So, I recently finished Harry Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump.

The major concern is that certain magical by-products are harmful to the environment, and the people living there. What a wonderful idea!

Imagine, if you will, a government-licensed corporation which created heavily-warded areas where other corporations could (after properly decontaminating the materials) dispose of their harmful magical waste for a price!

The possible contaminants in the SR universe abound: poisonous alchemical byproducts, items subject to extensive spell testing, bound spirits, certain paranormal critters, FAB experiments, etc. Basically, anything that could create a background count or mana warp.

Shadowruns in such a magically toxic (and heavily-warded) environment would be excellent...a corp might want to know what a rival corp is doing, and seeing what they're dumping could provide hints as to what and how. A given corp might be dumping illegal wastes. Maybe the dump's begun to "leak," causing a rash of magic-related illnesses or toxic spirits. Nature spirits and AmerInds could balk at the desecration of their natural lands. Et cetera.

Just a thought. The book was fairly good, too.

You could have alot of fun with this. Who says ritual materials have to be consumed completely in rituals... what if they become magical waste that has to be disposed of? You could also have corps building "astral damns" around their magical dumps so their neigbors don't figure out what they are really doing in their research plant... of course if that damn/ward were to break...

Pel

Or if the warding is slipping in places, and something like a powerful toxic shaman has gotten in there and is raising hell.... good setting for a bounty hunting adventure too.

The spill from the dump doesn't necesserily have to be toxic, does it? Maybe it just "jinxes" magical energies in the vincinity or cause sudden "spikes" leading to unpredictable spellcasting. Punks like wiz gangs or even some paracritter or other would probably hang around a place like that. A rise of spontaneously manifested nature spirits or even elementals in the area mebbe?