Boston, Massachusetts, somewhen in the Reagan Era...
Beantown isn't the place that it will become. Its seedy, dirty, dangerous and ruled by the corrupt, the immoral and the vicious. Even the water is dirty and thick with chemical run-off. They say you have to wait a while for trickle-down economics to work, but water can't trickle through sludge without ending up just as nasty.
But while The Hub lacks in cleanliness and kindness it doesn't lack for magic. Just like the world the uninitiated go through every day, Boston is a crossroads of magic and supernatural shit. Every kind of mystic critter from the gribbly to the great can be found near by, sucking power from the dozens of ley-lines and hundreds of intersections and making themselves fat off the the misery and misfortune of mortals.
Out of those hundreds of intersections of three or more lines are a dozen or so that rank well above the others. Places where half-a-dozen or more intersect and form a confluence, a nexus. Everyone knows that ley lines are powerful juju, but the mojo of the nexi is something else and everybody wants a taste.
Most of the big groups have one, that's a big part of what makes them big players. The White Council sits on one in Cambridge, the nastiest kind of Vampire has one up north in Salem and the second nastiest brand of leech, the Red, have one out west toward Framingham. There's a big one in Quincy on the south shore too but that's got yet another type of vampire all over it and they don't entertain guests.
Then there's the one under the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, but last band of monsters that tried to use it learned why the first thing Angels always say when they don't want to fight is 'be not afraid.' Because when they do throw down, they don't leave anything behind but ashes.
There others are out on islands, out it the woods, or just seem to be unlucky. Like that one over at World's End in Hingham. Great view, great fishing, bad news.
Anyway, that's what its like in the Birthplace of the Revolution. Basically what its always been like since the colonists first showed up and fucked it up. If you still want to make your way here, then good luck, kid.
You're gonna need it.