Valari is a lean, sharp-featured wood elf woman whose stillness feels more threatening than most people's movement. Her pale skin is etched with dark forest-ink tactical tattoos, branching from her throat across her collarbones and down both forearms in patterns resembling roots, patrol routes, and old blood vessels. Her ice-grey eyes rarely blink when she is evaluating a person. Dark hair is shorn close to the scalp in a severe utilitarian cut, though one narrow lock has been deliberately left long behind her right ear and tied with red thread. She moves with economical precision, placing each foot as if the ground has already been measured. The unexpected contradiction is her hands: broad-palmed, scarred, and unusually gentle, more suited to tending wounded animals or transplanting seedlings than wielding weapons. She leaves people with the impression of a drawn bow held perfectly still.