By the year 2589 Terran Standard, humanity has left the homeworld and spread across hundreds of planets, some of them naturally suitable for mankind and others terraformed to fit our needs. Everyday, exploration teams push our frontier further and further, claiming more solar systems or discovering new intelligent lifeforms, some of which rival us in technology and power. Faster-then-light jump drives allow vessels, ranging from bulky cargo freighters to sleek warships, to travel between the stars in a matter of weeks, rather then years.

The most powerful government in human space is the Terran Union, a multi-planet federation of the Core Worlds, the oldest and richest of humanity’s possessions, governed from Earth. The majority of humans live within the Belt, former colony worlds which have developed enough to gain independents. The Belt is filled with planetary nations, ranging from monarchies to military dictatorships to social republics. The last section of human space is the Fringe, the frontier, filled with barely explored planets and small colonies.

Often the home bases for religious or political extremists, corporate own worlds or scientific missions, the Fringe is a place of horror stories told in the Core. Tales of workers laboring to death on toxic or otherwise hazardous world, mingle with stories about unregulated and unethical biological experimentation and wild rumors about settlers developing deformities and mutations.

Alright, I know most of you are wondering, is this about some sort of Sci-fi war epic, some story about mutants, a tale of worker’s rights, maybe a yarn about experimentation? Well those are possible roleplays and may come into this narrative but this is about the circus. A space traveling circus, zoo and freakshow in fact.

Cooper’s Grand Traveling Menagerie and Circus appeared about twenty standard years ago, when a one Cooper Smith purchased a failing zoo on the Core planet of Aries, which was filled with Earth animals. Instead of trying to fix up the place, he had cargo pods modified into enclosures for the animals, turning each into a little piece of Earth and stored them about his freighter, The Traveler. Setting out, he began touring around the Belt and the Fringe, allowing the folks living out there to see animals that still filled humanity’s myths, folktales and wise sayings.

On each planet, he would collect some more animals, adding to his menagerie and he began to collect performers, venders and all manner of folk. By the time eight years had passed, he was at the helm of a full-blown circus, traveling zoo and freakshow. Rarely shipping into the Core, where regulations and inspections led to several arrests and seizers of more then a few of his animals, Cooper became somewhat of a major interplanetary celebrity in the Belt. More often then not, governments would declare system wide holidays, when his heavily loaded freighter would exit jumpspace on the edge of their star system.

His shows generally follow the same pattern, although the length of stay various. Once The Traveler gets into orbit above a planet, Cooper takes a several days to shuttle his people, equipment and animal dirtside and set everything up. Once they reach opening day and start selling tickets, everything falls into place. During the day hours on the planet, the circus and zoo is in full swing. When the sun sets, the freakshow takes over. Once the late night hours come around, the purely adult entertainment begins. Sometimes the show runs for a standard week, others run for over a standard month and then everything gets pack up and The Traveler jumps out of system, ready to start all over again.

But things rarely go as smoothly as that. As has been mentioned before, Core planets tend to come down hard with regulations and often have activist groups who would rather see the Cooper’s Grand Traveling Menagerie and Circus disbanded. Belt planets tend to suck the show into local politics, that or have wars and rebellions erupt around the show. Fringe planets are just plain dangerous and rarely turn a profit but they do offer a chance to collect new people and strange animals for the show.

Roisdor is an interesting planet. At one time, it was a booming industrial complex but the massive amount of chemicals and pollutants have covered the surface in a sea of toxic vapors, hundreds of feet deep. The only places the population of the planet could live in, were massive city towers, level upon level of living places, stack on top of factories below, reaching up above the ocean of poisons and burrowed below the surface. The ruling families live at the top of each tower, called a hive and as the population gets poorer, they live closer to the sweltering factories, which still churn out toxins and breath air thats been refiltered several times and might as well have been pumped in from the outside. In truth, each level is controlled by gangs, with the luckiest levels only having two warring gangs at one time. The police force, offering lip service to the ruling power, are gangs onto themselves, only with badges.