Scarterra Traveling Circus
Scarterra has many fantastic beasts in them. Many wealthy princes, adventurers and warlords pay good money for exotic trained beasts. Scarterra has many adventurers who scour the land looking for animals to capture and train in return for riches.
One of these such groups was running low on funds as it costs a lot to feed their charges. They had the desperate idea to let the locals gawk at all the weird beasts in exchange for a coins.
This helped them scrape through a rough patch, until they were able to find a buyer for one of their trained pegasi. When they entered the buyer's realm they found their reputation preceded them. All the townsolk in their new location were offering them money to see their tamed monsters.
They figured they might as well keep doing this to make a side income. Next thing they knew, a Kantoca duke offered them several hundred gold to be the showcase exhibition in his festival. Gradually the rag tag adventurers and animal trainers got better at showmanship and they hired a few bards. Where once they made almost all of their income selling trained animals, now they found they made about a third of their income running shows (and the shows helped advertise their beast training services which helped their primary business)
That was generations ago. Now the group is rebranded as The Scarterran Traveling Circus and they have two score employees, some helping the show, some hype men to travel ahead of the main group, and of course wilderness savvy people to find new beasts.
The circus also provides safe haven to outsiders. The circus features "friendly orcs " helping with the shows while wearing ridiculously exaggerated costume versions of their tradiional barbarian garb.
Over it's long history, the circus has featured metamorphs, an aranea, kobolds, several kalazotz and almost every half-breed hybrid you can name.
The "friendly" monster that wasn't.
It's fun and exciting for a person to look at a scary orc warrior up close. The circus has hosted a lot of benign gentle outsiders to many of the so-called monstrous races. One time they included a "friendly" camazotz. She was nice and friendly when around crowds, but on the circus' last night in each new location, she would murder one or more people in the place they were visiting and drink their blood, then use the circus as cover to slink away. Eventually people caught on and the camazotz was slain, but this scandal almost shut down the circus forever, staining their reputation for years to come.
Type
Entertainment, Troupe
Official State Religion
Location
Official Languages
Comments