Midnight Circus

The Midnight Circus is a major villainous organization in White Wolf Studio's roleplaying game franchise, the World

Of Darkness. The circus is not confined to any one of the games set in the World of Darkness, instead drawing both its membership and its adversaries from just about every single game on record: entities from Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming and Wraith: Oblivion are all represented within the ranks of the circus. It is this diversity - combined with its loyal service to the Wyrm, Apophis and other monstrous forces - that makes the Midnight Circus one of the most dangerous groups found in the series.

Purpose
To the general public, Anastagio's Olde-Time Lunar Carnival And Midnight Circus is a legitimate group of entertainers: an old-fashioned circus complete with animal shows, clowns, magicians, freaks and rides, visitors rarely - if ever - notice anything amiss in any of the performances, and few suspect that the managers are interested in anything other than mundane profit. However, this is only because the Circus carefully disguises its true nature with a powerful Glamour Veil, preventing any of the audience members from observing the murder and mistreatment that occurs on a daily basis throughout the show.

In reality, the Midnight Circus is an active force for corruption with the World Of Darkness, and exists solely to spread moral and spiritual pollution by any means available. Every single show, ride, sideshow game or service provided by the carnival has been specifically designed to corrupt human souls, if not simply remove them altogether: in its wake, the Circus leaves a trail of soulless or spiritually-defiled victims, many of whom are driven to criminal acts as a result of their corruption. Whether fragmentary or forfeit, the Circus claims the souls of its audience for its own sinister purposes, usually to harvest their spiritual power; however, the Circus must also pay off its Patrons, and at the end of every last night in town, the representatives of the "Old Shareholders" arrive to collect their cut of the profits.

These shareholders are in fact Apophis and the Wyrm, two powerful evil entities within the World Of Darkness: primordial creatures of perversion and chaos, darkness and destruction, they have sponsored the Circus solely for its ability to spread corruption wherever it goes - and, of course, for its generosity in providing them with more souls to consume.

As such, unlike other villainous organizations like the Sabbat, the Technocracy or Pentex, the Midnight Circus has no grand plan in mind: its only goal is to remain active and continue corrupting the world. Of course, entities within the Circus may have something else in mind...