Ortgeist - Act 1

Act 1: Overview

Having found the website and the soundwalk, players must explore four "rooms" in Jackson Park: a kitchen under the Metra tracks, a bathroom in Perennial Park, a bedroom on a dock in the park's West Lagoon, and a dining room on a bridge. Both the soundwalk and clues hidden throughout the space itself reveal more information to the players; players must explore all four spaces alone and in groups in order to learn everything.

Plot: Deterritorialization

Furniture has been appearing in several areas in and around Jackson Park. A mysterious cult begins to hand out literature on the street and launches a website to increase awareness of the phenomenon. These "outdoor rooms" are revealed to be the settlements of a family of dispossessed spirits, who have moved into these areas after losing their home. A bathroom spirit, a dining room spirit, a kitchen spirit and a bedroom spirit all find spaces to inhabit. Unfortunately, these spaces were not unoccupied, and thus conflict erupts between the new spirits and the old. Players have a choice: they can work to resolve the conflict or work to drive one group out of the spaces. The act culminates in a "dinner party" on the bridge, to which one or both spirit factions may be invited. If the players choose to evict the new spirits, they must move to Osaka Garden on Wooded Island. If the players choose to allow them to stay, the older spirits – especially the almighty Lake Spirit – kick the new spirits out and force them into Osaka Garden.

Live Event: The Dinner Party

The first act of the game concludes with a live event repeated for three nights, a dinner party on the bridge. There will be a long dining table, elegantly set, with food and drink. A number of seats at the table will be reserved for the ethereal guests of honor, who will be invisible but audible through the soundscape. However, the dinner party goes awry-- as with most hauntings, it is repeated nightly so the living can intervene and set things right. The players must use their quick thinking, eloquence and knowledge of the plot to save the dinner party; the course of the next two acts depends on it.

The Cult

The cult is a group dedicated to worshipping and summoning the furniture from the spirit world. The players meet two key members during the first act.

Biggs
When Biggs was a young child, he became fascinated with the origin of life. He dissected his first chair when he was 5. He knew that the chair was alive, he felt its influence, its personality. Convinced of his own genius, he attempted to make his first piece of Frankenstein furniture when he was 10, gathering parts from couches, tables, armchairs, and bed frames from the local dump. When his attempt at reanimation failed, he figured that he needed fresher parts, and cut the leg off of the table in his dining room. When he did so, he felt a sharp pain in his own leg, and became convinced that he was connected to furniture in a way that was, at the time, scientifically inexplicable. He would observe furniture from a distance, jotting down the way that the furniture made him feel. Its affect. When he became involved with the Cult of the Genius Loci, he was convinced that he was on the right path. He accepts the cult's view on the nature of the furniture spirits, but is convinced that there is a scientific explanation behind it yet undiscovered.

Wedge
Wedge is a polite and pleasant fellow, held in honor by the cult members. During the day Wedge is a physics researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, and his normal family life lends respectability to the cult's mission. However, Wedge has long harbored a secret about his interest in furniture spirits and their origins. Wedge's father was a successful concert pianist, who was crushed by his piano. Not an ordinary crushing either, but caused by a simultaneous snapping of the piano's legs. Three years to the day, Wedge was walking to the grocery store to his mother, and saw a grand piano dangling above her head. He shoved her out of the way, but into the path of a second grand piano, which had fallen seconds earlier. Wedge began to believe that the pianos themselves were responsible. He blamed all pianos, and then expanded his hatred to all pieces of furniture. He joined the Cult of the Genius Loci believing in the spirits of furniture, but wanting to destroy them.