past the last streetlight · no pavement from here · mind the verge
The Outskirts
The street has lights on it and somebody sweeping it. This does not. Keep going past the last lamp, past the point where the kerb gives up and becomes a verge, and there are premises out here too — the mystical, the eldritch, and whatever else keeps its own hours. It is always dark in The Outskirts. That is not a mood we are setting. It is the hours.
What is out here
- You can only see as far as your headlights. Everything on this road is lit from one low, level direction and goes black an inch past the beam, which is why the signs below have a bright face and no back. It is also why this page tells you what is down each turning rather than showing you: out here, a sign is the honest thing and a picture would be a claim.
- A sign with no road behind it is still a sign. Some of what is named here is not built. Those ones are lit and say so, plainly, on their own board — because an area that quietly listed rooms you cannot get into would be the street lying about its own architecture, and a website pretending it has no unfinished edges is doing something every actual outskirts knows better than.
- Each premises is its own world and shares nothing with this road. The verge is cold and dead and painted by hand. What is down the turning is not, and the sign says what you are walking into so that walking in is a decision rather than a surprise.
- Nobody was sent out here. Our town is stimpunks.world, which accepts everybody, so it has no outside to push anybody to — this road is a direction and not a verdict. What is down these turnings is here because this is where it is: a fort stands in a field, a screen stands in water, and neither of them is in exile. Out is not the same as out of favour.
- Nothing out here moves on its own. The dial still works and each premises sets its own noise, but the road itself has no ambient layer at any setting. Headlights that swept would be a car going past, and there is no other car.
The turnings
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TURNING 01
Black Leather Lagoon
A drive-in screen standing in black water, showing to an audience of reeds. An appreciation of The Cramps, our Halloween playlist on the screen, and a rack of their records on posts out in the shallows. It is always Halloween at the Lagoon.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-22 · dark, lit from one screen, loud on request; nothing in it flickers at any setting
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TURNING 02
Sithen
A fairy fort standing in a field under a full moon — a ring of earth and whitethorn you can walk all the way round. The rules nobody will say out loud, a country that reroutes a motorway around a thorn bush, and a door this one does not open.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-22 · cold, silver, lit from overhead; nothing in it moves and the mound is not entered
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TURNING 03
Looming Rocks Amphitheatre
An open-air stage at the foot of two enormous rock faces, after dark. The floods point upwards and the lichen answers. Whole concerts on the rocks, a lighting desk that walks the bill without loading anything, and a great deal of stone that was here long before the stage was.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-22 · dark, vertical, lit from the ground up; nothing in the rig flashes at any setting
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TURNING 04
Dance, Punks
An old airstrip with a crowd dancing on it and not one sound reaching the verge. A silent disco: three channels in our Dance, Punks crate, a headset each, and the volume in your own hand. From the road it is a field of small coloured lights and nothing else.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-23 · dark, lit only by the headsets; nothing strobes and nothing moves on its own
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TURNING 05
The Small Hours
An all-night diner, and the last lit thing on the road: one long band of window, bright as a lamp, with its light lying out across the car park. Crip time, a clock over the counter with no hands, breakfast whenever it is for you, nobody asking why you are up, and a jukebox of Josephmooon’s two albums with a Stimpunk’s song about Autistic insomnia on it.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-23 · lit from inside one long box, seen from the dark; it does not close, and the tubes do not flicker
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TURNING 06
The Repeater
Up a track at the very end of the road, a radio mast on the ridge and a hut at its foot, black against the glow of everything else. The farthest place the road goes, and the easiest place on it to be reached: shared-signal space, a log that confirms every kind of contact and counts none, and a line you can leave open.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-23 · unlit, a silhouette against the skyglow; the lamps on the mast do not blink, and nothing on it sends anything anywhere
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TURNING 07
Nothing For Sale
A lay-by with a ring of cars pulled up nose-in and their headlights left on, and tables in the middle with everything on them free. Mutual aid rather than charity: take what you need, leave what you can, and nobody is counting either.
Stimpunks · opened 2026-09-23 · lit by everybody’s headlights at once, so everything casts a fan of shadows; nothing in the ring moves
On the unlit signs
A board out here can stand lit with no road behind it, and say so. That is a state this road has and keeps: the alternative is a road that only ever appears fully formed and never admits to having been planned. The campgrounds past the other end of the street settled this first — an area has a state where a plot is spoken for and empty, and a website is usually the only kind of place that pretends otherwise. An unlit board is never a link, never a disabled control, and never hidden. A board that is lit and says not built is information. A board that quietly did nothing when you pressed it would be a broken page.
Job marker — a reflector set into the verge
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: The far end of the street
Before the code: The Outskirts says you can only see a certain distance, and it is very specific about what is doing the lighting. What light is it?
Hint 1
It is in the first item of the list called What is out here.
Hint 2
It is not the moon and it is not a lamp. There are no lamps out there; that is the point of the place.
Last hint
You are in a car, and you have stopped.
Give me the answer
The answer is Headlights. Headlights — low, level, close, and coming from off the page, which is why every sign out there has a bright face and no back, and why the road goes black an inch past the beam. It is the one light no other world on this street uses, and it is the whole reason the area can say it is always dark without simply being unreadable: what the beam reaches, it reaches properly.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: CATSEYE
That is the one.
Headlights — low, level, close, and coming from off the page, which is why every sign out there has a bright face and no back, and why the road goes black an inch past the beam. It is the one light no other world on this street uses, and it is the whole reason the area can say it is always dark without simply being unreadable: what the beam reaches, it reaches properly.
Quest code: CATSEYE