The Streets... The Streets of EcatombCheriArk are like the veins pumping the lifestream to the rest of the body... And We are that lifestream... We are the blood... Like a sleeping behemot, She lets us play around in Her womb... But we can just do that: play until we are allowed to do so...
The great Warlocks, politicians, mad scientists, prophets, corporatives, businessmen and everything else can very well go on pretending they are in control: anyone who really lives on the Streets knows better. EcatombCheriArk knows no master... So much trembling with magical energies, business routs and dreams, the City much long ago earned from whatever kind of central government we have the absolute indipendence... It was more like everyone just turned to look away hoping this place would disappear, though... But it didn't... Instead, it kept attracting more and more people; some were chasing some dream, some were after a big score, some after knowledge, some wanted power and some simply wanted money (or more money)... Some just came out of curiosity and could never escape Her enticing charm... Like a moth drawn to a deadly flame... Such flame is so powerful that we all forgot which was the reason for coming so close in the first place... We are now just dancing around Her, oblivious to anything but Her sweet dance. But deep inside everyone knows what is the beacon that displays EcatombCheriArk uniqueness and mistery...

We are all sitted on a powder keg ready to blow... This is a commonplace running rampant these days in EcatombCheriArk... Everybody has a story about how this city is going to show us its special qualities in a way nobody is going to forget... Of course, in any other place but this, these would be called fools and taken to psychiatric detention, but here... Here we know that the city had... Has a purpose... And a dark one indeed... EcatombCheriArk was made to Seal something... This is no bed time horror story... This is a proven fact: every single piece of this city was designed to be a magical vessel for a gigantic ritual... Just by looking at how the Streets cross themselves you can tell this: the main streets we cross and follow in our everyday routine were thought to form the shape of a great magical symbol, able to gather, store or abjure enormous amounts of energy... EcatombCheriArk was built in this exact place and in this exact way to fullfill its special and undeniably crucial duty...
And here our problems start... the city of EcatombCheriArk is incredibly old... So old that nobody remembers exactly who built it and how...and neither there are records from that time... we are of course talking of something like tens of thousands of years in the past, I suppose but... anyhow... the biggest thing that now everybody is left guessing it's not How it was built... but Why...
Hundreds of septs sprang up everywhere and any moment in a city so undeniably linked to supernatural events, but all of them wanted a differrent view of what the Seal was ment to do... of what the City was ment to do... and everybody started preaching their own prophecy... soon... nobody knew who was telling the truth anymore... And nowdays we are not in a better condition... 
Still the Seal is beyond the reach of even the most accomplished wizards and of the wealthiest corporations... or perhaps they know, but they aren't telling: how are we, the common folks, supposed to know?... We are just left here, listening to the street preaching of septs, churches and self proclaimed messiah, trying to glean what are we sitting upon... Meanwhile, our struggle for everyday life keeps us too busy to ask too many questions... That is, if you are not as stubborn and foolish as me...
But nobody seems to really know, and for every answer you come up with, there are just two new questions waiting for you... It really seems the secret was lost a very long time ago, and there is no way of getting it back.... This sometimes makes "normal" people a bit happier... It's one of the last things that the ultrarich corporations can't brag about: they are as clueless as us and, for what we know, their ass is as in danger as anyone else's... They won't figure it out until something happens... Which leads us to our most grevious problem...
Although the prophecies are budding here and there without any particular accord about What will happen, they surely agree on one point... When... And, in the case you were asking, it's gonna be soon... very soon... You can say that it is just a plan from the corps to divert people attention from their businesses, or the growing mass of hungry and angry and armed, you can say that it is just a way for churches to earn their living on the gullibility of the poors... You can say anything you want, but from how things are going every night down in the streets, from the raising bodycount, violence, corruption, plain vileness and every other decandent face our society shows us every night a bit more, these just seem more and more the rigth times for a good deserved apocalypse...
So the Seal stays there, fueling the phobias and concerns of the people of EcatombCheriArk... but, usually, the children of the night care little... The young men and women who live on the edge never think of tomorrow... and so, yet again, EcatombCheriArk buried secret is ignored... or taken for granted... or accepted blindly...just like the fact that rain falls from the sky... but not everyone shakes in fear or ignores the Prophecy... some actually call for it, like a blessed tidal wave to end all pain and injustice... to level all the unfair differences that chew through the lives of the so many poors...
But the Prophecy does not limit itself to affecting us mentally, it has several Physical requirements as well...

The city layout is kinda sacred... the main streets are built to form powerful symbols of magic... were they to be changed or distorted, the power of the Seal would be broken... And even a total moron like me can guess that it wouldn't be a smart move to make... Same goes for the city bounduaries... EcatombCheriArk is perfectly circular in shape, confined within some of the strongest walls that magic, steel and prayers could ever build... Even the downtown area... the corporative area, that is... is surrounded by another set of walls, another perfect circle in which a "pentacle" made of streets is inscribed... This has cosequences that go beyond the simply stilistic relevance, however... City walls beyond which you can't build (without probably blowing the whole world to smitherins, that is) mean a fixed urban area through whatever time the city can live... which, by now, is quite a bit... and demographic growth won't slow down just because you put walls around it and "special" laws haven't proven any good... So the population grows and the space remains the same... The result is fairly obvious, isn't it? These days, even with archologies and magical help, EcatombCheriArk is seriously overpopulated: the streets are forever crawling with a neverending river of people and many of them do not have any place to sleep at night... Many would kill for a house... and in fact many do just that... As you can expect, overcrowding leads to poverty, poverty to desperation and desperation easily escalates into crime... Crime usually influences even high places in society and economy in the form of corruption and bad government... which in turn generate more poverty and... Well, now you can well see why everybody is so damn sure that World End is at the door...

Streets are so crowded that transport is a major concern these days: in any time of the day, using any kind of land vehicle is totally impossible without injuring hundreds of people, in any street, no matter how large or big... So the administration simply forbid the use of any such land vehicle... The sky seemed the ideal solution, but soon there were too many dumbasses darting above the heads of "our dear citiziens" that, as it was in ages past for land movement, accidents and car crashes became quite normal... But if you can tolerate a car crash if it happens reasonably far from where you are standing, when it happens above your head, there is no "reasonably far" place, since it is inevitably going to crush down on you or someone else... So, they turned to magical instant transportation, as they call teleport these days... but it was soon clear that when used "en-masse", this system led to a dangerous destabilization in the surrounding time and space... So what do you tink they did? You guessed it: they forbid it... Of course all of this doesn't apply if you are rich enough to pay for the ultraluxurious fees that allow all of the above mentioned benefits... But we are talking big bucks here, so don't worry, you don't have to sweat to get it... you are either born with the money to earn this privilege or you will never see any of it....
So, do we poor bastards have to go on foot across this Megalopolis so that rich sons of a bitch can enjoy our skies and space time? Of course not! The Administration didn't want a riot this bad, so EcatombCheriArk is literally blanketed with public transporation... Most notably our subway lines and our monorail train...
These are marvels of Magic and Science fused together, which provide a capillar service to every part of the city with minimal fees waged on the passengers... everybody uses one of these four lines to move about EcatombCheriArk and they are quite secure too...
They say, in fact, that all of them were built in respect with the city layouts and the need for magical protection and they too serve as a protection for the Seal and with superstition running high these days, nobody dares ruining or committing crime on them, since doom could befall on the criminals... Besides, everybody feels quite good still having something that can be called public and isn't owned by the corporations... so I guess not even the dumbest shithead wants to see his last piece of trophy in the war against the corps ruined just for fun... In that case... They would have won again, wouldn't they?... and nobody wants Them to win these days...

Money is still what makes the world go round. Although in the slums barter is gaining popularity, money is still the way real business is paid by. Corporations pay in money, The Administration pays in money, Street Gangs Kill For Money. Credits are the Currency in EcatombCheriArk. The system is fully informatic: there are no coins, all the money comes in the form of a virtual account hold by The Administration in their Intruder-Proof Databank. Corporations also hold their employees accounts, although it could be more correct to say “own” their employees accounts. The Account holder distribute (freely) Credit-Keys, pen sized computers that are permanently connected to the Account Databanks: to pay your check in your local store, you just need to plug your Credit-Key in their CashManager™ and confirm the transaction via secret code and Karmic-Path validation. During private transactions, Credit-Keys can be plugged to another Credit-Key to dump the money directly on the owner account. Obviously, all these transactions happen under the ever vigilant eye of The Administration (or the Corporations, in the case of corporative Credit-Keys). This means that every income is accurately registered in the system and there is little chance (which means “no chance”) to acquire money from unknown source. This was supposedly operated to reduce robbery and fraud crime rate: in fact, bank robbery is nothing more than a pale memory of the past (Informatic hacking is a commonplace these days, however). It seemed however that not everybody liked the fact of having their money incomes completely under the Administration check: mostly these were criminals, but at some point, even Corporations grew the need to pay their “co-operators” fees without leaving tracks of the transactions. To accomplish this, Corporations began to “sell” pre-paid Chips: essentially Credit-Keys that had no owner nor confirmations codes which contained a pre-set amount of money (paid to the reseller when you buy the Chip). This became a popular form of payment in the suburbs “where no one ask any question or stares long in your face” and an effective way to elude the account control operated by The Administration. This way, Credit Chips became a new form of coins, easily changing hand many times in a single night in the Slums…