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

[girlinthebox]

"Pressing fingers to glass, peering through. They see them now. Waiting, watching, but they were always there..."

It isn't just her seeing the spirits anymore. Anyone afflicted is starting to get glimpses of what she always sees, and for her? It is as if the door has been blown open. They can't walk through, but they're too close. Too difficult to turn away.

[onlyhymns]

Cade returns a few minutes later with the requested bucket and cloth, the water sloshing occasionally over the rim in his haste.
He and his demonic entourage hurry in to crouch next to Nerva, where he immediately sets to the task of dunking the cloth and wringing it out, preparing it to be a cold compress.

[keeperofmagi]

The words were making her skin crawl, and she had to check herself before she instinctively looked over her shoulder. At the last second, however, she was saved by Cade, and looked immensely relieved when he appeared.

"Thank you, Cade," She shifted over to give him more space. "There must be something we can give her to bring down the fever."

[onlyhymns]

Cade nodded silently to Nerva as he pressed the damp cloth against River's forehead, his face strained with fear and worry as he observed once again how pale she was, how feverish.

"...maybe willow bark," he suggested quietly, just resting the cloth there, afraid to touch her any more than he already was, "that can help a fever, I think."

[girlinthebox]

At least she falls quiet when the cold towel touches to her skin, save a faint whine of discomfort. There was barely enough strength in her to squirm, but the effect is immediate. Rather than focus on the figures dancing around them her eyes fall shut, lips parting in a weak inward breath.

"Nnn..."