Revenge of the Veggies

Did you know that genetics was discovered by some monk breeding peas? Well, it was. In this dimension, the Renaissance never happened. Europe was still feudal, and colonisation was a non-starter: the people were mating like rabbits, and soon entire forests were ravaged for building materials. Selective breeding was all the rage with the people of Latveria. The majority of the land was arid, and impossible to farm on. The few patches of arable land were placed under immense pressure to maximise their yields, and this new discovery was the hope of a poor nation blocked on all four sides by enemies. Alchemy had continued to progress over the centuries, influenced by techniques from the Orient. One really could turn water into gold, drawing upon the magical forces that resided within the mauri of each being. This wasn't elegant magic. It was brute force and crude, driven by a desperate need to provide for their whānau, their hapū and their iwi. It was effective, but it was also highly destructive. Mixing it with this new science was bound to solve Latveria's problems... Magic was still constrained by the laws of physics: energy cannot be destroyed, merely transferred from one form to another. Who knew that vegetables were sentient?

The exponential growth of the populace had introduced Europe to concepts like housing density, supply-side economics, probability charts, free trade agreements, public-private partnerships and limits to growth. Eating each other never occurred to these backwards savages: they were too busy raping and pillaging the land, bending nature to their feudal will.

Latveria's chief economist was having none of that limits to growth crap. In a famous speech, he said that 'our stock will rise as high as the sky.' People weren't expecting that to happen quite so literally. It all began with a transmutation spell. Harvesting the tree sap from their local forests, skilled alchemists could turn temporarily turn arid land into something greener. Presuming that the farmers timed their harvest correctly, the miracle appeared to hold. Soon, the population was growing at an even faster rate.

They were aware that the trees were sentient, but they weren't aware that plants were. I mean, it's not as if anybody bothers to ask a vegetable whether they're keen to be eaten. Afterwards, there were various theories: the tree sap had some lingering life force that supercharged the latent consciousness of vegetables; that some dissenter had devised a clever spell to terrorise the Latverian people; that it was a new Prussian weapon; that God had decided to punish them, Old Testament-style. The obvious answer eluded them, however: the veggies were taking revenge for the millions of trees that had been felled in the name of progress. Some people say that capitalism corrupts the soul of a nation, and this was a defiant stand from the whenua. There was an element of human error involved too; some amateur setting up a crop said the wrong incantation, wasting a bucketload of magical energy as the spell spread over fifty acres rather than five. A professional from the district council was sent in to fix the mess. When they cast the reversal spell, all of the nascent vegetables were fused together. The giant vegetables were truly something to behold.

The carnage was swift and brutal. These kaiju were ideally suited to destroying the crummy buildings the feudal barbarians had constructed. The truly disturbing sight was that of vegetables eating people. These tall cucumbers and broccoli could eat dozens of humans at a time, their vicious teeth tearing into the flesh of their former oppressors.

Finally, the mages were able to reverse the spells. It had been five days, and over 20% of the population was dead. Latveria's capital was littered with the wreckage from the incursion: buildings that had been trampled, thousands of dead or injured. A fire in one of the outer suburbs was still burning, and the palace grounds were all torn up. People tried to rationalise it as the cost of doing business: if we keep on having to find new ways to maximise our yields, then we'll need to try risky things that might tap into forces beyond our control, and we still defeated them (eventually).

Others were appalled at the human cost of what was largely interpreted as an instance of those damn mages playing God and messing with the spirits. There was an upside, though. This newer, leaner population was easier to feed, and this whole giant vegetables thing might solve their food supply problems if they could figure out how to generate blank, brain-free versions. So, despite the widespread public clamour to ban magical engineering, the sneaky mages continued on with their alchemical abuse. Latveria's best and brightest had inadvertently proven that their magic had profound military applications. They wasted little time in setting those forces upon their neighbours. Without Latveria's secret spells, they were quickly conquered, and soon this small country was a superpower of Europe. All because of some dude breeding peas... The End