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

[justice_is_blond]

Contaminated food can spread easily... but it doesn't entirely fit. Air or water fit more. He'll put more work into this; it has to be something that can be figured out, and soon.

"No, that could be... Perhaps not relevant to the disease that's going around, but it could be useful knowledge about the place itself. Or maybe it is related. If more than usual can see spirits and demons..." He doesn't like the idea of the disease being magical, though. There's already enough stigma mages have to face. If this has magic roots, it could set them back yet again. But there's also nothing to do about it save keep working and make sure they don't lose anyone to this.

"Would you like something with which to pin your hair back while you rest?" She's not getting up at this point, he's pretty sure. And he's glad of it.

[failedfirst]

"It seems magic, to me. I do not know of any regular poison that could cause someone to see through the Veil." Their world may be ever dancing with the Fade, but not in this way.

She frowns at his offer, realizing she had in fact been tricked into resting. She thinks about trying to get up just to defy him, but even the thought is exhausting, so she just shakes her head.

"Pinning it up makes my head ache worse than it already is. I'm fine."

[justice_is_blond]

He can see the consideration in that frown, knows what she's about to try, and feels a great deal of relief when she decides against it.

"All right. Could you use anything else? Because you are here and I truly would like to help." Even if she doesn't know of anything non-magical that could have caused this. He doesn't know how to spin this if people start worrying about magical diseases on top of everything else in regard to mages, but he's going to have to figure it out.

[failedfirst]

"You should rest, too," she responds immediately, tilting her head as she looks at him. She knows he can't be doing much better than she is, which is obviously why he won't sit.

"You won't be helping anyone if you collapse."

[justice_is_blond]

"I'll rest when I've made a little more progress on figuring this illness out." He knows she's right. He also knows that both Justice and himself feel a need to do more. They're needed. If he can help, he has to.

"And I'll do my best to avoid collapsing. I know that falling asleep on someone is not going to help them. Most of the time. I am pretty, it may build their self-confidence until I start drooling on them." She gets a weary half-smile. "Get some sleep, Velanna, please."