When Caliban wakes up, shackled and monstrous, he remembers nothing. The shadowy world of the circus he now inhabits and the bleak, unobtainable landscape beyond are alien to him. He finds himself horribly deformed and forced to perform with a litany of fantastical, often enslaved others. This disparate and vivid cast, as well as the circus' enigmatic and evil proprietor, the master, stand between him, the memory of his old life, and one new and free. As he travels through an ever changing landscape of abrasive, absurd cities and beautiful countryside, Caliban befriends Pockets and Tick, two clowns inseparable both from each other, their alcoholism, and the circus. Together they must overcome the master and make sense of themselves and the new world around them. None of it is as it seems.