#liriel baenre (starlight & shadows)

[banished-away]

[the-banished-one]

reading homeland vs reading daughter of the drow

[bramblepatch]

I made this for d&d purposes a while back but let's be honest it's equally applicable to most people who encounter either Drizzt or Liriel before the age of 100

[vspin]

"Do you know why we wizards are tolerated in Menzoberranzan?"

Liriel cast a quick, startled glance at her father. "Target practice?"

[rukafais]

Some Liriels. I'm not sure about how I drew her hair here, I might do some more workshopping about it later. She's fun to draw though!

Liriel's childhood, her experiences with her mother, and how it seems to have shaped her is fascinating to me. I would have liked to know more about Liriel's mother especially, since she was so deeply devoted to loving her daughter.

(And I'm always struck by that very small moment at the start of the first book, where she instantly realizes that her mother is dead. I always wondered if that was too much of a shock and she was later emotional about it in private, or she sort of just repressed it...)

[munnchausenzip]

Getting into forgotten realms lore is kind of funny because wdym theres TWO menzoberranzanyr good aligned outcast noble drow with Weird-Ass Specialest Eyes..

[alicelufenia]

This is maybe weird but who is Liriel? 😳 I saw you mention the name to lunastrophe I think, and I'm asking only because I named a half-drow of mine Liriel out of nowhere and now I'm thinking I've obviously read the name somewhere before hahahaaaaagh 😂😭

Liriel Baenre is a character from some of the earlier drow novels by Elaine Cunningham. She's also like my second favorite drow ever :D

She starts off as a spoiled noble dodging her priestess training to study magic, and desired to travel the world with the aid of an artifact she comes across in her adventures called the Windwalker, to allow her to use her drowic magic on the surface. She's basically the in-universe reason why drow are able to use their underdark magic, like faerie fire and darkness globes, on the surface, following her journey. Her companion on these adventures is Fyodor, a human berserker from Rashemen, so I always picture him with Minsc' accent. That's not important, but I find it funny.

She's also one of the few female protagonists of any drow stories I know, and in my opinion severely underrated compared to other heroic drow like Drizzt. Whereas Drizzt is motivated to distance himself from his drow heritage, Liriel is proud of it, and labors to preserve the magic of her homeland on her adventures. She's also funny and mischievous, but will turn serious at the blink of an eye.

She has many dealings with various gods too, initially with Eilistraee and her followers when she first visits the surface, her experience as a priestess of Lolth where we get a firsthand account of how horrible that is (she calls on Lolth to help her and her allies, which involves everyone being teleported to the Abyss for an instant. No one else is affected, but the brief exposure is so traumatizing she cries for the first time in her life), and finally becomes a cleric of Mystra, magic being her greatest calling.

Also this screenshot isn't my own, that would be from this reddit post. She doesn't actually appear as a character in bg3, but the op recreated her as a custom character. I think she looks great.

I highly recommend Daughter of the Drow if you're interested, followed by Tangled Webs (where she gets a cool as fuck adoptive pirate dad) and Windwalker, final book in the trilogy. Sadly aside from a few short stories that's all she appears in.

[wineredsea]

I just committed to the grave mistake of reading the prelude to daughter of the drow. yeah I definitely will not be normal about liriel baenre.

[everybodyloveshippos]

Liriel and Fyodor

I’ve been reading the Starlight and Shadows trilogy and liking it a lot.

[tief4tief]

extremely niche relationship that's real to me: Liriel / Thorn and even maybe Liriel / Thorn / Sharlarra as a throuple.

[paxesoterica]

Apparently there's a limit of 30 something tags, so here's the first half of my list.

favorite character from any media BUT it has to be a woman. in the tags now go (pls talk to me about your favorite fictional women pls pls pls pls)

[banished-away]

starlight and shadows + textposts, because i think about this series a normal amount

[the-banished-one]

Liriel and Fyodor (idea by my friend Hoor)

[bramblepatch]

So I know that Liriel ends up converting to Mystra in that short story set a few years after the Starlight and Shadows trilogy but I think it would be really funny if she just. Kept going. Every five or ten years she gets distracted by a shiny new goddess and jumps over to priestess for her for a while. Gets really into Sune for a few years. Dabbles in following Zinzerena for a bit. Has a Selûnite phase. Spends a while at a temple of Sharess.

[vspin]

Liriel Baenre's Daily Planner

Attend magical lecture

Learn some spells

Go shopping

Fish

Watch treacherous friend get eaten by carnivorous fish

Settle some scores

[lunastrophe]

Hello, can you make a post about drow's importance of fashion and moreover their braids and overrall hairstyle? What kind of styling they did, products they used... I would love that. You're truly a source of inspiration. Keep it going please! Thank you ❤️ Merci beaucoup.

Hello! Drow fashion is a delightful topic - I think I am going to create a few more detailed posts about drow clothes and beauty care in general. Thank you so much for inspiration! ❤️

For now, here are some basic information:

🕷️ Drow Clothing - in drow society, clothes reflect the drow's station and rank, especially among nobles. The best fabrics, like gossamer-like spider silks, are the most expensive, as well as intricate fabrics that resemble spider webs in their structure. Such web-like fabrics in clothing are often adorned with jewellery.

Leather is an easily available material in the Underdark, and it is often used by drow to produce various items of clothing. Top quality black leather is especially popular among nobles.

Some more common fabrics in the Underdark are made of mushroom fibers. Fabrics made of plant fibers or wool are naturally less common and more expensive, since they need to be obtained from the surface - as merchants' goods or as spoils from raids.

🕷️ Dress To Impress - surfacers often consider drow sense of fashion scandalous, but among drow, it is more about showing off their physical perfection and manifesting their self-confidence.

Drow generally take great care to conceal their physical flaws. In consequence, revealing clothing can be read as a message "I have no flaws to conceal" - or "I have flaws, so what? I am powerful enough not to care!", depending on one's attitude, station and power.

Piwafwi (drow cloaks) of nobles are often marked with specific colours and patterns, to indicate the owner's station and house.

🕷️ Hairstyles - drow usually wear their hair long, but many warriors crop their hair or even shave their heads (shorter hair = less chance for the enemy to grab it). Uthegentel of House Barrison Del'Armgo was wearing his hair short and spiked, most likely styled with some Underdark equivalent of hair gel.

For long hair, some drow use hairpins. It is quite popular among drow to make hairpins that are sharp enough to be used as weapons, or even hairpins that can store spells, like small wands.

Drow also braid their long hair. Triel Baenre, for example, was wearing her hair braided into a tight braid that was wrapped around her head like a crown - simple and practical.

One of young noble females from House Fey-Branche, adept in Arach-Tinilith, was described with her hair braided into three long braids.

Some drow like to braid their hair into many thin braids. Such braids could be used to create elaborate, durable hairstyles, often with help of a skilled servant. Liriel's party hairstyle was of this kind.

In Menzoberranzan, single-braided hair was a mark of a commoner (at least for a young drow male - as far as I remember, it was mentioned in description of only one character in Starlight and Shadows, so I am not really sure if it applies also to females or to older drow).

I also very vaguely remember that at least among Menzoberranyr drow, some hairstyles were reserved only for nobles from specific houses or of specific ranks - but I do not remember details, I would need to look it up.