#szarkai drow

i first started playing baldur’s gate 3 in september of 2024. i think i made it to the chapel and got irritated with the desktop UI and then kind of gave up on it. in january of 2025, i decided to give it another go after seeing a picture of astarion on instagram and thought he was pretty cute. and you know, if enough people are raving about the game, it must be worth at least one more try, right?

my playthrough in january of last year was a cleric.

i’ve played dungeons and dragons since 2022, so i was still certainly a novice at the time, and quite frankly, i still consider myself a novice even now. with that being said, when i made my cleric, i at least had the basics to go off of.

as most people do, i created my cleric primarily based off of a version of myself. her name was xavia. she had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a little tan; i imagined she liked laying out in the sun, especially bc she was a follower of lathander. she was playful, nice, and generally laid back; overall a pretty basic character (though there’s nothing wrong with that).

at the time, i knew nothing about astarion.

so the tiefling party rolls around, and he makes his signature move. and of course, both xavia and i fell for it. however, by the time i got to rivington, i realized that i had missed so much of the game.

i let shadowheart kill lae’zel bc i thought that’s how the story went, i didn’t know wyll was a companion, i thought karlach was actually a bad guy, i somehow managed to trigger the goblin fight at the grove but then escaped bc i didn’t know what was going on which made me lose access to it and led to halsin’s demise.

and… i somehow missed astarion’s confession scenes.

long story short, i decided to end that play-through start a new one and to give the dark urge a go bc of all the things i heard about the storyline. after several runs that i eventually scrapped, i played one all the way through using valanna’s head model but different character. i finished the game as resist durge, only killed people on purpose, and successfully romanced astarion.

astarion.

i’ll save some time bc i think the love for him has been profoundly professed by the fan base. but i fell for his story, as one does, quite hard. i soon discovered AO3 and the concept of fanfic (i know, i know) and i realized that was something i wanted to do too. i wanted a way that i could care for him, to support him, to show him the world can be slightly better and brighter, that his boundaries matter, and that healing is never a complete or linear process. i wanted to give him space to exist; to be seen.

but how does a sentient meat sack enlighten a blorbo?

of course, by creating another blorbo.

i loved the durge storyline, the head model i had picked for my first durge run, and astarion. so, in march of 2025, i created valanna.

i spent about 3 days researching and deciding what she smells like; deciding on jasmine, saffron, and a wisp of sweet cherries.

i spent roughly a week deciding on her name. in standard drow language, her name means counselor of darkness (technically darkness, counselor of) and thankfully her name stuck through all the various character morphs i put her through.

i spent about 8 months deciding her race. i was constantly stuck between an elf, a drow, and half high elf and drow. i also toyed with her being an eladrin elf. i genuinely love the forgotten realms and all of its lore and i value lore accuracy as much as i do creative freedom. i tried out almost every gorgeous skin tone an average drow would have, but kept going back to the bone white skin tone for her. it felt like it fit perfectly, but of course i couldn’t let it be that easy.

for the longest time, i didn’t allow myself to accept the skin tone that felt the most like her. all the posts on reddit about szarkai drow and lore accurate skin tones for drow started making me second guess my choice over and over, despite the fact that none of them were ever directed at me.

so after lots of reading and mouse clicks on my computer, i finally settled on a skin tone that fit both her and what little lore there is on szarkai drow. and through that whole process, i eventually gave myself permission to let my OC be my OC.

i spent 11 months deciding her eye color. same deal as the skin tone, plus a few extra months. i actually just decided on her eye color about a month or so ago, around valentine’s day.

i had originally settled on pink for her eye color. i didn’t want her to look like astarion’s sister anymore than she probably already does, so red was out.

so, what shade of pink, you ask?

every shade. i couldn’t decide. the amount of mods there are made it so much easier and harder to decide. at one point, i had picked a pink that had a black ring around it to signify that she was still under bhaal’s control and then i planned on removing it after the whole durge scene with orin. which i still love that idea, but it didn’t really feel like… her.

eventually, i settled on a silver-white eye color; a barely noticeable tint of blue depending on the lighting.

i have spent the past year getting to know valanna. i tried to figure out all the various ways to fit who she is within the boundaries of the dark urge’s story and in november i realized that the gloriously written dark urge story is not who she is.

there were pieces that fit, but overall, it felt like i was trying to put m&m’s through a shredder and expected them to still be in one piece on the other side. but of course, that doesn’t work, and neither did the dark urge storyline.

so, since last march, and more so since november, i have sat with her. i’ve listened to her tell me who she is, what makes her giggle, what makes her question her existence, what would matter to her if it was taken away, what life experiences shaped her, why she thinks they affected her the way they did, who was in her life, who is still in her life, and why.

her and i have considered why she has the boundaries she has, why only some of them are fluid depending on the context, and why others are non-negotiable; and why she’d want to have that conversation and why she wouldn’t.

so, i’m sure if you are also a sentient meat sack, you’re familiar with hot dogs and more importantly, spaghetti.

sometimes, you and your character need to sit down with the hot dogs and spaghetti of who they are. the hot dog being the thing; a childhood bedroom, a parent that had quite the arcane skill and was invisible their entire life, a favorite ring, a song they hate, their third favorite bar that they’ve only been able to visit six times, and so on. various types of hot dogs.

the spaghetti ties it all together. their third favorite bar is only the third favorite bc the bartender loves playing the song they hate the most. and they hate that song bc it was the song that parent would play loudly while screaming at them before leaving for days at a time.

the hot dogs are the what. and the spaghettis are the why. and every character, both the blorbos and the meat sacks, have hot dogs and spaghettis.

as i have given her space to grow and evolve and sat with her to understand her hot dogs and spaghetti, the more i have come to realize that she has been doing the same for me.

she has been holding my looking glass just as i have been holding hers; every question i have asked her, she has gently asked me in return. and through her, i have had the opportunity to learn more about myself, identify the hot dogs, seek out the spaghettis, and understand why.

she has given me the chance to reflect on who i am, and in return, it has given her the ability to tell me who she is. we both have learned through each other, what it means to be loved; to be seen.

it’s been a gift, you know. and i won’t forget it.