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

[chainlightning]

Close, now. Closer than they were, at least, and Merrill outstretches a hand for Galadriel as she walks closer.

"This will sound strange," she starts, shifting her weight slightly on bare feet before settling, centering herself. "There is strange magic that is pulling people into dreams, making spirits visible from beyond the Veil, even though it isn't any thinner. I'm one of the people who is sick."

This close, maybe Galadriel can see the sheen of sweat, the way her vibrant green eyes look paler, duller.

"I need you to wake up with me."

[laurenande]

"Wake up?"

The question was strange and, even as she spoke it, Galadriel's expression twisted. Her gaze drifted over Merrill, careful and forcibly focused, and then slipped away as she turned and looked back, above and behind her. She hadn't seemed to notice the shifts within her own dream, the way the trees vanished or Valimar had faded away, but now she sought them out. They were gone and, as she realized what Merrill was saying, a look of profound longing settled on her face.

"So we did not make it home," she stated with a note of distant finality.

The phantom seemed weaker, less solid, as she turned back and looked down at Merrill's hand. It was outstretched and waiting and, after a few lingering seconds, Galadriel reached out and toward her. Her hand, settled on Merrill's but, as she tried to curl her fingers, it slipped through and the shock of that, of that simple failure, was finally enough to shatter the dream around them.

All at once the darkness lifted, evanesced and curled away, like fog eaten by the morning sun. The library took the place of the void and, in the candlelight, the spirits that had gathered seemed so much farther away.

[chainlightning]

Awake. Merrill shudders and raises a hand to her forehead, pushing the sweat away. Then she goes to find Galadriel -- which, luckily, doesn't take long as she's more or less right there.

"Galadriel-?"

She isn't certain if the other elf is awake or not yet, but she certainly doesn't feel comfortable reaching out to touch her just yet.

[laurenande]

Galadriel stirred with a groggy sort of malaise; she had no skill in waking, not yet, and it showed as she drew herself from dreams and gradually sat upright in her chair. Her eyes were heavy as she blinked them, her pallor was a bit beyond what was normal, she was clearly ill. She spent a moment regarding Merrill--at first a smile crossed her face but it was quickly tempered as the contents of her dream drifted back to her.

"I am uncertain I shall ever become accustomed to dreaming," she said, voice rough, and leaned back in her chair.

[chainlightning]

"That one was very vivid," Merrill agrees, stepping forward to meet her. She smiles despite Galadriel's discomfort, gently touching the other woman on the arm.

"It was very beautiful."

Up until the giant spider, anyway.