History

The following is a time line explaining the history of Dieselpunk Devolution. It's an essential step in understanding how the world came to be, and what it is now. Take it in at your leisure, or read it all at once.

Pre-1911, the alternate history of this world is identical to that of ours.

1911 – While studying special relativity and the relationship between space and time, Albert Einstein creates a functional time machine, capable of taking the user to any date throughout its existence. Before using it, however, a future version of himself arrives through the device, having brought with him a collection of technological plans and scientific breakthroughs. He offers them up to his former self, on the single condition that he too will travel back to this date and repeat the same offer.

1913 – After selling the majority of the plans to major and growing businesses across the globe, Einstein begins to finance his own company with the remainder of the technology. EinsTech is born and specializes in robotics and mobile computers, quickly dominating the economy as a major corporation.

1915 – Several other major corporations are born from the future technology, rising to power in world commerce. The major competitors include Ford Motors, Kawasaki Industrial, and Bavarian Motor Works. Other companies would see success on a global scale much like them.

1916 – With the time travel that occurred five years ago now a publicized and critical event, precautions are taken to ensure that the capabilities are not abused by world governments. The original device is reduced to its components and spread across the aforementioned corporations and EinsTech itself, to ensure that it won't be used again until it is to send the information back in time once more.

1917 – Government officials globally begin privatizing their affairs. The success of corporations like EinsTech encourages more and more nations to accept capitalism as a solution to both financial and political hardship. At a time where many nations would be suffering the effects of World War 1, the world is instead seeing a time of peace through intellectual revolution. Steel and munitions manufacturer Krupp Industries, anticipating WW1 to escalate, negligently buys out several smaller companies specializing in artillery and naval warfare.

1920 – As a gesture of positive reform, many European nations begin to disband their armed forces. The result is a series of Private Military Companies rising out of the former armies. It is in this way that many countries are liberated of their formal military, while still employing PMCs to enforce justice where it needed.

1922 - To make up for revenue lost at the end of the first World War, Krupp Industries begins developing vehicular arms and other militant products, with the PMCs as their target consumer. This leads to the purchase of even more competitors and facilities that, while rapidly expanding the corporation, leaves Krupp an unstable and disjointed organization, held together by a series of their own railroads throughout Europe.

1925 – EinsTech begins its first contract with a private military company; this will have been the first time a global corporation utilizes an armed force. Since they are capable of paying more then governments, whose only source of finance is taxation, the trend of PMCs being hired by larger corporations is born.

1928 – With an interest in using time travel to advance their own businesses, several corporations initiate an armed conquest to recover rival companies' time machine components. PMCs are hired for both defensive and offensive purposes, and the first venture into corporate warfare begins. Because they are unable utilize any formal militaries of their own, nations caught in the crossfire are helpless, and battles fought in the streets go unpunished. Law enforcement becomes the task of the PMCs themselves, with the laws being dictated however they want.

1930 - To help protect their massive business from rival corporations, Krupp Industries not only outsources to the PMCs themselves, but also funds their own internal security force. Due to the strong monopoly they hold on the steel market, they remain a primary target for other major corporations while unwittingly possessing a share in the time machine conflict as well, a lost component hidden among their vast number of facilities.

1936 – The Armenian metropolis of Aushaven becomes the site of an armed conflict between PMCs contracted to each major corporation. The event is much more publicized then those before it due to the urban setting and strong retaliation from Armenian citizens. With civilian militias formed to combat the militant intrusion, the result is a long and extensive series of battles fought there that transform the urban sprawl into a city-wide war zone. The Aushaven War is one that many believe will dictate the final victor of the decade long conflict between corporations and themselves, as well as the nations that suffer.

1937 – The present year during the roleplay. The Aushaven War is still an active and heated conflict among most PMCs, though outside of it the majority of the world is still operating much as it did before.

1950 – The year that Einstein's future-counterpart originally traveled from. It is also the year by which the time machine must be reassembled and used to reinstigate the technological and social revolution that started in 1911.