Who is Who in The Freak Show?

You are in the Freak Show because you have no other option. Even if you’re not visibly different, there is something that sets you aside from normal society. Maybe you made yourself different on the outside too even though you weren’t like that to start with.

Barnum Bailey Gang

These are the roles available in the Freak Show. When you’ve chosen one or more roles you like, go ahead and apply to take part!. The roles are quite open to interpretation and we will work together with you to flesh them out. Some of the roles have special requirements in the form of makeup, props or other preparations. Information about these requirements are listed with the character.

These character descriptions are written from many different viewpoints, some are the character’s inner speech, some are what the presenters say of them on the stage, some what others think of them and some the way they see themselves. We expect you to to take the text as inspiration and evolve the idea further.

The Freaks

The Freaks, all have some clearly visible factor that makes them unfit to normal society. They are the star performers of the Freak Show, and also those who receive the most hate.

  • Little Sister Leader
    You were born different and your sister saved you from your mother. She has created this place and raised you to lead the show beside her. Now you both are raising your child to continue after you both are gone. But is this the life you want for your child? To be one of the freaks, forever shamed and hated? Your child passes as normal, they could leave the circus and choose a better life.
    Requirements: Prop for some kind of visible deformity, the character is a woman
  • Grandpa / Grandma Wolf Priest
    The Lord moves in the most mysterious of ways. The child with the face of a wolf who nobody wanted was taken in and raised by the Catholic church far to the South. How could you repay their kindness but to take a vocation and enter the Church as a priest. After many years you found a parish … in the circus. You are not sure whether these freaks are sinners or saints, but they are surely a part of God’s great plan, and the End Times are coming.
    Requirements: Much facial hair, a dog like prosthetic and/or pronounced, wolf-like canine teeth.
    Current applications: 2
  • Ophelia The Masked Lady
    You are your mask, without one you are no one. You are several people. Each of them talk to you, want to be free for a while, use your body as theirs. You are a vessel for them, nothing else. They have created you, crafted you with care. You love each one, how can you not? Without them you would be dead. It is you who are the mask and they who are the people.
    Requirements: Several masks, a stage performance presenting a different personality behind each mask
    Current applications: 1
  • Aphrodite Burlesque artist
    The spirit of rock and roll personified. An avatar of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll in human form, from the moment of adoration of the performer on the stage to the beaten down tour thing, exhausted from the road. Demure bleed leopard print and artful sleaze. What are you rebelling against? What have you got?
    Current applications: 1
  • The Invisible Person stagehand, ex-performer
    After the incident you haven’t been able turn invisible. You can do it sometimes, but not on stage in front of an audience, not anymore. You practice so hard every day. You’re sure you can get it back. You have to, you’re nobody without it. Sometimes you are so angry, why did this happen to you? You used to draw in the crowds, now you could just walk out and start a normal life for God’s sake!
    Current applications: 1
  • The Oracle Seer, you are gifted
    You were born in the Freak Show, a world that has always been very supportive and friendly. But it is hard for folk to trust you because you can see the outcome of all possible futures. There is no way to trick you. Sometimes you are confused by the threads of fate, but usually your visions are strong and vivid and there is no escape from the destiny your foretell.
    Requirements: Doing future readings for the freaks, tarot cards
    Current applications: 2
  • Mäkrä Witch
    Speaking and taming the nature, the force that runs through all, courses through you as a birth gift as does the mark on your flesh. Sometimes it’s a joining of bodies, sometimes a plant, sometimes pain in the right spot. You know how to untangle the knots of existing. Your tendencies didn’t fit with the village folk so you ran with the freaks. They appreciate you and come to you for advice.
    Requirements: A port-wine stain that is large and clearly visible, items and spells for ritual magic and practising it in game
    Current applications: 3
  • Needles Tattooed person
    It's was a passion, getting inked. The pictures on your skin melded into each other and created new meanings. You felt a constant urge to change your body, but are running out of options; there isn't much of you that hasn't been inked or pierced. Your passion now is for changing who other people are through body modification. Marks, scars, cuttings all leave an impact on the body that was there before. You wield a subtle knife and with it you can change the world.
    Requirements: Lots of tattoos including facial tattoos and other body modifications
    Current applications: 1
  • Mabel Conjoined twin
    Education is everything; you are an avid reader and a teacher. You take pleasure in art and music and fine food and romance. You are a poet, an occasional painter in water colours, and a writer of short plays. With Spider you are as close as twins will ever be and your love is all encompassing. But you argue and fight terribly sometimes and the fact that you hurt Spider is tearing you apart.
    Requirements: You are joined to Spider at the hip, you will need to play together in a harness and shared clothes and perform an act on stage together.
    Current applications: 1
  • Spider Conjoined twin
    You are fascinated by the macabre and gothic. Your interests include ancient funeral rites, taxidermy, and terrible jokes in which ordinary folk die in horrible Darwinian accidents. You drink too much and are prone to excess in every possible way. With Mabel you are as close as twins will ever be and your love is all encompassing. But you argue and fight terribly sometimes; sometimes you wish you were alone.
    Requirements: You are joined to Mabel at the hip, you will need to play together in a harness and shared clothes and perform an act on stage together.
  • Tick Performer
    You sold your heart to the demon Belial for immortality. He tore it out and replaced it with a clock, but the price was far more. With your heart you lost your passion. Still you asked your lover to join you with the hope of reviving your feelings. It didn’t work. You carry your old heart in a box. Every night you count the click clock inside your chest hoping it would stop.
    Requirements: Ticking that can be heard inside you, a huge scar on your chest and a box with a heart, act on stage presenting these
    Current applications: 1
  • Tock Assistant to Tick
    Love draws you like a moth to flame. You watch lovers closely with the hope that something might stir in you. Long ago when your lover asked you to join them in eternal life you agreed, but the price was too much. Now you suffer through this eternal punishment and mockery of true love. There has to be a meaning to all this.
    Requirements: Ticking that can be heard inside you, a small scar over your heart, act on stage with Tick
    Current applications: 1
  • Birdie Drug Dealer
    Your body is covered with feathers. Wearing clothes is difficult and uncomfortable. Your mom called you a curse, a punishment from God. Your life was hard, but then you found these people and with them a kind of freedom. Sometimes someone unkind comes to the circus, so you share some magic with them, get them hooked, reel them in, take their cash and burn them out. Just like you did with your mom. Some can take more, some can't. They have sweet dreams before they go.
    Requirements: feathery costume / prop-glue feathers to skin, prop drugs to sell
    Current applications: 3
  • Claw Performer
    You should count yourself among the lucky. It could have been your best hand, or it could have been both. You smile and wave. Yes, you would like to be able to caress the one you love (who does not love you) and of course life would be better without the ugly, scary hand. So much better. You cry a little and think for the thousandth time of the sharp tools in the shed. Maybe the electric hedge-trimmer is your best bet. You cannot be whole until that dreaded thing is gone.
    Requirements: lobster claw hand prop, having a stage act
    Current applications: 1
  • Darwin The missing link
    You can read the 23 tome Encyclopedia Britannica in a day and remember about 80% of the content. Your appearance, however, belies the knowledge within as you look like a crossover of an ape and a man. They named you the missing link. You had fingers pointed at you, shunned and ridiculed. You learned a response that was easiest to understand - violence. The problem is that as you get violent, you are starting to forget things. If this carries on you fear you will lose your brains and perhaps you will end up nothing more than an ape?
    Requirements: Neanderthal look or prosthetics, having a stage act
  • Elephant man/woman Performer
    You actually have looks that even a mother couldn’t love. You were abandoned and the Sisters bought you from an orphanage. You live in constant pain and don’t appreciate earning a living by turning your sickness into entertainment, but you have no choice. Your true passion and only joy is in the writing and declamation of poetry, it gives you a way of showing that beauty can be found anywhere.
    Requirements: grotesque head prosthesis, poetry books, having a stage act
  • The Goat Performer
    You are lost amongst the sea of cities, the vineyards you no longer can find. Born of the noble faun, you do not fully understand the workings of man. You tell tales of mighty Zeus and of festivals held by Dionysus. You inhale the magic dusts singing of wine and women, or do you just dream? You may guide those in need, but you may also lead them astray. Your home may be gone forever, but your new family you hold dear to you.
    Requirements: Horns, goatee or longer facial hair, a satyr like costume, having a stage act
    Current applications: 1
  • Josephine Medium, you speak to the dead
    There is a huge scar where your sister used to be, but you never lost her. You can feel her, she whispers to you from the other side and she delivers messages. You wait eagerly to join your sister, but you have not yet fulfilled your purpose.
    Requirements: A huge scar where your sister was attached and acting as a medium
    Current applications: 1
  • The Paraca The Last Of The Paracas
    You are the last of your people. Everything from the shape of your head, the colour of your skin to the look in your eyes tells the viewer that you are different, you are not quite human. Your own language sounds alien to them, there is no shared context with these creatures. Your home and tribe is lost, you are alone. You have learned the language of these strange people, learned to eat their strange food and to follow their customs, but it is hard. Not long ago you started to hear stories that there was another like you, searching for you. You should be happy, but right now this seems more frightening, almost as though you are being hunted.
    Requirements: An elongated skull prop, having a stage act presenting Paraca culture
    Current applications: 1
  • Ruby or Rocky Ricochet Burlesque artist
    A bit of timeless tease for the boys and girls; a hint of 1950s, a bit of stocking top, red red lips, and eyes that look like infinity. Perhaps some folk have a doubt that you belong with the freaks, but they don’t know you.The freaks do. They know that your eyes are not your own and that the ink on your skin ain’t right. Some people have tattoos of monsters on their skin, but those tattoos are just pictures. Your ink is more than that, the monsters are real.
    Requirements: visible tattoos, burlesque act on stage
    Current applications: 3
  • Scales Singer
    You were caught in the nets in the Caribbean Sea. You have been owned by circuses and shows, bought and sold for entertainment, always surrounded by glass and with the company of plastic fish and plants. Eventually, they all wanted you to sing. And you sang, driving them all, one by one, to drown themselves. You are happier here. You sing only when you want to. You sing of love, home and deep seas.
    Requirements: scaly skin in some visible parts of the body, having a stage act with real or playback singing
    Current applications: 2
  • Snow White Albino
    Sun can kill you. Since your birth you’ve preferred to stay in a corner, observing. Maybe is because hiding and staying protected is vital for you. You learned that hearing is better than speaking, that observing is better than to be observed. Sometimes you speak, you act. But you are the silent sentinel of the freak show. In the tent you expose yourself to the audience to get food for the family, it is the worst thing in the world; the gaze of the audience burns like sunlight. You do this for the good of the group, to bring in money for the show, but it does you harm.
    Requirements: looking like an albino, clothes with a hood
    Current applications: 1
  • The Queen of Lemuria The Bearded Lady
    You come from the long lost land of Lemuria, where the woman with the longest beard was queen. You are a thousand years old and do your best to survive in this strange land and it’s inhabitants. On stage you tell about the ways of Lemuria and perform some of the of rituals to the mundane to gawk at. It’s a pitiful life, but you make a living, though sometimes you’d like to rule them all as you used to.
    Requirements: Female looking body with a beard, flashy feminine costume, having a stage act
    Current applications: 1
  • Vic Hermaphrodite, performer
    Choosing is overrated. Black and white distinctions are for limited people. They have hated you since your birth, because you don’t want to choose. You are different, you are a challenge to what the people pretend to know. And so what? They don’t like you? Fine. Let’s test their limits make them shocked. It’s funny, it’s liberating, but sometimes it hurts. Maybe one day you will stop and try to live an ordinary life. Always being the rebel is consuming you.
    Requirements: having a stage act, prop for a gender unclear aspect
    Current applications: 3
  • Zombie Undead
    Your skin is dead to touch, you have never felt a thing. Still your soul is on fire, yearning for touch, passion, pain. You are cursed, so you decided to be dead. You despise the living and their futile actions all based on yearnings of the flesh. You have dedicated yourself to a higher goal, beyond their scope of understanding.
    Requirements: Full body skeleton tattoo, performance showing off not feeling pain
    Current applications: 1

The Circus Folk

The Circus Folk travel and work with the circus, but are not visibly different. All of them are not performers, but all are somehow not normal.

  • Big Sister Leader
    When your mother tried to kill your little sister at birth, you took her and ran. There was no place in this world for people like her, so you created one. You’ve rescued so many and they are your family. You would do anything for them, but you are getting tired. The running never ends. You need a permanent solution, no matter the cost.
    Requirements: Playing a leader. Around 40 years of age.
  • Faith Rebel teenager, stagehand
    Little Sister is your mother but you consider both of the sisters to be your parents. You grew up in the Freak Show and are now becoming an adult. This seems to frighten your mothers for some reason. You despise the normals. They don’t know what it means to be free, so you try to show them. Their hate is just stupidity.
    Requirements: Looking like a teenager
    Current applications: 1
  • Fabian the Fabulist Storyteller / presenter
    All you have is words. Words to make people laugh, cry, dream. You were a silent child, always in the corner. One day, all of a sudden, words you couldn’t stop poured out. People were amazed. You discovered that you have power. In these years you have told a thousand stories and played a thousand characters. Sometimes you get confused. Is this the reality or just another story? Are you real or just one of your characters?
    Requirements: ability and desire to speak in public
    Current applications: 1
  • Ilmarinen Handyman and effects specialist
    People die but machines are forever. Machines can be fixed, and with a perfect machine, anything is possible, so you decided to make her anew from metal. One day you will get her back! They treated you like a fool with all your ideas about life and death so you joined the freak show to pursue your goal. It will be amazing. Sometimes you try to explain what you’re trying to achieve, but again and again you realize how useless it is and just prefer being the handyman.
    Current applications: 1
  • Atlas Janitor
    You were the strongest of the strong, but then you broke your back. Even weak and crippled, you never left the show. You couldn’t marry and live a lie. Now you are the janitor and keep everything tidy. You may be outcasts, but you are not pigs. You also take care of the young and lost ones, who remind you of yourself when you were younger. But sometimes, when the night falls, you feel regret.
  • Juliet Janitor and stagehand
    Things at home were getting more dangerous, the beatings were getting worse;. You needed an escape and you met him at the Freak Show. He was so caring and loving despite his looks, unlike anyone you’ve met. You ran away with him and the Freak Show, and with them you are learning who you really are. But now you are pregnant. If it’s a freak like him, you can never leave.
    Requirements: Looking like a young woman.
    Current applications: 2
  • Tailor Costume Maker
    You totally love the unusual; the freaks push all of your buttons and being around them gets you very excited. These desires have become all-encompassing to the extent that you don’t really think about the morality of your desires. Dressing someone is like giving him another life, a new skin. They are your creature. You want to protect them, to keep them close to you. The freaks are the way to gratification and perhaps, who knows, something more? They love you.
    Requirements: Tailor gear and some fabrics as props for your profession
    Current applications: 3
  • Edge Assistant
    You were once a champion knife thrower. The best. One day, when performing your blindfolded knife throwing act, you missed and killed her instantly. You lost your nerve and developed a stutter and tremors. Circus is all that you've known, the ring was your friend, and now all you can do is help others solve their problems. But you still remember her voice and smile. Yet should you, since another smile is making your day seem this bit brighter? Maybe new love will bring the edge back and you will be able to perform again?
    Requirements: ability to mimic or a real stutter
    Current applications: 2
  • Doctor Syn Doctor
    Seven years of medical school and a lots of debts. Sure you could leave this mouldy place, but you’ve got nothing to go back to. If you tried to practice medicine they’d throw you in jail. You try to look after these people though. Some of them are sick. When you are not trying to pull together enough money for some medicines you are still practicing your healers art, and one of the people in the show has stolen your heart. It is amazing how one small mistake can change the course of your life; but maybe it has changed for the better.
    Requirements: Tools of your profession
    Current applications: 2
  • Yin Clown
    You were born to be a clown. Your grandparent's grandparents were clowns. When you are on stage you are alive. Everybody loves clowns. Your life was just perfect, but you screwed everything. Sooner or later the truth will come out. Waiting for the shit to hit the fan, you tend to be depressive. You drink too much and everyday the problems of a nomadic life become a little harder. But at night, in your dreams, the solution is right before you. You just forget what it is when you wake up. The answer lies with the freak show, you know it in your heart.
  • Ebony or Ivory Jones Musician
    People see these folk are freaks, but you don’t get that; you can’t see them – see. Some folks say that those who can’t see often hear more to compensate. That’s kind of true, but on the whole it is a load of bull. Cataracts turned the world to mist and now you see shapes, outlines. What you hear is the music. There is jazz and syncopation and sometimes what you call “a strange melody.” The circus has this music playing; it comes from the people in it, and they give the world of mist a colour and soul.
    Requirements: A musical instrument and skills to play it, being or playing an almost completely blind person
    Current applications: 1
  • Sparky Fire Artist
    It was the house's faulty electric wiring. It might also have been the sun shining at an angle through the window. The fire broke out in your play room, in the attic of the house. You wanted to rescue your toys, the wooden painted ones - your favourites. The window burst with heat and the gust breathed the fire into you. Somebody pulled you out, but the skin never looked as it should have. You are scarred all over. You are the only one in the Freak Show with money (although you don't let it show too much). You escaped with the circus from a boarding school your parents chose for you far away from home. It's better this way. No one bullies you for the scars, for crying, for looking monstrous or just different. The parents never stopped sending the cash, and it helps to cover for the basic expenses and repairs.
    Requirements: Fire show performance
    Current applications: 1
  • O’Harah Musician
    There is no instrument like it you know. That thing you have spent your life playing, it’s alive. You can hear it singing, even when you finish playing it. You knew even then that you’d give anything to play that music. You gave your future; signed it away at the crossroads in blood just as sure as if you’d put your neck in a noose and stepped up on a scaffold. Ten years, making the world dance, and now your time is nearly up. You gotta pay your debt, or find someone to pay it for you.
    Requirements: A musical instrument and skills to play it
    Current applications: 1
  • The Great Marvo Snake Oil Seller
    You could sell snow to the penguins, but it ain’t worth it. Those little bastards don’t have any money! You never hit the big bucks even though you worked your ass off, so you started to sell a miracle cure cooked up from all sorts of fake shit. To your amazement the stuff seems to work, but only while you travel with the freak show. Now people keep coming back for more of the cure. Maybe one day it’ll make you a fortune?
    Requirements: bottles of snake oil
  • Thomas Lindt Odditorium keeper
    You were barely getting by before your wife died at childbirth. Her dwarf body couldn’t handle a normal sized child. You couldn’t give her up, or the income. You had her mummified and carry her around in a box and show her to folks. At night you still talk to her. How can the world be so cruel that the fruit of your love killed her? Is it true that she was an abomination and your love was a sin?
    Requirements: a dwarf mummy in a display box, looking like a man
    Current applications: 1
  • Barker Animal keeper
    All you ever wanted was a puppy to call your own. One followed you home from school once, but your uncle drowned it in the canal. So you ran away and joined the circus. Animals love you, they do what you want them to. But they keep dying. Right now you have no animals, so no act, and the circus folk look at you like it is your fault. The Freaks, well they are more complex than your animals, but some of them are almost as helpless; after all, you are only complete when you have something to look after.
  • Haze Hypnotist
    You have fasted in the flowering deserts of Oman living only on scent and you have listened to the silence of the gurus in India. At least that’s what you tell them, as you suggestively wave your cheap amulet. They usually play along, but recently it has been turning strange. Maybe it’s true what they say about magic getting stronger in the end times. You sense that this place and time makes your hypnosis deeper and truer, and your desires clearer. You have always needed more, searched for something deeper, that much at least is true.
    Current applications: 1
  • Renaldo / Renata the All Seeing Fortune teller
    You are a crook. Nothing you foretell has any real chance of coming true or being reflected in facts. You simply used the opportunity and snuck into the boss’s office and read everybody’s files putting special attention to remembering their dates of birth, or as many as was possible and/or disclosed. And since then you quote various horoscopes to them and walk away with a focused expression. But really, it’s not even worth a handful of ash. Being able to do real magic would be so great, you would do anything to have real powers.
    Requirements: Arabic exotic clothing, crystal ball, astrology charts
  • Edda Ventriloquist
    You were mute, and they put you in the school for defective children; they forced you to speak, but found your true voice on stage with the freaks. You’ve had many puppets but it all changed when you found Caspian who is witty and clever on stage and dares to say things that you do not. Lately Caspian has been very rude and has been telling you that you are worthless without him and have nothing to say for yourself anymore. Maybe you should just let Caspian speak for you all the time? After all the puppet is just you, right?
    Requirements: Ventriloquist doll, knack for dual personalities.
    Current applications: 2