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

[keeperofmagi]

Things were getting worse, and quickly, and as one of the unaffected Nerva was finding herself busier and busier as time went on. So when Husband first came to butt her head against Nerva's leg, Nerva completely ignored the dog. When she butted her four more times, however, and began to get Gaston so excited that he rolled around like the stupid idiot he was and got mud everywhere, she finally turned her attention to it.

"Where's Benevenuta, when you are being such a menace?" She asked, but the voice wasn't unkind, because animals were always better than people. When she did so, however, Husband turned and walked toward the library, and then looked back at her, plaintively.

Nerva sighed and followed, Gaston doing so immediately afterwards, the mud at least helping to hide his ugly mug.

When she found them in the library, her first reaction was a flicker of a hidden smile, and then sudden and intense worry as she strode up to take both their temperatures.

[liberalum]

Dorian's crumpled lean into Benevenuta contributes to the necessary architecture of their inadvertent cuddling, his hands holding onto a book loosely in his lap. It's the first thing to go, hands twitching when he senses cooler palms touching his over-warm face, the heavy codex sliding past his knees and thumping to the floor.

Which wakes him up almost as effectively as Nerva. His posture stiffens just enough to jolt the woman against him, chin bumping her bowed head.

"This is fine," he tells-- Nerva, the dogs, possibly no one in particular, save for himself. His hand slithers up, nudging hers away, so as best rub his eyes without particular regard to the smudged lines of kohl he'd applied for Maker knows what reason. He hadn't felt quite so haggard when this morning began.

[ungovernable]

The vague sound of affront and protest that Benevenuta makes into Dorian's shoulder closely resembles the one she made earlier in lieu of what definitely would have been a very clever and compelling argument against his objectively wrong assertion that she has feelings that matter. Then, more clearly, "What?"

which is only slightly better. Sweat tacks the curls nearest her face to her skin and the tangle of her hair caught between their elbows is fleetingly confusing as she can't quite work out why she's stuck--

"What."

No, she's fine. She's got this. She blinks owlishly up at Nerva, burning up under her hand.

[keeperofmagi]

"Yes," She muses darkly, "You are both completely fine. That much is readily apparent."

She has to move them, that much is clear. But how, and where, are another matter entirely, especially if they are determined to do otherwise.

"Come on. You both need to be in bed, or you'll do yourself harm. Dorian's room is closest."

[liberalum]

"So glad you agree," Dorian mutters, taking in his immediate surroundings with a disgruntled squint. Book, on the floor. Nerva, nipping at their heels. Glass of wine, probably room temperature at this point, but he leans forward enough to pick it up to inspect.

Wrinkles his nose when his stomach turns over, and he sets it down without sipping.

His room is closest, not far from the library, and he doesn't object to going there, even with Benevenuta. It's just he would really rather not move at all. He wags a finger at Nerva. "You underestimate my capacity to study under these kinds of conditions. You should have seen me during exam week." But all of this comes out a little blurrier at the edges than his usual crisp diction.

He rubs his face with his hands, and nudges Benevenuta with an elbow. C'mon, then.