Editing Magipunk:Setting (section)

=== The Modern Day ===

Generations have now passed since the discovery of Passion. The dominance of the Church-Mills and the Alliances is complete. The cities of the human world are now vast, sprawling affairs, filled with hastily erected, shoddy buildings that house uncounted hordes of uneducated, illiterate peasants who work for the Church-Mills or the production lines of the Alliances. These cities stink with the byproducts of the various processes, of the tides of humanity, and hum with magical potency. Urban sprawl, and the attendent social problems, has come to the world. 

At the same time that magical advances have fueled social and physical changes, people have been hard-pressed to keep up. The social stratification of the feudal world has been changed, but not broken: still, 5% of the population controls well over 95% of the wealth. The children of peasants have little opportunity to legitimately advance in the world, sending an increasing number into lives of crime. 

But the situation is none-too-good even for those at the stop of the social ladder. The masses cannot be contained forever, and the pace of the continuing changes in the state of the art work against cozy bureaucratic power structures. In a world where every spell is obsolete a year after it's created, where every factor of society is different from what it was a generation ago, is a world that belongs to the youth. As profound as the changes that wracked the world have been, what's coming is greater. 

And then there's the prophecies of doom. Even the thoroughly corrupt modern Churches can not ignore the coming end of an Age, as cults spring up among the lower class and the old faiths die.