"Overnight, the circus comes to town. But something’s wrong … very wrong.
The circus music, which should be cheerful, seems menacing. The attractions (especially the freak display) seem off, the cotton candy is a sickly shade of green, the knife thrower doesn’t miss and the clowns …well, the less said about the clowns the better." — https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Circus_of_Fear
I've been working on a mashup of ...
Don’t
Rest Your Head/Don’t Lose Your Mind, Nobilis, Glitch, Little Fears,
City of Mist, Clockwork Domain, Crimes Against Men and Gods, Crossroads
Carnival, Domains, Dreaming Cities, Dresden Files, Into The Odd /
Electric Bastionland, Enter The Forest/Enter The Palace, Extracausal,
Fairy Meat, Folkloric, Grimm, GURPS Steampunk/Screampunk/Time
Travel/Warehouse 23/Faerie/Metro of Madness, Headspace, In Dark Alleys,
In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, Katabasis, Kidworld, KULT, La Compagnie
des Glaces, Monsters and Other Childish Things, Nephilim, Over The
Edge, Part-Time Gods, Puppetland, Reaching In The Dark, Relics, Savage
Worlds Codex Infernus/Contagion/Crystal Heart/Enascentia/Fae
Nightmares/Imago Mortis/Mutant Chronicles/Savage Tales of Horror/Streets
of Bedlam, Schauermaerchen, Shattered Dreams, Shelter, SLURPS,
Solipsist, Summerland, Terribly Beautiful, The Echoes of Heaven, The
Nightmares Underneath, The Strange, The Swing (except Time is a stretched out Slinky instead),
The Thing That Lives In Your House (Knows All of Your Secrets), The
Zantabulous Zorcerer of Zo, Threadbare, Through The Breach/Meat Market,
Troika!, Twisted Rails, We Are Champion and World of
Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness
Orpheus/Umbra/Wraith/Geist/Fae/Gypsies/Midnight Circus/Possessed/Time of
Judgement/Changeling/Deamon/Deviant/Promethean/Hunter/Dark Eras/Hurt
Locker/Asylum/Immortals/Inferno/Innocents/Midnight Roads/Mysterious
Places/Proverbial Monsters/Second Sight/Skinchangers/The Godmachine
Chronicles (NO f*cking elves/dwarfs/hobbits/orcs/dragons/werewolves/vampires/any of that sh*t though!), Broken Rooms, Born From Hate and … if I can wrap my head around it (and it doesn’t turn out to be a joke) … possibly … Jenna Moran’s game WTF
... taking whatever elements of each lend themselves to a Barker/Gaiman-esque tale that would, I think, in the right hands, deliver to fans of gaming the kind of punch in the gut that killed Houdini — I’ll give people dark fantasy alright (they’ll be traumatised for Life! ¹)
And Disparateum is central to it: it's the only place the Awake can get any sleep without falling prey to the Nightmares of Mad City. That is right, isn't it ... the Dreaming is safe, right? It's not a place where the Nightmares catch you unawares, whilst you slumber on, blissfully deluded that you aren't in grave danger here, right? ... Right? ... You didn't make the long, arduous and dangerous journey from the Warrens, via the Underground at Electric Bastionland, by way of London Below, then brave the Cityback, emerging into Katabasis, risking your very soul in search of a way in to the Named City, for nothing, surely? The Dreaming can't be Closetland in disguise, surely to God! And you can't be an eight-year-old tapped in the body of a fully grown adult, with no idea how you got here or what to do with it, because your secret Mythos is hidden from you ... you don't even realise you are a Rift (you aren't that awake you're just one of the Awake, asleep in the Named City ... and the Mist is coming to claim you)!) and you, therefore, have no idea of your power (the only thing that can save you now).
Disparateum is key to what I'm building as a .... 'campaign' isn't the word; it's more of a long (at least a year IRL), (hopefully devastatingly traumatic) experience — so, keep up the good work (I'll be back with the financial support ASAP.
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¹ Can you guess why it has a working title of No Happy Endings ? 😉