Eirlys

"My baby... Take care of her for me. She mustn't know anything. Protect her." Beneath the canopy of Viridian Woods, a mother's final plea pierced the silence. The Treants looked at each other solemnly. The baby in her arms laughed. A pure laugh, innocent despite the tragedy. A laugh to be protected at all costs. The Treants called her Eirlys, and hoped that the forest would be her shield. Beneath the branches of Cedarine, Eirlys grew up without a past, but with magic in her veins and a gentle rage in her heart. She was about to make the forest her playground.

"Never go to the Viridian Woods... they're cursed!" Eirlys became the forest's invisible guardian, the one hunters feared without ever seeing. The plants rustled and seemed to move visibly. Around trespassers, the forest had become a labyrinth with no way out, infested with green clouds of spores and pollen designed to punish their intrusion. Perched in the trees, a frail figure leaped about, laughing. Soon, when fear had dissuaded them from any retaliation, she would let them go. Her message had been conveyed: no one should enter HER woods and threaten her friends with impunity. At the cost of long (very long) and tedious years of learning, she had finally ensured that she was the fiercest protector of the Viridian Woods, capable of responding much more quickly and radically than her Treant mentors ever could. She loved them so much. Nothing should ever threaten them.

"The war is not yours, child. Stay hidden." But war crept to the edge of her sanctuary, and Eirlys did not hide. In the Battle of the Hexwood, she unleashed spores and fury, turning tides with primal grace. When peace returned, she opened the forest to the Elves, guiding them to fertile soil and safe paths. They taught her words and offered to help her answer the riddle of her origins. She declined. Her roots ran too deep. The forest was still her cradle, her shield, her family.

"No one sees it, but there's a rot beneath the roots..." On the Night of Burning Stars, Eirlys watched her forest wither. Corrupted totems buried deep had poisoned the land. She hunted the shaman behind it, only to learn the rot spread far beyond her woods. The strange totems were buried across the continent, slowly reshaping nature. To protect her home, she had to leave it. The Elves, awed by her resolve, tasked her with leading the Rangers' expeditions into the wild. With spores in her satchel and fury in her heart, she vowed to chase every totem, every shadow, until the wilds could breathe again.