faderift | OPEN: Cloudreach Event

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It is fever delirium and Merrill's normal nature that brings her wandering, unsteady on her feet as she currently is. She's near the library, stumbling into Solas' claimed chamber mostly be accident. Staying, however, is the fault of the colors on the wall.

The art is- familiar. It's in the style of old, the ruins that are across Thedas and the few pieces of painted works that the Dalish are able to create and keep. Merrill reaches for the closest, dragging her fingertips lightly over the fresco. Behind her flit spirits of Learning, of Curiosity -- Pride is there but distant, only just visible in the right light. For now, the others are far more interested in Merrill and what it is she's just found.

"Careful. Some of the work is fresh - you would not want to stain your fingers."

Solas steps from seemingly nowhere, from the shadow under the scaffolding, brushing his hands on a cloth, and offering a smile. The smile faded, though, as he took a look over the Dalish. It was easy to see the fever in the sweat upon her brow.

"You should be resting, da'len."

A stain wouldn't be too bad. It could always be washed, though perhaps some others in Skyhold would mind the colored fingerprints around. She would say as much as she turns to look at the other elf, but she's a bit too startled -- first by his sudden appearance, then by the use of da'len by an elf with no vallaslin.

But that's no excuse to be rude, and she offers him a slightly sheepish smile.

"It's difficult to rest. The voices all seem louder, then -- but you still can't understand them if you try to focus on them. And they're not very helpful when I fall asleep, either." If possible, one of the spirits of learning with her almost looks sheepish.

OPEN: Cloudreach Event

closed to solas.

wow this is so late i am so sorry feel free to ignore if you want

neverrr