OPEN: Cloudreach Event

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone at Skyhold
WHAT: Cloudreach showers bring weird shit.
WHEN: Cloudreach 15 onward
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: For information about the illness, its effects, and its cure, please make sure to also read the OOC Post.

This high in the mountains, snowstorms are to be expected. But this one is large and lingering, hanging over the valley and the fortress for days. In Skyhold, with its eternal spring, the snow becomes rain before it hits the ground, leaving inhabitants and visitors to wade through puddles and mud in the courtyards. In the valley, snow and ice accumulate under cloud cover—and worse, when the clouds finally thin, a whole winter's accumulation of snow begins to melt in the sunlight.

Within a day, the ground is sodden and mucky enough to give the survivors of the Fallow Mire (or Ferelden in general) unpleasant flashbacks, and those who live in tents are issued additional hastily-constructed wooden pallets to raise their floors above the mud. It is worse outside the fortress: streams and rivers have overflowed their banks, rapids run twice as fast as normal, and flash flooding has made even road travel treacherous.

On Cloudreach 17 a mudslide buries the pass into Skyhold from the west, and on the 19th a sheet of snow loosened from a mountainside collapses into the shadowed passage from the east. An Inquisition supply caravan is caught in the latter, scattering wagons and goods across the hillside and leaving a dozen people and horses in need of rescue and medical care.

Healers may find themselves stretched thin, as in addition to the usual rash of blisters and sniffles that come from days of rain and flooding, an illness begins to sweep through Skyhold's ranks from around the 16th onward. It's marked first by climbing fever, then by flashes at the edges of vision—green light and jagged formations that aren't there, beings of light and shadow gathering around people or clustering in corners—and distant voices, coherent for brief moments if you're quiet and still and not trying too hard to listen.

Comments

[dalishious]

Briefly Merrick thinks of his recent conversation with Zevran, but any discomfort is quickly pushed aside in favor of worrying about his brother. He takes the cloth and gently wipes down Cyril's face.

"How long has he been like this?" he mutters to Pel.

[mythalenaste]

"Since I came over." And it's disconcerting to realize it might not just be delirium. "It's hard to say what's going on. It could be the fever, or it...I don't know, Merrick. Other patients have been oddly sensitive to things across the veil. He might be seeing a spirit."

[samahl]

Cyril eyes close a bit as Merrick tends to him. He hums a bit and just tries to find comfort in having both of them near. "I'm not crazy," he says softly. "There is something there. It looks like a monster."

[dalishious]

"I know you're not," says Merrick fiercely. "I'd never say that about you." Not after being called that for most of his life. He strokes Cyril's hair.

"Why is there a demon by you," he demands of Pel, his voice low.

[mythalenaste]

"I'm a mage." It's unnerving as hell, but not entirely a surprise. "I know how to shut them out. Don't worry."

She re-chills the cloth and presses it to Cyril's forehead. "Ignore it, vhenan. It has no more power than it is given."

[samahl]

Cyril mumbles incoherently for a bit and then sighs. "It's still really creepy. Is there anything we can do to drive it away?"