Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a Queen who was a giantess. She hadn’t always been a giantess, but wanted her people to believe so.

The truth was that, many years before, she had been a simple woman of average height. But even back in those days, she was very spoiled and demanding, and the King constantly had to fulfil her every wish for the good of their marriage.

One day, when she was still a normal woman, she had set her mind on never getting old, and had commanded the King to find a way to fulfil her wish. So the King had asked the Court Wizard to come up with an elixir of long life. The court wizard worked really hard on the potion for many years, during which the King fell seriously ill.

At last, just a few days before the King’s death, the Wizard came to announce that he had found the ultimate formula, specifically built for the Queen. So she eagerly and impatiently drank it, and in fact from that very moment she stopped getting older. Or at least, her aging got so slow that it became virtually unnoticeable: she was in her forties back when she drank the potion and many years later, when our story takes place, she would still have the same appearance. Well, as a matter of fact, something about her would have changed during all that time… Something related to her size. Yes, because along giving her longevity, the potion had had a side effect on her.

The King would never know about it, since he only died a few days after the Queen had drunk the potion, but the side effect slowly became more and more evident, first to the courtiers, the to the subjects… The fact was: from the very moment she had drunk the potion, the Queen had begun to steadily grow. One year later, she would pleasantly notice that had become one full foot taller than the year before. By the second anniversary, she had gained 1 foot and 2 inches more; by the third year, another full foot more… And so on. She continued to grow by around 1 foot for each of the following 60 years.

This leads us to the moment in which our story takes place: in the Year of The Queen 66 F.T - F.T. standing for “Feet Tall”. Exactly: you must know that among the Queen’s eccentricities, there was the introduction of a law decreeding that every year should be named after the height she had reached by the coming New Year’s Eve. She loved to let all of her people know about her changes in size and height: she actually loved the side effect of the long life elixir.

So, around every new year’s eve she held great celebrations which lasted for 3 weeks, with the middle one being the most intense. The day of New Year’s Eve fell in the middle of the middle week of celebration: on this day the Queen used to take public measurements which would formalise her new height and decree the name of the new year.

In the remaining days of celebration, she basically had the right to command everything that she wanted, and everyone had to do exactly what she asked for. Disobeying the Queen could lead to arrest. Originally this wasn’t a rule, but over time it became a sort of de facto law.

Along with the Queen’s eccentricities, there was the practical issue of dealing with the Queen’s growth. It made it necessary to constantly build new infrastructures or adjust the existing ones to her increasing height. She made her subjects work for peanuts, and was very demanding with them. The hardest jobs were at the construction site of the new castle, “Her Highness’ Manor”: the project was to build a castle that could be suitable for the Queen for the following 100 years, estimating an average growth of a foot per year. Can you imagine building a castle designed to be home of a 170 feet tall Queen? Basically a titanic task.

You can easily understand how the Queen’s needs and eccentricities, along with a famine which was looming over the Queendom, were beginning to make some men angry. Rebels started meeting secretly to discuss about how to change things. Some of the old men still remembered the times when the Queen was just a woman slightly taller than average. Not many believed their words at first, but after some time they convinced the majority of the rebels that the only way to remove the Queen from power was to shrink her back, in the first place. But for that, they had to get hold of the Magic Book of the Court Wizard, and they had to find a plan to do that…

But the Queen had the control of a personal army, which was very loyal and well organized. And what was more: many subjects were on her side, and some of them were even her spies… So it wouldn’t be easy for the Rebels to succeed in their plan.

And that’s when our story actually begins: in the middle week of the celebrations for the beginning of the Year of the Queen 66 F.T.

Today is New Year’s Eve, and the Queen is getting ready to take her public measurements on the city square of the capital, in front of thousands and thousands of her subjects.

In the meantime Darren, a young man working at the construction site of Her Highness’ Manor, is on his way back to the city for his only day off from work. Even if humbles workers like him cannot join all the celebrations, they still have the right to attend the public measurements of New Year’s Eve.

So he’s there: walking down the path that goes from the Manor to the City, whistling cheerfully, and knowing nothing about what is going to happen to him on that most important day…