Lore: Wood elves are Good??

[BattleAxe1980_NL]

So i was reading up on the lore, for the wood elves. And for centuries, they hunted down every one that was even near their forest. I'm not even talking about actually going in, because that was even worse. But set up a farm close enough and someday soon, you'd catch an arrow tip first. Which frakking bites, i imagine. And for what reason; to cool the hotheadedness of Elves and forest alike.

It's like not even kicking the ball in your neighbours garden, but getting shot for looking at his garden.

And they're classified as being good? You'd think that would make them at the very least part Destruction like the Orcs. Seeing how they too do their own thing as well.

[Gamefever]

There are groups of people in the real world that really do believe that the worlds population should be limited to 500,000 total. Those same people actually believe that they are good and rightous.

The Wood Elves can be painted easily as nice good people, if you can ignore all the harm they have done in the name of their green tree's.

[PuttBlug]

They aren't good or bad. According to the lore they can become cruel if someone steps into their territory but other than that they won't go out of their way to hurt people. They are much like the Tomb Kings in that regard.

[spellsnare]

the only time wood elves would come outside of athel loren is for the great hunt beside of that they tend to stay in they forest

[Gamefever]

The first wild hunt only resulted in a whole village being slaughtered.
Thing about Warhammer is that no group is innocent or in whole "good".

Its Warhammer....There can be only War.

[BattleAxe1980_NL]

Originally posted by spellsnare:

the only time wood elves would come outside of athel loren is for the great hunt beside of that they tend to stay in they forest

Yes, and the way i read it, that was to hunt down people to close to their forest, for no other reason than being close to their forest.

[ihKu47]

I'm not sure if Warhammer really operates on good vs evil, it's more like order vs. chaos. Sure, most order aligned factions are less evil than chaos oriented ones, but they can still do evil things - for their own "good reasons". Well, sometimes from purely self centered reasons as well. The Woodelves are good in that they would rather destroy than pet the Beastmen and other factions that the order aligned factions are typically at odds with.

[ihKu47]

Originally posted by petermout:

Originally posted by spellsnare:

the only time wood elves would come outside of athel loren is for the great hunt beside of that they tend to stay in they forest

Yes, and the way i read it, that was to hunt down people to close to their forest, for no other reason than being close to their forest.

If you want to experience more "good" factions being bad, read up on the Dwarfs and their grudges :P

[Gamefever]

Order VS Choas +1

[Longtoke]

Order / destruction etc garbage is age of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, tww isn’t based on that abomination.

[BattleAxe1980_NL]

[/quote]
If you want to experience more "good" factions being bad, read up on the Dwarfs and their grudges :P [/quote]

Oh, i will. Found this wonderful wiki, went from HE to woodelves and was scratching my head. Hence my query above.

[Gamefever]

Well I wouldnt know, I stopped playing the Table Top long before Age of Sigmar...
But Order vs Choas fits where Good vs Evil not so much.
A lot of Evil exists in the Empire and the Imperium of Man (40K version).

[Karsk]

If I had to summarize the Elves of Athel Loren in three words it would be: Aggressively Chaotic Neutral.

They can only be described as "good" insofar as they are not particularly fond of Chaos, Necromancers, and Greenskins.

Wood Elves on a VERY good day are Chaotic Good. That's only when they feel like it.

For the most part they keep to Athel Loren and will instantly murder the hell out of anyone who takes a single step past the line of stones marking the true border.

Also I wouldn't ever use terms such as good and evil to describe any factions in Warhammer Fantasy Battles. The one and only exception being Chaos who are the ones that are pretty damned evil.



Because the setting is much more grimdark than Tolkien's (it came long before 40k) the various factions can be divided into three categories broadly speaking.

The Forces of Order (The "Good Guys")

Empire, High Elves, Dwarfs, Lizardmen etc....

These factions whilst not being good in the traditional fantasy sense, do not want to cause all sorts of death and destruction.

Order aligned factions do what you would think, they basically want to keep the world largely as it is.

The Forces of Destruction (The "Bad Guys")

Chaos, Greenskins, Skaven, Vampire Counts (Where they stand tends to be more based on the individual vampire lord, some are happy to live in mortal society while the ones we usually see in the games want to do stuff like take over the Empire and rule a world of undead and enslaved living servants)

etc...


True Neutral Forces

Basically only two factions fall into this category

Wood Elves (They would happily work with destruction factions if it was in the best interest of Athel Loren)

Tomb Kings (In tabletop the TK were THE neutral faction, they were able to work with anyone. Much like the Vampire Counts they are dependent on the Tomb King in question but they have absolutely no loyalties to anyone but themselves and the land of Nehekhara. If it's in their interests they will also work with anyone but have no permanent allies)



This is only a very cursory summary of the factions, simply because it is easier to explain how the Wood Elves act in relation to everyone else if you understand where the other factions stand.


If you ever end up reading some of the old official tournaments from back in the day when WHFB was alive and well, they did events such as Storm of Chaos and End Times but there were others like them, your army would only be able to team up with others that fell within the same alignment. Same goes for the tournaments on a local level not just the big global events GW did when they were still cool and actually cared about the setting and the community rather than gouging the everloving ♥♥♥♥ out of their loyal customers.


As you can tell I absolutely love the lore of WHFB, 40k as well of course but as I got older I began to appreciate fantasy a lot more. To the point where I prefer Fantasy to 40k any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

I love to discuss the lore as well, so if you ever have any questions about the lore let me know I'll be happy to answer them!

[Notright]

I think others have done a good job of summarizing the different factions. The one thing to understand about GW lore, nobody is ever the "good guys". Some are less "evil" than others.

The Empire has witch hunters and inquisitions. Torture is an acceptable form of interogation and you are guilty until proven innocent.

The Orcs just want a good fight and do not care who it is with.

The High Elves are narcisitic paranoids and suspect that anyone, including themselves, could fall prey to Chaos.

The Dark Elves have already embraced Chaos and are hedonistic, plus there is the whole fight for the throne thing going on.

Wood Elves are extreme isolationists and anyone coming near them is subject to an arrow in the eye.

The Lizards are religous zealots and treat every non-believer as prey.

The Skaven are sneaky and backstabbing.

The Vampire counts want to control the Empire and humans are cattle.

The Dwarves are greedy, quick to anger and hold a grudge like a psycho ex, only they want to bury the hatchet in your skull.

Chaos just wants to watch the world burn.

Tomb Kings are obsessed with immortality and posessive to the extreme.

[ihKu47]

Originally posted by Notright:

The Dark Elves have already embraced Chaos and are hedonistic, plus there is the whole fight for the throne thing going on.

I'm not an expert in Dark Elf lore, but from what I've read their relationship with Chaos seems a little more complicated than that. There are Chaos cults among the Dark Elfs but if they become too public they are usually put down, and the Dark Elfs at large tend to think it's blasphemy to belong to such a cult. But they do worship an elven god of murder, and are self-serving and often hedonistic, and the existence of the cults means they are not hard to sway over to Chaos.

Someone more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm wrong :)

[Toby Larone]

Originally posted by Notright:

The Lizards are religous zealots and treat every non-believer as prey.

Lizardmen are more robots following their programming and trying to decipher the instructions left behind and destroy anything the goes agaist them.