• TheGreatestShowOnEarth

(SimonBooth)

The society investigate T P Burnham's TravellingCircus.

guest starring Richard Roxburgh as MrFlanagan

Personal accounts may be found in JacksJournal and EricsJournal

Tuesday, 22nd April 1924

• TheCharacters were sat, as usual, in the TeaRoom at 122 Mallory Way. DavidSchreiber, a new probationary member, introduced himself to Eric, Benito, Jack, Alsoud and HayesWebster. MrFlanagan arrived with the papers; TheUnityTimesChronicle carried the news that "the goat-man of the damned, cursed by beelzebub himself" had escaped. DavidSchreiber opined that freak shows were exploitative of the unfortunate people involved, and resolved to write a paper on the subject to continue his sociology studies. EricColigny had received discounted tickets to the Circus in question, so he could take David to see the freaks, and possibly interview them for his paper, and they invited the others to join him after work. They agreed to meet at the circus at 7 that evening.

  They met at 122 and Benito drove them to the TravellingCircus. They were shown into the Big Tent, as the show was about to start. They saw Dirk and Kriss Pearson's knife-throwing act; The Balancing Bavarians; Horatio Kramer, Lion Tamer; BladeHiltonall, A sword swallower; A troupe of clowns; and finally the black magics of Astoundo. EricColigny and JackProctor, along with most of the audience, felt suspiciously compelled to donate a small sum of money ($20 and $5 respectively for the PCs) after his act.

  T P Burnham announced that the Goat Man had been found, and invited the audience to attend his Museum of Nature's Mistakes. The queues were long, so TheCharacters visited sideshows for a while. They went into Astoundo's Magical Maze (a hall of mirrors) and only AlsoudHassam was able to lead them out.

  The queues let up slightly for the freakshow as sunset drew close, so TheCharacters joined the queue and were let in. The first freak looked very much like a white ape, but the second was quite literally a man with a fish's head - even EricColigny's sharp eyes couldn't see any join. The Rabbit-headed woman and the Goat-headed man were much the same. Eric waved at the goat-man, and it began to wave back, but the circus attendant hit the bars of its cage and it stopped. Benito asked if it could understand him; it began to shake its head, but thought better of it. Benito the "asked" the attendant if David could take pictures, and so he did.

  Outraged, the characters returned to 122, where David began composing his paper. Alsoud searched the library for references to animal-headed people, but turned up only the egyptian pantheon and the minotaur. Jack did something and Eric did something <<< No he didn't. Well he read the papers and drank tea, but that hardly counts -- MikePitt >>> . Benito may have done somthing too.

  As the night drew to a close and TheCharacters arranged lifts home, there was a loud knocking at the front door. Benito pulled open the peephole-thingy, only to see an animal's eye looking at him. They sent MrFlanagan away and opened the door. David was shocked to see a goat-headed man flop onto the floor; the others less so. David, Eric and Jack noticed that the goat-man was taller than the one at the circus. Eric calmed the creature down and asked the creature if it could write. It nodded, paper was fetched, and the creature announced itself as JosephCarey, a member of TheUnitySociety who left for New York about 10 years ago. The realisation that the freak was originally a normal person proved too much for Schreiber, and he had to spend a few minutes drinking hot, sadly unsweetened tea with MrFlanagan to calm down.

  Carey told the players that he and his wife had moved been attacked and kidnapped when they arrived in New York. Carey had awoken strapped to a machine, and the next thing he knew he was as the characters found him, goat-headed. Jack asked what happened to his wife; he was told she was the Rabbit-woman. They asked about the other freaks; he told them that the fish-man he had seen transformed, that he had heard the ape being called Tracy, but that it had been with the circus longer than he had, and that the goat-man they'd seen must be new. Jack went back to the papers and found that a young man had gone missing from ThePoorhouse earlier that day. They asked whether Carey knew how to operate the machine; he said he had seen Burnham use it often enough that he thought he might be able to undo what it had done to him and his wife.

  TheCharacters decided to go to the Circus, free the freaks, and persuade Burnham to transform them back. Benito found his suit of chainmail while checked the car boot for supplies - Carbide lamps, shotgun, ropes and salt - then obtained a pair of wire cutters and set off. DavidSchreiber asked why they carried such supplies in their cars, but didn't receive a satisfactory answer.

  EricColigny let the characters into the railway sidings alongside the circus, and they snuck round the back. They cut through the fence surrounding the circus and crept in. Carey led the PCs to Burnham's tent, then he and JackProctor went to the freaks' enclosure. Eric and Benito slashed through Burnham's tent from opposite sides, then jumped in and pointed guns at him.

  Burnham had been sitting at a folding table writing in a notebook. AlsoudHassam entered the tent and looked at the book - it seemed to be vaguely mathematical, but with four symbols - - in place of numbers. Burnham stayed calm but appreciated his position - in Benito's vice-like grip. He agreed to free the freaks and transform them to their original state, in exchange for which the players would keep the circus's secret and not go to the police or the papers. He didn't volunteer any useful information about Astoundo, but he offered to lead them to the machine.

  Meanwhile, JackProctor stood guard while Carey incapacitated the sleeping attendant and fred the freaks. Jack was suspicious of TracyTheApe - it seemed distinctly like an ape - but nonetheless ushered it and the other freaks back to Burnham's tent, from which Burnham was now leading the others. Burnham looked at the ape and gave as much of a wry smile as is possible while gagged. Burnham led the party to Astoundo's Maze. They followed him around a corner but when the ape saw it reflection it started hollering and rampaging off through the hall, detroying mirrors as it went. Benito handed Burnham to Jack, and restrained the ape while Eric put a sack over its head and hit it with the butt of his rifle. While the rifle was aimed elsewhere, Burnham slipped from Jack's grasp and ran off. Eric stayed with the freaks while Benito, Jack, Alsoud and David tried to find their way out of the maze; and while Alsoud returned to the start Benito was able to follow Burnham to the edge of the tent.

  Benito chased Burnham across the circus, where he disappeared into a tent with no entrance. Benito crawled under the edge of the tent to see Burnham attempting to use the TransmogrificationMachine - a mechanical arm attached to a collection of glass orbs, mounted on goats' legs - on himself. He grasped Burnham, who activated the device prematurely. Suddenly Benito was holding a mass of flailing tentacles, antennae, slime and miscellaneous organs. He stepped back and emptied both salty barrels of his shotgun into the creature. The others found their way into the tent just after the shot rang out, just as the circus folk were emerging. Carey placed the rabbit-woman at the machine and rifled through the notebooks stacked by it until he found the page he wanted. He activated the machine, and a stylus attached to the mechanical arm began to write on a wax tablet attached to one of the larger globes. Some of the writing looked somewhat different; this he scraped out and replaced with writing from the notebook. He pressed one of the orbs, and the rabbit-woman's features flowed, bubbled and ran until they rearranged themselves into a woman, who then ran over to the goat-man, thanking and kissing him. The procedure was repeated on the fish-man and the newer goat-man (though without the kissing), and then Carey found his own page, gave it to Alsoud, and then attached himself to the machine. Alsoud by this time had gathered enough about how the device worked to operate it and transform Carey back into a human. Carey thanked the characters, and promised to dedicate his life to tracking down other escaped freaks and restoring them to human form. When all the escapees that he knew of were found, he would destroy the machine. Alsoud made him swear to do so, and he did. He also agreed that the machine when not in use would be kept in a crate, locked by two padlocks. He would keep the key to one, and Alsoud would keep the key to the other.

  TracyTheApe was attached to the machine, but it showed no signs of transformation, so they left it as an ape. Needing a distraction, they turned the ape loose; and while the circus folk dealt with the ensuing confusion, Eric was able to lead the transformed freaks to safety. Benito left and after some "persuasion" he returned to the tent with his car. He and Jack loaded the machine into the car, and they, Alsoud, David and Carey drove it to 12 Devon Lane, where it was put in a crate and padlocked as discussed. They then returned to 122 to see how the rest of the freaks were doing.

Epilogue

• Over the course of the next few days, JosephCarey and his wife stayed at 122 until he went to check his savings at the NationalBank. 10 years of compound interest after selling up to move to New York had left him with a tidy sum, and he was able to buy a house in Devon Lane, close to the TransmogrificationMachine. The other ex-freaks were a poor boy, Oliver Dylan, and an ex-drunk, David Watkins; both were eager to return to society. EricColigny put in a good work for the Watkins at the NYNHH Railroad, and Benito was able to find the boy work in Legitimate Business.

  It would seem there was no love lost between the circus-folk and Burnham, as the circus re-opened on the Thursday under the management of the sword-swallower, Blade Hiltonall, who told the papers that Burnham had decided to retire. The circus stayed in Unity, without either the freak-show or Astoundo, until the Friday, and their train pulled out of Unity Hills sation on the Saturday. Astoundo's whereabouts rtemain unknown.

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