Blaise Peppercorn

Blaise was created as the focal character for a Monster of the Week mystery. The party met her after someone from her circus called about a supernatural disturbance. Taking control of the situation, she feigned assisting the group in their investigation. As signs began to point to her, the party had to do everything in their power to keep her from shutting down their search and kicking them out. All was not as it seemed, however…

1969

Blaise was a weird kid, and weird kids become weird adults. The daughter of two 80s golden age scammers, she learned some rather peculiar skills as a child. Her grades were nothing special, though, and she had an uncanny ability to make people laugh and forget their problems. She was a forging prodigy, and her parents were a little disappointed by her choice to pursue clowning.

Clown college was the first place she truly felt like she belonged. She attended school in Wisconsin and sometimes struggles to hide the accent she picked up there to this day. She took naturally to performance, almost too naturally. In her studies, she formed a strong bond with another clown she worked under as a mentor. An older, gloomy man, he was surprised by how open Blaise was to his style of comedy. They bounced off each other well in performances, and together they formed a comedy duo under the monikers Sugar and Spice. She graduated in the class of 1990, and the two of them continued their show in Illinois (mostly on account of not being able to work cheese jokes into their Wisconsin sets with an already food-based theme).

1992

Not long after they began doing parties and events, they were scouted by the Wheeler Family Circus- a place Sugar actually helped establish earlier on in his career. Wheeler trusted Sugar as a quality performer, and had faith in his professionalism. A rather mysterious pop-up, nobody quite remembers when they showed up in Munich, Illinois. Still, nobody can deny they put on an incredible show. All the acts leaned towards larger than life, and the enigmatic ringleader was no exception. As mysterious as the circus, the Wheeler family name was hard to trace. Wheeler was an imposing man who ran a rather tight ship. This didn’t alarm Blaise, though. She saw the circus as family. She loved being surrounded by people as weird as her.

1995

A talented and charming performer, Blaise quickly became popular enough to have an opening act with Wheeler himself. Her clown persona, Spice, was to be hopelessly and hilariously in love with him. Outside of the act she found herself at odds with him, feeling like he didn’t pay the acts well enough and desperately wishing he would bring the almost perfectly stereotypical circus to the modern age. He was an older performer who demanded absolute perfection, and she was young and free-spirited. Still, she distanced her frustrations with Wheeler from their performances.

The joke of the opener was that her character would find various ways to accidentally endanger him, but he would appear miraculously unharmed. The props were to foreshadow the rest of the show- and the act ended with a giant ring of fire falling around the ringmaster. He would escape unharmed and the rest of the cast would be introduced, and the show would go on.

One rehearsal, though, things didn't go as planned. Blaise and Wheeler arrived earlier to rehearsals than the rest of the cast to prepare what they expected to be a quick run-through of a well-practiced routine. When the ring of fire fell, though, flames reached Wheeler’s cape and he legitimately caught fire. Not realizing his screams of pain were real, Blaise continued the act as if nothing had happened- genuinely thinking he was playing it up as an over-the-top drill for the real thing. Suffocated by the smoke, he fell silent and was consumed by the flames.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. As soon as the scent of burnt flesh hit her nose, Blaise entered crisis mode. There were no phones at the circus, so 911 was out of the question. Any controversy created by this accident could ruin her career- and the circus's reputation. Realizing she didn’t have much time to act, she placed the body in the pyrotechnics crate they had out for the rehearsal. She sealed it tight and hid it in the storage tent. She told the rest of the cast he never showed up that day, and spent the next week putting the skills her parents taught her to use by perfecting his handwriting to fake a goodbye note- a goodbye note that would leave the circus to her.

She presented to the rest of the circus what she claimed to be Ferris Wheeler's living will. In it, he supposedly entrusted her with the entirety of the circus following his "planned disappearance" Because of her character's fascination with the Ringmaster and her popularity as a performer it seemed fitting to all that she would be left in charge of the show, and nobody questioned this takeover. She shed her clown makeup to take the reins as a ringmaster herself.

People liked her ideas and enjoyed working under her as the ringmaster. She brought change that performers and staff had been begging for for years. She made promises to completely change how things were run for the better, offering higher wages and better conditions for employees. One of her first decisions was to make the circus into a traveling show. The guilt was a burden to her, and she desperately wanted to make the circus a traveling show to distance herself from the incident. She had announced the plans fairly soon after Wheeler's disappearance, but the night she held the briefing she found herself in a strange dream in which he spoke orders to her.

She wasn't certain it was real at first, but over the course of a couple days he made it abundantly clear that he was a dangerous spirit, and if he so desired he could possess her and take over her entire life. Only capable of manifesting as an apparition wreathed in the flame that killed him, he could only act through taking over the bodies of others. Blaise’s connection to his death made her a perfect conduit for his wrathful spirit, a flaming specter of anger. Ferris Wheeler was a proud man, and he would not let his circus be changed from his original vision. If she did not carry out his will for him then he would do it himself- by stealing her body. He could erase her just like she did him, and they both knew it.

She told the only person at the circus she could trust not to sell her out. Sugar agreed to help her, as the two were close and he had personal grudges with Wheeler. He noticed the faulty pyrotechnics that fateful day, but told nobody. He kept a careful eye on the pyrotechnics crate that held Wheeler’s corpse, but he wished she would come clean so they could handle the situation realistically. Still, he did as she asked and kept silent- partially because she promoted herself to his boss. Wheeler kept Blaise trapped at the circus, as if she left his reach he would lose his power over her. Sugar made excuses for her, and did all he could to keep her secret from the cast to keep things running smoothly.

Not a week following her big announcement, she made another: all their plans to become a traveling circus would come to a halt, and they would stay in Munich on this very lot. All of her big ideas would be "sent back to the drawing board" and things would continue to be run as Ferris Wheeler ran them. People were upset with her for this, but they managed for a while with mysteriously few changes following the old ringmaster's disappearance.

1997

Tired of living in fear, Blaise tried to stand up to Wheeler one night. Enraged by her insolence, he shouted at her resulting in a terrifying flash of purple flame filling the tent. Michael, the animal trainer, caught a glimpse and reached out to local paranormal investigators to try to solve the mystery. By sheer luck, Blaise intercepted them on their arrival and did her best to misguide them and keep her secret safe.

Try as she might, the hunters were stronger and more determined than she had accounted for. Sneaking into the circus at night, one of them stumbled upon Wheeler's corpse and ran out in fear. Realizing the panicked investigator could spell the groups death and her own possession, she chased after them in a hail mary to save all of their lives from Wheeler's wraths.

She had only moments to explain her situation to the group, desperately pleeding for their help. Willing to humor her, one member deduced that she was likely being haunted by a revenant- and that meant they needed to destroy the body. Wheeler fought back, critically wounding one and destroying the weapon of another, before a well-placed shot ended his reign over his own circus and freed Blaise from his grasp.

The Aftermath

She didn't confess the whole truth of what happened to everybody, as she couldn't bear to lose the group of people she considered family. Still, the circus was able to move on and began a successful 1997 season in Munich. Finally free to do what she wanted with the circus, Blaise polled the cast and ultimately decided to finally take the circus on the road. The 1998 season would mark the start of a new rebrand for the show- Now called the Peppercorn Traveling Circus.

She found herself with a lot of free time following the incident, and ended up spending a lot of nights at the Moonshine Lounge- a local gay cafe she found she really connected with. During the days, she spent a lot of time at the library catching up on the years she missed trapped at the circus.