faderift | A Little Down In The Mouth Pt 1

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A Little Down In The Mouth Pt 1

WHO: Adelaide LeBlanc, Christine Delacroix, Eirlys Ancarrow, Maxwell Trevean
WHAT: Quest to find the source of the plague.
WHEN: Firstfall
WHERE: Fallow Mire
NOTES: Summery is Here.

Of all the possible sources of the plague considered, Adelaide honestly had not thought something so innocuous as a fishing hole free from the undead would be responsible. Somewhere mired in them, the wells full of rot, anything like that would have been her first guess. But with how prevalent the undead were in this place? Perhaps that any one spot didn't have them shambling about should have been an indication of a larger danger.

Or perhaps she was grasping at straws. Too much work and a rough time finding sleep left her slightly more irritable than usual. Any answer would be better than none and this? Was their best bet.

That the walk was so long through the bog and the undead tended to trail behind like macabre ducklings didn't help much either. "I think that is it."

She gestures to the map held by one of the soldiers- trying to find any landmarks in this place as difficult at best- but the rough sketch seemed to match.

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Christine stops and looks ahead, brow furrowed a little. It looks like an ordinary fishing hole, which means they'll have to get up close to see what's so strange about it that's causing all this. So she reaches into her satchel and takes out several pieces of cloth with ties sewn into them thanks to Krem.

"Here; I don't know if these will help, but we should cover our noses and mouths with these. If this is where the plague originated, we are at a high risk to catch it ourselves. Do we all have gloves too? I brought extra pairs." Germ theory may not be a thing, but Christine knows well enough to cover her skin and the orifices that people cough and sneeze out of.

Eirlys quirks an eyebrow up at the face masks, thinking them a very good idea if they were going to end up sneezing all over each other in getting close to the source of the outbreak. "If it's spread through the water, we'll need to be careful with our clothes, it'll seep straight through them. We may need to burn them when we're out of the Mire."

Maxwell was no healer by any means, so he listened carefully as the women conversed, prepared to take their advice to the letter. As much as he hoped to help, he didn't want to do it by becoming a fresh specimen.

"I'll do what I can to keep the undead behind us back, so you can work," he promised, frowning ahead at the quiet little pond.

It certainly looked innocuous didn't it, compared to everywhere else in the Mire crawling with death and undead. And somehow that wasn't comforting.

Reflexively, he kept his bow out, held loose, but ready.

"How wonderful." Her tone is as dry as the mire is wet, already she is reaching up to twist her hair out of the way, roll back her sleeves as much as possible, and take the mask as offered by Christine. Between the walk and the undead she's more than ready to find answers and move along. "Try not to fall in."

Christine ties her own mask on, making a face unseen behind it. The idea of falling into a plague-ridden hole is disgusting.

"Let's see what we have," she says, voice thankfully not very muffled. "Does anything look like it does not belong?"

Eirlys places her feet slowly and deliberately, feeling that one misstep and she'll go straight through the slippery, rotting wood of the dock. "I'll try to clear some of these reeds, perhaps they're covering something more sinister."

Maxwell glanced back the way they'd come - no immediate undead, just a few shuffling figures in the distance, hopefully nothing more than the other soldiers could handle - and then stepped forward to help Eirlys. Carefully he pulled on the reed tops, just enough to get the roots free of the mud without splashing.

"What could be down here that would cause all this?" he asked, wondering if the healers had any more guesses than he did.

"A particularly pustulent corpse, a demon, darkspawn blood but this does not seem much like the taint in my limited experience around it, a fungus, a poisonous root, some ill humor from the fade tripping through the veil to settle into the water- other than a cough, a fever, and death within tent to fifteen days of catching we have terribly little to guide us." All the more reason to hope that this proves to be more enlightening. Back at Skyhold Bruce had been digging but nothing they could find seemed to do more than slow the course of the disease.

Mask in place Adelaide peers at the reeds on the other side of the dock, kneeling before stirring the surface of the water with the end of her staff. Mud. Silt. No fish, none that she could see. "They did come here to fish, yes?"

"It was said to be a fishing hole," Christine remarks. "But I do not recall if that is what people were coming out here to do." She squints at the water that Adelaide is stirring up, noting the lack of fish too.

"Perhaps they were hopeful, or it could be that no fish have been here for some time. If whatever is causing this can kill all wildlife, they would have been the first victims."

"I don't think people have been able to fish much here," Eirlys says grimly, reaching into the area she's uncovered from the reeds she's pulled out and depositing a couple of dead and decaying fish onto the dock, where they land with a dull, wet smack. "I just hope they haven't eaten any of these."

Maxwell's nose wrinkled, the mask helping, but not fully blocking the stink of rot as the fish slapped against the dock. "Even if they were wise enough to avoid the obviously dead, if it's in the water, and they managed to catch anything, the living fish were likely on their way down the same path. Appearing well enough to eat, but still carrying the sickness."

He pushed at the reeds with his bow, stirring up more silt and muck, another decaying fish bubbling to the surface and drifting in a gentle eddy.

Curious, he watched it.

"Do we know where this pond feeds from?"

"There is something down there-" Her staff nudged against something too solid to be mud or reeds, something lodged in the much. Without proper leverage she couldn't quite manage but if the bridge were a touch more solid she could get the end of it underneath and possibly shove it up. Or- well. She withdrew her staff and tapped the muck covered end against the dock, frost flowing from the tips of her fingers to form a long, sharp hook on the bottom. After a moment more to reinforce it she dipped it back under and hooked the end around whatever it was- roots, a large fish, a mass of reeds and waste.

"Maxwell, a little assistance? I cannot quite haul it up."

The reeds rushed back, water slapping gently as Maxwell's bow lifted and he turned from his side of the dock to Adelaide's. He slipped it on over his head and reached to help her.

"Here," he gripped the staff behind her, "on three. One, two,... three--"

"Oh Maker..." Eirlys raises a hand to her forehead and rubs at her temples as the object begins to drift toward the surface of the water, seeing that it looked distinctly human in shape.

Christine touches Eirlys's shoulder to get her attention. "Let's move back and give them room." Room to haul the body out and up onto the dock. It really is disturbing looking; like nothing she's ever seen before. But a dead body might be the cause of all this, right? If it polluted the water, then the fish and people who ate the fish would be polluted too.

Of course, they have to be thorough and not just assume, which means an examination is next on the list. This may be the most unpleasant thing Christine has ever been involved in.

"Unless this is stuffed with stones- I do not think it should be this heavy." Even a body in full plate will rise in time- and this one looks as though it had been lodged in the water for a fair while. Lifting it out will require touching it and- no. No thank you. Adealide shifts her grip on her staff and gestures to the water alongside, frost building up a wedge of a ramp for her and Max to slide the corpse onto the dock.

Less chance of catching the plague this way. "That ought to hold."

Dragging it around and up will be a great deal simpler now.

"Maker," Maxwell muttered, shifting so he could pull while Adealide pushed. "Why couldn't it have just been the fish?"

Together, though, were able to slide the body onto the slippery ramp and manhandle it up on the bank where it settled, oozing unpleasantly. Releasing the staff, he glanced between the healers, an eyebrow arching bemusedly. (Glad, for the moment he had next to no training in the healing arts.)

"...So, who'd like to go first?"

Eirlys steps forward, trying to conceal the repulsion she felt toward the corpse. She'd seen enough of them, with the outbreaks she'd helped deal with in the alienage, but there was something different about this. It felt almost unnatural.

Kneeling down next to it she cups the man's face in her hands, turning his head one way and then the other, and then she tries to unbutton his jacket and soon gives up with how slippery the buttons are, slipping her knife through to open it up.

"There's no obvious cause of death."

As much as she doesn't want to, Christine kneels down beside the head as Eirlys checks him. They need answers. "Perhaps illness in his case too? The body is so changed, it will be hard to pinpoint exactly what happened." But then she sits back on her heels, thinking. "He may have simply fallen in and drowned."

At this point, the body is in such a state that discovering the truth may be tricky. The fact that his body is so unnaturally heavy makes her wonder if a waterlogged body can really add that much mass. No illness could do that, could it?

"Check his pockets? It could be that he carried some trinket that can identify him to the locals."

"I would guess drowning but in this state? It is difficult to tell." Maker, that smell. There's never been room for the squeamish in healing, the body in life and death can produce a veritable assortment of fluids and smells depending on it's state. Honestly she'd expect it to be more decayed for having been in the bog- but then it may be a fresh (ish) body? Adelaide kneels and picks through the muck covering his pockets, trying to find a coin or a ring or- something. "He should not have been so heavy, unless his stomach was full of stones."

"He isn't even wearing armor..." Maxwell murmured, eyebrows veed in thought as he moved closer to the body as well, looking it up and down as the ladies pulled and poked.

Crouching, he reached out tentatively and touched the corpse's slime covered belly - distended with rot. He prodded gently, wincing slightly at the flesh squished and squelched.

"I don't... feel anything immediately. But as swollen as it is, I'm not sure you'd know without actually cutting into him."

"Then that's what we'll have to do." Eirlys glances around at the rotting wood of the dock - hardly an ideal place to start an autopsy. "Would it be wise to get him back to camp first?" Otherwise she supposes they could just drag him a little way, to somewhere it's easier for them all to gather round and not worry that he'll slip back into the water if the dock gives way.

"It's a long way to carry one so heavy," Christine reasons. "Perhaps we should try to learn what we can in the here and now, and if this seems worth further study, we can fetch more people, perhaps a cart to carry him in?" Poor man. Not only dead and left in the water, but now going to be cut open and possibly hauled around in a cart.

She shifts to stand and looks behind her. "Though this would be better on dry land. We could move him over there? I have a blade, if we wish to do this now."

"If he is one of the first beplagued I would rather not see what it might do to the rest of the camp." Cutting corpses- she hasn't had to do that for a fair while; normally shew as able to treat patients before they died or the cause was plain enough further investigation isn't required. Adelaide allows frost to cover her fingers and flicks them along the dock, icing over a path from where the body is to the dry land Christine indicated- it'll make dragging him simpler.

With a grimace she resets the hook under the corpse's arm and nods to Max. "Help me drag him? Someone will need to take notes on what we find as well."

"If you've parchment and ink, I think I manage that," Maxwell offered even as he stepped around to grip Adelaide's staff again. "My hands are the most expendable at the moment."

He could poke and squish with the best of them, but the actual healers would get more out of it than he would.

"One, two,... three," he counted down, and with a little grunt of effort, helped heave the body onto the new path and began to ease it away from the water.

Eirlys stands back and watches them drag the body, poking her toes in the abnormally deep marks he leaves in the ground and thinking he must be very heavy indeed. Once the corpse is settled she kneels down close, brushing some of the mud from the pallid skin of his face.

"How should we do this? A clean cut through the stomach?"

She knew a little about anatomy, but had never really cut up cadavers before.

"Mmm hmm," Christine replies, moving to kneel on the opposite side of the man and taking out her utility knife. First she cuts away his clothes to expose his chest and stomach. The skin there really doesn't look much better than his face.

"Maker, this is going to be unpleasant," she says, as if there was really any doubt of that. Starting at the sternum, she cuts a vertical line into him, lips pressed tightly together behind her mask. She has to go over her cut again and again, cutting down deeper until she starts to get somewhere because her knife isn't meant for this sort of job. And while she has no experience with cadavers either, from what she's read in books, something is really not right here, as she makes more cuts so they can get the skin pulled back. She can feel some sort of resistance that isn't the smooth line of his sternum or rib bones. It's something bumpy instead.

With help, she gets the skin pushed aside to reveal crystals of red lyrium seemingly growing along his bones.

"Merde!" she whispers harshly, quickly drawing back her hand so she doesn't touch any of it, not even with the protection of her gloves.

The more Christine's cuts fail to go through neatly? The more concerned Adelaide becomes. She tugs her staff free and sets it aside to kneel across from her, pulling at the skin and flesh with gloved hands to free it from- something within that was preventing it from peeling back like an overripe peach as such bloated, rotten flesh ought. Something was wrong- and only when that odd, wet rending not entirely unlike ripping silk snaps through the air and they yank the skin and muscle back do they see the truth of it.

Red Lyrium.

Maker-

She grabs the corps's wrist, pressing along and- more of those bumps and ridges. A hand to his jaw and it was not only the bloat that had his face misshapen. His skull, his ribs, his fingers- she was willing to bet his legs and feet as well. "It is growing everywhere-"

Maxwell knew nothing about how that sort of thing should go and so it wasn't until the skin was actually peeled away and the red shards - shining sinisterly amongst the flesh and bone - that he realized just how wrong what they'd found was. Jerking stiffly upright from where he'd been leaning closer he gaped at the lyrium.

"That's not--" No, no, certainly not. Even not being a mage he knew that wasn't normal. "An... an accident? Of some sort?" He glanced between the women, gaze lingering on Adelaide, knowing she was a mage and hoping she'd somehow have more insight. "Or do you think..."

How would have they managed it, and more importantly, why? Did it cause the plague, or what that incidental?

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A Little Down In The Mouth Pt 1

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