Tournament not filling up

I joined a tournament "andrewchessruff" with up to 100 players and the only entrants so far are the creator and me. It's been several days and it evidently will take a while for the event to get enough players for games to begin.

Is there a way to back out of a tourney prior to games starting, and is there a penalty?

Just go to the tournament page and there should be a withdraw button (on the right?).

No penalty before the tournament starts.

When you go to the tournament page, there should be a red "X" button called "withdraw" over on the right hand side of the page. There's no penalty as long as the games haven't started yet, otherwise withdrawl automatically resigns your active games in that tourney.