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.
Perhaps the cosmic bridge is itself a pollutant, a poison slowly worming its way through the universe? An impossible structure, spanning the void between planets and stars – and infecting the worlds it touches.
- Mechanichal Locusts – from the workshops of the bridge, they raze entire worlds, carrying their plunder back onto the bridge from where they were seeded
- Drought – many worlds the bridge empties not just of food but of water, wide areas around its piers covered in water binding grains, which in dirty wet clumps are then brought up
- Life – the bridge does not just take, however, it gives, too, cancerously spreading life, too much of it, strangling everything and itself, masses of spores, covering everything, nesting themselves into everything, spreading, spreading
- Metallic Life – immunity from the growth comes in the form of hard, artificial life, the mechanical locusts might be but the most primitive example of, metallic life taking possession of the environment in its own ways, invasive metal, that local flesh and blood is ill equipped to compete against
- Dust – in the end, all is dust, the fields empty, the rivers dry, life chocked to death on its own bounty, metal creatures crumbled to rust, dust all, carried along with the wind, sterile dust un willing to nourish a future
- Shadow – and then, as the next span of the bridge starts to jut out, then its shadow falls on plains of dust and cloaks them into a gigantic darkness