Miss Cunningham's Everlasting Revelry

Miss Cunningham's Everlasting Revelry is a traveling circus that is billed as The Greatest Show on the Material Plane. It has been running for the last 99 years, performing in kingdoms to sold out arenas all across the continent for the last 97.

Current MC and owner, Nick Verrill has been with the troupe for his entire life, and is the son of the previous owner, Frederick Verrill, who purchased it from its creator, Penelope Cunningham, toward the end of her life.

In its inception, the Everlasting Revelry was simply an equestrian show put on by Miss Cunningham, where she demonstrated tricks with her two horses, Buttercup and Delilah, and taught people how to teach their horses the same tricks.

The next year, Cunningham showed up and somehow recreated the magic of her previous year's act. She performed for several hours, giving demonstrations and watching others take the stage. One such person was Molly Ware, a self-taught juggler.

Cunningham later went on to say that she was "positively entranced" by Ware, and "needed to know her."

In Ware, and the unexpected assistance of a duke, Cunningham found a business partner, and the next year, the two performed together, equestrian tricks and juggling both on and off horseback. That year, the amount of money they made showed them the only path forward for them was to keep coming back to this spot.

The following year, Cunningham and Ware had more than twenty people show up in the hopes of performing with their horses. The first time it eventually began showing signs of evolving into what it currently is was in the same summer, when she hired other types of performers to entertain the crowds that would inevitably gather. That year, she had six horse acts and five assorted filler acts, a juggler (Molly Ware), a flame dancer (Belinda Higgins), an aerialist (Lillienne Skydancer), and two jester acts to open and close the performance (Hector and Victor Kennelbraugh and Noella Smythe).

History

100 years ago, Penelope Cunningham took to a small roadside stage outside the city of Morgane to showcase the tricks she'd been teaching to her horses since they were foals. As luck would have it, being repaired on the same side of the road is a duke's carriage, and this particular duke happens to absolutely adore horses.

Duke Niels Angelico, in his own words, "saw just one trick and was convinced" that Penelope Cunningham "would rise to stardom" for the way she handled her horses. He watched her perform for hours, until she decided to pack up for the day.

This is where he approached Cunningham with the deal that launched her career. If she were to come perform for the autumn and winter on his private estates for his guests, then he would be prepared to give her 8 gp right then and there. She accepted, and soon found herself employed by a duke. She spent the rest of the summer training her replacement at the stables she previously worked at, and by the first day of autumn, had her horses unloaded onto his estates and she was fully moved into the performer's wing of said estates within days.

She then spent the autumn and winter performing her horse tricks for the Duke and his guests. The next spring, she moved back home with her earnings, and set up getting the permits to set up her shows several months ahead of time, so the process would be finished by the time summer rolled around.

On the first day of summer, Cunningham was ready to start her season-long show, now with space for others to take the stage in between her acts. One such performer was Molly Ware, a juggler. Ware was an avid performer, famous for saying "Life is but a stage, so you might as well learn how to perform!"

Ware brought new life to the show, as there was now constant entertainment for the audience, and the performers gained a new measure of control regarding the overall message they were trying to send via their performance. What this meant was that the only downtime during the performance was a planned pause point.

It was through Ware's connections that the rest of the original troupe was brought on board. She was friends with Belinda Higgins, a professional flame dancer, as well as chairperson of the council of Insert Name Here, an artist's collective.

Higgins already possessed a working relationship with the rest of the original lineup, with Lillienne Skydancer, Noella Smythe, and Hector and Victor Kennelbraugh already being a part of the collective. (Reportedly, this was when the first talks of taking the show on the road were had, but Lillienne Skydancer, the only remaining original member, refuses to comment whenever the subject is broached, most famously saying "Why should I answer that? Who cares?")

Ware introduced her friends to Miss Cunningham that autumn, and they started planning the next summer's lineup immediately. The order of the acts was to be Smythe, Lillienne Skydancer, Higgins, the Kennelbraugh Brothers, Ware, and finally Miss Cunningham's horseback grand finale, with a horse act from a volunteer participant to be chosen day of in between each.

Over the years, the lineup changed several times, but Miss Cunningham and Molly Ware always showed up, year after year until she stepped down.

Miss Cunningham chose to learn something from every single performer she worked with, so that she could appreciate the time and effort each individual put into their own craft, meaning that by the time she stepped down as the show's MC, she had more skills to her name than any of the other performers.

Frederick Verrill comes into play five years before Miss Cunningham steps down. His is what is known as a mech act. He dances with a clockwork woman, "tames" a clockwork tiger, and collects coins from the audience using his clockwork capuchin monkey.

Frederick eventually cozies up to Miss Cunningham enough to sell the circus to him when it was time for her to retire. From here, the gears of motion literally begin turning for the Everlasting Revelry, as Frederick was quick to adopt the idea of making this a mobile show.

Using his personal wealth to supplement the circus' budget for the first year of operations, Frederick hired drivers, security, and added performers, nearly quintupling the employed staff. Shows started being longer, laying from generally an hour and a half to over three, and performers started collaborating on their acts, making them more complex and dangerous.

This led to the only scandal to rock the foundation of the circus. In one of these more complex acts, a horse was accidentally cut by a sword. As a result, charges of animal abuse proliferated. These were quickly put to rest, though, by retiring all the animals in the show and replacing them with magically summoned versions, and later, Awakened animals (Captain Monkey and Gios Thunderpride, both currently ongoing acts) that could actually give their consent.

During the scandal, a notable figure who came to the defense of the Everlasting Revelry was Bilner Twistback, a reclusive and highly eccentric gnome of no small innate magical ability, who elected to break his famous ten-year absence in the hopes of clearing Frederick's name. In doing so, he earned "a friend, and free tickets, for life," according to Frederick. In a twist that rocked certain sections of the continent, Twistback said that the only thing he wanted in terms of thanks was "the chance to audition for a job in the Everlasting Revelry.

Twistback's act is what brought the summoned animals, who could be communicated with in a manner more befitting a performance, to the show. It was real magic in a circus that had previously specialized only in illusions, and it caused the popularity of the show to soar.

Frederick was soon approached by other mages of various reputability for a place in the show. Among them were Gier, a firbolg wizard, and the Polshka trio, a set of Grung triplets named Rus, Gus, and Tes. Verrill was reluctant to hire any more mages, however, as he said it would take away the rarity and awe of Twistback's act. In truth, it was later revealed that the circus was barely making a profit with the added weight of Twistback's salary and specifically the cost of his reagents.

Frederick's son, Nicholas (Nick), also had a growing role in the circus. As he got older, his role changed from "adorable child ticket puncher" to "assistant," and he wound up as a go-for for everybody who worked for his father at the time. When he became a teenager, his role was shifted to a paid version, said to promote a sense of responsibility.

60 years ago is where the enigmatic Mr. Komogra comes into the story as a financier for the circus. Little is known about him before his appearance at the circus, but he became a major figure in the story. He says that it came to his attention that the circus wasn't doing so well financially, so he became an investor.

In the 15 years that followed, the Everlasting Revelry did nothing but skyrocket in popularity. Every act sold out, people were desperate to get their hands on tickets, and encores grew longer and longer until one night, on their 75th anniversary, they did a double length show with an encore that was, itself, the duration of a double length show.

The Everlasting Revelry was set up like a festival all its own, with different stages of acts happening in a staggered order throughout the afternoon and evening. All of the city's major inns and shops had a table for selling goods and making reservations to sleep off all the alcohol being sold.

What nobody aside from Frederick and the performers knew was that there was also going to be a special announcement at the end of the night. Frederick was announcing that they would start a mobile version of the Everlasting Revelry. A traveling version of the show would make its way along the coast, up and around the country before coming back.

The plan was to make it self-sufficient, and therefore able to operate entirely independently of the home base, and the announcement went off without a hitch. A week later, the first tour would begin.

Within a few months, it was clear that they had another hit on their hands. Everyone seemed to love it when the circus came to town.

However, several days after their 83rd anniversary, Frederick decided that the showman's life was no longer for him, so he got his affairs in order, and bid adieu to the crew, leaving his 27 year old son, Nick, in charge. Frederick would still be owner and act as the final decision maker when it came time for big choices, but other than that, it was Nick's show.

To date, the show has performed almost every weekday for the past 100 years, taking time off only for emergencies. It has been seen in almost every kingdom on the continent.