The beautiful thing about producing a publication of this sort is the drive it creates behind the columns serialized here. A Vampire’s Vengeance, House, and Bus Driver are all moving forward, week after week, with new installments. And now, thanks to updates in our construction process, refinements in these attractions can be made alongside the construction itself. This means the path to release of a complete and polished attraction post-Backstage construction will arrive far sooner than would normally be expected. Take Grounskeeper for example: had this new process been in place during the construction of Groundskeeper, it is quite possible Groundskeeper would be available in a completed and polished format by now.
In any case, we present to you the new installments of A Vampire’s Vengeance, House, and Bus Driver in this edition, along with a classic horror story that may leave you feeling a little nostalgic perhaps, if you are a lover of the macabre and a connoisseur of macabre media. You’ll see what we mean when you read it.
Now, without further ado, let’s get into it →
In an earler Backstage Edition, we brought out the concept for Archivist, paraded the potential attraction around, and then put it away for later development. Perhaps you may recall this, perhaps not. As a refresher, Archivist will be a character in the Children of the Damned universe, an assassin librarian who maintains the Cosmic Archive at the behest of the CABAL, a shadow organization pulling strings behind the scenes.
Well, Archivist is not coming to light in character form just yet, though she has served as inspiration for software tooling underlying the Calamity’s archival infrastructure. We here at the Calamity are hard at work improving our backend processes—which differ greatly from what you see here, Backstage—and the new Archivist CLI serves a powerful purpose in elevating our backup management immensely. If you are a fucking nerd and interested in its inner workings, you will find the public repository for Archivist CLI here.
With regard to the attractions themselves, House and A Vampire’s Vengeance received a strong nudge in the direction of editing this week. A whole editorial workflow was established, as mentioned in prior editions, and I was hard at work in beginning the process of moving these two stories forward. Their assembly and refinement will run in parallel with their ongoing construction. Bus Driver will soon follow suit.
Oooh we get more lore in this edition’s installment of A Vampire’s Vengeance!
Solomon finds himself in dire straits when the beautiful field he began traversing in last edition’s installment turns out to be not what he expected. Is this going to become a recurring theme?
Hmm. A puzzle box with doom inside of it. Now where have we seen this before?
San Pedro Joe opened the box, and paid with his life.
backstage.carnivalofcalamity.xyz/p/teakwood-box
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The gift of time is, for many, an incredible gift indeed. Unless, of course, it is not a gift at all and arrives with a cost in excess of what one may be willing to pay …A tale from the Odds ‘n’ Endings Boutique.
Welcome to another installment of Bus Driver! We are absolutely enraptured with Griselda’s story, right alongside the bus driver and his passengers. If you recall, she was telling us all about her trip with a group of people from Northern California, making their way south. You can catch up with Part XXVII here. She left us on a cliff-hanger in last’s week’s edition. What did she and her merry band of travelers see? Let’s find out.
"Finally, we crested a hill and we saw the horrors they spoke of in the mountain pass we left behind."
Griselda paused. She brought her glass to her lips, and drank the remaining liquid in one gulp. Tears filled her eyes as her face soured. Someone at the table began to refill her glass but she paused him with a raised hand. "I think its enough for me this night." The resident returned the bottle to the table. Everyone waited with baited breath as Griselda took a deep inhale, dried her eyes, and let out a slow exhale before continuing.
"We saw horrors only written of. It was as if by writing of them, the authors willed them into being."
Griselda paused again. She sat silent, contemplative. The bus driver, whose fear of what she might describe was conquered by his curiosity, said "Please." Griselda turned her eyes to him without moving her head, then returned her gaze to the table.
"From the highest places around here you can see the gathering, that thick mass of infected in congregation," she said. "So I know you will not think me crazy now. But back then, I could not trust my own eyes with what I saw.
"The first thing catching my attention was the lake itself. It was like no lake I had ever seen. It did not look like water. It was at first still, calm, and looked iridescent, like one great big sheet of stained glass, reflecting the sun back to itself. Too still to be water.
"Then we saw the first of the monstrosities. Giant bulbous masses floated over that iridescent stillness. Creatures as big as six feet, soaring over the lake with wings as wide as seven feet. They were slow, heavy, sickly looking things with lumpy bodies and long arms like sticks. Seeing them was enough to make me shudder. I looked around and found others doing the same. We wanted reassurance we were looking at the same thing.
"We were too confused to make noise. We stood there, quiet, watching these grotesque things fly over the lake in random fashion. The infected, they walked right up to the water's edge and stopped, not going in, not going any farther. They stood as if waiting for something. We watched, waiting for something as well. We knew not what. Stupid of us to have stayed and waited, but we watched.
"One of the grotesque flying things floated down and picked up an infected person. They flew high over the iridescent lake, all the way to the middle, and dropped them. We watched the infected person fall, a slow descent to their doom. They hit the water, and that's when we knew it was not glass, for they made a splash, then sunk below the surface. The water rippled all around them.
"What did we see? We should have run then. We should have run before then. We should have never went that way. We should have listened to the people in the pass."
Not another cliff-hanger! What happened next?! Tell us, Griselda! Don’t just leave us hanging! Well, you know how this goes. There’s only one way to find out why they should have avoided this route entirely. Come back next week!
Well, this was quite the exploration Backstage, was it not? Edgar has more to chew on, Solomon has passed his last alarm, and there is something wild afoot in the deserts of California the bus driver is now becoming aware of! Not exactly action-packed, but certainly informative, and quite the treat for you lore-junkies, yes?
We here at the Calamity hope you enjoyed your visit Backstage this edition. Please share with us your thoughts on your adventure. You can reply to this email, leave a comment on this post, or use any of the buttons below. And be sure to return next week!
Cordially,
Mad Alex
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