Speculation, but it seems like a pretty obvious connection. I know it's not entirely the same but there are liches in my world who take on new identities after staging their own death. It could be wrong, but I think it's likely that Charles Moore shed his identity to control the circus once more.

But I have a theory. It's less a zoo, and more a farm. He takes people already touched by these entities, like myself or like any of us that have already been assigned a patron against our will, and takes them the extra mile to becoming avatars. What he intends to do with them is another matter, but he definitely pushed Pyre into that role intentionally. My guess as to the purpose behind all this is to create formidable monsters that are primarilly loyal to him. But it could be anything, creating chaos, amusement, making avatar soup... [She shrugs.]