Egress: Act 1, Act 1, Scene 1
It’s Thursday morning, April 13, in a bougie North American suburb called Forest Lake. The sky is clear, the cars have left their driveways, and Pony Hateno has overslept. That never happens.
Pony rouses from dreams of a neverending passage. He stayed up late last night, past even his midnight red line for finishing homework, so he could install Egress on his phone at the moment the software unlocked at 12 AM. The servers were chugging, but he remembers clicking at last through TOSes and EULAs and loading screen gags (“Summoning Meteors” - ha!), being prompted to NAME THE PLAYER…right after that, he must have crashed.
He fumbles for his phone, not charging on his desk, but tangled in the bedsheets. The clock tells him that he’s late for school oh heck oh FUCK
Pony gurns. This is the worst of all possible worlds.
[[I spitballed with Hamhambone about Pony’s home life. I had an idea that he might have lost a parent, but it didn’t gel. We drew a card for an Elemental Motif (from the main Calypso table) for inspiration and got Fox — Cunning. She suggested that Pony has two dads, whom he calls Fox Dad and Wolf Dad. Fox Dad is a reformed trickster turned stay-at-home parent who’s trying to be the stable and firm authority his very boring teen seems to want, Wolf Dad is a salaryman and Earthbound-style voice on the phone who’s always at the office. The wolf provides and the fox guards the den so the pony can grow up into a proud stallion! That was the moment Pony became an actual character for me, not just a narrative instrument: I was immediately beaming and cheering for him! I became more excited and invested in playing him as a PC, but also squeamish about putting the character in danger and asking hard questions about stakes and consequences.
Pony starts with two Conditions at 1 each: Rueful Role Model and Adversarial Ally. These represent his relationships with Ruby and Axel respectively: she’s doing all the cool creative self confident stuff that he wants to do, while ze pushes him to competition to draw out his entrepreneurial spirit/is kind of a dick. Relationship Conditions are a special kind that can be drawn on for Light Dice or modifier bonuses. He also has one Trauma at 1: Overwhelmed. Pony has a lot boiling under the surface while he tries to keep his 4.0, no breaks, no escape, no way out that he can see. What is he even doing it for?]]
Axel or Ruby aren’t blowing up his Convoke with Egress takes, which is weird. If he knows his pals, they’ll be playing by now. Even Ruby would have logged in for first impressions before class. The Convoke bunny icon is vibrating, but his chats won’t load properly. All he gets are old snippets cached on device.
[[To find out what’s happening, I roll the Oracle move: “Has the game started already and taken down Convoke?” I get match dice, meaning the assumptions of my question are flawed somehow. Rather than discard the question, I opt to act on my flawed assumptions and take 1 Dark Die for Pony. I’ll track each PC’s Light and Dark Dice separately.]]
When he logged into the game at launch and let it run while he slept, who knows what trouble he unleashed? Rival Egress players could have already shut down Convoke somehow to gain an advantage!
Pony YOUTH ROLLs out of bed, still in pajamas, and opens the curtains to take a look around his room. It’s a normative upper-middle-class suburban subdivision home’s bedroom, decorated with revealing glimpses into his INTERESTS:
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a bookshelf mostly dedicated to BUSINESS ACCOUNTING, TEST PREP, and SHEET MUSIC
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his very own CELLO in its very own CELLO CASE, sparingly decorated with CUTE STICKERS
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his DESKTOP PC, store-bought and equipped with keyboard and neatly sorted MANILA FOLDERS
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a stylish and calculation-ready GLASS BEAD ABACUS, a well-meaning gift from Fox Dad
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a mint condition box containing WOODY WOODPECKER RACING for GAME BOY COLOR, an investment piece from Axel
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a promotional poster for CAREER BOY by DORIAN ELECTRA, a playful present from Ruby
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a large framed poster for BACCHANALIA, depicting the cast in a dramatic full costume tableau
Bacchanalia is the musical Pony likes, but it’s so much more than that. It’s art. The beauty of the violin mixed with the power of spoken word and the grace of modern dance, breathing new life into both hip hop and musical theatre to elegantly, ruthlessly skewer the political and media world of ancient Athens…or is it modern America? Bacchanalia asks: what if our democracy will be saved by satire? Or even – satyrs?
(Axel is sadly mistaken: there aren’t actually any textual gay or otherwise queer characters. But culturally, it feels like a representation win! And that’s not getting into satyrsonas,)
Oh. There’s also the mysterious FORMAL HELMET that Wolf Dad gave him for his birthday. He’s never been sure what to do with it, so it just looms on his shelf.
[[Pony hits the Key of the Mundane for describing his room decoration and interests, plus the details about his perfect attendance record. +1 Dark Die, taking him to 2.]]
The best thing to do is check whether the game even activated once he installed it. Maybe he’s worrying over nothing?
Pony opens the Egress app. It goes right into the title screen music.
oh gawd it’s already happening. Pony flop sweats.
Isn’t it augmented reality? Is there an ARG component? His anxious brow creases as he taps through, looking for the TOS he remembers accepting last night.
Pony follows the prompt, hoping to get to some kind of menu. His phone screen renders his room through the eye of the camera. He must have already granted device permissions.
[[Calypso suggests rolling only when your dramatic instincts say you should. This feels like the right time for a Strive roll. I declare the Goal I’m after, the Danger threatened, the Trait I’m rolling with, and any modifiers from Conditions or Light/Dark Dice. Getting creative with framing a Strive’s stakes opens it up to a wide variety of moves.
Goal: Capture something useful.
Danger: Cause problems.
Roll +Teenager, Pony’s just messing around.
7-9: the danger hits, and instead of achieving his goal, Pony takes 1 Light Die called Wacky Antics. silly slapstick stuff happens!]]
Pony fools around with the camera until a lock-on reticle appears on his bedroom doorknob. The game software has recognized it somehow as [KNOB]. He can’t tell what to press or click: “sure, capture,” he says, and -
doink!
The doorknob is gone. Clean off. The door is just a door now.
“wh”
“how”
Pony tries the door, but there’s nothing to try. It won’t turn or budge. There’s no way out of his room.
Oh no! Pony Hateno has been SKINAMARINKED. That never happens, either.
[[I decide the fiction calls to give him a Condition from his Cope Edge. I have a little table of all his problems: Binge, Obsess, Dream, Spill, Avoid, or Blank. This time he rolls Spill. Stammering, spouting, oversharing - but with Convoke down, who will he even spill to?
Conditions: Rueful Role Model •, Adversarial Ally •, Spill •
Trauma: Overwhelmed •
Light Dice: Wacky Antics, (Theme Music)
Dark Dice: 2
This feels like the time to end the scene and cut to someone else. We’ll leave Pony stuck in his room, and next time, meet Ruby. see ya then!]]
(messages made with Pesterlogger, Undertale/Deltarune text box generator, and Earthbound Text Labs.
all art and music by hamhambone.)