Characters In Game: Embi Marie Payne Zeetha
All Characters: Abner Aedith Andre Augie Balthazar Circus Cook Embi Lars Marie Moonsock Moxana Olga Payne Pix Rivet Thundering Engine Woman Trish Wanda Yeti Zeetha
The following were notes made while this was in development. They do not necessarily represent the final state of the thing.
A "traveling Heterodyne show" (v4, p13); we get the impression that such shows are pretty common around here, enough so that the relatively sheltered Agatha is well-familiar with them.
The members of the Circus are mostly Sparks (v4, p85-88). Payne describes this on (v4, p91) -- being in a traveling show allows them to "hide in plain sight", with folks not realizing their true nature because of the illusory nature of the show.
As of this writing, it isn't clear whether the Circus per se is going to be in the game. On the one hand, it is replete with characters. On the other hand, most of those characters are individually a bit thin. So we'll see how we play it.
Agatha first encounters the Circus on (v4, p10).
There is a sketchy picture of the Circus as a whole on (v4, p11).
The Circus folk are (v4, p13-14) understandably nervous about Klaus and the Castle, but nonetheless willing to take Agatha in and shelter her. This says a lot about them.
The Circus lives hand-to-mouth, and they aren't always honest. They can forthright about this, as in (v4, p49), where Abner quite explicitly makes the point that grifting is an essential part of life for them. This may indicate a major plot idea: is the Circus trying to pull something here, and have gotten caught up in larger affairs? For instance, they could be claiming to have inside information about the Castle, or even that they are somehow from the Castle, and are trying to sell that, which is what drew Gil and company here. See the description of Olga on (v4, p56) for ideas about a couple of the kinds of scams that were typical. This plot is trickier to sell if we don't have a bunch of townies in-game, but still has a lot of potential. We see on (v4, p95) that it is normal for them to take the events that happen around them and write fantastic stories around them.
The members of the Circus are very secretive about their true nature. Payne and Marie make a real effort to keep Agatha in the dark for the entire three-month journey to Mechanicsburg (v4, p68).
On (v5, p57), we hear that the show has included "An excellent magician" (who? Payne?), "some song and dance", "a sword-mistress" (presumably Zeetha, "and a hilariously bad midget in a cat suit" (obviously but incorrectly Krosp -- we see on p59 that it's actually Embi).