High Prelate Valerissa Sarkesh is a tall silver dragonborn whose pale scales shine like hammered nickel beneath shrine lamps. She stands with such immaculate uprightness that courtiers unconsciously straighten when she enters. Her movements are slow, economical, and nearly silent, yet never hesitant. The scales along her jaw overlap in fine, fanlike ridges, giving her face the severe geometry of a carved reliquary. Her teeth are small, square, and startlingly numerous, visible whenever she speaks with warmth or laughs at a private joke. She smells faintly of hot stone, cedar ash, saffron oil, and the bitter mineral smoke used in the Palace Shrine. The unexpected contradiction is that her intimidating height and judicial stillness are paired with delicate, almost birdlike motions when she handles letters, cups, or frightened children.