singillppl | Tales From The Northern Territories #7

TALES FROM THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES #7 

Greetings, Interlopers! Welcome to another of your bi-monthly updates, known as Tales From The Northern Territories! The purpose of these little ‘newsletters’, is to touch base with players on how things are going within the game and the fallout of the event of the previous month. In addition, these updates will also provide some extra information on NPCs, along with any additional happenings that might be going on within the game — which may be hints towards the upcoming Test Drive Meme!

Before we jump into things, here’s some dates for your diary for this month:

Activity Check — 1st - 5th
October Mini Event — 5th
CR Meme — 15th

First up: some announcements / housekeeping:

CONTENT: As a reminder, there will be no TDM this month. In addition, with there being no TDM, that means there will be no application round this month. Players may still play out from the Setember event, or create their own open post for more general posts. There will be an Mini Event this month, which will be posted on the 5th!

We hope you enjoyed your Never Have I Ever Meme last month! This month, players will have their bi-monthly CR Meme.

INTERLOPER CENSUS: Thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out the Interloper Census. We got 55 entries, hot damn! The data will be gathered and a video presentation will be delivered at some point in October.

HOUSEKEEPING: A reminder for players that we have both a Character Location Tracker for players to use to show where their characters are each month. I will link it here, but it can be found on the Areas Page. In addition, we have a Character Impressions Sheet for players to put down first impressions/basic general knowledge of characters that was created by one of our former players! While linked here, this can be otherwise found on the Navigation pages.

SEPTEMBER’S EVENT

PAINFUL REMINDERS: After the Auroras at the beginning of the month, no more ‘gifts’ will be left for Interlopers. The voices of loved ones heard in the Aurora will go silent and will not be heard any more. But what will remain is the painful reminders or mysteries from home — and they have certainly left their mark on the Interlopers.

THE ENEMY WITHIN / BAD BLOOD: After the night of the 28th, the Forest Talkers are no more. Their number depleted and their leader, Mallory, is dead. It seems that either way, the Forest Talkers were going to destroy the Interlopers or die trying.

Those who followed Mallory and found him before his death will have learned from him the true cause of the Forest Talkers: after years of fighting for the rights of nature against man’s expansion and industry in the Northern Territories, the Darkwalker approached Mallory and convinced him of the group’s true purpose — to allow the end of the world to occur, so the world would be reborn, as described in myths and stories told to the natives of the Northern Territories. The Yawning Grave is death. The end. The grave from which new life can be born. The cycle of nature. They took up arms against the Interlopers, believing them to be stopping the end of the world occurring with their presence

And with this, Mallory revealed another piece of information: Enola is allegedly holding the Darkwalker in place, stopping it from destroying the world — delaying what must come to pass. But, Mallory remarked, she cannot hold it back forever and is simply playing God.

It was pretty close! But the results of the poll were that the remaining young Forest Talkers who chose to abandon their cause will Integrate into the ranks of the Interlopers and make their home in Milton. They will be given talismans originally crafted by Heartman and anointed with Interloper blood to ward off the Darkwalker’s influence. They will become part of the community, even if their status is that of native. A list of names will be added to the Master List due course, and they will be marked separately to signify their non-Interloper status — but can be utilised in same way NPC Interlopers are. The NPC page will also be updated accordingly.

The Hunting Lodge will be looted for supplies to be brought back to Milton. Following this, the building will be abandonned but can be used as a resting stop/shelter by any Interlopers in the southern Lakeside area. For now, a kind of peace has settled over the Milton and Lakeside regions — Interlopers are able to travel and hunt freely, with one less threat in the world.

AND NOW... THE WEATHER

DAYLIGHT: Winter is on the way. The daylight hours are beginning to shorten and the nights grow longer. Sunrise does not occur until around 8.30am and the sun will set around 7.30pm — meaning there are now around eleven hours of daylight in the beginning of October. This amount will grow smaller and smaller as October goes on and moves into November, with the last sunset of the year occurring around November 26th. From then on, the long night has come and the only light Interlopers will see is the scant light of twilight.

WEATHER: The weather will get progressively colder in the months of October and November, with constant subzero temperatures. Snowfall is common most days, with harsh winds and blizzards growing in frequency into late October and throughout November. Any waters that had thawed over the summer will begin to freeze over again and stabilise to much thicker ice that’s safe to walk on by November.

AURORAS: Middling to high frequency of Auroras. Even with the growing snowfall and storms, there are still plenty of clear nights in which Auroras are likely to occur — with around half of the months of October and November experiencing Auroras nights in terms of number.

NEW HAPPENINGS IN OCTOBER

SEISMIC ACTIVITY: Will begin to lessen into the winter. Odd tremors will still happen, but will be very minor compared to what has been felt previously. It seems like things are starting to calm down a little.

WILDLIFE: With the lack of Forest Talkers sabotaging hunting trips, Interlopers will have more luck in finding wild game. Wildlife has finally returned to normal frequency, or as normal as can be for the wintertime. Hopefully Interlopers will make good use of this time to try to replenish stocks from the summer's difficult times.

DREAMING: Interlopers will find themselves dreaming a great deal more than usual. With that, their dreams are far more vivid — as if they are reliving memories rather than dreaming. Dreams will often be sombre or frightening in nature, nightmares will be more common throughout October. Oddly enough, this is particularly prominent on Aurora nights.

NPCs

METHUSELAH: Methuselah will remain in Milton following the attack from the Forest Talkers to help to tend to wounds and help rebuild the town or assisting with the burials of Forest Talkers .

He will spend a great deal of time outside, though. He can be found stood or sat alone, staring at the skies at night, often during Aurora nights — frowning in deep thought. If approached, he will shake his head: There will be none coming this month. I do not sense their arrival, but I cannot say why that is so.

He also spend a great deal of time in the churchyard to tend to the graves of Interlopers lost in the last year, as he usually does. For Interlopers who have been here for some time, they are used to this. Methuselah tidies up graves, resetting previous trinkets he has left for them. He will be found sitting in a contemplative silence, or perhaps he may be gently speaking: sometimes they sound like some kind of prayers or some kind of funerary rites, other times it almost sounds like stories.

YOUNG BILL: Following September’s Event, Young Bill will temporarily stay in Milton for the month of October to help Interlopers rebuild. He will stay in one of the empty cabins on Mackenzie Street with Scout and Nova, and will be found working on making repairs to Interloper homes or will joining Interloper hunting parties.

He can be found, in his downtime, sitting on the porch of the cabin he occupies. He is sombre in demeanour, and his usual cagey attitude is gone. Intelopers can sit with him a while and talk with him. He will apologise, he never believed that the Forest Talkers were this far gone, and their revelations have shaken him. He will lament on what appears to be the end of the world and the stories he heard as a kid look to be real after all.

If anyone remarks how strange it is for him to be in the middle of town and not on the Outskirts, Young Bill will laugh and simply say: Well, I used to live here.

He will leave to return to his cabin at the end of October and his door is open to Interlopers looking for respite whenever they are in Lakeside.

ENOLA: On Aurora nights, Enola can be heard. Often there is simply the sound of soft breathing if one is paying very close attention. Other times, Enola is more easily heard. She can be heard crying out, or uttering whimpers and sounds of distress. It sounds like she’s experiencing nightmares, just as the Interlopers are.

FOREST TALKERS: Are no more. Their leader, Mallory, and almost the entirety of their number have been killed following the attack. The less than a dozen of young Forest Talkers who defected will assimilate into the ranks of the Interlopers. The Old Hunting Lodge will be emptied of supplies: food, tools, weaponry and medical supplies, and brought to the Community Hall to be shared out amongst Interlopers/added to the community stock.

The young Forest Talkers themselves will begin a new, uncertain life in Milton under the watch of the Interlopers. While they will get to work in their new community, they will struggle a little with integrating over their former enemy. Some habits will be a little harder to break — some of their beliefs are still strong. They won’t sabotage any attempts of hunting by Interlopers but will purposely go out to hunt small game themselves and still carry out their grisly displays albeit in more private and isolated rituals out in the woods: animal remains placed in particular manners, the snow dug away to the earth.

If questioned, they will simply answer: The world is still dead, even if we don’t want to fight you anymore. We just want everything to be reborn again, so next time it’ll be better. We have to give them a chance. I guess we just have to see what happens.

Tales From The Northern Territories #7

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