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

[dreadinquisitor]

He startled abruptly at the light touch, his focus on the darting shapes along the edges of his vision, he hadn't even noticed the man, sudden and clear before him. He blinked. His brow furrowed. He scrunched away, shoulders pressing into the hard stone of the well.

"Who-- where did you--"

The voices continued to buzz and whisper, even as the blond stood silent above him.

[disgracedchampion]

"It was not my intention to surprise you, monsieur," while he remained standing, he made no move to follow the man as he flinched away from his touch and back against the wall, "you simply look unwell."

It might have been pointing out the obvious, but if this man thought that he was alright, then perhaps the obvious needed pointing out.

"I am Michel de Chevin and you needn't fear me," unless of course he did something that inspired a need to fear, but otherwise Michel simply held out a hand, "can I help you up... take you to somewhere, to someone?"

The healing tents perhaps?

[dreadinquisitor]

"I don't--"

His eyes continued to move, tracking after something only he could see, just behind Michel and then off to the side... Then they squeezed shut, his head pounding painfully.

"I don't have anyone. ...I think I just... I need to rest, but it's so warm."

[disgracedchampion]

"Of course...you're running a fever," so naturally he would feel warm, or cold...sometimes there were transitions between the two. Whatever the case he could not walk by the man and simply leave him in the mud.

It didn't appear that he could rise of his own accord either, so Michel had no other options. He stooped down carefully and hoisted him out of the mud.

"I can take you to the healing tents or to your quarters...though you might be best served seeing a healer."

[dreadinquisitor]

He was nearly dead-weight, neither resisting nor particularly proactive as Michel hauled him from the wet and dirt. He tried for a moment to find his feet, but they seemed to tangle together, clumsy and unhelpful, and he slumped heavily against the man, the heat drifting off his skin.

"I... I don't know what's wrong with me."

[disgracedchampion]

Well now, hanging dead weight would not be much use to Michel, and so he bent at the knees and scooped the other man up. He was a bit taller, and heavy, but no more than any suit of armor Michel had been stuffed into. He could certainly carry the man around for as long as he had to.

"I'll get you to the healing tents, perhaps they can figure it out," the obvious answer was that he wasn't well, beyond this, Michel had no idea what was plaguing Skyhold.

[dreadinquisitor]

If he had even the slightest bit more sense about him, he'd have been embarrassed to be swaddled so, but thankfully such concerns were beyond him at the moment and he relented to it with little more than a groan as everything shifted uncertainly about him.

"...Maybe," he murmured distantly. "Maybe... They still have him, I promised..."

[disgracedchampion]

Michel would probably have to insist that there was nothing to be embarrassed about...though he did find himself hoisting and carrying people about more than he could remember ever doing. It was more important to see the man off to a healer and less important to be concerned about how they appeared to others.

"Who still has him?" In all likelihood this was a delirium talking, but just in case he was on about something real, Michel could not ignore it.

[dreadinquisitor]

A blink. A frown, and a different sort of pain in his eyes.

"Alone... still in the dark." His mouth twisted. "I don't know what to do..."

[disgracedchampion]

Michel really did not know what to say to that, they were the words of a delirious man, after all. What did one say to a delirious man?

"I...what can I do for you? To help?"

[dreadinquisitor]

"Don't leave him there--" He gripped weakly at Michel's coat, looking at him imploringly, eyes shining with fever. "Don't let them--"