HISTORICAL:
"MARABIGO" The Transpermutable was the stage name of Henry Leggingham, an illusionist and showman who made his debut at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where he distributed large posters to passengers of the towering 300 foot Ferris Wheel. He famously accelerated the ride to twenty-four rotations per minute, generating an astonishing spectacle of animated images. Nearby, an infuriated
Edward Muybridge was charging ten cents a head for the world’s first motion picture show, his theater’s entrance now obscured by a 300 foot moving cartoon of Muybridge kissing a horse. Marabigo’s mysterious origin and exotic demonstrations quickly caught the world’s attention, notably his consumption of an entire hot air balloon (without condiments), the catching of a meteor with his left hand, and his teleportation from Boston to a flying monoplane and back, returning with scarcely enough time to catch his young son, who he had tossed from the cockpit. Not to mention, of course, his domestication of a giant squid. Marabigo hoped to pass his trade secrets to a protégé, but while levitating his son onto the moon in 1909, he tragically missed and launched his successor into space. Renouncing illusionism, Marabigo buried his secrets and turned to the magic of cinema, where he starred in several weekly serials alongside Harry Houdini and a robot built by Thomas Edison. He later produced a comedic two-reeler inside of his own stomach, swallowing and regurgitating all the necessary actors and technicians. Several years later, Marabigo’s son unexpectedly landed outside Cleveland. But in a tragic twist of fate, Marabigo had died only hours earlier, fatally choking on silent film starlet Clara Bow. Never having inherited his father’s methods, Johnny The Unbustable began an extensive search for the buried secrets, hoping to start an exceptional creative studio under his father’s name. Unfortunately, while attempting the famous Marabigo comet-catch, Johnny the Unbustable was busted in two, cutting short his search and stature. For the next ninety years, magic and dream enthusiasts interested in the lost secrets would slowly organize. Today this guild of mediamancers* has already done much to dig up and master the methods of its namesake, the Great Marabigo. And they’re always looking for more.
*conjurers utilizing the element of media
