I have been doing this for twelve years now. Writing against RPG-a-Day. Against. Again and again. Every day, every August, since 2015. Most often on my own, sometimes collaboratively with others here on d6ideas or across different (German) blogs.
2015: ArtifactaDay
2016: Loot-a-Day
2017: Rival-a-Day
2018: Ad-Blog
2019: RPG+Ally+a+Day
2020: Not One Step Back
2021: Veteran-a-Day
2022: The Thousand Titles of the Cat Emperor
2023: Sommerverdichtung (German only)
2024: CampaignConceptaDay
2025: A-Piece-of-History-Every-Day / Calculating World(s)history
And now? The German next door neighbours at Kritischer Fehlschlag have issued the rallying cry “Crime Scene” (German).
But here? After twelve years of doing this dirty work? There is but one possible answer:
The Dirty Dozen.
Interpreted via the lense of the so called Dirty Dozen of persistent organic pollutants such as DDT and dioxins (although an earlier thought was the likewise so called Dirty Dozen of biological weapons and this might still colour some of the entries).
One-hundred-and-fourty-four poisons and pollutants (in the widest, freest sense). Twelve each for twelve systems. Thirty-one days. Twelve years. Against RPG-a-Day. Again.
Kraken is an old setting which I dust off every few years, tinker around with it a bit and then put back in the box again. The real update, the big rework remains to be done. On the blog, it surfaced in the past a couple of times in context with its Weimaresque political landscape and the instability of the democratic institutions of its star-spanning state – probably among the bits least likely to change if and when the big update comes. The following environmental issues however, are pretty prone to massive change, as they draw upon elements of the setting that in themselves might or might not survive any coming round of tinkering. Conditional pollutants.
- Biodyne – (in some iterations of the setting also known as Biodyne Systems or Federated Biodyne) as monopolist in the production of the artificial lifeforms that are a de facto requirement for faster-than-light travel, Biodyne is basically able to have their legal department draft any environmental protection legistlation applicable to their operations – the exclusion zones (a matter of national security) around their laboratories and production centers thus are massively polluted with anything from antibiotics, anabolics, and other drug products, to literal mountains of not-corpses (it is not a person!)
- Memory holes – exposure to hyperenergetic effects, especially during FTL travel, can have detrimental effects on human memory – and those can become permanent with continued exposure
- Computer errors – the same hyperenergetic effects impacting human brains can also impact computer systems, corrupting code
- Hyper fragments – whereas the previous environmental effects of employing hyperenergetic technologies (gravity manipulation and hyperspace) manifest on the level of information, so called hyper fragments are physical deposits, often multiplying within organisms
- Mining industries – hyperenergetic technologies requires certain exotic materials, and although the companies extracting them do not have Biodyne’s monopolist’s powers, the strategic, civilisation-enabling importance of their work is still such, that they do can largely operate without concern for the local environment (or the health of their workers) – apart from common pollutants and issues (from particulates to cyanide), the exotic materials themselves can cause or enhance any of the hyperenergetic environmental issues already described
- Navigation beams – the gravity beams that spaceships use as “keys” to hyperspace are suspected to also affect local space-time, effects accumulating over time
- Impact gel – widely employed to absorb kinetic energy from accidence (and in a military context from weapons’ fire), used impact gel routinely is released into the environment and few local ecosystems are able to effectively metabolize or eliminate the nano particles
- Gravity anomalies – even without repeated point use of navigation beams anomalies in local gravity can be detected around sites where exotic materials are extracted and refined or hyperenergetic technologies are manufactured or employed
- Dry colonies – while humanity (or the Terran Union) leaves a free hand to Biodyne and the mining corporations in polluting local environments, the Naga show little more care, the semi-aquatic sophonts do not consider the environment of planets without substantial amounts of free surface water worth protecting and so apart from their domed cities their “dry colonies” resemble nothing so much as giant landfills
- Modified agricultural planets – MAPs are planned environmental destruction in action – massed deployment of targeted GMOs on selected worlds with the express goal of strangling the native ecosystem and render the entire planet a productive resource for feeding other colonies
- Free Systems – (iterated as Federated Systems and Free Federation) the smallest of the states declaring their independence from the Terran Unions has completely dismantled any regulation of industry, resulting in the excesses already described being potentiated within their sphere of influence
- Crystal poison – results in the degrading and ultimately destruction of exotic materials – it has yet to be positively identified, though it thought to be connected to extraction techniques probably with multiple factors playing into it