Act 3: Overview

In Act III, an expanded soundwalk and a new set of locations are again revealed. Once again, the scale has changed; what little is visible of the new scenes suggests enormous rooms with giant inhabitants. The players now have three (very large) rooms to explore, one at the 57th St. beach and one at the Jackson Park Driving Range, and one at the steps to the museum.

Plot: Each One in its Place

The following morning, both Wedge and the furniture have vanished, leaving the cult in a state of agitation. The only sign of hope is a couplet posted on the bulletin board outside Osaka Garden:
   at this point we must swim or Drown;
   meet the bloop on Its home Ground.
After some pondering, and maybe a few false starts, players take the hint and head to 57th Street Beach, where they discover a grotesque parody of the furniture they have grown so close to over the past few weeks: a shoe rack made of driftwood, holding a crude pair of flip-flops; an equally crude banister and handrail at the water's edge, suggesting a staircase descending into the Lake, and a front hall table, apparently pieced together from more driftwood and the remains of the furniture in Act I, all at several times a normal human scale.

The Bloop

Bloop is an ancient and all-powerful water spirit: the spirit of Lake Michigan. The base of this Great Lake was formed at least 417 million years ago, and it has been around in its current form for at least the last 6,000 years. It is by far the oldest spirit anywhere near Jackson Park, and its seniority gives it authority over all of the other spirits. Despite this, few nature spirits in the area have exchanged any form of communication with Bloop. If another nature spirit does something to offend Bloop, Bloop will respond with a simple show of force: a large wave, or an undertow. If it speaks with the spirits it is always terse. When the furniture spirits first move into Jackson Park, Bloop does nothing. It remains a mysterious force in the background, feared by the Cult, but never showing itself.

Live Event: The Sending Off

By now the players have noticed the strange capitalization on the couplet, which instructs them to DIG. Digging at the points where the eerie noises of the final soundwalk are loudest, players find a great deal of driftwood, carved with indecipherable inscriptions. Players also turn to the hall table; with some difficulty, and perhaps with some help from the trust exercises they learned in Act I, they manage to lift one of their teammates high enough to grab what's on top of the table: a fishing net. Trawling near the banister, players discover a message in a bottle specifying a date and time, late in the evening. At the appointed time, players arrive to find several cult members with canoes on the beach, who row everyone out to the final sound clue: the Bloop itself explaining the devastating disruption the furniture has caused to the spiritual makeup of Jackson Park. The Bloop insists that players make a choice: use the driftwood they've collected to build new bodies for either the furniture or the Bloop itself. Whichever spirits the players decide to build will settle back into the park as the effigies fall apart; the ones left unbuilt will die. If players fail to decide, the Bloop will continue to rampage through Jackson Park, upsetting the spirits there. Once the players have made their choice and , they hand what they've constructed to cult member, who carries it out to the center of the lake in a canoe, while the voices on the soundwalk gradually fall silent.