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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 →

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rectangular block of burnt orange with the words Under Construction in tan
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rectangular block of tan with the words The Calamity in burnt orange
rectangular block of burnt orange with the words Bus Driver in tan
rectangular block of tan with the word Survey in burnt orange

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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.

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Oooh we get more lore in this edition’s installment of A Vampire’s Vengeance!

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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?

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Hmm. A puzzle box with doom inside of it. Now where have we seen this before?

Book cover for Calypso. The title is spread across the center toward the top, superimposed over the Mad Alex emblem. The background is a splash of dark colors-yellows, blues, greens, and black. The author's name, 'Mad Alex' is centered at the bottom of the design over text printed in playbill flourish that reads 'presents a tale from the Odds n Endings Boutique.

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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.

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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.

Background is burst of alternating reddish-orange and tan ray coming out from the center of the image. Over this is the Mad Alex emblem, over which is placed the silhouette of a charter bus in a burnt orange. The text "Bus Driver" is boldly displayed to the right.

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