Cbox started plotting again, so this is a summary of many peoples' ideas.

We were talking about introducing a (NPC) anti-mutant church, somewhat comparable to the Westboro Baptists. The main church would be a non-violent hate group that does pickets and protests and preaching and such, and preaches that God is angry with mutants for existing and with humans for allowing mutants to exist (and so on; exact beliefs weren't discussed, apart from being anti-mutant and extreme). Then there would then be a smaller splinter church that thought the nonviolence wasn't active enough and formed a new church with the same beliefs, but that encourages the use of violence. Or, the main/only church would have a secret subgroup ('of the pure' or similar) that does the violent things that the church can't officially endorse (and that some members would object to if they knew about it). Or, a main-church-run violent branch that masquerades as a splinter church. Basically, the idea is that the majority are nonviolent, but a subgroup uses violence.

Also, this is not supposed to be the same as or related to the one that existed in the Registration plot or any canon versions.

We discussed names, but didn't pick one. Most ideas were based on something understated and playing off of Westboro Baptists (Eastside Baptists, Northboro Church, Marlboro Baptists because Miles was involved in planning this), something egotistical and relating to purity or righteousness (Saviors of Mankind, Church/Servants of the Pure/Saved, East Side River Church of Jesus Christ; these would probably require checking that they're not a real church's name) or amusing acronyms (God's Allies Seeking Salvation was an attempt at A, S and S, something using A, R and C or A, R and K were also attempted). If there is a main church and a splinter church (or something that pretends to be one), they'd probably need two names.

Ideas for the splinter group included:
--Them having an Adapted who could 'purify sinners'
--Them having mutants who believe that they are not mutants, but 'blessed by God to do His work eliminating mutants/spreading the light of revelation' (these could also be in the main church, depending on their ability).
--One or more people who will follow around 'target' mutants to learn what their weaknesses are (either in their mutation, or psychologically).
--They could also kidnap and brainwash (or in some other way control) mutants into obeying them, to be used against other mutants.

All these were kind of tossed out and not really discussed, though, so need more of that.


Specific plot-related ideas:
--They'd be perfect for causing trouble in the riots.
--Forte's return involved Allison and Aura being kidnapped (which is still in progress) by a group that fits the splinter group's description, depending on which if any of the tossed out ideas we go with.
--I've said Persi belongs to an unnamed extreme mutant-hating church; having that be the bigot cult would amuse me (though probably not affect anyone else, really).
--Any time characters need something to react to they can meet one of these, either preaching at them how evil they are, or trying to get them to join the church, or harassing someone else, etc.

Ideas from/discussion included Cold Steel, Emerald, Miles, Forte, Aura, Clyde, Serena, and WereCat.

Just tossing my 2 cents in the plot pot here but this would be an interesting way of showing something more than just mass hysteria resulting from the riots. While that is the point of the riots, when people are hysterical, they tend to want to follow someone and a church of this magnitude would be a perfect follow up.

This could also be a way for people to get involved with the riot plotline that might not want to get involved in violence, if the main group did protests completely without violence, similar to stage 2 of the plot.

We are all still in stage 1 but this might just help give an extra kick to the plotline. Showing that not only do some police officers are against the mutants (no big surprise here, we haven't exactly been the kindest to the NYPD) but a religious group as well (one that has nothing to do with a certain unicorn ). It might be interesting to see some of the mutants questioning beliefs and the like.

Another church...? It would be Sebastian´s church all over again... maybe you should change the institution for another one.

It would be a "church" because of religious practices but with people actively protesting and actively doing bad things it would be vastly different. In the grand scheme of "Human VS Mutant" Sebastian's church didn't really do that much.

This would be an actively practicing church that want to "Heal/cleanse" mutants of their demon powers. or repent for their sins of mutanthood" not making them gods among men like Sebastian did. They want everyone to be saved and be cleansed, even the poor souls of these damned mutants whether they want to be saved or not.

*stamps Fish's seal of approval on idea*

Sadly all I have to offer is church names at this point: New York's United Temple of Salvation (NUTS)
Assembly Reaching for Christ (ARC)

Interesting idea. Anyway I've got an acronym for ya.

Savior in Nazareth (SIN)

Alternately you could add Assembly to the end and get (SINA)

Emerald makes some interesting points. I can see this group being troublesome for a lot of different groups on MRO. The cops wouldn't like them, but they'd have to deal with it. The X-men couldn't really put a stop to it. They'd have to react nonviolently. If they wanted to stand up to them without getting arrested, the best they could do would be nonviolent protest. As for the Order... heh. We talked about this in the cbox tonight. It'd be very difficult for such a group to last the week in Order territory. And if they annoyed Syn and Lenna, something might happen to ruin the organization's dreams. For the sake of the argument, and the plot, we need to find some ways around this.

If they stayed out of Order (physical) territory, would that work, at least for the nonviolent ones?

Or what we could do is have the violent ones go to the order, showing that the group as a whole as a natural threat and while we all know of orders massive amounts of power, this group could overwhelm them on a political level (Lawyers, politicians and everything) and perhaps maybe a physical level with the violent group.

We have been needing a group that can take on the order other than the X-men, the violent sector of the church would be a perfect example. For the mutants, Have adapted or mutants that actually negate or temporarily disable powers as their powers. What about their combats skills? Make these god warriors some bad boys who are on or even above the level of the order as well as the X men. If we make them a threat on both fronts they will be a hell of a lot more intimidating and won't be obvious push overs for the more violence prone members of the respective groups.

This was it shows that everyone can be beaten, outsmarted and out fought, making everything threatened by them as a whole. This is what I was pondering with the group, to make an enemy that actually takes some effort to be fought and can't be beaten in a single solo post by our stronger characters. They can even know the weaknesses or something like that.Not only that, but our respective groups can even lose a few of these fights whether politically or physically and while it's great to have our group run about and win because it's easy to win against a bunch of npcs this can be a new aspect of roleplay to explore to maybe have them actually lose a few times. Politically wise, if these guys get huge support from the public and the government this could always give a bunch of the X's the "What world am I fighting for" kind of thing and maybe if they get beaten in a physical fight maybe members of the order could question The "Homo Superior" thing. The whole aspect of it leaves so much room for character growth and really good,rich roleplay.

That's just my two cents on it.

While I'd suggest avoiding mutants that suppress powers, Adapteds could work. So could avoidance of Order territories, or making some people powerful. They don't have to be powerful, mutant-wise. Political clout could make it hard for the Order to simply assassinate them and make it look like an accident. And if someone was there to fill the void every time, it'd be an endless swarm.

I'd like to hear other peoples thoughts on this. I think this could be pretty interesting.

While I'm pretty sure there are many powerful mutants in MRO, there are also many who are vulnerable to simple things like a bullet or a bomb. The cult's violent enforcers could simply be well armed and not just with your basic gun or machine gun, but also all sorts of nasty gadgets, like flamethrowers, tear gas, blades, vicious looking clothes and masks that cover them from head to toe, not letting people see their faces or even skin colors, gas masks, night vision goggles or many other gadgets that, while not exactly easy to come by, they exist in real life and and are not exactly high tech.

A guy wearing a suit that covers his entire body cuts it off from physical contact. Gas mask protects from gas based powers. Kevlar provides armor and resilience, radio facilitates communication and goons don't necessarily need to be incompetent. It's one of the things I liked about Legend of Korra. Without spoiling it for anyone (I haven't seen the whole thing!) their bad guy goons were quite effective and found workarounds to dealing with super powered beings.

Hell, that angle could be one of the pillars of the cult. Humans adapt. They use tools, technology and their creativity to overcome their obstacles, they don't rest on their laurels, always leaning on a mutation to save their neck. Mutants are a genetic disease to be expunged, not the future of mankind.

And if the church ends up having an acronym that spells 'ARC', then their secret enforcers could be their 'Archangels', removing mutant abominations from the face of the earth through fire and bullets.

Any human with enough training, smarts and weapons can be a challenge for many of our mutants.

So, as long as the nonviolent group stays nonviolent and out of the Order's area, it sounds like they'll mostly be able to survive?


For the violent group:

In a thread Aura and I have with Forte, Aura and Allison fight and lose to and get kidnapped by a mysterious group that beats them by having a brainwashed/mind controlled/it's not really clarified mutant whose skin is invulnerable. (They also lose several humans first.) That group wasn't really expanded on beyond 'mysterious group that kidnaps mutants' but they could easily be part of this, or just their techniques (powerful guns, some psychological manipulation, the brainwashed mutant) could be used.

One of the suggestions was that this group would stalk mutants (either specific targets, or just any mutant they found) to learn that mutant's weaknesses before they attack them. If the NPCs are played as knowing and exploiting mutants' weaknesses, that could help them.

And not all information would need to come from stalking; some of the church's members could be police, detectives, journalists, or others with access to information or a justification to look for it. Even knowing what a mutant's power is would be pretty helpful in some cases (never promise not to hurt Drew, or anyone else when around him). Or someone who shows up at the Mansion 'hi, I'm working on a book about mutants that's supposed to show that mutants aren't all-powerful so they won't be so scary to people, can you tell me about your abilities?' Probably not everyone would fall for that, but some might.

(I'm also now imagining X men getting kidnapped, or just general Mansion residents with X ideals, and then being rescued by Order members. That would cause some interesting drama.... Separately, I could also see the Order working to either reveal the connection between the violent and nonviolent sides, or manufacture one if they're genuinely different groups.)

I think the church would definitely seek out Adapteds as 'blessed by God to cure the sinners,' or something. So they may not know what they are, but the church having a disproportionately large representation of Adapteds seems believable to me (a group that universally, unquestionably adores you and views you as a messenger from God is kind of hard to resist). They wouldn't all be adapteds of course, or even most of them, and at least some adapteds probably would limit themselves to nonviolence, but they could also help protect the nonviolent protests and such by being around (as well as, should a mutant try to attack and fail due to an adapted being present, make the cult think they're 'protected by God to do his work/spread his message' or something like that). So I imagine they'd drastically reinterpret what adapteds are, but having them seems believable.

The armor and gadgets seem the opposite of what the Westboro baptist church is all about. If this is supposed to be based on that group, the second they got themselves armed and dangerous, I feel like they'd lose the protections the law and their lawyers have. It'd be a bit much. Just my thoughts.

Yeah. The way I've been imagining it, at least, is that the main/official church is the Westboro-Baptist-like one, including the nonviolence (and legal immunity).

The armor and guns and such would be a violent splinter group that broke off of the main one (and yeah, not really Westboro Baptist based anymore, beyond being bigots), probably due to being unhappy with the nonviolence, since that's the main difference. (Potentially they could also have more of a belief in 'you can be forgiven for your sin of being a mutant if you join our side and do whatever we tell you to,' but it probably wouldn't make much difference.) Personally, I think such a group existing (either as a genuine splinter, or as secretly part of the main group, and officially claimed to be a splinter to protect the main group's legal defenses, as well as keep the people in the main group who would object to violence being used) is realistic, as well as providing plot potential that the nonviolent group doesn't.

It would be possible to keep the nonviolent group and have no violent one (or not as a group; violent individuals might be easier to keep the Order from killing off the nonviolent group?), or have the violent one be genuinely, completely separate from the nonviolent bigot church; maybe as a gang that are trying to gain power by controlling mutants, or whatever. Regardless, the violent and nonviolent groups aren't the same thing, at the very least legally, so the nonviolent group would be able to deny any relation and keep their legal defenses.

First of all, while it would be funny to give our rabid anti-mutant group a backronym like "SIN" or "NUTS," I honestly don't think that these people would ever choose a name like that for themselves. Maybe it could be a joke shared by mutants in the know who aren't members, or something like that.

While it's all well and good to go around killing mutants (if you're one of these jerks, anyway), I think the group's goals would be better served if they worked in the shadows to combat the Order's and the X-Men's efforts to change public opinion on the mutant issue. Their ultimate goal would be creating a social situation in which murdering mutants becomes socially acceptable. Any intermediate (eg. concentration camps, like back in the Registration) would also be welcomed with open arms. Things that our bigot group would do to this end could include:

* Disrupting the M trade (Because mutant powers are evil, and having a lot of people running around who identify with mutants without actually having an X-Gene is serious trouble)
* Finding a way to get their own stable supply of M (Because damn, that stuff could be useful, especially for black flag operations in which the members are pretending to be mutants)
* Assassinating politicians and community leaders publicly, while pretending to be extremely radical mutants. Some of these politicians could even be pro-mutant, but the fake-radical-mutants could publicly announce that these pro-mutant politicians didn't go far enough.
* Generally causing pointless unprovoked chaos while pretending to be mutants. This should involve a lot of civilian casualties, injuries, et cetera, and it should happen in some of the most mutant-friendly, human-populated places in town, so that "our less perceptive fellow human beings can wake up and see mutantkind for the cancer that it truly is."
* If a member of the group is ever caught and interrogated, they can (falsely) say that they're working under the orders of activists who would really never endorse assassinations / whatever. For example, a captured member of Team Bigotry might claim they were working under X-Man orders when they killed that politician or blew up that train.
* That reminds me, they could try vilifying the X-Men. One ploy could involve a man who goes to the police with a story about something terrible, yet difficult to verify, that the X-Men are doing, but he'll tell the police he's "afraid that telling them would cost him his life," or something. Later, the anti-mutant guys could actually kill him, or at least fake his death really well. This would make the police suspicious, and if the whole affair turned into a news story, it would be great.
*Like the Order, this splinter group would want to make the riots worse, so that law enforcement will be too worn-down to stop any anti-mutant mob violence.

Long story short, the way I imagine this bigot group operating, they'll spend a lot of time pretending to be a bunch of mutant terrorists, in order to make everyone else realize what can happen when you allow mutants to live peacefully in your society. Any terrorist act they perpetrate would be carefully calculated so that it doesn't accomplish any kind of pro-mutant goal (in fact, it might thwart several pro-mutant initiatives), but it would make more people hate mutants, and give new life to the anti-mutant movement. Remember what terrorism did to public opinions of the Muslim community? It would be kind of like that, only with the intent of creating backlash.

This kind of thing shouldn't be the splinter group's entire deal, but doing something like this makes them much more of a threat to the mutant community than anything else I can think of. It's a lot easier to wipe out an entire group of people when they're a hated minority, after all. The violent splinter group might be able to characterize themselves as heroes, when they're actually going around, not using any X-gene-related powers and killing mutants. In fact, the pretending-to-be-evil-mutants part might be a secret even to most of the rest of the splinter group. Only those members who understand the importance of using every means necessary to sway public opinion could be trusted to know about that part.

Also, regarding the use of actual mutants in the splinter group, I think they would be able to recruit the mutant children of cult members, or members of other organizations similar to the Church of Humanity. There might be camps in the MROverse for mutant children similar to the "pray away the gay" camps or whatever those hellholes are called in the real world. Successfully indoctrinated mutants from such places might believe that God will forgive them or something if they go along with the organization's wishes. Kidnapping and brainwashing random other mutants seems a bit too complicated, unless they have a mutant or M-user on hand who can simplify that process for them. These mutants would be great fodder for a fake mutant terrorist organization bent on villifying mutankind.