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

[judgemewhole]

James feels his chest expand out - but then Merrill speaks and it's all he can do not to in fact, feel sheepish and embarrassed. Like he is before First Enchanter Lydia again, chiding him for getting caught up in his own pride. She is right - he has let himself get drawn into a fight that isn't going to go anywhere, and is not helping Merrill, but impeding her care.

"Of course." He goes to get her a glass of water, putting his hand behind her head so she can drink. "I am sorry, Merrill. I did not mean to let my temper get the best of me."

Then he looks over at Anders for a long, hard moment, before he states simply.
"They tell me you gave yourself up. That you didn't even fight, after the explosion. So, I offer my apologies, for my assumptions that you felt no guilt. A truly penitent man ... would have stayed for his own judgement. Sometimes it is not easy to see past one's own grief ... and anger."

He looks down at Merrill, addressing them both, "Perhaps it was Meredith's kind that would see you all die, for what you have done, whatever it might be ... but my kind only wishes to serve. To protect, and do the Maker's work."

[justice_is_blond]

He's ready to entirely ignore the man from here on out, rolling his eyes at the apology to Merrill like a five-year-old (or Carver,) and then he gets an apology too. Anders stands there, wordless for a rare moment, frowning. What's he even supposed to take from this? The man who just said he'd not taken responsibility is now admitting that he did, and Maker, could things just be simple? So Norrington's not an idiot now? He'd known and he was just angry? It's a familiar enough situation that Anders dislikes it just for the familiarity.

Anders takes a breath to respond and stops, looking back down at Merrill. There's no reason to stop for the sake of a blood mage, but she's been kind and she's ill. A little mercy wouldn't be the worst thing. He won't open up any further, or give any other sort of an opening, not here, but he won't snap.

"The problem is that that's exactly what she said." His voice is neutral as he picks up a small packet and holds it out. "Add this to her water. Meredith said all along she wanted to protect and do the Maker's work. The Templars who wanted me dead long before I did anything save run for my own freedom wanted to protect and do the Maker's work. It's exceedingly difficult to know what that means when it's been used against everyone I've cared about for so very long." Barely, just barely, he refrains from adding a snipe in there about how yes, he has cared for people.

"What you're saying sounds pretty but it is meaningless." He stops, closes his eyes, and takes a breath. "Let me rephrase. It has meaning to you. In a room of twenty people it likely has twenty-five different meanings. To me, it has none because I have heard it out of a thousand mouths for a thousand things. What does it mean, to you? What is your kind? What is protection? What is the Maker's work?"

[chainlightning]

"It's okay," she tells them both, even if James is the only one who apologized. They're passionate people, and when it comes to the problems Thedas faces, isn't it better to be passionate than not to care at all? The problem, of course, comes when one is too passionate and gets carried away...

But Anders regrets. He should be allowed to make up for it. Merrill has always believe that to be true.

"Humans do like to say everything is because or for the Maker, don't they? Not that faith isn't a good thing, but- I've always thought there has to be more than just that. It can't be the only reason to do something."