Quest for Corpulence

Your eyes open with a gasp and as the blurry world comes back into focus, you find yourself staring up at the ceiling, confused and disoriented. You had the strangest dream last night which made you toss and turn in your sleep. You dreamt of a bizarre far off land of towering castles made of glass and steel, metal carriages with rubber wheels that pulled themselves without horses, miraculous little windows that could fit in your pocket and show you just about anything you wanted, and, most frightening of all, the people all seemed to malign corpulence. Shunning adipose and indulgence in favor of emaciation and denial. It was quite disturbing but you can see now that it was all just a bad dream. At least -- you think it was. At the moment, it's a bit difficult to tell what's real and what's not so as you sit up-right in bed you decide to go through what you know until your senses fully come back to you.

Your name is ______, you're just an average farmer living on the outskirts of the city of Tallowford. You live in the kingdom of Grasia, known among the Seven Lands as the Land of Plenty for your fine food and drinks and ever bountiful harvests. Of course, in the presence of such a grand abundance of food, the people of the land have grown quite fat and that corpulence has become a symbol of your land's prosperity. For your people, fatness is venerated as sign of status, wealth, and a life lived joyously; and no one exemplifies those qualities more than your noble ruler, King Porter II. The mountainous blob of a white tiger who lives in the great castle here in Tallowford, spending every day drowning in food, drink, men, and song. Growing ever larger by the day. Yet, despite his gluttonous nature, he is a fair and just monarch who puts his kingdom above all else, though some conspiracy theorists whisper that he may just be a figurehead for someone else pulling the strings.

Yes, it's all starting to come back to you. You feel silly for questioning reality. It's about time you got washed up and ready for the day, so you throw throw your blanket off your legs and lower your feet to the floor only to accidentally step on a book that seems to have fallen beside your bed. You pick it up and examine its simple red cover with the words "Adventures of the Banquet Table" printed across it in gold leaf. That's right, you were reading this before you fell asleep. It's a collection of tales from the Knights of the Banquet Table, the name given to King Porter's royal, and quite rotund, guard who protect the kingdom. Although the lands have existed in peace for multiple centuries, that doesn't mean danger doesn't still lurk in the darker corners of the lands, ready to strike. The stories of their heroics are quite thrilling, and the numerous illustrations of their enormous forms are quite scintillating as well. Somedays you wish you could join their ranks, if only to get to see their beautiful bulging bodies outside of their plate mail. You set the book back down on the nightstand and make your way down to the washroom.

You shiver a bit as you trod down the stairs of your modest cottage, the autumn air has been getting colder every day. The harvest has come and gone and you've been paid handsomely for your crops. Now, all you need to worry about is keeping your larder well stocked and firewood in the hearth until spring comes once again. You decide to get a fire going before you can have something to dry and warm yourself back up after your morning bath. Once the flame looks steady along the bundle of wood you slip into the washroom and get a look at yourself in the mirror.