About Dark Metal Canon: The following information is canon for general, collaborative purposes. It is considered to be the default, and it is assumed to be in effect when roleplaying on the communal grid. Individual troupes may determine what "reality" is for their purposes, so other scenarios may be in effect within those groups.
In the year 2000, the actions of warring supernaturals brought their existence to the attention of humanity in ways that they were unable to conceal. The resulting world war caused global havoc, decimating populations, destroying countries, and causing massive environmental damage; the end of the old world.
LATMA (the Los Angeles-Tijuana Metropolitan Area) rose from this destruction, an overcrowded and caste-bound megacity on the west coast of North America, ruled by a Consortium of corporate powers - a corporatocracy in which citizenship depends on one's allegiance to a corporation, and lack of citizenship means no rights at all. While the actual extent of the Consortium's strength and reach is the subject of rumor (which they deliberately enhance), it acts as a faceless dictatorship protecting its population, providing for their needs in a territory surrounded by the wastelands of its former country. (LATMA operates on the revised Old World of Darkness system.)
LATMA is a city of new growth and untouched ruins. A dozen blocks of bombed-out wreckage may exist just outside a wall enclosing an ultra-Bright sector where the cyber-enhanced wealthy live in luxury, and even the wreckage is better than the ruined, lifeless desert wasteland that surrounds most of the city. It's a land of ashes, and what grows out of it (whether real or metaphorical) is sometimes astonishingly beautiful, but more often mutant horrors.
Order 47, arguably the Consortium's primary concern, declared all supernatural beings to be illegal; they can (and should) be shot on sight. There are insinuations-- generally ignored-- that there are supernaturals working for the Consortium to whom this doesn't apply.
MetSec, Metropolitan Security, is the Consortium's militaristic watchdog, provided with high-tech equipment and training making them capable of bringing down the O47s (although naturally the Bright areas where the most important citizens live tend to have the best-equipped and fastest security response, and the Dark ones tend never to see them at all). The supernaturals have learned that humanity is now well-enough equipped that the failure of their secrecy puts them in imminent threat of extinction; cybernetics, aerodynes, the Matrix, and Reboot are all tools humanity is putting to creative use in their anti-supernatural war.
Other domains have also formed out of the global wreckage, some taking other approaches to the problem; the enormous, sprawling empire of the Hind-Manchu has enlisted the Beast Courts and other supernaturals as full citizens, its San Francisco enclave currently making the LATMA consortium nervous, while the New Aztec Empire (the NAE) looms to the south and reportedly serves brutal supernatural masters presenting themselves as gods. Africa is a war zone; Europe is a disorganized collection of fiefdoms, and so on for the rest of the surviving world. There are also other enclaves in North America, such as PACNW (Pacific Northwest) and NewBos (New York-Boston). (The NewBos game grid is in development, and hosts the New World of Darkness system.)