The Mountebank Club

The Mountebank Club is a cult to Jack of All first introduced in the night shop. They believe their master to be a founding member, though the nature of the Mountebanks renders this claim difficult to prove or disprove; they each use a persona with an associated name, personality, voice, backstory, mask, and seat at the Club's table. All Mountebanks create a persona to use upon joining, and share as little information on their original self as possible, even to other Mountebanks. Mountebanks switch between personae at the beginning of every month, allowing them to maintain a higher degree of secrecy.

Meetings of the Mountebank Club are frequently drunken and volatile, with members sharing cynical and sometimes surrealistic poems, essays, and short stories. The meeting hall of the Mountebank Club is disguised, and sometimes changes locations; despite this, its interior decor is always filled with the exact same mixture and placement of gory and disgusting artifacts of murder, both historical and recent.

The Mountebank Club is more than a club of similarly morbid people, though that description isn't wholly inaccurate. They often commit theft to get their hands on useful equipment and murder to get rid of rival servant groups. Due to how suspicious wearing masks in public would seem, they usually choose to wear them only at meetings, though they are secretive enough with their names, voices, and personal histories that they are frequently unable to identify one another out-of-character. For this reason, all members have a tattoo depicting the Mountebanks' symbol somewhere on their person. The symbol in question is a stylized depiction of two hands shaking, with one of the hands wearing a red glove. The Mountebank Club's active mode is referred to as the Switchblade Symphony, courtesy of ARC agent Ash Fairchild.

After hours, the Mountebank Club acts as a one-stop shop for both Runners and servants, frequently requiring them to protect their clients from one another. During this period of time, they refer to themselves as the Night Shop. They have a good deal of connections, and are able to provide either information or a good source of it on almost any supernatural topic. Both equipment and information come at a price, however, and the cost is rarely money.

Trivia

 * The Mountebank Club is based on the Whitechapel Club, a secret society based in Chicago which considered Jack the Ripper their absentee president and had drunken meetings where members would share and mock various pieces of writing.
 * In an earlier version of the Mountebank Club, members switched personae at every meeting rather than at the beginning of each month.