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]

There's a massive divide between them. He's not even certain he cares to bother trying to bridge it ever. But right now he also doesn't want to dig it deeper, so Bruce gets a nod once he's taken the water, and Anders silently goes back to working through the notes various healers have made, sorting through to find a pattern. They have to figure this out sooner or later, and sooner is becoming more and more urgent as the healers struggle to stay upright.

He's not watching over Bruce exactly, but it's not coincidence that he lingers in the room as long as he can. If Bruce goes full abomination, someone needs to be ready.

[amygdalae]

At least Anders doesn't need to worry about that happening - Bruce has more than enough control despite Anders' belief otherwise, and even Bruce has no desire to put others at risk with his (or Anders') foolishness. Others don't need to suffer for their mistakes.

There really is not much to say between them now so Bruce just keeps drinking his water and dwelling on the myriad of thoughts in his mind as Anders hovers close by, pretending to be not watching but clearly is. Not exactly the first time Bruce has faced this sort of scrutiny, but it has been a while.