idolpro | Betrayal 3: avante en garde

[ You spill out of the elevator into the Honeymoon Suite—the elevator is gone when you look back.

A hot tub is the focal point of the room—a clear diamond shaped tub like the focal point of an engagement ring. The stilts that support it can pump in water or bubbles, and atop the tub, a heavy crystal lid hangs like a pendulum beneath the chandelier. It throws prisms all around the room, a pretty distraction from the fact that surely a bath-tub doesn’t need a lid. A couple’s bed has been made nearby, the linens and covers that surround it so fine that through the diaphanous layers any voyeur would still see the shapes bodies within might form. The silvery drawers and closet have translucent robes and nylon ropes available for guests to avail themselves to. Or, for the more practical, towels.

It brings you back to when you met them—the way your eyes met across a crowded room, and in the crush of music and noise and bodies, you still somehow found each other, as if drawn by magnets. The way you found your refuge there, and the way you just knew, instantaneously, without any words spoken—they would be the center of your world, and that you'd do anything for them—

It's in the script someone's written for you, in your hand. Now, you have your own history, your own words and you can give those to the audience instead. But enough pain, enough destabilization, and you don't know if you'll want to keep sharing. They've set the stage for someone else, given you a prop, and you feel that. Reality isn't wanted here—no, you need to be larger than life, in this place, to not be devoured by the narrative, reduced to an extra. The script whispers for you to lock that troublesome self away, and try on this new role for size, and you'll be a star.

...but there's no point in casting a top-tier idol like you if you can't put your own spin on it, of course. At the bottom of the script, there's a note someone's written with a smiley-face: "just ad-lib, you're gonna be great :)"

A pearl-handled folding knife with a swirled damascus steel blade sits on the bedside table.

A readout on your phone tells you the rules and displays the basic goal (explore the rooms of the casino) as well as the item that you've been given (Switchblade). Only once you leave your starting room does your phone update to display your role's traitor goal (kill a rival for someone's affections, creating a rivalry if you must). It looks like nothing is stopping you from committing the traitor goal even while you're sane, if you wish to.

There is an exit to the North. ]