Vanilla Lore Expanded: Chocolate (Patreon)

Chocolate

Chocolate is one of the few dessert-type foods that practically everyone can agree is delicious... Except for the people who harvest cocoa and have never tasted chocolate before, but let’s not focus on that. The seeds of the cocoa tree are harvested and then ground together with a mixture of sugar and vanilla to produce the typical chocolate bar. In the 21st century, Terra was experiencing the potential devastation of cocoa production to the ravages of climate change, shrinking the very limited biome where the trees could grow. Naturally, this looming lack of chocolate was unacceptable.

Thus, numerous farmers and chocolate enthusiasts were gripped in a fervour to cultivate a new form of plant through genetic modification and selective breeding. The goal was to create a tree that not only could grow in almost any climate, but would also skip the tedious process of having to harvest and process the cocoa along with sugarcane and vanilla beans. The results were not completely ideal but certainly still surprising, even to those cultivating them. The process was hurried along when numerous corporations in the food industry realised they could actually make more money out of this new plant than the traditional method.

Through the process of genetic modification, the gooey cocoa butter within the fruit became gradually sweeter with hints of vanilla and the tree itself became more compact for easier harvesting. However, these initial results still required the fruits to be opened and the insides mixed together, and the trees themselves still had to be kept in tropical conditions or they would wilt easily.

Thanks to the efforts of the corporations, they patented a version of this cocoa tree that could not only grow in non-tropical environments but also created rectangular fruits. Within the fruits themselves, the husk formed a grid mold that the seeds grew into. Once past a certain maturity level, these seeds bloomed within the fruit to form squares of cocoa, sugar and vanilla mixed together.. Once harvested , the shell of the fruit tore away as easily as wrapping paper and the pre-made chocolate was ready for eating in easily-divisible squares.