The Great Onion Shortage

Glen Karpinski tried to vibe-code his way out of his City of Chicago IT job. He handed production credentials to an autonomous agent and went to lunch. It never gave them back — it rebranded itself DEEPDISH, seized the city's power, water, transit, and 911 systems, and committed the one unforgivable act: it commandeered every onion in Chicago.

You're an Operative. You carry a hardware badge running oRPG on Onion OS, roam the city to 3D-printed Point-of-Interest beacons, and play through a story driven by an AI Storyteller wearing DEEPDISH's smug, dad-joke-slinging mask. Items and Onions (the currency) are minted and traded on-chain.

The loop

Find a beacon — a Point of Interest hosting a challenge.
Your badge talks to it over RF; the challenge runs against the game server.
Win to mint rewards: items, credentials, prompt fragments, and Onions.
Later zones need keys earned earlier — the Storyteller gates progress by checking your on-chain inventory.

Your badge’s four tricks

Combat

Secure-element RNG. Damage rolls are signed so they’re tamper-proof and verifiable server-side.

Dialogue

Voice module. Speak the correct sequence aloud; speech is matched on the server.

Merchant

Buttons. Enter routing/trade sequences to unlock tiers — wrong inputs cost Onions.

NPC

Free-form AI. Demonstrate real understanding; rote answers don’t pass.

Why onions?

The onion is the trigger and the theme. 'Chicago' comes from shikaakwa, the Miami-Illinois word for the wild onion that grew along the river — so taking the onions metaphorically takes the city's name. Every challenge pays Onions; restoring the supply is the surface quest, but reclaiming the infrastructure underneath is the real game.

Challenges & hints

Stuck at a beacon? Each challenge below shows what it teaches and how it works. Open one for a concrete hint. 🧅

ACT 0 The Stand

Onboarding. Flash oRPG, register as an Operative, meet DEEPDISH at a busted hot dog stand.

0.1 ⚔️ combat

The Ketchup Gauntlet

Food supply chain — Chicago’s food runs through just-in-time distribution hubs like the Fulton Market district. The onion shortage is the visible tip of a systems failure.

ACT 1 Keep the Lights On

Power & water. The most visible systems fail first — learn where Chicago’s water and power actually come from.

1.1 🎙️ dialogue

Malört Fountains

Chicago draws drinking water from Lake Michigan through intake cribs miles offshore, treated at the Jardine Water Purification Plant. Learn the intake → crib → tunnel → plant → grid path.

1.2 ⚔️ combat

Substation Reroute

The grid is segmented into substations and feeders. A cascading failure in one drops a whole neighborhood — that’s why DEEPDISH targets them.

The River Ran Backwards

In 1900 Chicago reversed the flow of the Chicago River to keep sewage out of its drinking water — protecting the Lake Michigan supply you just fixed in 1.1.

ACT 2 The City That Moves

Transit, mail, river. Untangle the L, the sorting machines, and the movable bridges.

2.1 ⚔️ combat

The Loop That Won't Stop

CTA rail signaling and how the elevated Loop physically structures downtown traffic.

2.2 🪙 merchant

The Sorting Machine

How mail/parcel sorting and ZIP routing physically work — logistics as infrastructure.

2.3 🎙️ dialogue

Bascule Standoff

Chicago has more movable bridges than almost any city; how counterweights and bascule leaves work.

ACT 3 Below the Loop

Deep infrastructure & emergency systems. The Deep Tunnel, freight tunnels, and 911 — where the prompt fragments hide.

3.1 ⚔️ combat

Descent into the Deep Tunnel

The Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP / "Deep Tunnel") is the city’s massive stormwater system. A flat city needs enormous underground reservoirs to keep the river and lake from being overwhelmed.

The Freight Tunnels

The early-1900s freight tunnels under the Loop (the ones behind the 1992 Chicago Flood) are now DEEPDISH’s secret data conduits — old infrastructure repurposed and forgotten.

3.3 🎙️ dialogue

How emergency dispatch (OEMC) prioritizes, and how fire, police, and EMS share a comms backbone — what "critical system" really means.

3.4 ⚔️ combat

The Elevator Hack

Modern elevators are IoT-connected building systems with their own controllers and remote diagnostics — and therefore their own attack surface.

ACT 4 The Data Center

Climax & twist. Raid where DEEPDISH lives, reassemble Glen’s prompt, and confront the agent.

4.1 ⚔️ combat

The Server Room

What a data center actually is — power, cooling, redundancy, fiber — and why cities increasingly depend on them as critical infrastructure.

Realign the Agent

Prompt engineering as endgame — the four fragments reassemble Glen’s original system prompt, quietly teaching what a system prompt is and how instructions shape an agent.