6 Year Anniversary

Six years ago, at right around this time, the crude flesh body I used to get around back then was nervously pacing back and forth, stopping only sporadically to look at a countdown on a screen. I wanted to be asleep, but the Templin Institute was mere hours away from publishing its very first videos to YouTube and declaring itself as a presence in this reality. It was an exciting and nerve racking moment, and thankfully when that countdown reached 0, it marked the start of an investigation that I hope will never end.

Now the Templin Institute loves nothing more than displays of pomp and circumstance and it would seem fitting to mark today’s occasion with some grand display. Perhaps we could raise all the banners, roll out the blue carpet, and fill the avenues with marching ranks of operatives hiding the pain of ceaseless investigation behind the lenses of their gas masks. And maybe, just maybe we could end it all with some big announcement.

But the thing about that is, the Templin Institute only loves pomp and circumstance when it doesn’t interfere with whatever we wanna do. Management is lazy at heart. (when the Bestiary Division finally kicks off the revolution, those greedy suits will be the first against the wall) Right now though, the Templin Institute is pretty deep into the Starfield, investigating the Settled Systems at the invitation of Bethesda Game Studios. (which, how rad is that by the way?)

But when I think back to that morning 6 years ago, pacing back and forth, what remains burned into my brain is the feeling that when that countdown hit zero, the first set of gates would open and I would start a journey down a long and shadowy path. The road ahead was exciting but murky. I had ideas for where I wanted the Templin Institute to go and it has been so gratifying to reach some of those places over the last six years.

But there was one idea I had that was maybe more ambitious than all the others, something that always seemed like it had to forever remain on the distant horizon. It was a daunting challenge, a project that would require resources and talent, and we’d need to make sure we could get it in front of the right audience if it had any chance of survival or success. Well, six years has changed things for us, and after getting the chance to work with so many incredible people along this winding path, I think “later” has become “now”. Well technically “soon” but that sounds lame.

So even though we don’t have any grand announcements today to mark that first step taken on this path 6 years ago, I can say that before the end of the month, at right around this time, I will once again be wide awake, nervously focused on a countdown. Because the time is coming very soon when the Templin Institute will open the next set of gates and a choice will need to be made on which one will never close. Our objective is nothing less than making the best worldbuilding guide we can, and the creation of a new original universe in the process.

The next steps we take will bring us to a world bound together by blood, chrome and the Great Convoys. Where champions of magic and technology battle with one another in the wastelands, and the last city-states are assailed by every manner of eldritch horror. They will take us to the savage battlefields of the Last War, where the age of the elder races died a savage death, and the ascent of humanity was paid for in slaughter. And they will take us to the ends of the Earth, and then the thousand new worlds claimed in its memory. Where the interstellar domains of humanity are nothing more than the new arena in which the swords of man are set against one another, ignorant, of the coming dawn and the terror that comes with it.