Once upon a time there was farmer in the cold snowy land of Elcon.

Well, there was lots of farmers, though the majority of them were underground as growing things on Elcon’s snow buried surface was a bit troublesome. The farmer of this particular story, was but a poor mushroom farmer.

An ioll beaten down by heavy work. Iolls are not usually farmers, being hunch-backed dog creatures that walk on their hind legs. They have snowy fur, their teeth and claws are of a particularly hard ice. Normally iolls are hunters and trackers, as they are beings particularly unaffected by cold.

This ioll however had lost a leg, and thus he turned to farming. It probably hadn’t been the best choice as really he could have kept hunting and tracking.

So, this ioll dug out a living underground, but it was a mean frugal existence. However over the course of a year, the ioll managed to get the ingredients for a cake, in particular he had managed to scrape together a few krells to buy flour from a merchant.

So, the ioll decided to indulge in this one small luxury. He made a cake. It was a mushroom cake, mainly because he had a lot of mushrooms. The mushrooms he used however were rare sweet mushrooms. Sugarcap they were called.

It was a cake without icing, though there does exist many cakes without icing. The ioll actually had an oven big enough for the cake. It wasn’t a bad cake in terms of size, it was around the size of his head.

Cooking the cake took a while, but the ioll was in for a surprise, as the cake climbed out of the oven all on its own, having grown a pair of arms and legs.

The ioll looked at the cake.

The Cake, looked at the ioll with currant eyes.

“Er, Ello!” Said the cake.

“Uh, good day” The ioll replied.

You see, the ioll had made a terrible mistake. He had not bought self-raising flour from the merchant, but plain “self” flour. Generally only mad bakers and magicians use self flour.

There is ethical issues to making highly tasty people.

Speaking of ethical issues, the ioll was weighing his options while the cake looked wonderingly around the ioll’s house.

“You know what, I think I’ll just eat you anyway” The ioll advanced on the cake.

The cake stumbled away from the ioll, putting the farmer’s table between his delicious body and the hungry ioll.

“Come on, this is what you were born for, cakes are made for eating!” The ioll complained.

“Hey, hey, should you really be doing this, I’m a person you know!”

“I’m just a poor simple hungry farmer, all I see is a cake”

The ioll chased the cake around the table for a bit. Then they stopped at opposite sides again.

“I know, how about I work on the farm for you?” The cake cleverly suggested.

The ioll paused. Eating the cake would bring momentary pleasure, but an extra pair of hands on the farm would make his life far less hard. It wasn’t much of a choice.

“Fine” The farmer said. “I’d probably get bad dreams or summat from eating a person-cake anyway”

Besides, running made his pegleg chafe on his stump.

“Eh? I thought you only saw a cake?” The cake mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

So the farmer gained a hard worker in the form of a cake with feet and hands. The farmer forgot he ever intended to eat the cake and the two became friends. Soon enough the cake became too stale to eat anyway.

The Farmer saved up for more self-flour and baked a dozen cupcake workers. Soon the Farmer had a large farm worked by various cakes and cake-like beings. His farm supplied a number of nearby villages and even a town. It was not long before his series of farms became an underground Kingdom of Cakelings. He was the First Farmer King of this new farming kingdom.

So, he himself ended up living quite comfortably, tended by loyal cake-minions.