New Year’s Resolutions

Greetings, fellow barbarians. It’s been some time since we last gathered around the campfire. I had originally planned to hold a thorough review of 2021 somewhere around Christmas, but a string of unforeseen events threw my schedule into disarray.

Nevertheless, I have returned now. Since I’m not a fan of dwelling on the past, I’ll keep things brief: 2021 was a good year for the tribe, especially in German-speaking parts of the world. There’s a steady influx of new recruits, and a new paperback edition of Pillagers has made its way onto the German book market.

Granted, we didn’t reach all intended milestones, particularly concerning the lore section. Time will hopefully take 2022 as an opportunity to slow down the break-neck pace it has adopted during the pandemic.

2022 Outlook: Mostly Barbaric, with Occasional Bouts of Corporatism

The expansion of the tribal archives will remain a priority in 2022. So far, none of the shamans has dared to voyage past the 21st century. But astute clansmen may already have deduced from other lore snippets what age comes next: the reign of the OC Alliance. Preliminary data suggests that this will be a very long and convoluted age, thus it might be necessary to split the archive entry into different parts.

There will be more than one seance, however, as we’d—ideally—like to uncover not just random facts but cohesive memories from specific individuals, similar to what has been achieved earlier with Barbarian’s Moon. This hunt for new tales is likely to last for the entire year.

Apart from these side projects, a bigger challenge looms ahead: the continuation of the main neobarbarian premise as laid out in Pillagers. (I know that English members of our tribe are still waiting for their translation. It will arrive at some point.) After all, the book ends in an “unresolved state” and it is high time we find a remedy for that. No doubt this means the oracle will have to crunch some—very—big data once more—and some dark sacrifices may also have to be enacted. This arduous computation shall provide us with a sequel to Pillagers.

Lastly, there have been some very peculiar developments in the current timeline. Most notable was Facebook’s rebranding to Meta.

It is not quite clear what prompted this decision, though Zuck’s restless lizard brain must of course be scheming towards something. It is also unclear whether this Metaverse fantasy might pave the way towards Omninet, the true cyberspace of the future. I may need to have another talk with Dr. Kramer on this one …