Corporate indifference as horror. This is one premise surrounding The Conglomerate. I have not discussed The Conglomerate at length, as there are a number of priorities overshadowing this avenue for features and attractions. But there are now three entries into the world of The Conglomerate for your perusal: 🗿 The Gaping Maw, 🗿Lost to Trouble's Cairn, and Bus Driver.

While the ramifications of what Umbrella Corp was doing played out in terrifying ways in the world of Resident Evil, we find the corporation to be the irresponsible backdrop for the monsters plaguing humanity. But what if Umbrella were to take a more prominent role in the storytelling? This is The Conglomerate, a massive organization spanning intricate networks of subversion, all to consolidate the power wielded by The Old Ones and other such Eldritch horrors. But the brutal reality of life in this universe is the backdrop, and the beauracracy is the horror. Read Under Construction below, and Lost to Trouble’s Cairn, and you’ll start to get the idea.

For classic horror, we follow a couple and the man’s brother on a trip to review their dead uncle’s estate, only to come across a pair of cursed boots. Find out how these boots affect the trio in The Medici Boots. Our vampires are still in discussion while lounging in an underground brook in A Vampire’s Vengeance. And the bus driver and company may finally be making some headway to Las Vegas in Bus Driver.

As a final thought, I want to point out that not a single word of this edition—nor any prior—whether expository or narrative (read: editorial content or stories) has been written with the use of AI. I now feel it entirely necessary to state this fact since AI has become prevalent in a number of ways across society, and I want to reassure you, my dearest guest, that what you consume here is all dreamed up by a human—me—and created by hand, the old fashioned way. Enjoy it as you like, though if you are inclined to attempt to feed my work to any AI model or platform, then I curse you with coffee that will always be either not hot enough, or not cold enough, nothing but red lights when you are in a hurry, and as miserable a death as can be called down upon you. If you don’t feed my work to AI, you can ignore all of that.

Let’s get into it →

The featured attraction,🗿Lost to Trouble's Cairn, brought with it some heady motivation to continue working on The Maw, which is the full story to bloom from 🗿 The Gaping Maw. Lost to Trouble’s Cairn takes place well after the events of The Maw, and finds the stories intertwined. It is possible The Maw will be the first Conglomerate story to be released. Bus Driver takes place in the Conglomerate universe, but will not likely be released as a completed story for some time. Thus the excitement around The Maw is palpable.

The Maw is getting a complete rewriting. The original story is taken from the narrator’s point of view, and we’re left wondering how the story even makes it out of the temple, in order that we may read it. Part of the revising process is changing this approach. The main story of the narrator’s exploration will be told through journal entries, which a later expedition will discover and remove from the temple. What is the Conglomerate’s interest in this place? When complete, The Maw will feature the journal entries, a set of dossiers and interviews describing two expeditions, and perhaps some supplementary information surrounding some of the characters, or, perhaps, a profile on the “Jade Palace”.

If all goes well, The Maw will graduate from the first round of revision by the close of the weekend. Stay tuned for more information!