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There was once a time where one had to hunt and scavenge, and fight off competing predators, and shelter from the weather, and from their lack of skill or luck, many starved. After several thousand years of this, agriculture and livestock were the next step, and food became more controllable, predictable. Through technology, cattle grew fat and juicy, and the population swelled in numbers, until a bad harvest wasn't a cause of death, and rot no longer tainted their meat stores. To starve, became a fear of the past.
After a few more millennia, every farm was optimised, multilayered, purely focused on the output of meat. Science was bent to the single end of consumption, and world hunger stopped being an insurmountable tragedy, and became a problem of mere logistics, one that seemed in reach. The civilisation grew and grew, pushing their food production higher in every way they could, keeping themselves well-fed and comfortable.
And then, as these things do, it became unsustainable.
What were The Gastric Wars?
The Gastric Wars were a series of world-wide conflicts among slarym nations due to the rapid desertification of Amkear, their homeworld. This environmental collapse is attributed to both slarym activities and the transition of their local sun to a red giant, as the overfarming practices of their civilisation collided with the gradually rising temperature and increased radiation from their star. Gradually, the livestock megapastures which had fed the planet became arid and unfeasible for grazing on, leading to desperate attempts to reinvigorate them by pumping water from underground, an act which only hastened the land's demise.
The years before the war heralded a clear decline in social relations as supplies continued to worsen. Outbreaks of mass malnutrition and empty supermarkets became a common occurrence, while food trucks and warehouses became the targets of plausibly-deniable attacks from both state powers and independent groups. Ultimately, there was only one obvious answer for politicians who needed to appease their restless publics. A nationalist motto is often quoted to represent the prevailing sentiment leading up to the war: "Why must WE starve when there's food on THEIR table?".
Over the following century, troops fighting over the remaining areas of verdant life that could still support livestock managed to obtain a slim supply of food for those remaining back home, but enlisting itself was presented as the best way to get something to eat every day. Many joined their nation's army not for the hope of winning some great geopolitical conflict, but because of the knowledge that as much as the army offered little-to-no rations for their soldiers, alternative dietary choices were implicitly encouraged.
Cannon fodder became synonymous with dinner. Medical tents doubled as canteens. Every battle won would be celebrated by a feast of the enemy, and every battle lost would recognised by a feast of those most wounded or at fault. The writings of a soldier from the time mention that after a few engagements, the sound of bullets alone was enough to make most of their battalion start salivating. Civilians were not spared from this practice, though many once-lively cities had been reduced to ghost towns by the time their would-be conquerors arrived, as their society descended back into the endless cycle of raw predation. The Gastric Wars had become a fight of survival, not only against the enemy, but against your fellow soldier, as friendly fire could occasionally reward someone with a full stomach.
It should be noted that the Gastric Wars, despite their savagery, never involved the use of destructive superweapons such as nuclear bombs, even though such technology was well within the slarym’s means. Being charitable, one might say this was because the slarym found the idea of rendering vast swaths of land intentionally inhospitable unthinkable when they were already suffering so much from their past actions, and that every side was unanimous in their disdain for such tactics. It would be more accurate to say, however, that the reason for this abstinence was that the slarym considered objectives such as wiping out enemy forces or factories secondary to consuming them, leading to edibility being a major factor in considering potential weaponry (this can be seen especially clearly in the bioweapons fielded during the war). Most likely, what held commanders from pressing the button was simply the fact that irradiated flesh tasted bad, and made you sick.
The memoirs of veterans from the final years of the war work well as cook books on how best to prepare the flesh of their fellow countrymen, putting up the slarym as contenders for the record of the species with the most written cannibalist recipes. Despite most slarym describing the taste of their own peers as unforgettable, slarym meat is infamously rather tough and chewy, making it a unpopular choice in many places around the universe.
Biological Warfare
In the decades before the war began, when it became clear that conditions were worsening, the agro-industrial complex looked into the possibility of creating sturdier cattle that could survive with less nutrition. Though the eventual products of this research were highly resilient and had some success replacing regular cattle as pastures eroded, the inevitable conclusion could not be avoided; Animals still needed to eat something. The bottom layer of the food chain itself was being worn away at, with countless plant species becoming extinct with each passing year. The slarym had invested little time into plant biology, and so without being able to address the underlying issue, these genetically modified breeds did little to tip the scales back towards stability. The work done in engineering them would’ve been ultimately pointless, if not for what happened next.
As conflict broke out, farmers and geneticists naturally found themselves involved in military matters, as conquering farmland was the initial goal of every faction in the war. Those that had lost their own pastures turned their attention to the war effort, advising soldiers on what could be scavenged and how to find the few native species of wildlife that still remained on Amkear, but were not content to merely provide advice. Instead, they soon began to devise weapons, for every side still possessed the genetic laboratories and animal factories that had briefly been their hope for survival. If they had no food to feed their cattle, then they would simply bring the beasts to new grass, and so was born the bioweapon industry.
It is said that slarym bioweapons are rather peculiar compared to many others in the universe. They're often noted as being the only weapons where the taste matters first and foremost, not only because most are genetic derivatives from the slarym livestock, but because the ultimate objective of each and every one was to fatten itself up on the bodies of the fallen or the landscape itself, before being slaughtered and eaten by its own side. These creatures would scoop through enemy ranks like an anteater attacking a hive, or chew up pits in the earth and grind down the raw stone and dirt into bone marrow, extracting as much strength and energy as possible and converting it into a form more palatable to slarymkind. Though none could sustain themselves on dry earth alone (one imagines that if the slarym had managed to crack that capability, they might well have eventually devoured their entire planet), they were deadly, hard to put down, and tipped the scales across many battlefields.
One bioweapon for which decent records exist was the Marikat, a cousin of felines mutated beyond recognition into a ball of fangs and tongues. More subtle than the giant kaijus which crushed soldiers beneath their bulk, the Marikat was designed as a nighttime attacker, taking advantage of the limited visibility and fatigue the enemy would be experiencing. Its long tongues, which protruded from all parts of its body, were extremely flexible and contained a paralytic venom, allowing them to snag the leg of a slarym from a distance and drag them away without alerting nearby sentries. As the Marikat feasted on the bodies of its prey, their mass would mainly be converted into lengthening its tongues, allowing it greater reach without sacrificing mobility. Though the creature was intended to only last long enough for a few extended engagements, at its most well-fed the Marikat could possess dozens of tongues, each able to reach over battlement walls and picking up soldiers on the other side. Upon being cooked, the toxic nature of its flesh would be removed, leaving a pleasant zest in its place.
In modern times, though the slarym species have partially restored their civilization from ruin, few traces of the bioweapon program remain, as all specimens, alive or dead, were likely eaten. Surviving genetic material could act as a rough blueprint, if the slarym were ever inclined to restart the program, but this is a distant possibility. It is estimated that the slarym population fell by over 90% during the Gastric War, and though the species retains their voracious appetite, they appear to have learned the lesson of restraint from their brush with extinction, and the dangers of what could be unleashed in war. For it was not bioweapons that proved the greatest bringer of death for the slarym, but a simple microbial fog.
Mass-Digestion Weapons
The digestive fog, as it was called (also known as an M.D.W, Mass-Digestion Weapon), consisted of clouds of airborne genetically engineered bacteria, modelled after gut bacteria. Upon making contact with the body of a slarym, the microbes would bond to the skin and muscle and begin to produce a tiny trickle of acid. By itself, a single germ would have negligible impact, but when descending in a crowd of millions, the result was akin to being dissolved alive. Soldiers caught by the thin pools of mist would find the flesh sloughing off their bones and collapse into a puddle of their own body, while those managing to evade the main clouds might’ve slapped themselves on the back for escaping, only to discover their shoulder had turned into loose chunks of meat. Several hours after deployment, the digestive fog would die and enter its second phase, changing from acting as an acid to a preservative for the newly created food supply. The attacking force could then swoop in and claim the harvest, without ever having to engage in direct warfare.
The digestive fog was not a perfect weapon, as it was dependent on the wind and worked best when unexpected. Still, it saw common usage from its inventors, and then from each other faction as the method of its creation was leaked or rediscovered. Armies became used to seeing it on the battlefield, and the taste it left on its victims, which was described as slightly bitter but giving a decent crispness if eaten alongside tastier toppings. Instances of friendly fire were uncommon, but not entirely avoided, yet this too was acceptable. The real danger only became truly apparent as the years wore on, and the fog was deployed again and again across numerous battlefields.
To the slarym’s credit, the digestive fog was designed to only target their own species, and never mutated beyond their control unlike similar weapons in the history of various species. But the slaryms it was used on were not merely bags of flesh and bones. They wore manufactured clothing and armour. They carried metal and plastic equipment. And as the acid coated their body, it would dissolve tiny amounts of heavy metals and processed materials, dripping it into both the melted carcass and the earth below.
The quantity of these substances was low enough that a slarym could eat the fog’s leftovers for years without noticing ill effects, but slowly symptoms would begin to emerge. Abdominal pain would flare up, and never fully go away. Outbreaks of constipation would strike battalions. Limbs would tingle, teeth would ache, soldiers would have trouble concentrating or recalling past events. Fertility rates fell, and those children who were born would often suffer developmental problems. As concentrations rose, those who ate the bodies of those tainted would also suffer similar effects, until vast swathes of the planetary population had been poisoned. Eventually, the connection between each factor was made, and though the truth brought a tide of resentment, there was no scapegoat to carry the blame. Every side was responsible. Production of digestive fog ceased, and remaining supplies were disposed of or placed in deep storage.
By then, however, the damage had been done, not just to the species but to the planet. Arid scrublands, already struggling to persist in the warming environment, fell to the heavy metals that trickled into groundwater. Battlefields were permanently stained black, the land that had been scarred by the war would never see life ever again, and what were once soldiers full of appetite became barely living husks, wandering through zones of death. Everyone knew, from the lowest cadet to the highest general: Extinction was their just desserts. In a decade or two, the great filter known as “World Hunger” would swallow all.
Until a slarym soldier, and amateur astronomer at the time, looked up. Up into the sky. Up into the starred abyss, that contrasted the black land his feet marched on. A radio dish he’d been stationed at had received signals from space, and he’d made the calculations. Checked the probabilities. Discussed and debated with those who could still talk or think despite the hunger pangs. All signs pointed to a single possibility.
And he began to salivate.
“Why fight among ourselves when there is a whole universe out there to eat?”
The Leftovers
Nowadays, details about the Gastric Wars are a thing for the history books. A shockingly small factoid in the greater flow of life. There have been bigger, or more gruesome, or generally more important wars in the universe. The only concern most will have about a slarym is whether or not it's looking at you like dinner. They’re a species of cannibals. Why? They simply are, is the ultimate answer. Things are the way they are, and always have been. There’s better things to worry about.
But if one ever finds themselves close to a slarym, it might make for an interesting topic of conversation. The Gastric War broke down slarym society at large, and in rebuilding, the species became wary of mass-farming and returned to simple hunting and gathering as their main source of food, though with modern additions and cities. The civilization still bears the signs of that time, in both culture and environment, with ruins scattered across the continental deserts of Amkear. Perhaps the slarym would have become radically different, if they had been contacted earlier. Maybe they wouldn’t have digested their planet alive.
What-if’s don’t matter to the slarym, though. What matters is that they usually don’t eat good conversationalists, especially those well-versed in their history. For a species looked down on as people-eaters, pleasant chit-chats are harder to come by than a quick meal.
A hungry slarym is still hungry, nevertheless.