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

[failedfirst]

He's not so lucky. She's mixed up some concoction of elfroot, mint, and a few other random herbs including a hint of witherstalk; all in an attempt to either stave off sickness or at least provide an energy boost. She doesn't really care what her mixtures do at this point.

"I see you're weathering the illness well," she comments, a little dryly.

[ombranera]

He's had some of Oghren's brew before. If he can swallow that? This is-

Terrible, Maker's breath- but he can swallow.

He does bend double and sputter into a coughing fit, wincing at the strain on his throat with every hitched wheeze. "You are a cruel, cruel women."

wheeze

"It drives me mad with desire..."

[failedfirst]

She sees the desire demon, just out of the corner of her vision. Her own demons and spirits are not nearly so perversive.

"I'm sure you're fully up to acting on those desires, too. Come sit down before you fall over." It's not a request. Were she at 100% she might shove him over to the fire. As it is, she just grabs his wrist and tugs him along and hopes he doesn't fall over, otherwise he'll take her down too and then they'll just be two sad sick elves in the mud. Thoroughly embarrassing.

[ombranera]

"I can so-" No, no he can't, and he goes with the tugging without batting an eye. This is probably for the best, the following, the slumping near the fire as he's pulled. Honestly he cannot remember the walk down which is probably a poor sign indeed. "If you just poisoned me Alistair will be very cross with you."

[failedfirst]

Once at the fireside Velanna more or less falls back into her nest of blankets and furs, picking up the cup she'd set aside before. She scoffs at his declaration, taking a drink from her own cup and making a face at the taste.

"It's not poison, but it definitely needs more mint."

[ombranera]

"It needs less mint and more alcohol." As that was the solution to everything in his mind, more or less. "Or less elfroot. After a point you know it stops doing any good, yes?"

[failedfirst]

"I was First in my clan and spent most of my childhood studying how to properly use plants in healing. The amount of elfroot is adequate." She looks a little offended at the insinuation she doesn't know what she's doing.

"And alcohol is the last thing you need. It dehydrates and you already look like you're going to fall over if a light breeze blows through camp." Sure she looks the same, but she's not admitting that.

[ombranera]

"Should it taste this green?" That might be the mint. Or whatever else in it. Ugh. Zevran simply peers at Velanna and points. "Pot."

And then to himself. "Kettle."

[failedfirst]

Her glare might be a little more convincing if her eyes weren't glassy with fever.

"I am managing. I also have reason to be powering through it, I'm attempting to figure out why this is happening. Who are you helping by wandering down here when you should be in bed?"

[ombranera]

"How am I to sleep if I do not know how Alistair is faring?" He isn't, that's the thing.

[failedfirst]

She actually has no idea how Alistair is faring, she hasn't seen him. Even if she had she's not entirely certain she would have realized it, people have started blurring together. Still she frowns at Zevran.

"He won't be faring well if you stumble and fall into the ravine trying to move back and forth between here and Skyhold." Sure the bridge is wide, but accidents happen.

[ombranera]

"I would not fall to my death, don't be ridiculous." He's over tripping down stairs and out of windows, he has been over it for the better part of a decade. How dare she-

Of course that's when the vertigo kicks in and he needs to slump forward, bracing his face in his hands against the wave of dizziness. "...I suppose I must remain here, then."

[failedfirst]

Velanna watches calmly as he slumps forward, taking another sip from her tea. She frowns a little at his statement, however.

"You mean the Warden Camp, not here specifically." She'll tolerate his presence until he's feeling well enough to wander away but that's about as hospitable as she gets.

[ombranera]

"When I can stand straight I mean to find Alistair." And ask him if there is room in the tent for him to spend the night. Walking back up seems impossible at the moment.

[failedfirst]

Her face relaxes at that, and she nods.

"That is a fair plan. He's likely in his tent so you haven't got much of a search at least." Because really, if she's sick, no way Alistair dodged whatever this is. He's always in everything.

[ombranera]

"Good." He doesn't think he can make the walk, right now, but later. Later he will try to stand. "He has not been about much today? He might be ill. Marvelous."

[failedfirst]

"I don't know. I haven't-" she grimaces, putting down the cup of tea in her hands for a moment, "I haven't been able to focus on much beyond what's in front of me." She's always had a little problem with tunnel vision, and now it's evolving into a Big Problem.

Now that it seems like Zevran will be going, but not immediately, Velanna attempts something resembling hospitality, she shifts a few of the blankets and furs out of her nest and pushes them towards Zevran. "Here."

[ombranera]

"You are ill." He shrugs, blinking at the blankets he is offered. After a moment he even manages to take one, tucking it close and sighing at the warmth. Not so terrible after all, are you Velanna? "It is normal to focus on being able to make it through the day when you are not feeling well."

[failedfirst]

Don't let it get around that she isn't terrible. It'll ruin her reputation.

"I'm not so bad off. I've been back and forth several times to the healer's tent to speak with the mages there and they have yet to make me stay," although not for lack of trying. She's dodged Anders attempting to swaddle her at least twice. "I have been trying to find a cure."

[ombranera]

"Have you had much luck? Nothing I can think of or have tried has done me much good." Even the old standbys of how to treat a fever seem to fall through.

[failedfirst]

"None. The best I've done is dulling the ache in my head and clearing the fog for an hour or two." She's clearly not happy about that. "I was the best herbalist in my clan, it's maddening I haven't found something."

[ombranera]

"Perhaps it is a magical illness? What with the seeing spirits and hearing them and all." Which he has been doing, and hates in no small way. "Maybe that is why herbs have not been working on their own."

[failedfirst]

"That..." she pauses, frowning a little. Initially she was going to say it was absurd. However, regular illnesses did not make a person capable of seeing through the Veil.

"May actually be likely. Though that would mean this isn't really an illness, it's a... reaction." Well you just changed all her careful experimenting, Zevran.