For the next few days, Skyhold will be experiencing poor weather and a mysterious illness. There's an event log for this here. This post is for questions for us as well as plotting amongst yourselves.

About the Weather

It's shitty.

About the "Illness"

CAUSE: The "illness" is, in fact, being caused by an underground artifact dislodged by rising pressure in the water table… thing… We're not geologists, guys, we're just trying to give you something fun. So there's an ancient artifact lodged in the bottom of the hot springs now because of the weather and reasons. Work with us.

EFFECT: In addition to a rising fever, the primary effect of exposure is essentially an ability to see/hear through the Veil to the raw Fade. The Veil is not thinned and there is no increased risk of rifts or possession; those sensitive to thinness in the Veil will be able to confirm as much. Mages, rifters, and dwarves will experience the same effects as everyone else. Affected characters will see or hear things primarily when they are not attempting to do so. "Zoning out," for example, might allow a character to absently listen to spirits for a decent length of time, while attempting to focus on what they are saying will muffle or silence them.

In practice, this may allow characters to glimpse spirits that cluster around or observe particular people; to hear snippets of what spirits say to one another or themselves; or to catch similar glimpses and phrases from the dreams of people sleeping in their vicinity. Again, these are only brief snippets, and most of what people observe should be difficult to understand or only hint at what is going on.

The effects will subside no more than three days after a character's last exposure to contaminated water, or less if you'd like.

RESOLUTION: Someone needs to deduce that the water is the problem, and then someone needs to go get the thing, which is, in fact, a very old dwarven skeleton and the skeletal remains of his or her armor. Retrieving it will require diving in hot water—super fun. Multiple people are welcome to be involved in both the deduction and the recovery. Once recovered, the bones and armor will need to be handed over to the Inquisition for safekeeping.

OPTING OUT: Those who bathe or drink from water sourced from the hot springs beneath Skyhold after the rains will be affected, though the degree is up to you. If you want to opt out entirely, have your character coincidentally avoid baths and drink from water collected prior to the event until it's sorted out that the water source is the problem.