It was the Turn Of The Century, when the world and it's peoples ushered along by a new age of advancement unveiled for themselves a truth: the Supernatural is real.
And as the years went by: Earth Unveiled.
Today, It's the Modern-Day: and life is largely just as we remember it.
People still go to their 9-5s, to school, to buy overpriced coffee, to fund fighting in foreign countries with overpriced coffee; all while tweeting "progressiveness" and "progress" from the comfort of their couch, with the convenience of a cameraphone. (which ironically, is made from the very exploitation their "against"). It's the same ol' Earth as we know it, with the same legends and lore, the same people and places, the same politics and powers, the same present and past: everyday life is just as we remember it being in the real world.
Beneath the surface though, things have changed: Conspiracy is afoot.
It's been two decades since the public became privy to the existence of the truly extraordinary and yet progress, atleast according to the public, is miniscule. The supernatural & super-science has been stratified by state-governments (The "Super-State"), commodified by corporations & celebrity charlatans (Paranormal Pop Culture), and cracked wide open by criminals & cults alike to squeeze whatever profit from the paranormal they can. In the modern-day, due to a variety of dynamic factors: the supernatural world has become less a science and more a spectacle, it's become a "controlled conspiracy" rather than a truth of the world to be unveiled to the public and it's people.
The supernatural has been spectacularized
By a modern-day paranormal pop culture: a complex web of paranormal personalities, platformers, politicians, and providers who exist to align the public to an agenda. An agenda which simply put: serves to keep the public from asking questions, to keep them from the search for truth, to keep them from seeking out the supernatural and/or unveiling conspiracies. Conspiracies, which are, the core of Earth Unveiled: they are the mysteries at the root of the world which the powers-at-be and similarly secret-societies have long struggled to sustain.
Nobody doubts the supernatural exists:
But thanks to the purchasing of the public's perception & position by the paranormal pop culture and it's patrons, people have their doubts when it comes to everything else about the supernatural. The public at-best cosigns conspiracy away to those responsible for covering it up as they go about every-day life but beyond at-best: there are those amongst the public who go past a mere passing interest in the paranormal. These are your fringes: people who stockpile weapons, join up with paramilitary groups, pursue "monster-hunting", become indoctrinated into cults, pursue parasocial relations with paranormal personalities, or otherwise wind up commiting direct-action persecution of the paranormal whenever their paranoia becomes too great.
Seekers of the truth are smirched, only covered as they become crack-pots well-off the deep-end.
As they are purposefully ignored by the paranormal pop culture, and sometimes even actively encouraged and/or incited by it into action. There exists a sizable portion of the world, some fraction of 1% of people, who possess actaul paranormal powers that defy the laws of psychics & reality: these are "The Gifted", "Supes", "Abhumans", the "Paranormal" people, and/or just about any other title one can conjure. The public is aware of their existence and so is the Super-State which some think created them in the first place: as they didn't begin to appear at-scale until just about a year after the turn of the century: at the beginning of the Global War on Terror.
Despite their short decade of "Superheroics": Supers today have become extraordinary escorts to the rich and/or powerful, servants of the Super-State, paranormal personalities of the para-pop culture, co-conspirators of criminal conspiracy- so forth.
They help to control the world: but their grip is slipping, cracks are forming.
And through the cracks an opportunity of a lifetime presents itself to a select few: as Earth Unveils