Setting
Haven is a small town on the coast of Massachusetts, not far from Boston
and an easy commuting distance from Brown University. To most of the world
that is all it is, and even to most of the residents its not so different.
They have a few extra rules they live by, like dont venture out into the
forest alone and never go outside when its misty no matter what you hear.
But apart from these they live much as anybody else does.
For others though, for the members of the supernatural world Haven is
something entirely different. It is a place where one can cross between the
worlds, a waystation and the last one of its kind on earth. This makes it a
place of great import, where supernatural groups can use these connections
to gather valuable and powerful materials and goods from those other planes.
It is also where any threats from outside earth would first arrive, making
it an important fortress and beachhead should earth ever be attacked.
For these reasons it drew the interest of the three most powerful
supernatural organizations in the world, The Hand, The Order and The Temple.
These organizations all shared a common goal in holding Haven as a defensive
bastion, but also are all in competition over the resources that can be
obtained from it. Many attempts to strike an accord between them failed,
until finally they settled on a less diplomatic solution. The three
factions came together to work a great magic over the town, called Sanctuary
this magic protects anybody inside the town from serious harm by others.
And this protection is where the towns name derives, although not all are
equally protected and several ways to bypass the protection have since been
discovered. The spell allowed the factions to compete and conflict with
each other, without ever being at risk of weakening the forces they have set
to guard the earth from intrusion. After WWII when the three factions faded
into history, the town continued to be fought over by secretive supernatural
societies, making use of it in a similar way.
Others also found the town of interest, supernatural scholars and magical
practitioners came to experiment with the supernatural power to be found
there. Others came to make use of sanctuary to hold conferences or shady
meetings with those they couldn't otherwise trust. And the town drew the
attention of a criminal supernatural element as well. In Haven, with
sanctuary, enforcing supernatural law was almost impossible freeing up
certain types of criminals to do as they wished as long as they didn't need
to kill anyone.
When supernaturals fight, they usually do so in a shadow world, a darker
mimicry of our own called the nightmare. There they can conflict freely,
without ever being seen or noticed by the normal members of humanity.
A manipulation of the spaces between worlds called pathing, allows some
supernaturals and those they take with them to travel vast distances very
quickly. Due to the latent power of Haven pathing to and from it tends to
be a fair bit faster than elsewhere, and societies often deploy operatives
there for just that reason, wanting to take advantage of their ability to
quickly deploy to missions or conflicts around the globe.