Cataclysm Day (Player-Guidance)

###### tags: `Lore` Life is fragile. The galaxy is littered with dead worlds where life once prospered. This truth was felt deeply by the Solarians and the Riso-Tecetians, who in their foolish histories had each endangered their living worlds. In the first century of contact between these two peoples, a celebration known as Cataclysm Day began to emerge. -An excerpt from Words We Said Before Sol, A Primer on Terran Anthropology --- ### What is Cataclysm day? Originally a series of informal traditions that marked kinship between humans and kepori, Cataclysm Day has become celebrated widely across the known galaxy. Codified in some way by every major political power, Cataclysm Day centers reflections on the fragility of life, and celebrates the persistence of living things in the face of adversity. In its strictest sense, Cataclysm Day commemorates the Solarian Night of Fire, the Tecetian Environmental Collapse, and a handful of other events which either eradicated all sentient life on a world, or came close. Cataclysm Day is broadly celebrated by many different people in many different ways. --- ### What Does Cataclysm Day Mean to Me? As celebration of Cataclysm Day is widespread, your character has almost certainly heard of it. That doesn't mean they celebrate the holiday necessarily, or that they agree with what it represents! For example * A cynical mercenary might view those who celebrate the holiday as soft * A Solarian physician on an independent mining vessel might view Spacer superstitions surrounding the holiday with suspicion. * An IPC character might find the fixation on "living" things offensive. While the next section will detail common ways of celebrating Cataclysm Day, feel free to break from the mold! --- ### How is Cataclysm Day Observed? ##### General Customs Different cultures mark Cataclysm Day in many many different ways, however the following traditions are often mainstays across cultures: * **Moments of Reflection** * Outposts, radio stations, public broadcasters, and political powers across the Galaxy encourage moments of reflection in the morning and evening of Cataclysm Day. In the morning, a list of "Cataclysm Planets" is read aloud (see below for more information on these planets). This provides a time to reflect on the fragility of life. In the evening, a list of "Living Worlds" is read aloud. This provides a time to reflect on persistence and hope inherent to all living things. The exact contents of each of these lists varies drastically depending on location, and who is holding the ceremony. * **Terrarium Building** * People will often construct small self-contained terrariums on Cataclysm Day, with the goal of maintaining a closed ecoystem over the year. The difficulty is supposed to engender an understanding that all life is equally precarious. The longest surviving Cataclysm Day terrarium was sealed in FSC 324 by Tecetian ecologist Pwer-Caudesi, and remains in equillibrium to the modern day! * **Exchanging Cards** * Cataclysm Day is a bittersweet tradition, emphasing both the beauty and fragility of life. In this vein, many have long celebrated the holiday by exchanging cards with the people they most fear losing. * **Planet Painting** * A more recent Cataclysm Day tradition has been for people to paint living planets they identify strongly with. Often these paintings place a strong emphasis on minimalism, as artists over the years have competed to extreme lengths to paint the most fragile looking living planet. A famous example is the Rachnid artist Chi'Ret'Xin'Ne who composed a black canvas nearly 250 square meters in area with a single grey dot in the center for Cataclysm Day 467FSC. This piece was titled "10,000 years from Reh'himl" and is currently on display in the Texe'geuhiml galleries. ##### Culturally/Factionally Specific Traditions * **Spacers**- As a people strung between worlds and sustained by artificial life support systems, Spacers have a unique perspective on the fragility of life. Due to this, Spacers have developed a few unique ways of celebrating Cataclysm Day. * **Annual Maintenance** * Many Spacers time detailed annual maintenance for life support systems to fall on Cataclysm Day. What began as a joke on a handful of ships is now a very common practice. Having no maintenance done on Cataclysm Day is considered bad luck. * **Living Keepsakes** * Some Spacers, especially those who do not often visit livable planets, hold on to something living from the last green planet they visited to exchange on Cataclysm Day with friends. Keeping the living thing alive until the day for exchange is supposed to offer a chance for reflecting on the fragility of life. The living things are sometimes incorporated into terrariums, kept as pets, or returned to the next living world a Spacer visits. This last custom has recieved much consternation from CLIP-BARD in recent years. * **The New Gorlex Republic** * Gorlex VII has been a controversial addition to the list of Cataclysm Planets ever since its destruction during the ICW. Many Gorlex Hardliners, citizens of the New Gorlex Republic, and even the odd member of the Ramzi Clique celebrate Cataclysm Day as a secondary memorial day for the destruction of Gorlex. As the NGR has expanded into the Frontier in recent years, Cataclysm Day has become a day of heightened tensions between Gorlex Factions and those that fought against them in the ICW. * **Saint-Roumain Militia**- Veneration of the Ashen Huntsman instills a deep respect for living things in members of the SRM, and the religious order has several unique ways in which they express this respect during Cataclysm Day * **Hunting Ban** * Acolytes of the Ashen Huntsman are forbidden from hunting native fauna during Cataclysm Day, allowing a period of reflection on the relationship of the order to the creatures they routinely hunt. Numerous exceptions exist to this ban, including for self-defense, urgent needs of survival, and in service of resolving dire ecological imbalances. * **Restoration Work** * SRM crews often engage in ecological restoration work during Cataclysm Day. For example, a Hunter Montagne might direct their crew to spend time removing invasive plants from a forest, clearing trash from a polluted watershed, or seeding threatened species in areas of their native worlds. * **Fasting** * All members of the SRM hold a bread and water fast during Cataclysm day, both as an extension of their abstinence from hunting and as a way to "clear the mind for reflection on the Huntsman's principles". Exemptions to this fasting are granted for those with medical conditions or duties that make such fasting dangerous --- ### What Cataclysm Planets are Recognized on Cataclysm Day? The specific planets included in the morning reflection differ greatly throughout the Galaxy. The below Cataclysm Planets are the most commonly recognized in the Frontier: ### Cataclysm Planets "Today we remember the worlds of Cataclysm, where the flame of life faltered. Take a moment of silence. Remember..." * Terra: * The Capital of the Most Serene Solar and Intersolar Confederation and the original home of Humans. Civilization on this world was nearly destroyed in the hostilities of the Night of Fire. * Teceti: * The Capital of the Unified Teceti Federation and the original home of Kepori. Centuries ago the civilizations of Teceti nearly drove their world to uninhabitability through unchecked industrial pollution. * Sitami's Folly: * Once called "Sitami's Hope," this planet was one of the oldest and most ambitious projects of the Green Belt Terraforming Initiative. The ecology of Sitami's Folly completely collapsed during the early ICW due to both direct sabotage and indirect disruptions to the project. * Mikiliwolo * Another Green Belt Initative World lost during the ICW, Mikiliwolo was already fully terraformed when it suffered ecological collapse. This was caused by the release (either accidental or intentional) of a bacteriophage with extremely broad tropism. Within months the phage had eliminated most of the microbial life on Mikiliwolo, and the rest of the biosphere died off soon after. * Gorlex VII: * Gorlex VII was a large N+S Shipping colony home to a population numbering in the millions. This population was sustained by life support systems and habitats that were thoroughly destroyed during the ICW. Due to its lack of terraforming and native life, Gorlex VII is a controversial inclusion on this list. * Re'tex'himl * An early Rachnid colony, Re'tex'himl had existing native fauna prior to Rachnid colonization. Unfortunately this life was extremely sensitive to a native agent in the Rachnid microbiome, and was entirely eradicated within 100 years of colonization. Without a biosphere, the colony on Re'tex'himl soon twindled to a fraction of its previous population, and never recovered. * Iakono-XZT2: Located on the fringes of PGF territory, Iakono-XZT2 is a mid-sized terrestrial planet, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere and a primitive biosphere. Ruins on the planet suggest a technological civilization once lived here, dying out shortly after the development of atomic weapons. A sobering reminder of the fragility of intelligent life in a universe that allows so many tools for destruction. * Curie H2H-B: * Located in Intersolarian Territory, H2H is a small Red Dwarf Star that was obscured from early Solarian astronomy by interstellar dust. Only a dozen light years from Sol, H2H-B orbits H2H at an appropriate distance for liquid water to form. Paleological investigation of the planet has found fossils of early multicellular life on the planet, though H2H-B is sterile today. The planet was most likely sterilized during a collision with a large planetoid that is thought to have robbed it of most of its water.