Before a catastrophic pandemic reduced their numbers to a stronghold at Hathersage, clowns were the fairest rulers of The Dark Peak, an advanced civilisation that colonised every corner of the region. They have since repositioned themselves as spies and couriers, mercenary and self-interested, loyal only to their own kind. It is, I think, what several hundred years of managed decline looks like.

clown marriage ceremonies involve a gold chain with a heavy padlock-sealed collar at each end — one for each party — clasped around the neck by the ruling noble and locked shut. Van Hallam, arriving at the betrothal of Pandora of Hathersage to Ocnus, Prince of Glossop, described it as "a bit kinky" — which, from a man who has survived every major denizen conflict in recent Dark Peak history, probably means something more precise than it sounds.

Once the ruling civilisation of The Dark Peak, the clowns were reduced to a fraction of their former number by a pandemic whose nature and cause remain unrecorded — and when a civilisation loses most of itself to a disease no one documented, what survives is generally not the best of it. They operate now as couriers and mercenary spies, concentrated around Hathersage, loyal only to their own kind. Their elaborately decorated bodies are a legacy of insect origins, and they hatch from eggs raised by their biological parents, which is, comparatively, the least unsettling thing about them.

Clowns in Hellsborough are the courier and intelligence service of The Dark Peak — performing for scraps while cataloguing every movement, interaction, and cargo they witness. No ideological allegiance: information and goods flow to whoever pays. Two generations ago, they were the rulers of The Dark Peak; whether that history is a cautionary tale or an ongoing ambition depends entirely on which clown you're speaking to.