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]

His hands are cool, compared to hers. A healer's hands. They're always the bloodiest, and she thinks of Simon. Of blood, and fire, fear too. They're never far behind. It's been quiet so far, but she knows they hunt her still.

They could still finish what they started. And even if they don't...

He doesn't know. No more than the others knew of him, when they invited him here, and they would have his head now if not for the Wardens. There is no such refuge waiting for her. Her fingers squeeze tightly against his as she closes her eyes, a small tear trickling from the corner of her eye.

"Stay. Please."

[justice_is_blond]

Her request is enough, but the tear says all the more. Anders takes a seat next to her and puts his free arm around her shoulders gently. He's been on his feet working for some time, and this is still a form of healing.

"Of course." The wall behind them is kindly supportive, and he relaxes against it for a few moments before looking over at her again. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about or hear? I don't know a lot of stories, but I could come up with something. Or we can sit here in quiet." He's not good at quiet for long, except when there's a reason for it.