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

[shieldwalls]

caravan

It's long hours of grueling work in the cold, wet rain -- mud and water feel like a second skin and heavy footsteps sink into the slippery ground, to help those who were stranded by the avalanche of mud. The caravan itself is a wreck of wood and splinters, animals are frightened, people are hurt.

There's a lot of work to be done, and Aveline can be found here, helping to get people to medical attention or working to save the animals.

On top of that, her head pounds and she feels overly warm. There are whispers at the edge of her hearing, but she ignores it in favor of pushing herself to complete the job at hand. Maker, it's going to be a long day.

library

After a long dip in the hot springs to wash the mud off of her, she feels no better than she did earler. The heat has spread, and it's effects last long after the brief dip. With that comes the telltale body ache of a fever. Aveline doesn't get sick. She wants to keep busy, but her body is not having it.

And yet...

Wandering leads to the library, somewhere that offers peace and solitude from everyone -- why is it still so loud? Who are they, and why wont they leave her be?

"Shut up and leave me be, or I will make you..."

Her voice wavers, but she still has conviction enough to swing a fist at one of them. Too bad you can't punch a spirit back to the Fade, right? It goes wide, lacks her usual strength. May want to ... look out.

dreams

They can be somewhat more pleasant, when she finally does allow herself to lie down and sleep. Dreams are sometimes of flowers and a man with the warmest brown eyes, smiling, laughing, dancing.

Other times... other times, the dreams take a less happy turn. Running, a feeling of failure and defeat. There are blades at her back and she knows that if she turns around or stops, it means death.

The dagger being pressed into her hand while eyes grey and clouded with the delirium and blight plead for an end -- he gasps when the blade breaches his body.

A woman with dark hair and bright blue eyes, who walks far ahead of her. The Champion. Aveline calls out to her, but she keeps on walking into the darkness, and she can't keep up. Then she hears the woman's scream, but suddenly, Hawke is gone.