Nobody declared the end of democracy. It just ran out of cash.
From 2026 to 2126, in order: how corporations came to have more money than countries, how a spat over espionage became the first war between companies, and how a massacre got the name of a dismissal.
Timeline
History + FictionFrom a 17th-century precedent to the campaign's present, in 2126.
Documented events carry a citation. Scenario events are marked Fiction.
1600–1874History
The East India Company keeps its own armies and rules territory. A company with troops and a border is not an invention of the future. [1]
2017–2018History
The Federal District lives through about a year and a half of water rationing; the Descoberto reaches its lowest level on record. [6]
2022History
With Jakarta sinking, Indonesia decides to move its capital. [9]
2030–2045Fiction
The Concession Era. Indebted states privatise water, prisons, ports and civil defence. Corporations win special economic zones with their own rules.
2046History + Fiction
The First Asteroid. OmniTerra robots launched from Alcântara bring a metallic asteroid into Earth orbit and start mining it at a profit. [2]
2046–2065Fiction
The Inversion. Companies with space operations come to hold more cash than the countries that host them, and start buying their debt.
2058History + Fiction
Brazil leases Alcântara for 99 years at auction, splitting the base between OmniTerra and Halcyon Orbital. [3]
2068Fiction
OmniTerra finds out that Halcyon stole its orbital capture system and announces the sanction: whoever works with Halcyon does not work with OmniTerra.
2068–2074Fiction
The First Corporate War, fought by private security in northern Brazil. Kuro-Tech sells weapons to both sides.
2074Fiction
Halcyon goes bust. OmniTerra buys the wreckage, Alcântara included, and with it the whole of Brazil except the Federal District.
2079Fiction
OmniTerra declares formal sovereignty over the Americas: the first ESTEMP. The other big ones follow over the next two decades.
2080–2100Fiction
The Corruption Gold Rush. The civil service sells what is left of the states and earns a place inside the companies. The REGESTs shrink.
~2095Fiction
The Corporate Quarantine is born as an OmniTerra contract clause. Within a few years it is practice across the market.
2097Fiction
The Sale of the Strip. The Brasília REGEST sells the Descoberto reservoir strip to OmniTerra in exchange for the Humanitarian Contract of 2097.
2111History + Fiction
The Great Dismissal of the Djibouti Triangle. Thalassa floods the Afar depression; Petro-Vanguard and Great Rift poison the surroundings. Millions dead, all dismissed seconds before. [4]
2112–2115Fiction
The AntiFaCa is born. The media nickname the rebels spoons, the resistance adopts the symbol, and the spoon taboo spreads through the ESTEMPs.
The Ladle Cell completes the replacement of all 41 employees of the Descoberto-7 Station. The station starts sending extra water to Brasília.
2126Fiction
The campaign's present. An OmniTerra auditor arrives at the Descoberto at 08:00 (the adventure).
The First Asteroid
History + Fiction2046: the first wealth no government controlled.
In 2046, OmniTerra robots launched from Alcântara brought a metallic asteroid into Earth orbit and began mining it at a profit. Nobody lived in space, and nobody does to this day; but for the first time a company had a source of wealth beyond the reach of any government. The idea was old [2]; what changed was who paid for it.
Over the next twenty years, companies with space operations came to hold more cash than the countries that hosted them. First they financed governments, then they bought their debt, then they bought the governments. Corporate historians call the period the Inversion; the REGESTs call it the Pawning.
Space has metal, but it has no people. Living up there is still expensive and hard. Refineries, launch sites, water, food and above all labour are still down here. That is why corporations still fight over territory, and why the Colony Dream is such a useful promise.
The First Corporate War
History + Fiction2068–2074: a spat over espionage that ended with all of Brazil sold.
The first war between companies had no ideology. It started with a theft and escalated one retaliation at a time.
1. The espionage.Halcyon Orbital, the second miner to reach the asteroids, got there too fast. In 2068 OmniTerra found out it had stolen the orbital capture system used on the First Asteroid. 2. The sanction. OmniTerra announced: whoever works with Halcyon does not work with me. Suppliers, banks and clients had to pick a side, and the market split into two blocs. That split is the first sketch of a world divided into ESTEMPs. 3. The sabotage. Diverted cargo, downed systems, accidents on building sites. 4. The advance. Mining space means launching rockets, and the best places to do it are near the equator [3]. Halcyon secretly bought land around Alcântara, in Maranhão, and sabotaged OmniTerra launches. 5. The escalation. When that came out, the two companies' private security forces clashed in northern Brazil. Each answer was bigger than the last.
In 2074 Halcyon went bust, and OmniTerra bought the wreckage, Alcântara included. Brazil, in debt and too weak to refuse, became OmniTerra territory. Only the Federal District was left out, because it had nothing anyone wanted (see The Brasília REGEST).
Kuro-Tech sold weapons to both sides throughout the war. The "pacification weapons" it is known for were born there.
The Corporate Quarantine: after the war, hiring someone from the other side meant importing a spy.
The idea that a company can have an army, a border and an enemy, like a country.
The Corruption Gold Rush
Fiction2080–2100: when the civil service sold whatever was left.
When it became clear that the states were going to shrink, the people working in them did the maths. Between 2080 and 2100, ministers, judges, inspectors and directors of state companies used the chaos to sell deals, licences, land and data to the corporations, and earned a place inside them in return.
Many of today's senior executives descend from those officials. That is why the bureaucracy of the ESTEMPs looks like a government office: it was built by people who came from one.
The REGESTs got the worst. Whatever made a profit was sold; what was left is what nobody wanted to buy (see The twenty REGESTs).
Corruption became company culture. In the ESTEMPs, rules apply to everyone except those important enough (see The pyramid).
Forgotten files. Contracts from that era, like the one that gives Brasília its water (see The Brasília REGEST), are still in force because nobody bothered to cancel them.
The Great Dismissal of the Djibouti Triangle
History + Fiction2111: the century's greatest trauma, with the name of a procedure.
The Afar Triangle, at the mouth of the Red Sea, is one of the lowest regions on the planet: Lake Assal lies 155 metres below sea level [4]. Next to it runs the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, one of the most important shipping lanes in the world [5]. In 2111, the two met.
The region was home to Great Rift Holdings collaborators, with ports run by Thalassa Corp. After a structural collapse in the ports, Thalassa calculated that it was cheaper to sink the region than to rebuild it. It opened a canal and let the sea into the depression. The sums had an extra benefit: flooded land becomes sea, and the sea is Thalassa's.
To protect their own markets from the crisis, the two neighbours responded. Petro-Vanguard poisoned the coast across the strait; Great Rift levelled and poisoned the inland side. Millions of people died, recorded as "acceptable collateral damage".
Seconds before the flood, every resident received a termination notice. Technically they were dismissed before they died, so no ESTEMP answers for homicide. The flooded region appears on corporate maps as the Gulf of the Dismissal.