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

[arlathvhen]

"I wish I could say that it's silly for people to be terrified of the Fade, but I honestly don't blame most people. We still don't know a lot about it, and what do we know?" She kicks her legs out, waving a hand around. "All most people know is that it's where demons live. Especially now, when there are holes in the Veil and demons pouring out of it. Did you see that network post? Everyone was worried about possession." Despite her admittance of the danger of the Fade, she gives a neutral shrug.

"But I think that it'd be...easier to understand and look out for danger if we could see them. I mean, the Veil is just as strong now, right? And having other people able to see kind of...I don't know. Makes it easier to help other people? But it could also be a hassle if Templars started persecuting everyone who sneezed at a spirit." She paused, rubbing the side of her neck, frowning. She was being particularly articulate today, wasn't she? She was going to blame the sickness.

"But it is interesting. I mean, how many people have ever been able to see the spirits like this? Especially people who aren't mages. Maybe it'd help people realize that not everything in the Fade is scary and wants to wear your body like some meat suit. But--that's probably far too optimistic."