The night Elf military has changed quite a bit in recent years, thanks to new threats and the aftereffects of the burning legion invasion. Before the second invasion, the druids were sleeping, and the sentinels were mainly used to keep the peace in ashenvale, dealing with threats from occasional satyrs, furbolgs, overly aggressive goblins groups, wild animals, centaurs from the south, and other such threats. The night elves were very restrictive about who could join the military, out of cultural tradition, and a lack of need for a large fighting force.

During the burning legion's arrival, this all changed. The orcs during Grom Hellscream's movement into ashenvale were able to fight the night elves effectively, despite being in the elves own homeland, and they were only forced out with Cenarius's help and the corrupted warsong's fighting with other orcs. The burning legion soon directly invaded the Night Elf lands, with the help of controlled scourge fighters, and the sentinels took some time to learn to fight against the new invaders. While the Night Elves were able to survive against the burning legion, with help from awakened druids, about a third of the sentinels and a quarter of the druids were killed in the legion's attack.

The survivors, however, were much more experienced and skilled fighters, and set about training new sentinels and druids for future fights. The burning legion had left numerous demons, undead, corrupted creatures, and other troublesome creatures still in Ashenvale, and other enemies such as the Naga had been awakened in the aftermath of the invasion. These new enemies were much more dangerous than what the Night elves had encountered in the past several thousand years. to build a powerful enough fighting force to handle the new enemies, the Night elves dropped many of the traditional requirements for joining their military, such as gender and ancestry. Druids, rather than returning to sleep in the emerald dream for long periods of time, rested in shorter bursts, and stayed awake for much of the time to help heal the land and fight against enemies. The night elves adapted training methods used by humans and orcs to quickly train the large numbers of new recruits.

The current Night elf military is split into three sections, Sentinels, Druids, and allied or otherwise friendly creatures. The sentinels are those with weapon skills, or those elune worshippers who use the goddess's powers in battle, the druids are those who use the powers of nature directly, and the allied creatures include hippogryphs, dryads, faerie dragons, ancients, and other such creatures with strong bonds to the night Elves who assist in various ways.

SentinelsEdit

In the past, only females could become sentinels (for their assumed stronger connection to elune, and ability to shadowmeld), with different requirements of birthplace and ancestry for different roles in the sentinel armies. After the burning legion invasion, these requirements were removed, and many highly skilled hunters and animal trackers, among volunteers in general, joined this organization.

The sentinels are composed of those night elf fighters who use physical weapons, and those who draw their power from elune. They are the largest group of Night Elf fighters. The most common weapon among sentinels are bows and arrows, using the so called "ashenvale bow", which does not fire very far or powerfully, but is quite accurate, and can be easily maintained. Some sentinels learn to use throwing knives, swords, or glaves as well. Many learn to ride a nightsabre panther, and learn to use weapons on it as well. Even many priests of elune learn to use physical weapons, though many of the newer ones only focus on spellcasting.

Although a few sentinels learn to fight in open combat, the Night elves mainly learn to fight in forests or other difficult terrain, or at night, where they can hide and use hit and run fighting styles. All of them learn to shadowmeld, an ability that can make the Night Elf somewhat invisible, and allows them to hide much better than members of other races with similar skill. Sentinels also are taught to survive on their own, and how to hide using normal methods, in addition to the usual training in group fighting and weapon use.

Priests of Elune are trained separately, near moonwells or at other temples of elune. Although many learn to use bows or other physical weapons, priests focus more on their megical abilities, focused on healing and using the powers of the moon and stars to bless allies and attack enemies. Priests are still expected to learn to hide, ride nightsabre panthers, and fight well in hit and run battles, though with less time available they tend to be less skilled in these areas than pure fighters.

When not in combat, physical weapon using sentinels are used to hunt for food, or to protect outposts from wild animals, while priests heal sicknesses, maintain moon wells, and provide spiritual guidance to other night elves. Sentinel survival training makes them useful as plant gatherers, animal wranglers. Some others simply take work unrelated to fighting. In general, though, the sentinels have been kept busy over the past few years dealing with corrupted creatures, demons, and other enemies in the night elf lands.

DruidsEdit

Druids are one of the most distinct elements of night elf society. These Night elves and tauren have learned to use and understand the powers of nature as no one else on azeroth can. While the Tauren druid tradition is quite recent, the Night elf druids have a long history. Several thousand years ago, they were the main spiritual leaders in Night elf society, and helped repair the world after the burning legion's invasion. While almost all druids were sleeping in the emerald dream when the burning legion invaded, they were awakened to help fight the invaders, and have once again become heavily involved in night elf society.

Originally, only male non-highborne night elves, born on particular days, and displaying certain features, were allowed to become druids (males were thought to have a stronger connection to the natural world), these restriction have been removed, and as with the sentinels, many new druids brought their own useful skills to the group. Gardeners, stargazers, animal trackers, and others have contributed new knowledge to the druids, and have learned the druid's powers quickly. In addition, druid leaders allowed Tauren to train to become druids, and the Tauren have proved successful students.

Druids must sleep occasionally to enter the emerald dream, a process that increases their knowledge, wisdom, and powers. Before the legion's invasion, many druids would sleep for hundreds of years at a time, but after the invasion, druids have been in demand as fighters, and for repairing damaged lands, and most night elves for a few years slept only a a week or so every two months. With the recent corruption of the emerald dream, the Druids have been prohibited from entering it until the source of the corruption is found.

In battle, druids perform a variety of roles depending on their training and natural abilities. Some druids control the powers of the stars and moon, similar to the elune priests. Other focus more on plant based powers, bring plants to life, healing their allies, or using vines roots to entangle, poison, or otherwise interfere with enemies. Druids that focus on animal powers can change their form into a variety of animal types, depending on the terrain and enemies they are fighting. night elf society has no shamans as the horde does, so druids also take up the skills of weather prediction and manipulation. While most druids lack the expertise in this area that the horde shamans have, they still command enough powers to interfere with and damage enemies in combat.

Outside of combat, older druids serve as spiritual advisers, and all watch the health of forests and other lands, helping to repair overly damaged areas. Some druids also assist in maintaining the moonwells, and the living tree-like beings that the night elves use for buildings. The most prestigious work amongst the druids is maintaining the health of Teldrassil, the new world tree. This tree has been experiencing much unexpected corruption, and many of the most skilled druids are used to explore the tree, to determine where the corruption comes from, and attempt ot fix or otherwise reduce it.

Friendly CreaturesEdit

The most common of the ashenvale creatures working with the Night elves are Dryads and Keepers of the Grove, known together as the Children of Cenarius. These half deer, half nigth elf creatures are the descendants of Cenraius. They are highly attuned to the natural world, and are also highly skilled druids. There are far fewer Children of Cenarius than night elves, but they provide unique skills to the night elf armies, including a talent for mixing poisons, an ability to run quickly, and an ability to resist magic. The two races have had a strong friendship for thousands of years, and will likely continue to do so for a long time.

Hippogryphs are flying, horned creatures found in the more mountainous areas of ashenvale. These creatures took a quick liking to the Night elves several thousand years ago, and now are used by the night elves for many purposes, as flying mounts for messengers or combat, as explorers or scouts for both peacetime and war purposes, and as fighters in their own right, as hippogrpyhs are quite dangerous to other flying creatures. In return for this assistance, hippogryphs are protected from other creatures by night elves, and given food if the hippogryph is otherwise unable to find any.

Mountain Giants are large stone creatures, slow moving, but resistant to most attacks. Mountain giants once existed in all mountain system throughout azeroth, but in other regions, have either been mined while hibernating, or destroyed by other events (such as the summoning of Ragnaros near blackrock mountain). Only in ashenvale have a large number of mountain giants survived. The night Elves have protected these creatures for thousands of years, and in return, the mountain giants help the Night elves in battle. These creatures are extremely difficult to kill, are large enough to block enemies from reaching vulnarable night elves behind, and can often taunt less skilled enemies to attack the giant rather than an easier nearby target. Fortunately for night elf enemies, Mountain giants and slow and clumsy, and are rare enough that night Elves only use them in the most important circumstances.

Ancients and treants are moving tree-like creatures that serve the night elves in a variety of ways. Some serve as buildings, or other storage places, while others act as guards for night elf cities and outposts. Still others join the night elves in combat, or are summoned into being by druids. the larger ancients and treants move slowly, but are extremely tough to kill, while smaller treants can move almost as fast as most animals. Ancients and treants are created in a variety of ways, some seem to have appeared on their own from trees or from special ground seeds, others are created by Night Elf wisps enchanting tree seeds or the ground, other are created from trees or seeds by druids.

Chimeras and Faerie dragons are flyers who have over time become friendly with the night elves, and who assist the night elves in combat when neccessary. surprisingly, these two creatures are related, a type of creature several thousand years ago called a Dragath split into two breeds, one over time became larger and more like the actual dragons, another became smaller and came to resemble an insect or bird more. Both creatures are rare, only found in small portions of ashenvale, and both have mastered their own types of magical powers. The larger and tougher chimeras prefer powerful attacks, using their lightning and acid breaths on prey or enemy forces on the ground. A small group of chimeras can easily destroy large ground armies, and many chimeras were used to prevent demonic armies from approaching Hyjal during the battle there. Faerie dragons focus instead on magical manipulation and evasion, they have learned to turn ethereal to escape predators or attacks, and can unleash a powerful attack on magic users surrounding them. Night elves are unsure where this "Mana flare" came from, but it is very damaging to enemy spellcasters.