Okay, so I lied about updating something else before I came back to this, but what can I say? I keep getting whacked with the inspiration stick, and I'm sure you all appreciate a steady stream of content. Let's see what wonders we experience today, shall we? Chapter 4: Researching Recipes OR Most Know WHY You Eat, I Want To Know WHO You Eat.
It is said, that a beast runs without care through the Oolong Grass Fields. Thick, powerful legs push them beyond the grasp of any predator, white wings flapping fast and hard enough to cut through even the hardest iron, and a head to stick in every pond it can find, as they let loose their terrifying honks! These beasts...ARE CHIMERIC TURDUCKEN, the carriers of the perfect piece of poultry! The softness of duck, the free touch of chicken, bound together by the pure overwhelming taste of turkey! You'd be quackers to pass up on this!
Following the aftermath of the Great Gourmet War, resources that were previously dedicated to funding massive war machines and army conditioning were repurposed towards understanding and closing the distance towards the fabled dish known only today as GOD. Guns and weapons were transitioned into capture and sedation tools, or used as deterrents against the more massive species who rendered conventional weaponry useless. Bases built to withstand decades of constant assault for decades on end in the worst conditions imaginable became Biodomes dedicated to either preserving and reverse engineering rare species, or serving as forward bases into the Gourmet World.
The largest shift of them all, however, was without a doubt Gourmet Cells. First found within deep-sea jellyfish extracted from the belly of a Sea-Salt Shark, the discovery completely overwrote what was previously established fact for Food Sciences. The Gourmet Cells almost seemed to exist on a separate spectrum to normal DNA, wrapping around the host who carries them before doing one of two things. For the majority of creatures, Humans included, the Cells acclimate and seemingly raise the thresholds the body can withstand and adapt to. In an unfortunately still large minority however, the Cells reject the host body, seemingly unable to latch on to the body at best, or 'consume' the hosts own cells at insane rates, causing extreme muscle atrophy, brittle bones, or even death by nutrient deficiency.
This reaction seemed unique to the Human genome however, as with every other carrier, whether it be mammal, fish, reptile or plant, the carrier because absolutely delicious.
Creatures with high concentrations of the Cells travel further and further away from their 'original' genetic lines, the Gourmet Cells 'filling' the gaps, often to the point of monumentally altering the creatures sizes, the ways its fur or stems are formed, or even allowing new ways to feed or attract prey with their newly enhanced capabilities.
Following this logic, Science today, especially those dedicated to replicating certain flavors to mitigate risk factor, a large part of our research is dedicated to what could be described as the 'Lineage Factor'. Essentially, we would target a high-tiered ingredient, and work our way back down the 'evolutionary' scale by species and food-cast to see if we can raise the lower-ranked species to a point the taste difference between the two would be negligible. From there, there were two main attempts, identified as 'forwards' and 'backwards' verifications.
'Forwards' verification was the act of purposefully feeding and raising the creature in question on specific ingredients or lifestyles to recreate or enhance an extinct or near extinct species. The most noted example of this would be the Troll Kongs of Biome 8, brought about by offering Ka-Ching Gorilla's high grade meats and spices, as they were considered the closest living biological realities still in the wild. This was also somewhat of a risky method, as without a complete understanding of the species and genetic influences, one risks the creatures going 'powermad', becoming driven to madness as their bodies hold more Gourmet Cells than they can typically allow, the desire to feed consuming all rational thought. On the bright side, this 'backslide' also provides the perfect chance to see if one has succeeded in their biological attempts.
Troll Kongs, who had incredibly dense muscles, had to be stewed for several days at a time before it could be considered edible, being so densely compacted in their four arms and chest. Once this point has passed though, the meat falls completely off the bone, and could be comparable to high-tier crab in terms of softness and flavor retention. But that was a digression, no matter how delicious it was with melted butter and mushrooms.
Anyway, the second option is 'Backwards' verification, which is based off the theory that while there are many more ingredients today still waiting to be discovered, the Gourmet Cells hundreds of years ago were much more concentrated, resulting in amazing and 'Primal' ingredients such as GOD, EARTH, and AIR as the pinnacle, and, to a lesser extent, Jewel Meat, Century Soup, or Blue Blood Corn. Thus, this method functions around the process of 'quality versus quantity', often by starving a creature for a short period of time before 'supercharging' them with other equivalent or prime ingredients. This often requires large amounts of manpower and cautionary requirements in case the experiment broke loose, but succeeded in producing amazing products or ingredients with a 85% success rate, making it a favorite of the IGO with their specialized compounds.
The main downside to the 'backwards' methods were, aside from the obvious dangers, were that the same methods were impossible to perform with plants, outside those species who witness autonomy or active hunting instincts, but even then the results simply ended with sickly or overly-stunted examples of their strains.
For smaller affairs like Hazard, our focus was less on advancement of individual ingredients or creatures, and more on the culminative. Connecting flavors and creatures in interesting ways to see what results. Sausage Snakes who were fed on a higher fruit diet in addition to their usual rodents ended up with a sweeter flavors, or extra juices, while Explosive Pineapples could be made much less volatile by growing them around milder herbs and additives such as being watered with Matcha Milk or fertilizer treated with fish scales to lower soil acidity, resulting in a fruit that popped along the tongue even while frozen, without actually exploding.
What I'm getting at is that this last week and a bit while I wait for the IGO to get an expedition crew out to the Frozen Hell, I've been trying to make an enclosure for some Spice Bears in a way that would both facilitate their natural environment to make sure they wouldn't try to break out, while also seeing just how much they could be pushed in other directions. Would a Spice bear who had mint with every meal create mint jelly with every drip of fat? Would they try and hunt the Sausage Snakes and develop a crisp finish to their skin?
...Could we recreate another species of bear within three to five generations? Tea Bears were fairly rare due to other species hunting them young, but an Earl Grey Bear would be worth a fortune in funding, especially if it was breedable. Questions for later, right now I was too busy cutting break-away bamboo for the enclosure walls. They could take insane amounts of blunt force trauma or cutting edges, but were incredibly weak to temperature changes, which was something I had in abundance.
It was also un to imagine what I could do with Snow-Drop Marshmallows and Eternal Glacier Ice. I guess I'd find out soon enough.
END OF CHAPTER
Gourmet Cells are hella fun to imagine with, especially with all the ideas that can be expanded from them. Hopefully I'm not far off the mark with what I'm imagining them as anyway. Alright, now to update the info section and then I'll do something else for a minute. I think the reason I'm writing so much is cause I don't have a new game to really get into right now, since I've finished every quest currently in Rise right now. Well, that and I'm honestly having a ton of fun with this. It's a fandom that doesn't get a ton of love, but gets a lot of attention when something good does come out. Nothing like the Megaman fandom, where everyone has their own opinion but doesn't want to share it, which is just a shame.