Set: Ancient Forest

The Ancient Forests

A young forest keeps itself in order. Rain, wind, the seasons, the deer that grazes and the wolf that hunts it: nothing more is needed for everything to find its place.
A forest that lives through the centuries ends up changing its nature. Magic seeps into it like water into soil, slowly, and begins to weigh on everything that grows and lives there. Minds awaken where there were only trees. Creatures arrive, drawn by that magic, some wondrous, others terrifying, and the forest does not yet know how to choose between them.
Around its thousandth winter, it learns. It is not rare then for balance to take shape, and sometimes a body. Some of these guardians are born of the forest itself: the Old Hands, sprung from a pact between nature and an arcane power about which almost nothing is known. The Sower gives a beginning to what magic has brought into being, his companion the Nourisher unmakes what has ended, and both tend only to the magical part of the forest, leaving the rest to rain and the seasons. Other guardians are blessed: the mossmantle wolves, whom the Sower and the Nourisher have touched so they may follow them in their work. Others still are made: the Sentinels, shaped by the elves to be entrusted with the keeping of the living.
Such a forest is only a thousand years old. Now imagine what lives in the ones that count several.