Nature’s Contribution · south-east of the stile · where the last street runs out
A brick house where the town gives out onto the farms
New Partington Power’s House
New Partington Power’s: a brick house with a covered porch, a small makeshift maker space at the end of it, and the farm right over the back fence.
The porch is glazed in clear glass, and it is in its own roof’s shade, so everything near you keeps its earth colours: the brick, the painted boards, the chairs and the bench. Everything past the glass is the farm, in full sun and a long way off in the afternoon haze, so the sky, the fields, the barn and the sheep are soft and pale. Every pastel here is the farm, far off beyond the glass. There is no lamp on the porch, and the old television on the bench is off.
Whose this is
This is New Partington Power’s. A home of their own on Nature’s Contribution, built to be somewhat like their own place: an ordinary suburban house, brick, with a covered porch and somewhere to make things. It stands at the very edge of town, where the last street stops at a gate and the farm’s lane carries on, so it has a suburb on one side and the fields on the other.
The house and the porch
- Brick, all the way round, red and dark red in courses, with the front door painted the mint of the far field.
- A covered porch across the front, with a brick knee wall, pale posts and a rail, and the whole of it glazed in clear glass, so you can sit out in any weather the farm has and still see all of it.
- Two chairs on the porch, and a little table between them with a mug on it.
- Painted boards underfoot, grey-green, and the porch roof’s boards overhead.
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so — and on this porch, nothing moves even then.
The maker space
At the end of the porch, small and makeshift, the way a maker space at home usually starts: whatever was to hand, put to use.
- The bench is an old door laid across two sawhorses, its knob still sticking out of one end.
- A pegboard leaned against the end pane, with a wrench, a screwdriver, pliers, a tape measure and a reel of solder hung on it.
- An old television, the deep kind with a curved glass screen, switched off, and a VCR beside it, with a few tapes stacked at the other end of the bench.
- A soldering iron in its coiled stand, and a coffee can of screws.
- A stool, and an extension lead run across the boards from the outlet by the front door, which is the most makeshift thing on the porch and the most useful.
New Partington Power’s own “SJ” Station ID, a glossy station logo warped like an old tape, with a broken heart tucked between the letters, is pinned on the Pebble Board.
Over the back fence
The back fence is where the yard stops and All Together Now Farms starts: its fields come right up to it, with sheep in the nearest one and a row of corn, and its barn and silo stand up the lane. The farm’s lane goes on from the gate at the end of the street, past the house, to the café in the old dairy.
A home owes the land nothing. Every other place on Nature’s Contribution gives something to the others, and this one is somebody’s house, so it is in none of the rows of what goes where.
Whose words these are
The brief is New Partington Power’s, passed on by Helen Edgar on 2026-11-06: a suburban home with a brick exterior and a covered porch, with a small makeshift maker space, somewhat similar to their own place; pastel and earth tones for the colours; and for where it stands, right by a farm, perhaps the edge of suburban and rural. Some of its feel came from a look through their own photographs, none of which is copied here. The drawing and the words are ours, and the name is New Partington Power’s to change.
The name and the headings are set in Young Serif, by Bastien Sozeau, and every word that is read in Hanken Grotesk, by Alfredo Marco Pradil and Hanken Design Co., both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, read off their own records in Google Fonts’ repository.
Job marker — a screw dropped out of the coffee can on the bench, lying on the porch boards
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: What is the maker space’s bench made of?
Before the code: What is the bench in New Partington Power’s maker space made of?
Hint 1
It is in the list under The maker space.
Hint 2
It still has a knob on one end.
Last hint
You usually walk through one.
Give me the answer
The answer is An old door. An old door, laid across two sawhorses, with its knob still sticking out of one end: whatever was to hand, put to use.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: PORCH
That is the one.
An old door, laid across two sawhorses, with its knob still sticking out of one end: whatever was to hand, put to use.
Quest code: PORCH