Woodland

But then - tragedy. One day, while Woodland was off doing naturey things with her dryad family and friends and followers, the forest suddenly burst into flames. The dryads rushed back and forth in a vain attempt to extinguish the flames, to no avail. Woodland rushed to help, distributing her famed soil to regrow the trees as fast as the fire could burn them down. But heedless of their efforts, at the end of the day, the forest remained a scorching inferno. Rumors began to spread that a dragon had been the cause of it, using accursed magic to turn the forest into a sea of flames. To rub salt into the wound, the dragon had apparently fled the forest, not even taking responsibility for the carnage it had caused!


Well, that was the final straw for Woodland. Like most dryads, Woodland is usually peaceful, but the destruction of her forest proved to be the tipping point. Coexisting with the bumbling brutes of dragons had been hard enough, and now a dragon would burn down her home? Unacceptable. And as the leader of the dryads, Woodland knew exactly what to do: leave the most fire-resistant ones to fight the flames devouring their home, and gather all the forces she could muster. Turns out, aside from making plants grow pretty, Woodland was also an excellent military leader and inspirational speaker, using heart-rending words to whip her followers in a fury. Inflamed by her speech, the dryads went on a massacre, and suddenly, being a dragon became the most dangerous occupation within a sixty-meter radius of any forest.

The slaughter went on for days, and the largest campaign took Woodland and her followers through a particularly thick forest that reminded Woodland bitterly of how her old home used to be. Things could've ended pretty badly for the few dragon clans that happened to have taken up residence on the other side of the woods, but fortunately, once the dryads had slaughtered their way through the forest, Woodland began to calm down. This forest was a good one, she thought, and she'd cleared it of the pesky dragons anyway. (Well, herself excluded, but that went without saying.) In any case, her old home was unfit for living, so she might as well put down roots here, so to speak. The order went out, and the dryads calmed down. Woodland explained that now that they had demolished the dragon population (they hadn't), it was time that they went back to the good old days of planting and growing things. Starting in this forest, a new era of the dryad would begin, and they would show all those terrible pyromaniacs out there the might of the trees!