These fun toys did not actually originate from
Vaputech.
Hey, not everything that's barking mad is the
fault of the Genius Prince. Other
Superiors - or even non-Superiors - get to play with the weird stuff, too. True, the Seraph of Lightning who had
created Cow Seeds in the first place Fell soon afterwards. Granted, Vapula may have refined the model a
little. It could even be argued that Vaputech is the only place where such
concepts could find a proper home.
Still, they didn't come up with it
first. Try to hold on to that thought.
At any rate, in their original configuration Cow
Seeds were merely a method to rapidly create bovines in a particular area. Simply plant one amid several hundred pounds
of organic material, spend 5 Essence and come back in two days to discover a
perfectly normal, fully functional cow.
The idea was to eliminate organic pollution sites - Cow Seeds break
everything down to their component elements, so no worries there - while
increasing the local availability of beef.
Considering the abysmal food supplies in much of the world, this was
seen as an overall good thing by the research team.
Then somebody had the bright idea of seeing what
would happen if a Cow Seed was eaten.
This being Heaven, the immediate answer was, "The question is moot,
as the blessed things were designed to be absolutely revolting to any corporeal
life form. You'd have to force it down
their throats - no, we shouldn't 'try it and see'. Good God, man, the entire idea is sick! You could kill someone that way.
No, we're not going to change our minds... now, put down the blast rifle
and be reasonable... GUARDS! GUARDS! GUA-AARRRGGHHHH gurgle gurgle
gurgle..."
It's always sad to see strife in the workplace.
Anyway, Vapula himself did the tests on mixing Cow
Seeds and corporeal digestive systems - but was displeased to discover that the
combination did nothing except make the test subject explode. He wasn't fully displeased, of course
(Vapula always likes it when he finds a new way to make test subjects explode),
but even he had to admit that there were easier and quieter ways to kill people
than by shoving a five-pound seed down their throats. There was still something there, though, so the Genius
Archangel kept on plugging.
Unfortunately, while the 'Archangel' part of the
epithet is decidedly suspect, the 'Genius' part is not. Vapula was able to solve both the size and
the explosion problem simply by removing the 5 Essence organic capacitor that
made up the bulk of the prototype Cow Seed.
He instead designed the Seed to attach itself to an existing Essence
matrix (that'd be a living corporeal body): once 5 Essence became available,
hey presto! A cow would result: best of
all, the improved version didn't even cause Disturbance, for some weird reason.
Kobal, of course, immediately underwrote the
production costs.
Cow Seeds require 5 available Essence to activate:
the victim must have already ingested the relic (the relic will lose its power
to transform about a week after ingestion).
The moment 5 Essence becomes available, the Seed activates and
transforms the unlucky target into a cow.
As few humans weigh enough to be a full-fledged cow, they usually turn
into some sort of veal: celestials have some doubletalk sort of metaphysical
weight to them that 'allows' them to take full bovine form. Incidentally, this is the outward form
of a cow: the target retains full intelligence and memories. Whether or not this does them any good is
debatable. Reversing the condition
requires a Superior.
Cost: umm... 3 per seed sound about right?