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

[fleurdesel]

Keeping in touch with her (she'll examine the thought later) Northern Mages over sending crystals during the chaos of tending to the ill instead of running to the library every other hour only works as long as they are awake or aware enough to respond. When the answers taper off to nothing concern overcomes common sense (that they are resting, that they've taken a break) and she seeks them out. A faltering, weary mess herself it takes some time before she can scale the stairs and glower in the direction of what spirits flitter about murmuring this or that or the other.

Dorian's alcove is occupied- and they are both of them out cold.

She cannot carry both of them. Correction: She cannot carry Dorian. But she knows of someone that might. After a moment's observation, taking in the exhaustion, the seen of sweat, how they list into one another much like slumbering puppies, Adelaide kneels to comb back Dorian's hair. "You are ridiculous."

[liberalum]

Hair that is usually so precisely and styled is now sweat-drenched, curled where it doesn't stick to warm skin. He hasn't, on this day, bothered with makeup after the raccoon disaster when he'd first succumbed to fever dampness, but there are still deep and restless shadows under his eyes.

He lifts his chin to look towards Adelaide, and the green light of the Fade seems to glimmer brilliantly at the edges of his vision, causing him to groan, lightly, even as rousing consciousness registers the uncomfortably warm tangle he's in. He feels like a furnace, and so does Benevenuta.

He sort of pushes her away, but mostly pushes himself away, listing to the side to land on his elbow.

Maybe he can just sleep here on his own that'd be fine.

[ungovernable]

The dress she's wearing likely looked lovely when she first put it on; it suffers some now for tangling around her knees, soaking cold sweat from her skin and rumpled from the second impromptu nap of this kind in perhaps as many days. (They had been feeling better, there had been things to do - the burst of productivity had lasted an hour at most.)

Benevenuta's back of the throat protest at all of this movement and noise is followed by the slight indignity of realising that the precarious situation she makes of her bodice habitually has, er, slipped.

"Adelaide," she complains, but to no particular end. Possibly just at being the person in particular to witness them.

[fleurdesel]

"Do-do, Nut-nut." Her bodice. Her chest. Honestly.

The headache brought on by this sickness likely isn't helped by the near constant, glowing presence of Compassion hovering just against Adelaide, peering over her shoulder at the two of them. Of the two Benevenuta is the one Adelaide could likely carry. They cannot remain like this. That they are such a sad tangled mess would be more amusing were Adelaide herself not some manner of ill.

A gesture, without contact, and that cool wash of blue drips through the air to help with some of the heat, the thrum of a rejuvenation spell perhaps easing the ache. "You both should be in bed."

She ought to be in bed as well- but patients come first. Doubly so if they are people she cares about for reasons beyond her imagining. After a moment's consideration she makes a call.

[liberalum]

"No, no," Dorian says. He has listed off to one side, sadly, against plush cushioning on which he will leave gross damp spots that he will deny later. At least any exposure of his chest is deliberate, though, so Nut-nut will be alone in the regard. "Take her, leave me, I'm not going to make it."

Coherent enough to make a joke, anyway. Probably a joke.

His arm goes over his eyes, as if to block spirits and sunlight both. There is dust in the library air. Leather was a bad choice. The sweet release of death will solve all of these problems.

[ungovernable]

The script for this is generally a bit of terribly noble protestation and back and forth; Benevenuta, rolling a little to untangle her skirts and put her bosom back where it belongs, grumbles ruthlessly, "Sacrifices must be made. For my greater good."

They are going to die here in this library. At least they will die surrounded by the only things they truly love.

[fleurdesel]

"I mean to take you both to bed." They are both tired enough that, perhaps, the innuendo will go without commentary. Benevenuta likewise gets her hair smoothed back with a cool hand, Adelaide's eyes glowing as she pulls on Compassion's power. "YouI can carry. Dorian- I've called in some help for, so stop being so dramatic."

[liberalum]

"But it makes me feel better. Why must you be so cruel?"

But somewhere in there, Dorian does manage to put together some information. The call for reinforcements, for one, and the fact he could swear he heard Iron Bull's name for another. He moves his arm just enough to give Adelaide a look of great reproach. How could she do that to him? Ask for Iron Bull, who will then arrive, and see him in this state, sweating unattractively and nauseous and without his face on?

Not bad enough to kick up a protest, anyway, shoving arm back over swimming vision. "I haven't written a will. Burn everything I own along with me to be on the safe side." Except it comes out more mumbly than witticisms are preferred to be.

[qunari]

"Why's it always got to be about setting shit on fire with you mages?"

It really helps that he wasn't that far away when the message came through, urgent enough that Bull had wasted no time in arriving. This wasn't precisely what he'd expected to find, but given the state of most of the people in Skyhold right now? Not all that big a surprise.

A look is exchanged with Adelaide before he moves to crouch alongside the two, ignoring the crack in his knee as he does so. "Sure you wouldn't rather be somewhere a little more comfortable? I mean, since you're dying and all."

[ungovernable]

"Nothing is burning," Benevenuta protests, fixing Iron Bull with a sleepy glare that's probably supposed to be for Dorian; he is bigger and easier to look at without turning her head. "I will have your things. It is only right."

Yes, that was definitely intended for Dorian. Unless Iron Bull lacks a will, in which case apparently she will take his things, as well. To keep them with Dorian's, obviously. After a moment, as if she's just recalled what was said to her, in sudden alarm--

"I don't wish to be carried!"

[fleurdesel]

"Because if I were kind you wouldn't like me at all." Well, overtly kind. At least Bull's come quickly enough to avert any further flares of drama or discussions of death and burning. Dorian is given one last arch look and a not entirely kind flick of his ear before she kneels before Benevenuta.

"And I do not wish to have you waste away and die without dignity in the Library for ignoring common sense and attempting to work while feverish and ill." Says the pot to the kettle. Ignoring her displeasure and whatever scowling she might earn for it, Adelaide slips an arm around Benevenuta's waist and attempts to gather her close for a proper lift.

She hasn't had to do this with anyone older than twelve in some time, but it is something she can manage for short distances. "Thus, you will be carried, you will be put to bed, and you will rest until you are well. Both of you. If I must tie you to the bedframe to see it done, I will."

[liberalum]

Dorian swats after Adelaide's hand, too late, mumbling something about please enforce a dresscode for the funeral probably aimed at Benevenuta, before he tips his head to acknowledge Bull. A little resigned. He feels so unhandsome. :c

"The qunari can be shirtless," he amends, after a moment's thought.

Maybe a little delirious, after all. In response to suggestion, Dorian pushes himself to sit up, one hand holding his head. Ha ha no never mind. He lists aside like he might just lie back down again.

[qunari]

"I call dibs on any tying to the bedframe," Bull adds with a smirk towards Adelaide, before reaching to scoop Dorian up off of the floor. Trying to move actually helped in that regard, letting one arm slip against his back to keep him steady, the other gathering his legs up under the crook of his knee.

And up they go. A more dignified method than the original plan to sling him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, but he's fairly certain that might end in nausea and all the results that follow. So he'll try delicacy here, at least for the time being.

"Let's get you upstairs, big guy."