When you wake up to discover, to your horror, that a strange blight has struck your beautiful, ripe tomatoes overnight, leaving some shriveled into tomato mummies just before harvest, examine the affected fruit for two small puncture marks.
If you find them, you have a much bigger problem than losing part of your harvest. A scourge of farmers is terrorizing your area: the dreaded veganpire—the vegan vampire.
Veganpires use their two sharp fangs to suck the juice from growing fruit, weakening the entire plant, often irreversibly. Tomatoes are their favorite prey, but they also attack melons, apples, and some citrus fruits. There are even reports of a variant called the sappire, which sucks sap from trees. Fortunately, these are very rare.
If there is a veganpire in your area, there are two approaches to protecting your harvest: active and passive.
Active defense involves identifying the monster, either by catching it in the act of committing this crime against nature or by investigating the local community. We must warn aspiring veganpire hunters: do not jump to conclusions. Unlike other types of vegans, veganpires will not announce their dietary preferences whenever you meet them. They often blend into the community so well that you would never suspect your neighbor until you caught him in the act.
There is one well-documented case in which even burning every vegan within three villages of the hunting ground at the stake failed to eliminate the real culprit. The harvest remained in danger, and the only measure that worked was a blood-sausage test administered to every resident. To everyone’s shock, the local butcher, who had made the sausages himself, refused to taste his own product. When they tried to force him, he fled. By day, he slaughtered animals and produced a wide variety of supposedly delicious smoked meats; by night, he stalked the local fields and orchards. Sadly, he escaped punishment by turning into a fruit bat and flying away. Fortunately, this particular pest was exceptionally powerful and cunning. Most veganpires are much easier to identify or ward off.
Passive defense and prevention involve protecting your plants through magic, natural deterrents, or psychology. Magical protection is prohibitively expensive, affordable only to wealthy farmers, and is generally used as a last resort when all folk remedies have failed. Advice on protecting your fields is plentiful, but most suggested methods, such as planting garlic around the perimeter, prove ineffective when tested. One method that does show some effectiveness is hanging strips of bacon rind around the field, which tends to drive vegans away.
Psychology, however, seems to be the best way to deal with your average stupid veganpire. All you need to do is put up signs warning:
“These crops are fertilized with chemical nitrates and irrigated with dihydrogen monoxide.”
Most veganpires will flee in terror upon reading this notice.
Per Carota Ad Astra (Through Carrots to the Stars): A Handbook for the Successful Farmer of the Outer Worlds, edition 5A1
***
Veganpires? Mostly harmless. Unless you’re a farmer.
Probably just a rural legend, at least these days.
Wanderer’s guide to the worlds, 6A-11
***
The earliest recorded account of so-called veganpires dates to the Fourth Age. See the folk legend “Seven Meatarians.” These creatures were most likely vampires of one of the standard types that had undergone an unusual transformation.
Although the story is almost certainly entirely fictional, vampires capable of subsisting solely on juice—and, more importantly, the life force extracted from fruit or other plant matter—have been documented on several worlds. In two cases, specimens were captured and subjected to rigorous study. Both were originally higher vampires that had subsequently undergone this transformation. According to the sources, both had been notorious predators that preyed on local communities, with power ratings of Class 5 or higher. Yet when the heroes tracked them down, they found only pathetic shadows of the once-terrifying monsters.
In the first case, the vampire actually begged the hunters to end his suffering. Unfortunately, he revealed nothing about the process that had turned him into a veganpire, or even whether he had undergone it voluntarily.
This modification of body and soul prevents vampires from feeding on the blood and life force of humans and other higher animals, making them dependent on the life force of plants instead. This mode of feeding is extremely inefficient, requiring a veganpire to feed almost constantly, consuming the life force of vegetation across vast areas merely to keep its body functioning.
There are claims that veganpirism is contagious and can be transmitted through a bite, but these appear unfounded, at least in the case of transformed higher vampires. To initiate the transformation of a victim, a higher vampire must first process the victim’s blood and then inject it back into them. A progenitor that has become a veganpire can no longer do this.
It is theoretically possible that this condition could spread among lower blood vamps, but the original source—the “vegan zero”—has never been identified.
One hypothesis proposed by the University team studying the specimens is that the condition was caused by a ritual, perhaps intended as a “cure” for vampirism. However, a metaphysical change of this kind requires a level of power usually associated with the Elder Gods or their artifacts. This would suggest that information about the process might be found in academic sources dating to the Third or Second Age, yet no such records have been discovered.
Aencyclopedia Lunatica, 6th age edition
***
The preceding excerpts summarize everything the University archivists have found concerning veganpires. The old legends have very little credibility, and there is little reason to investigate them further, with one exception noted below.
All tests conducted on the four subjects currently held in Laboratory 7-11B corroborate the findings reported in the current edition of Aencyclopedia Lunatica. Attempts to transmit the condition experimentally have been unsuccessful, even in subjects possessing all the genetic markers associated with blood vamps.
The veganpires themselves pose no threat to the city, as these creatures are virtually incapable of surviving in an urban environment without extensive assistance. However, we must investigate how and why they were created, and identify whoever or whatever is capable of effecting such an extraordinary metaphysical transformation. I therefore ask you, my colleagues, to give this matter your attention and draw on all your sources of information to trace the origins of the veganpires in Norport.
It is possible that the artifact mentioned in the old legend “Seven Meatarians”—the Dagger of Higher Veganism—actually exists and is currently in or near the city.
Professor Cecil Linder
Internal memorandum of faculty of applied philosophy, University of Norport
***
Yeah, we should have destroyed that shit as soon as we got our hands on it. It’s one of the worst artifacts left over from the age of the Elder Gods. One nick from the blade and you’re a vegan with no way back...
But using it on vampires was so damn funny, especially those cheesy idiots who think they’re apex predators and rulers of humanity…
Unsorted fragments, B-styled archives