#society because her mother's family ended up leaving the underdark when said mother was very young

[rebdot]

thinking very hard abt the lore i came up w for lyra (my tav) and how it relates to her being in a relationship w astarion bc they both kind of come across as similar "flirty morally skewed but putting on a facade" types and it's what brings them together initially but their reasons for being like that are so different.

she sees being a social chameleon and manipulating people as a way to empower herself in a world that doesn't necessarily trust or respect her and she uses it as a way to assert her will and autonomy meanwhile his experience is almost the exact opposite. and i think that's part of why she goes along with the honestly obvious manipulation attempt (she has 17 charisma and he has 10. come on.) bc she percieves it as just like, something harmless to play along with and have fun until eventually they both actually develop feelings and he confesses and they are both like "oh fuck." anyway the moment she finds out anything about cazador i think she starts plotting his death before he even mentions it solely bc she doesn't think that anyone who wants that much power over people should live.

[lairofsentinel]

Alessa Kalenhad

Chardry’s mother

Alessa Kalenhad was a human book merchant with a sharp mind who followed her family tradition in the book business. She was an extremely ingenious woman, able to deal with any situation making use of the few elements she had at her disposal. In particular, she was well known for having a delightful charm that allowed her to talk her way out of tense situations. Somehow, these skills were inherited by Chardry during his childhood, despite his drowness making them more complicated to be effective. 

She was still a young woman starting her business networking when, in the Underdark Market, she saw a little drow baby with breathing problems in a sales stand of a fellow merchant. Knowing how male drows were acquired as exotic pets for some unscrupulous, powerful humanoids on the surface, she could not look aside the miserable fate awaiting that baby. Without thinking twice, she bought him, giving him the name of Chardry and sharing her surname. She never knew about his biological family, and never tried to investigate it either. Doing so would put her—and Chardry—in danger; drows did not like to make public the stains in their genealogy. 

Her friends and merchant fellows warned her about the dangers of raising a drow child: rumours said that they have an evil, dormant nature, ready to awake as soon as they heard the Call of the Spider Queen. Despite being considered a lunatic for adopting that baby, she ignored those rumours, convinced that they were a product of ignorance and fear. She was a great believer of nurture over nature, and was determined to prove that a drow, raised far away from their cruel society, could be a creature like any other. Still, her friends will often warn her about the chance of ending up assassinated by her own son. 

She raised him on the surface, inside the nomad merchant community, finding a place in the only merchant caravan that allowed her to stay with the drow baby. Although the families in the caravans were extremely wary of the kid, they tolerated her son because they trusted in Alessa. She had convinced them with her silver tongue about how a drow outside their violent environment made them as dangerous as any human.

To ensure their acceptance and, therefore, their survival, she reinforced—maybe too much—a calm, repressed behaviour in Chardry, fearing that any tantrum or anger in the kid would scare the fellow merchants with his red glowing eyes. Sometimes she wondered if being so strict with such a solitary kid was right, but she had no choice. She needed to repress his strong emotions—especially anger—if they wanted to stay in the community. The problem was always Chardry’s eyes, glowing red as his childish tantrum overtook him. Sometimes even she feared her own son, whose eyes were the manifestation of Lolth’s twisted instincts in his blood. Trying not to betray her son, she had to endure her own biases and fears not to disappoint him too much. 

Despite the acceptance in the merchant caravans, it was clear that all families warned their children not to get close to the drow kid. This frustrated Alessa, who sometimes felt that all her efforts and Chardry’s were in vain, and made her acknowledge, day after day, that the world outside was not going to be kind to her son. 

Since Chardry was raised as a lonely kid, she encouraged him to get close to books and knowledge, things that would keep his mind occupied while allowing him to understand the complex place she had put him in the world. Chardry learnt all about drows and drow culture from books, shaping his vision of them with a very human perspective at a young age. One of her biggest fears was that, one day, Chardry could resent all these decisions and reproach her all the efforts they made. 

When she adopted Chardry, many of her non-business related friendships faded over time, afraid of the kid’s nature. She could understand the fear; she herself had felt cold blood running through her veins on more than one occasion in the many arguments she had with her son, especially during his teenage years.  

Chardry’s teenage was the most stressful time for her. He was unstable as any human teenager, but unlike those, he was too solitary and desperate to fit in. She never knew when Chardry would appear bleeding or severely hurt because he tried something he read in some books to look less drow. 

The situation escalated so much that one day, when she returned to her caravan after a long day of business, she found him with his cheeks and white hair soaked in blood, crying out of frustration. He had mutilated his own ears. Months later, another similar episode happened, with his arms being burnt in acid, in an attempt to decolour the purple of his skin. Despite all her love—and her mistakes—she knew there were levels in which she could never reach her drow son. The young man was not a human even though she raised him as such in order to guarantee his better integration on the surface. 

She tried to find a partner all her life, but the few opportunities in which her nomad lifestyle allowed her to find a girlfriend who would accept her constant movement across Faerûn, they disappeared as soon as they saw her drow child. Her partners advised her to leave the drow before Lolth would call upon him, and some even gave her ultimatums to choose between them or her son. She even forced herself to try to find a drow partner, but the few ones she met on the surface were so cruel that she left them soon afterwards. Her hopes in finding a drow parent to help her son to live on the surface were immediately discarded. In an attempt to get close to any drow that could help her son to better fit in, she tried to make contact with seldarin drows, but she never succeeded: they were rare to find and usually isolated, living far away from troubles.

When Chardry was finally an adult, he worked inside the caravan: cataloguing new books, developing business strategies [in which he was not skilful], and keeping the business accounting, while she remained the face of their business. Their relationship became deeper and stronger. Even though she knew that her son felt a heavy weight on his shoulders for all the complications she got in her life due to his presence, she always made him clear that she regretted nothing.

Later in her life, when she reached old age, she started to worry for her son’s future loneliness and his dire complications to establish relationships that could sustain him in his long life. In secret, she prayed to many gods to take care of her son’s lonesome fate. ------

Chardry’s main biography [here]

Fic while Early Access lasts [The Warmth Found by the Campfire]

[ Alessa’s photos are the result of bg3 character creator and artbreeder, playing with the many free filters of FaceApp. Chardry’s, only the FaceApp filters ]