haurchefaunt's chocolate

	The freezing Coerthas snow crunched beneath the anxious gait of leather boots, treading haltingly into Camp Dragonhead. A woman with soaped-brown hair and tall ears that marked her wild race stood at the gates of the elezen encampment, pulling tight her long yellow jacket to stave off the biting cold.
	Tall guardsmen clad in chainmail and Ishgardian shields nodded at her as she entered, and she tread uneasily toward the center of the camp. Though a few made their home in the square outpost of stone and brick, it was largely an intermediary between the frozen countryside, the dark oak trees in the distance leading to the Black Shroud, and the elezen nation of Ishgard proper.
	The place was about as lively as a Coerthan crop yard, save for a few green adventurers scurrying in and out of the camp like chocobos with their heads cut off, searching for work in any place that might offer it. The weary looks on the faces of the guards spoke what they were too polite to say.
	Their intrepid visitor, in her yellow Gridanian jacket, spun in a full circle looking for any sign of they who had invited her there. Finding nary a soul that looked particularly excited to see her, she gave a sigh and wandered toward the lord’s presidentiary and gave a knock on the double doors.
	“Excuse me,” she said, her voice choked of its enthusiasm by the chill wind, “is Haurchefant around?”
	An elezen woman dressed in a long, woolen robe poked her head from between the double doors, open only just far enough to enable her to do so. Her black eyebrows bent in stern dissatisfaction at the sight of the traveller, who swore she heard her mumble something akin to ‘yet another woman.’
	“Ah, yes, Miss Molkoh. Lord Greystone currently entertains another of his honored guests in the intercessory. I am to understand he is expecting you.” The elezen crooked her head to suggest that the intercessory she spoke of was somewhere around the corner.
	“If you become lost, you need only follow the sound of intermittent giggling. Good day.” The doors loudly snapped shut before the traveller had the chance to respond or fully absorb the meaning of the haughty woman’s words.
	Beneath the aetheryte bridge and hidden in an alcove, there was a wooden plank door, just out of sight from the center of the camp. Making tracks in the falling snows, there did indeed come a noise of laughter and gigglish chatter.
	Deciding it better to be informed than enter a den of hedonism and villainy blindly, the traveller pressed her long ear against the wood of the door and listened.
	“More hot chocolate, milady? There’s plenty more extra large marshmallows in our coffers.” The jolly voice of the lord of Camp Dragonhead came wafting like warm wind from the cracks in the door.
	“Oh, Haurchefant, I can’t! If I gain even a single pound, I will lose my grasp on the togi hissatsu ken, as it requires I consider my own gravity and—”
	The feminine voice was stopped in its tracks, weakened to a muffled protest. Confused, the traveller peeked through a crack in the planks—and promptly wished to the myriad Gods she had not.
	The silver-haired elezen lord had dipped his fingers into the lips of his hyuran guest, a large marshmallow held between them. It was soaked, dripping from his digits with chocolate brown liquid. The traveller’s stomach turned in disgust, and she turned her head from the door.
	In the camp’s center, two more travellers had arrived, clothes white with flecks of snow. An aqua-haired sunseeker, far from the warmer climes she likely preferred, and an axe-wielding wanderer from Ul’dah, his clan markings as fresh on his face as the day they had been painted.
	“Aitha!” The voice of the small seeker squeaked like a lost seagull, far from the ocean. “You were summoned by Lord Haurchefant to discuss strategy too? His letter came with the promise of something called hot chocolate—have you any idea what it is?”
	The Gridanian traveller quaked with revulsion. She shook her head.
	“No, Altea, and I don’t think I want to know.”