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

[chainlightning]

She would maybe be more offended by being called child if she were not sick, if she had not just invited it by saying hahren. As it is, Merrill just nods obediently and carefully goes where Fiona steers her, sinking down into the seat with a relieved sigh.

"Really, I think I could deal with the rest if this fever weren't so... feverish."

At least for a little bit. Eventually the flashes of green and knowing spirits (Learning and Curiosity she can handle, but again with Pride?) are following her about would get to her.

[rebelenchanter]

Fiona's first concerned was getting the younger elven woman bundled up, her feet cleaned, and something on them. After that was done she could focus on trying to bring the young mage's fever down with cooling agents applied to her forehead and the back of her neck. The healers were moderately successful in taming some of the symptoms...the spirits on the other hand were an entirely different mystery.

"Aside from the fevers are you experiencing other discomforting symptoms...spirits and dreams are commonly reported...is there...anything else?"

Of course she wasn't going to quiz the young mage too much, but they were attempting to learn everything they could and every little bit of information she could provide would help. In the meantime Fiona cast one of her more potent healing spells hoping for some improvement.

[chainlightning]

"Those," Merrill agrees, rubbing absently at one arm with the opposite hand. "Flashes of green, just out of the corner of my eye. And..."

Has no one else told them? Has no one else heard? It makes her worry, but Merrill can't hold back this tidbit of information if it will help anyone else.

"Voices. Ones you can't really understand if you try to focus on them, like they're speaking through water or something. At least they're not- not singing, like people say the red lyrium does. And I haven't seen anything move around by itself, so it's probably not red lyrium."

She hopes. She also realizes that it's maybe an absurdly specific thing to bring up, so she offers- "I was in Kirkwall, when everything- happened." Beat. "I'm Merrill."

[rebelenchanter]

The flashes of green spoke of the fade to Fiona and the voices also denoted spirits...so did this illness have some sort of origin in the fade. So far the voices and the green light just seemed to be benign, it was the fever and the other side effects that had Fiona concerned...though anything involving the fade concerned Fiona.

"It...sounds eerily like the Fade," Fiona contemplated to herself her fingers pressing together in contemplation as she monitored the healing effects on her young charge. Sometimes they varied, some would occasionally perk up a little bit, for others, nothing at all.

"Merrill, yes, I have heard of you...you were with the Champion, yes?" she had been kept apprised of those events, knowing that some of what happened there kicked off the mage rebellion, "I am Fiona, it is a pleasure."

[chainlightning]

Rubbing a hand through her hair at least shows that she's somewhat more coordinated thanks to the healing spell. Her eyes are a little less glassy, and some color returns to her cheeks.

"It feels eerily like the Fade," Merrill admits, with a slight laugh. "But almost- worse? Because at least if you're in the Fade, you're in it. It doesn't feel like it's following you around. Even when using magic, it feels like you're drawing from it, not like it's hanging on you."

It's like a heavy shroud, working to slowly drag them down -- perhaps not always intentionally, but because their worlds are separate, it's what's happening nonetheless.

"It's very nice to meet you. Though, um, obviously the circumstances could be better -- but that's true of all of Thedas, I suppose."