This must be what fat people feel like every single day.

With every little waddling step down the snow-covered pathways that snaked through the small hunting village, I hissed a different curse. Picking up one foot out of the drifts, trying to bend my legs to put it in front of the other, and then plopping my boot back down into the powdery white shit, huffing and sweating under countless layers the entire time... I was quietly thankful for the high metabolism that stuck with me my entire life.

Four layers of wool pants, three pairs of thick socks inside poorly-insulated boots, a shirt that the merchant swore on his life would keep me warm under two sweaters, the thickest fucking jacket I could find, another heavy coat on over that, and a triple-layered cloak of various furs with the hood pulled up and over my head. My mask was stashed in my pack the moment I could pry it from my face without tearing several patches of skin off with it, so my head was wrapped in a couple itchy scarves with just my eyes exposed.

I would have taken another glance at my map, but hands in mittens good navigation tools do not make.

Any idiot could have seen that they were edging into the Great White Expanse, the Skavian Wilds. I was just making the venture into the part of the map that cartographers generally left empty, the most ambitious of them filling the giant splotch of white in northern Salvar with a couple doodles of “trees” and “mountains”.

The map in particular I had been given had a small village marked down on it, on the northern edge of the Whispering Hills. It was a little collection of huts dressed in the thick hides of the wildlife that populated the area, with a population of around two hundred fools and idiots who never imagined a life beyond hunting and trading. To bless this village with any more description--or hell, even a name--would make it seem like I actually intended on staying here longer than absolutely necessary.