Mystery Box

No, I think we get the 'self awareness' thing. If we get too caught up in meta, it usually doesn't roll over well.

Alternatively:

How's your day going?

That's an Awful Self-Aware thing to say, for someone worried about us getting too Self-Aware, kid.

As for my day, well... I'm still on the clock. Mostly been trying to find a sneaky way to answer a Prayer or two, while keeping things Plausibly Deniable. That, and I've been watching Miss Bootz pitch a Drugged-Up Fuss at this Walter Paizel guy for the last hour or so. And lemme tell you, it's been pretty good.

The part where your Pawn put that cardboard box on, snuck around and hid in his apartment, and called herself "Imabox" or something was great. So was the part where he was trying to patch up her leg, while she was trying to convince him to help rob Some Homeless Guy once he was done. Just watching him struggle to keep her distracted and out of trouble for long enough that she'd finally fall asleep... honestly pretty funny.

So yeah, watching your Pawn get high on Green Slimerat Poison was the highlight of my evening. Pity you and the rest of her Higher-Order Thinking weren't really around to appreciate it.

if we don't get some kind of explanation for what a pawnographer is supposed to do and why, we are collectively very likely to keep pissing about to nobody's long-term benefit. So yeah, a lowdown would be good right about now.

Fair enough. Though, if you were anybody else, and this was a normal sort of Crawl, doing whatever you pleased in there wouldn't really be an issue. But as it happens, you and I do got our Duty. And that comes first.

Real surprised you don't already know this, though. Always figured that this sorta know-how got baked into a new Chorus. To be fair, can't say I ever asked. I'm not really supposed to socialize. I just create and Bind you to your Pawn, and support y'all once they're inside. Can't say I ever tried explaining The Crawl, or the nature of a Chorus to itself either, on account of it probably not having enough brains to get it. And that whole thing where keeping Self-Awareness to a minimum is important to the Mission. But if we're gonna bend the rules right now, might as well be thorough about it.

Let's start with a Proper Introduction.

I'm obviously a Horned Statue; an idol to the nameless Guardian Spirit of all Pawns here in Bigg City. Meanwhile, you're obviously Flannery "Over-Easy" Bootz III the Copycatburglar. Far as Bigg City is concerned you're a perfectly normal, if slightly more powerful and better-equipped than normal, Pawn.

But honestly, whichever "You" and "Me" we're talking about kinda depends on the Level of Abstraction we're dealing with. If that makes any sense.

Take one step outside all this, and you're also the Chorus that's guiding Flannery. My Assistant, and chief cat-herder in charge of wrangling our Bootz on the ground, eh? Meanwhile I'm your Supervisor, sorta... Elpis, the Daemon attached to the "Bigg City" Crawl. Didn't make the place of course... that honor belongs to a friend, who's unfortunately no longer with us. But I been here since the start, and now that everything's gone sour, I've inherited the Job of cleaning up.

And since we're a team, kid, you've inherited that Job too. Lucky us.

...Hey, you have a friend down here? Or know someone similar to ya?

Eh? Someone like me?

I mean, there's other Idols like this one around. They're how I reach people, and help 'em out here and there. But as far as I know, I'm the only Daemon working on Bigg City.

As for other Entities like us... well. There's the past Choruses I been assigned, but they're gone. You're the only one currently active in this Crawl. And once upon a time, I had a friend here, too... that gal I talked about, who was responsible for designing Bigg City. But she, uh... she went rogue. And kinda ruined a lotta people's lives in the process.

Naturally, she ain't around anymore. For good reason.

>on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is a bad pencil sketch of a house and 10 is the reality i am familiar with, how real is bigg city?

How real is... well dang, kid. So much for limiting your Self-Awareness. Lemme just say, if Lucity was here, they would not be happy this is something you're asking. Might even Decommission you on the spot.

Supposing we'll have to do our best, so as they don't hear about it, eh?

But... well... if you already worked out that this is a question worth asking, there's something you should know. Bigg City is... well, it's real enough. The folks here think and feel, toil and dream, get hungry and hurt, and all that. I can say, it's definitely a sort of Reality. But I guess I could also say, it ain't the only flavor of Reality? Maybe not what we'd classically think of as "The Realest" thing either, but it's... it's definitely Real Enough. And part of our job is to treat it like it's Really Real, or... well, let's say, that way lies trouble.

The very sorta trouble we're cleaning up after, in fact. And the reason why too much Self-Awareness ain't always good, for folks like us.

Anyways, it's actually Daemons like me, and Choruses like you that don't really exist, far as Bigg City is concerned... we ain't quite a part of it, and can only affect it if we're Bound to an Interface that acts as a go-between. For me that's Horned Statues like this. Through them, I can help folks out when they Pray and make me an offering, and crap like that. And as you might've guessed, your Interface is a Pawn. You can interact directly with Bigg City through Flannery, which gives you a lot more power in there than I have.

What is outside of the crawl? What makes the crawl different?

You're just gonna keep harping on this sorta stuff, aren't you?

Look, Miss Bootz and/or Company... this is really pushing the boundaries of what I Absolutely Can't Talk About. Stuff I don't know, even! I mean, there's certainly things I know that you probably aren't supposed to. I just...

Look. I lost a friend. A very dear friend, who'd been with me, near as long as I've been here. And it ain't the official story, far as Lucity and the rest are concerned, but I'm pretty sure it was just this sorta question that drove her off the deep end. Made her... made her do what she did.

You and I ain't that close, but I like you well enough. And I seen the Bad Ends this line of questioning leads happy, healthy folks to. I may be willing to bend the rules a bit, to get you ready to do what you gotta do, to fix what went wrong, and start to make things right... but I won't help somebody Stare Into That Abyss. Not again.

So, please just trust me. There's some stuff I just can't tell you. And stuff folks like you and I aren't meant to know. We just... gotta make our Peace with that.

What is Bigg City?

Alright. Alright, kid.

I can't tell you everything, but maybe I can satisfy that curiosity with a bit of Metaphor. And hopefully get us back on track to talking about what we're supposed to be doing here.

You see, Bigg City is The Crawl. Or, it's part of it. One of the Crawls.

It's like... let's say, hypothetically, that there was a library fulla books, written by a bunch of different authors. Bigg City is one of those Storybooks, which was written by an author under the pen name "Mystery Box".

Miss Box was one of the library's more popular writers. In part 'cause she was a good writer, but also since she always personalized her stories for One Specific Individual at a time. They'd come up to the library, and she'd figure out what sorta tale would mean the most to that person. Then, she'd start writing a personalized series of stories for them, as they read. Stories that made them the Main Character of their very own adventures. Stories that gave them what they most wanted or needed, so they could escape from their troubles, learn and grow, or whatever else a good Storybook can do for it's reader.

But one day, something changed about Miss Box. No one's quite sure what happened. Maybe she got bored of her Storytelling Formula, and decided to change it up. Maybe she didn't think about the Consequences, and thought it was just a harmless prank. Maybe this is who she always was, deep down... just waiting to be popular, before she lashed out. Or maybe she just... learned too much. Couldn't deal with it.

Uh, anyway, she uh... she still wrote Stories intended to make One Person happy, but started assigning Other People to read them as well. And the, uh... the stories weren't really designed to have more than one reader. The initial reader, who the story was personally created for, was still happy. They were still the Main Character, whom the setting and characters and events were made to support and fulfill, and all that.

Meanwhile, everyone else was stuck being... uh... being the Supporting Cast I guess? And a lot of the time, these stories had to do mean things to them, so they could be the Unfortunate Souls the Main Character got to help, to feel good and heroic on their adventure. Some were even just Background Characters the story barely cared about, who were only there to suffer, and establish the drama and troubles of the story's Setting. And remember. these weren't just unfortunate characters in a story. They were real people, too. They, uh... they felt what was happening in the story, like it was real.

So uh... basically, Miss Box's new works stuck all these Other Readers in stories that weren't being written with their happiness and fulfillment in mind. They were stuck in books that were only concerned with the fulfillment of that initial Main Character. Uh... by which I mean they were stuck reading this book, as long as the Main Character was still, uh... enjoying it? Until... uh...

Okay look, this Metaphor is starting to break down a bit.

Point is, the librarian of that library didn't want Miss Box's new books trapping all these Other Readers and/or Background Characters in stories not meant for them. Especially when they were just vehicles to make the Main Character happy, often at their own expense. So, Lucity had no choice but to... er, the librarian took the rogue author's Pen away forever, and kicked her out of the library. So at least new stories wouldn't be written.

But that still left a ton of Library Visitors stuck reading the bad books that had already been written. And the only way to, uh... to stop them from being trapped in Someone Else's Storybook was to... to take the Main Character that story was originally written for... out of their own story? For good?

confirming: our goal is insurgency?

I... suppose that's a good way of looking at it, yeah. Overthrowing the Tyrant at the center of their own little world. So everyone else can be free.

To sum things up real quick, and get to the point... Bigg City is a Real-ish Place full of people with feelings, but it's designed like a story. One that was tailored to make one special person it's Main Character, and make them happy. Only problem is, a bunch of Other Unfortunate People got stuck in it too. And Bigg City wasn't designed to care about them, except as tools to fulfill that Main Character, and help facilitate their story, at the other folk's expense.

So, in order to free all these other people from Bigg City, our first Job is to find out who that Main Character is. Investigate, follow leads, and find out who's at the top, or who this story's all about. Whoever it seems like Bigg City has been Custom-Built to make happy and fulfilled and crap.

And then? When you think you found out who that is? Well...

...then your Job is to Kill 'em.

Any, uh... any questions?
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