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

[tactical_alert]

"You speak like I refuse to sleep. I certainly sleep, and eat. And sit at a table and relax with a trusted-" what does he call Cassandra "-advisor. But to be perfectly fair to any and all healers that have ever had to deal with me, I am a poor patient."

And, well, not accident-prone or poor of health, but...still tends to take ill quicker than others, and puts himself in harm's way more often. So. It's a not-insignificant number of people. "I am able to look after myself."

[stabsbooks]

Advisor? She raises an eyebrow at his choice of words, but merely shakes her head. Attempting to define her relationship with Malcolm is a task beyond her capacity, at the moment.

"Take care that you do, then." She won't force him to go to the healers; she would be a terrible hypocrite if she tried. But there's a large gap between capitulating at the first sign of weakness, and stubbornly ignoring even the extremes of one's limits. "I will not hear of you pushing yourself until you drop."

[tactical_alert]

He could point out that hyperbole is a thing, but refrains. And if he's honest with himself, should the need come, he would push himself that hard. That need hasn't come, and he doesn't foresee it happening. "Yes, mother," he murmurs. "So long as you keep up your appetite. Or I will keep making pies until you do."

[stabsbooks]

Even for a Seeker of Truth, Cassandra can be excessively literal - to the point where it actually hinders communication and understanding, rather than making things clear. And so she feels a flare of satisfaction - she had gotten through to him, he would not take foolish risks for no reason - even as she rolls her eyes, shaking her head with a disgusted noise. "Please. I am not that old."