singillppl | October 2025 Test Drive Meme

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October 2025 Test Drive Meme

OCTOBER 2025 TDM

PROMPT ONE — ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST: A new group of arrivals find themselves lost in the frozen wilds and vulnerable to the dangers of nature. With luck, they make it to the town of Milton, and to a friendly face offering food, warmth and shelter — and the current inhabitants, their fellow survivors.

PROMPT TWO — POWER IN WORDS: Interlopers gather around the campfire and decide to tell stories: only to find their stories begin to come alive right before their very eyes.

PROMPT THREE — FRONTIER COMFORTS: Interlopers come across a surprise baker in Milton, offering up tasty treats — with unexpected effects.

ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST

WHEN: Mid-month.
WHERE: Milton, Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potential animal attacks, potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk.

'You are the Interloper. You are not part of nature’s design.'

It’s the last thing you hear. A dark, deep voice. Impossibly ancient. You feel afraid. Maybe you’re dreaming, maybe you’re wide awake. You saw the lights, and then your world went dark. But you hear it in the blackness, you won’t forget those words.

These are the words of the Darkwalker, you’ll soon come to find.

You awaken. You are not where you were before. It’s different for everyone, there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern in where you find yourself. You may open your eyes to find yourself in a cold, dim and dank cabin. The air is stale, dust hangs in the rays of weak sunlight that shine through the tiny windows. Someone lived here once, but they aren’t to be found. This place has been ransacked, abandoned long ago. It is quiet. The wood creaks around you.

Or perhaps you may awaken to find yourself shivering in the yawning maw of a cave, the freezing stone below you. Or maybe you’re unfortunate enough to sit up to find yourself lying in the snow, in the middle of the wilderness. Snow lies thick around you. It’s freezing out. You haven’t felt a cold like this before in your entire life. Cruel and biting. You have no idea where you are, and what’s worse — you are completely alone.

The sun is bright, enclosed in light fog. It is a strange kind of twilight.

You may feel different, too. Any powers or magics you may have feel... absent. Disconnected. Things that may not have affected you previously now do. Something in you has changed.

You know you can’t stay where you are. You’ll need to move, try to work out where you are and how you came to be here. So you walk, head out into the unknown, in hope of finding a trail or a road. You’ll find one soon enough. It’s here you may find someone else in the same boat as yourself, equally freezing and confused. You’ll both need to keep going. It won’t be easy. You hear howls of wolves around you, and the terrain is difficult: slips and falls are likely. You’re completely vulnerable out here in the open.

Or it’s possible you may come across someone else here. Someone who looks far better prepared to deal with the freezing cold and frozen landscape, out hunting or gathering. They’ll likely offer help and get you into town. However, for the unlucky ones who don’t come across anyone, you’ll carry on until you see it: the lazy trail of smoke rising in the air. Fire. Not just one, but several. Civilization...?

Follow it, and soon enough the way you’ve taken will certainly become a path or road. Unfolding before you in the mountainous forests, you’ll see the most welcome of sights: a small mining town tucked up in the valley. Battered, rusted road signs will direct to “MILTON, POP. 947”. You’re almost there, you keep going, and it looks like other people have had the same idea as you. In fact, you’ll hear the muffled sounds of life. People! In the town!

As you head into the outskirts and then further into town, you’ll find it’s a little easier to walk but the cold has gripped you hard. You’ll find the buildings, both shops and homes, some are dark and lifeless, some of them are boarded up, some of them are occupied. People are going about their business, or stood watching from their tiny porches of their small, timber homes. For a town this big, there doesn’t seem to be many people. Several dozen at most, but no more.

Towards the center of town, you’ll find the building from which the biggest of the smoke trail rises: a school-house of sorts, or some kind of community hall. Perhaps both. You’ll find more and more people all drawn to this place, each and every one of them in the same position as yourself (and your companion, if you’ve found one). Some are in worse states than others: some are bloodied, nursing bite wounds or cuts; others might have some other kind of injury sustained in the journey here from falls. Others may look as if they could faint from the cold at any second.

The door opens, and you’re greeted by the gnarled, wizened face of an elderly man, dressed in thick furs. He has a kind face. He smiles warmly, and with pity, ushering you in with haste.

“Ah. Once more, you poor souls come.” he nods gravely. No, this is not the first time that this has happened. “I am Methuselah. I welcome you, Newcomer, although I’m sorry for how you’ve come to find yourself here. You are not the only one, the lights are changing things. Come. Mother Nature has not been kind to you, but there are plenty here to help.”

The room is dim, lit only by natural daylight through the windows. A roaring fire sits at one end of the huge hall. It crackles, bright and cheerful... and warm. Even as big as this place is, the room is pleasantly warm. You’ll also find basic cots set up down one side of the hall, and while it seems there's a few people already living here, there's enough space for those in need of them. There's places to rest for a moment and get your bearings, or just trying to recover from the cold. Down the other side are tables and chairs, and long tables laden with food, drinks and bottled water similar to one might find at a soup kitchen. Once again, Methuselah offers a feast, aided by some of the other Interlopers.

There are canisters with hot herbal teas, mostly. But some coffee can be found. There’s also soup and stew and trays of charred deer and rabbit meats, plus some grilled fish. It’s very basic, but it’s hot and filling. A feast for those who have battled the cold to come here.

Methuselah will continue to busy himself, still; there is plenty to do. He will fetch blankets, tend to wounds, serve food and drinks — aided by a handful of others in the Hall. Your fellow survivors, but those who have been here for some time now. He does not have much time to talk. More and more people seem to be coming in from the cold. He will not stop to sit and rest until everyone is seen to, taking up a place by the fire to gaze silently into its flames.

He will encourage newcomers to get warm and eat, and when they are ready to — they can explore the town and find one of the many empty homes to call their own. He will not speak much, but gesture to your fellow survivors. They will have better answers than him.

POWER IN WORDS

WHEN: The month of October.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: reality warping; potential fourth-walling; horror monsters/creatures; potential character injury; potential character death.

They say there’s nothing more powerful than stories. Tales of caution told to little children to mind the great and terrible things out in the darkness of the world. Accounts of folk horrors or great adventures to thrill and entertain. Or perhaps stories of valour and hope to help inspire the hearts of the downtrodden and destitute. Words have been spoken over campfires for eons, passed down from lips to lips.

In the Northern Territories, there is plenty of time on one’s hands. The hours seem to crawl by, and there is very little in terms of entertainment to keep one’s mind busy after the chores and business needed to survive is done. Sometimes all there is left to do is to sit by the fire and talk. And with winter quickly approaching, huddling around a fire certainly isn’t a bad idea after all.

And certainly, Interlopers have found themselves compelled to gather around fires as of late. To spend time with their fellow Interlopers, to enjoy the sense of community and togetherness.

Considering the time of year, it’s October — a favourite time of year for some. Halloween draws close, and what better way to celebrate it in a world where nothing much can be celebrated by telling some of your favourite spooky stories for the evening? It feels like as good a time as any, after all.

So you gather around a fire with your fellow Interlopers and begin to tell one another stories. They might be retellings of your favourite horror movies, folktales from your country, stories that freaked you out as a kid. Stories of cryptids or the monsters under the bed. Maybe it might be some supernatural encounter you once experienced. Something to really spook your fellow Interlopers for fun.

… only it isn’t just for fun.

In a world where there are bigger powers at play, there is so much power in words spoken. As you tell your story, something… unexpected happens. Interlopers will find that the horror stories they tell around the fire will start to become a reality. The cryptid from your hometown may just start stalking you from the shadows. The werewolf from that favourite horror film of yours? You hear it howl in the distance. The ghosts you swear you saw once as a kid will appear before you.

You have brought these stories to life, accidentally.

How do you deal with such a thing? Well, how does it end in the story? Your creations only have as much power as the stories that hold them. Stake through the heart for a vampire, a ring of salt for ghosts, silver for werewolves. And you better deal with it quickly, less you become just another victim in the story.

Fortunately, if you’ve talked yourself into a bit of a jam, the monsters you’ve spoken into life will eventually disappear into nothing by the time the sun rises again. You only have to survive the night first.

FRONTIER COMFORTS

WHEN: The month of October.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: altered/magical food items; severely altered/warped behaviours; potential personality switches/animalistic behavioural characteristics; minor body horror; loss of senses; physical age changes; precognition/future visions.

In the month of October, Interlopers have been practically plagued by the delicious scents of homebaking that fill the air in and around Milton. Following their noses, however, has turned up nothing,and no one’s been able to find the source of those smells no matter how hard anyone’s tried to look. Interlopers aren’t exactly living on the most luxurious of diets, and often the most basic and simple of meals is what’s on the table for them in the general day to day. Whatever this is smells practically divine, and no one is immune to being enraptured by them.

One particular day, as you walk around Milton, the scent is particularly strong and this time you’re determined to find the source of the baking. Maybe whoever it is might be in a particularly charitable mood, or might be willing to trade for whatever it is you’re baking.

You see lights on in one of the cabins that had once otherwise been empty, or maybe you’d just never noticed someone lived there. But as you draw closer to the front door, the scents of home cooking are overpowering and you knock, hoping and praying for an answer.

The man who answers the doors isn’t someone you recognise. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about him: he is middle-aged and tall, with a thick beard. Behind him is a busy scene: a roaring fire and the ongoing process of baking. He chuckles at your staring and invites you in. Inside, you find the source of the smell: home-cooked pies of varying types; some more rustic than others, with golden pastry and rich-smelling fillings.

You’re not sure if the man is a fellow Interloper, or perhaps one of the folks from Silverpoint — a Milton native who’s returned home. Or maybe he’s neither. He doesn’t speak much, and only beckons you to pull up a chair at the large kitchen table and eat.

He offers a selection. The choice is yours, Interlopers. But trying out one of these pies might have you biting off more than you can chew.

STALKER’S PIE: A rich pie made with Bear and Wolf meat. Dangerous, mysterious filling. This pie gives the Interloper eating it an animalistic instinct. Your senses are sharp, keen. You hear, smell and see as an animal would. Your nails are sharp like claws, your teeth are now fangs to bear and snap. You see the world in black and white: predator and prey.

PREPPER’S PIE: A dense pie made from foraged vegetables. Rough around the edges. After eating this pie, you feel your mind is clear and untroubled. You feel prepared… in a way you didn’t think possible. For a time, you are able to see things in the immediate future around you. And with that, you are ready for anything.

DOCKWORKER’S PIE: A satisfying pie made from the day's catch. The taste of the sea. As you eat this pie, you feel a sensation of waves washing over you. A gentle rocking, as if you are a vessel on the ocean. With each gentle rock, you feel yourself shift. You’re still you, but another kind of you. Maybe if you’d made another choice, or maybe you hadn’t been chosen. In this world, this timeline, things had gone differently. And now so are you. Different. An alternative version of yourself, rippling through.

BREYERHOUSE PIE: A pie any meateater would love. Lunchbox-ready. Chowing down on this heavy, meat-filled pie reminds you that you too are just meat. And like the game butchered and broken down to make it, the same can be done to you. This pie will temporarily take away one of your five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste or hearing. You may find yourself feeling completely numb to touch; or unable to hear or see anything.

PEACH PIE: A pie filled with sweet, canned peaches. Reminds one of warmer seasons and brighter days. Eating this pie will change your physical age to a younger version of yourself. It will be of a time when things were simpler, happier. The world around you did not feel so empty and terrifying, and you now see it with eyes of wonder and an unbridled heart.

Afterwards, you’ll find you can’t find the man or his cabin again. Once you leave the area and try to return, you’ll find the cabin empty, with no trace of the man or his baking to be found.

FAQs

ARRIVAL: METHUSELAH'S FEAST

1. Arrival threads can be treated as game canon.

2. Items characters have brought from home can be found either strewn around them when they awaken, or in the community hall — as if someone left them out for them to collect. Methuselah will not know how they got there, and will be quite bemused by the happenings.

3. Reminder that all characters are now depowered upon arrival. They can choose not to notice it at first, or can immediately sense something is different about them.

4. If asked any personal questions, Methuselah will smile and say "Oh, you don't want to know about an old man like me. But I have lived all over in these parts for all my life." He will be more concerned with trying to help Newcomers, and is genuinely concerned for them and their well-being. Other Interlopers will say much of the same — there's little to know about him.

5. More information about Milton can be found here.

POWER IN WORDS

1. While any monsters are fine to bring in, we do ask that players are mindful of bringing in gigantic monsters (ie. Godzilla) that could potentially break the game's setting.

2. Players are welcome to go with monsters from their character's canons, or make up their own ghost stories or go with real-life examples of ghost stories.

FRONTIER COMFORTS

1. The effects of the pies will last between eight hours to a week, depending on how much was consumed. Nothing can be done to alleviate symptoms. You will feel incredibly hungover the day after the effects have subsided, like you've eaten something way too rich, but feel completely fine after that.

2. Dockworker's Pie can be any kind of AU, whether that's a canon AU (ie. Endverse in Supernatural) or a player-made up AU. Genderswaps would also be acceptable in this instance.

3. Peach Pie is flexible in how it can be played out. Characters can keep their normal mind/memories, or they can revert themselves to their literal child stage. Or even an in-between point where they find others around them (ie. CR/canonmates) familiar but can't really truly suss out their current situation.

TALES FROM THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES NEWSLETTER

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1. arrival

[It's difficult to know how long he'd been tromping through the woods, the low hazy sunlight making discernment of it impossible, along with persistent stray thoughts of where he is and how he'd come to be here. D'Artagnan can't recall time in between entering the garrison over cobbles under scattered dirt and straw in the bright, warm summer and awakening in the forest, with more snow than he's ever seen in his life. Unfathomable, he's attempted to push those thoughts aside, and continue on, a need to keep moving though his feet have more than half frozen in their thin leather boots, and he shivers almost violently as he steps through another close copse of trees, arms folded tightly under his ribs, the rapier at his hip scraping across the layer of hard ice on top of the snowdrifts as the end bounces between that and his calf. Sniffling loudly, he emerges with a bit of stumble onto what he thinks is a clearing, until he's brushed his greasy limp hair from his eyes and understands it to be a road of a sort, wider than he might expect. Pausing only a moment, he looks from one end to the other, any footsteps or hoofprints, carriage tracks, all would be buried under continual snow. He turns left, and continues on, pace steady at first, and slowing as the cold penetrates deeper. Shortly, in the distance, there is smoke, and that fuels a brief warming in his chest and the will to move quicker, and once he's taken a small incline, a odd sign proclaiming a place unfamiliar in the valley, and not far beyond it, a person. Thank God.]

You there!

[His attempt at a commanding presence is thwarted by both his appearance, a tall gangly young man in worn leather and half open flowing linen shirt, stiff with icy bits where sweat dampened places have frozen, and the gravelly ragged quality to his voice that makes it more a rough whisper than a shout, but perhaps it carries far enough in the desolate cold.]

What place is this?

2. methuselah's feast

[D'Artagnan shifts uncomfortably, occasional shivers still running through his thin frame, pulling a graciously provided blanket close over one shoulder. He's taken up residence at the end of one of the food tables, perched on the top near the edge with one foot braced on a backwards chair, next to a selection of water bottle he keeps glancing at with odd curiosity, upper lip lifted at one side in confusion, an eyebrow twitching at the crinkling noise they make when someone plucks on from the collection. He's yet to take one himself, but a bowl of half-eaten stew rests on his thigh, fingers curled loosely around it. He holds a spoon in his fist and gestures with it, pointing at the stew, when anyone enters his space long enough to speak with them.]

Have you had any of this?

[Low and quiet with a bit of a rasp to it, his tone verges the slightest bit toward incredulity, his expectations of freely provided food much, much lower.]

It's quite good.

3. frontier comforts, prepper's pie

[Simplistic foods with basic ingredients are all what D'Artagnan is used to, and the fare generally available in Milton hasn't given him any pause, except for the quality being a sight better than some he's found at home. He's content for the most part, if not an abundance, it's absolutely serviceable, yet the scents of something enticing continue to plague him for hours as he explores the town, and eventually, he's made his way inside this man's home and accepted hospitality without question. The lack of conversation makes it a rather boring meal, and he excuses himself, arguably rudely but he would claim otherwise, taking the remaining slice of pie with him, wrapped in a somewhat dusty cloth he'd pilfered from an empty cabin, choosing to eat outside despite the cold, for more of Milton beckons.

A man who runs on instinct and intuition, and not without an air of overconfidence, D'Artagnan takes little notice of his shifting towards something more approaching a prescience. Not until such instances of déjà vu are more clear and obvious in that he moves with ease to avoid pitfalls or cracking steps, a particularly slick patch of ice, what might've been an accidental literal run-in with another person, pausing at times for confused reflections on it when often he can be a very awkward person and prone to such bad luck or misfortunes. Hours in, his confidence and conviction has no bounds, and he may accost someone eagerly with a proposal to go hunting, certain he'll be able to track any game without error, smirk smugly as he issues a dry and monotonous warning for a small or humorous disaster nearly averted, or simply rush in to contend with a larger peril set to befall an unsuspected interloper.]

4. wildcard
whatever else, general milton things, campfire stories and cryptids, other pies from either side of the effects, etc. pm for questions or just throw me something.
canon point 1.08, basic permissions here.

Best eat as much as you can now, [ Hickey muses, as he sits down right next to D'Artagnan, close enough like they would be best friends instead of two men meeting for the first time. Personal space, what's that. Sounds fake. Hickey certainly doesn't believe in it.

He acts with an ease and a calmness that shows he's used to the community hall and used to these events in general. Other people might be thrown off by suddenly arriving in a frozen barren wasteland but nah. Not Hickey. He's been here long enough to adjust. ]

A warm meal's hard to come by here. After this, you'll most likely have to cook for yourself. And a large amount of people arrive here, not knowing how to make a fire.

[Unperturbed by the invasion of his claimed space, D'Artagnan turns a bit for an assessing glance over. The ease in which Hickey speaks of things places him as someone to readily converse with for information if nothing else, and he's presently quite bereft of it. An interrogation is not what he starts with, but a dry comment on the latter calibre of arrivals, a small knitting of his eyebrows marking his confusion of it as well, though he's far more judging in his words.]

I bet they don't last long.

[He trails his spoon through the stew idly a moment, before continuing, nodding over the food table.]

Is the game so scarce?

[And why were that true, he might wonder if only to himself, are they not distributing the meat more rationally, when surely it can be frozen.]

Not scarce, per se, [ Hickey muses, with a little shrug. ] It's mostly small game. Rabbits, birds, things of the like. But very few arrivals know how to bloody well hunt.

[ Which as far as Hickey's concerned, is absolutely him judging. Says a lot about the state of the world a few hundred years from now that people can't hunt. Ignore the fact that he wasn't so hot at hunting before arriving here, city boy that he is, this is something he can judge people for and judge he shall! ]

If you know how to trap or how to skin a carcass, you're one up compared to most people here.

[One eyebrow furrowed, the other raised, D'Artagnan seems genuinely surprised by that, peering out at the room with more focus and scrutinising people discerningly as he takes up another spoonful of stew, speaking again before he's entirely swallowed it.]

I know all of those things. I used to...

[Used to be, but no. His intended path had come to and end, and surely, he'd once again somehow become what he was, even if to be returning home was not returning home.]

I'm a farmer. We'd crops, sheep, chickens, horses. I've hunted rabbits since I was a child. Without such skills, I'd suggest these people to be aristocracy, but they don't look it.

[Not by far.]

d'artagnan | the musketeers

methuselah's feast

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arrival

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Methuselah's Feast

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arrival | i hope evening is ok because vampire lol

evening it is!

his skin thanks you

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