The X-men run missions and work together with the NYPD, striving to maintain a peaceful balance between humans and mutants. When it comes to a fight, they won't back down from protecting those who need their help.
Haven presents itself as a humanitarian organization for activists, leaders, and high society, yet mutants are the secret leaders working to protect and serve their kind. Behind the scenes they bring their goals into reality.
From the time when mutants became known to the world, SUPER was founded as a black-ops division of the CIA in an attempt to classify, observe, and learn more about this new and rising threat.
The Syndicate works to help bring mutantkind to the forefront of the world. They work from the shadows, a beacon of hope for mutants, but a bane to mankind. With their guiding hand, humanity will finally find extinction.
Since the existence of mutants was first revealed in the nineties, the world has become a changed place. Whether they're genetic misfits or the next stage in humanity's evolution, there's no denying their growing numbers, especially in hubs like New York City. The NYPD has a division devoted to mutant related crimes. Super-powered vigilantes help to maintain the peace. Those who style themselves as Homo Superior work to tear society apart for rebuilding in their own image.
MRO is an intermediate to advanced writing level original character, original plot X-Men RPG. We've been open and active since October of 2005. You can play as a mutant, human, or Adapted— one of the rare humans who nullify mutant powers by their very existence. Goodies, baddies, and neutrals are all welcome.
Short Term Plots:Are They Coming for You?
There have been whispers on the streets lately of a boogeyman... mutant and humans, young and old, all have been targets of trafficking.
The Fountain of Youth
A chemical serum has been released that's shaving a few years off of the population. In some cases, found to be temporary, and in others...?
MRO MOVES WITH CURRENT TIME: What month and year it is now in real life, it's the same for MRO, too.
Fuegogrande: "Fuegogrande" player of The Ranger, Ion, Rhia, and Null
Neopolitan: "Aly" player of Rebecca Grey, Stephanie Graves, Marisol Cervantes, Vanessa Bookman, Chrysanthemum Van Hart, Sabine Sang, Eupraxia
Ongoing Plots
Magic and Mystics
After the events of the 2020 Harvest Moon and the following Winter Solstice, magic has started manifesting in the MROvere! With the efforts of the Welldrinker Cult, people are being converted into Mystics, a species of people genetically disposed to be great conduits for magical energy.
The Pharoah Dynasty
An ancient sorceress is on a quest to bring her long-lost warrior-king to the modern era in a bid for global domination. Can the heroes of the modern world stop her before all is lost?
Are They Coming for You?
There have been whispers on the streets lately of a boogeyman... mutant and humans, young and old, all have been targets of trafficking.
Adapteds
What if the human race began to adapt to the mutant threat? What if the human race changed ever so subtly... without the x-gene.
Atlanteans
The lost city of Atlantis has been found! Refugees from this undersea mutant dystopia have started to filter in to New York as citizens and businessfolk. You may make one as a player character of run into one on the street.
Got a plot in mind?
MRO plots are player-created the Mods facilitate and organize the big ones, but we get the ideas from you. Do you have a plot in mind, and want to know whether it needs Mod approval? Check out our plot guidelines.
His whole body seemed to go stiff all over and his hand made itself into a fist in his lap. Apparently her vague story, even in its most diluted form, was enough to make people uncomfortable. Or angry. Rupert looked kind of angry. Not the kind where you explode and yell at people and hit things, it was the kind where every action, every word is planned with deliberate coldness. It was the scary kind of angry
>>>“Have the police caught him yet?”
Cold words, but their coldness wasn't aimed at her in particular. Katrina slowly shook her head. She hadn't even thought to tell the police. And she hadn't told anyone who would think to tell the police. There was no way that anyone could have caught him, because no one was even looking.
His voice was still gruff when he spoke again, insisting that she had to forgive the man who had done such terrible things to her. She had to forgive him, to keep being the person that she was. Otherwise, the green eyed man was still hurting her, changing her.
Had she already become a different person because of what had happened? She thought back to the last few weeks. She had sulked, brooded, and ignored her friends. Her mother had tried dragging her out of her isolation, but she had dragged her feet all the way. That wasn't who she wanted to be.
“I'm trying,” she answered softly, keeping her gaze guiltily on her hands in her lap. Rupert's next words surprised her into looking into his face again, though.
>>>“You’re a mutant.”
It sounded like an accusation, and from the way the word 'mutant' fit into his mouth, it was fairly obvious that he didn't particularly like mutants. One moment, he was pulling her closer with his words, concerned for her mortal soul; the next moment, he pushed her away again, rejecting an essential part of her identity.
After all she had shared with him, was the existence of one small gene out of the hundred and thousands that occupied space in her chromosomes enough to... enough to what? Break some bond of friendship or companionship that had formed between them? This man was a stranger and she had offered him a tiny little piece of her soul. If he wanted to shove it back in her face because she wasn't good enough for him, whose fault was it that she would be hurt? If she had learned anything from her experience earlier this summer, she should have already learned not to trust strangers.
“How do you know,” she couldn't help but wonder out loud. He sounded so certain, and yet, he couldn't be a psychic or he wouldn't have such disdain dripping from his accusations. Except, that wasn't the most important question. A better one was, “Is that a bad thing?”
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Nov 30, 2009 2:15:49 GMT -6
Haven
Member of Haven
Bi
822
9
Aug 29, 2018 17:15:00 GMT -6
Calley
>> “How do you know.”
Katrina might be looking at him, but Rupert was looking anywhere but at her: his eyes settled back on the cross at front, then skipped down to an empty pew with a scowl. Did he even try to explain? His name hadn’t seemed to strike any bells; she probably didn’t remember the dream. If she’d even had it. Just because Lee and Tarin remembered Alice and Raina remembered him didn’t mean the whole damn city had shared in the heart-warming experience. His lips worked for a moment—
>> “Is that a bad thing?”
—and then things got worse.
“No,” he blurted out forcefully, because this was Katrina Dumonde.
“Yes,” followed on its heels, because Katrina Dumonde was a mutant.
“Maybe. Damn it. You tell me.” His hand ruffled through his hair again, as if scratching out ticks. He looked at her again. He made himself look at her again. “The guy who did that to you—he was probably a human, right? Some humans are bad. I know that. It just sure as hell seems to me that as far as bad goes, your kind goes out of its way to take the cake. Half the fr—the muties I meet are killers; that’s the ones I meet, not the ones spouting about evolution as they trash downtown on CNN. But you—you’re different. Maybe. You were.”
His eyes skipped over to the empty pew again, as his voice lowered to an embarrassed mumble. “I had this dream, a few weeks back. I think one of your kind must have put it in my head—a lot of people I know had the same one. You were in it, Katrina.” Her name felt strange on his lips, like something living, or something waiting to be born.
He answered her second question first. Three times, in fact, before he gave up and asked for a hint. The trouble was she didn't know the answer either. She sat silent for a few moments while he elaborated on all the bad mutants that he knew. Some of the words striking rather close to home.
>>>“...Half the fr—the muties I meet are killers ”
How many really close friends did she have that were her age? Koga, Slate, Calley, Fausto... four. Out of those, Calley killed two people in a car accident. Fausto murdered his parents' killer and took her to the funeral. Half were already killers. Did that mean she, too, had a fifty-fifty chance of becoming a killer, too? Eeny meeny miney moe, her toes ticked back and forth under the pew.
>>>“But you—you’re different. Maybe. You were.”
She hoped she was different. Even in self defense, even if it was an accident, she didn't think that she could kill anyone.
You were? In a dream. He had dreamed about her before they had ever met. She had been good in the dream, different from other mutants. Lots of people had this dream. A few weeks back. It was a lot of information all at once, and it took her a few moments to put together all the pieces in her head.
“Were we friends in the dream?” Maybe that would be an indicator that could help them answer his first question. She examined his face again, searching for any sign that she might have had a dream about him, too. There was something about his face that seemed familiar, but it wasn't so much his features as the colored light dancing across them. Her face scrunched with concentration as she tried to remember back, to the time right before... right before all her dreams had become nightmares.
“Was it a good dream? I know... I've had a lot of nightmares recently,” she confessed. The nightmares were so sharply vivid that trying to remember ones that weren't painful or terrifying were harder to remember right now.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Dec 1, 2009 3:44:05 GMT -6
Haven
Member of Haven
Bi
822
9
Aug 29, 2018 17:15:00 GMT -6
Calley
>> “Were we friends in the dream?”
He nodded, shifting his posture so his elbows were propped on his thighs, and his clasped hands hanging between his knees. His eyes stayed on those hands: on them, and not the gray gaze scrutinizing him from the periphery.
>> “Was it a good dream? I know... I've had a lot of nightmares recently,”
“It... some of it was,” he replied. “There was... some kind of school we both worked at. Or you worked at, and I was affiliated with it somehow.” He’d been a preacher, hadn’t he? That wouldn’t make sense, for him to be a school teacher, as well. “There were a lot of good people around us. Pax,” he remembered, the words springing from his lips. His body jerked slightly; he gave a nod, as if to himself. “Pax. It was some kind of organization for world good—bake sales, or something. We were both in it; that must have been why I was around the school so often.” Hadn’t the school been named Pax, too? He scratched at his ear. Details like that weren’t so clear. It was the people who stood out in his mind, not the buildings they’d met in.
“There was some kind of virus, though. It killed a lot of people. And a war—in China, I think. It broke out while you were there with students. I think you went there... to see the dragon, maybe? You were there when the dragon died.” The words felt true, but his eyebrows furrowed. What dragon? The words stood out in his mind—Tiananmen Square, and a dragon. He hadn’t seen it, though, that he remembered; and it felt like just so much dream logic, when he scrutinized it. Tiananmen Square and a dragon, and a twelve year old who grew up to be a teacher who took field trips to China.
He shook his head, meeting her eyes again with a self-deprecating grin. “Sorry. I must sound like a nut. Like I said, it was just a dream. Things have already started changing from the ‘future’ it showed.” Like Raina and Luke; like him hunting muties; like meeting Katrina Dumonde in a church.
“How old are you?” He couldn’t help but ask, with a more honest grin twitching at his lips. She was just so... small.
Katrina's mind was the sky, clouded over by the turbulent events of her recent past. Rupert's words blew over her like an honest wind, revealing the tiny pinpricks of starlight behind the clouds. One by one pieces of constellations appeared, shining with familiarity; a faithful dog, a prowling lion, twins- one dead and one living that together watched over all the happenings in the world, an emperor on his upside down throne, a dragon twisting like a golden banner through the sky.
>>>“Sorry. I must sound like a nut. Like I said, it was just a dream. Things have already started changing from the ‘future’ it showed.”
He looked her in the eyes and sort of smiled with that statement, but not a real smile. Still, it was a spark that lit up another small memory.
“You used to smile more,” she observed. Used to, in the 'future'. “There was a mermaid, too. She was going to have a baby. And I went to the white house, then rode in a plane that landed in the Valley of Death.”
Her own dream logic sounded just as odd as his. Every word made things just a little clearer, faces came back to her both familiar and strange and shined like the stars, but clouds still obscured the whole picture. She couldn't see how it all fit together. She also didn't understand how his dream could sound so familiar to her. She didn't know if the things in her dream would sound familiar to him either. It was strange to think that two people, let alone a lot of people, would have the same dream at the same time.
“I remember waking up from the dream, but right afterwards all the nightmares came and gobbled it up. They got all mixed together and I don't remember whether I was trying to kill the dragon or rescue it.”
>>>“How old are you?”
Maybe she was still a little young to be dreaming of missions to rescue dragons and whatnot, but give her a few years and she could do it. “Fourteen,” she answered, mirroring the smile that was twitching to stretch itself across his face. “How old are you?”
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Dec 7, 2009 1:44:08 GMT -6
Haven
Member of Haven
Bi
822
9
Aug 29, 2018 17:15:00 GMT -6
Calley
Five words. Leave it to Katrina to change his world with five words.
>> “You used to smile more.”
Five words, and he couldn’t help but smile here and now. An honest smile. He wasn’t sure when he’d worn one of those last. It felt like years—past or future.
>> “There was a mermaid, too. She was going to have a baby. And I went to the white house, then rode in a plane that landed in the Valley of Death.”
“We do sound nuts.” His eyebrows quirked; his smile stayed. “The mermaid was my wife.” The baby was his. The rest of it sounded vaguely familiar; pieces of the whole, though he had no idea how to fit them together. The Valley of Death. Was that before or after she’d gone on the trip with the students? Is that where the dragon died? And the White House—he remembered letters being written to the President. They must have been pretty good.
>> “I remember waking up from the dream, but right afterwards all the nightmares came and gobbled it up. They got all mixed together and I don't remember whether I was trying to kill the dragon or rescue it.”
“I don’t remember, either,” he said, with a slight laugh. “That’s odd—you’d think a dragon would be important enough to remember, like that. But I guess he was competing against mermaids and unicorns.” Unicorns. Where had he met the unicorn? He remembered white hair and a horn, but the face wouldn’t stay still—sometimes it was young, sometimes old, sometimes not even human. Only the hair and the eyes stayed the same.
They seemed familiar, suddenly. Where had he seen them before? Had he bumped into the horse on the street, and missed it?
>> “Fourteen. How old are you?”
“Old,” he replied, looking over at the little girl. Maybe not so little, but young enough that he felt a sudden dust settle on his shoulders. When had he gotten old? “Younger than I was, though. I think I was thirty-nine in the dream; I’m thirty.” The future was already a year closer than it had been. There was something strange about that: like he was racing towards some deadline. Like he was trying to catch up with who he had been. That jerk had set the bar pretty damn high.
If they were doing the math right, the future was only nine years away. Somehow by the time she was twenty three she had to grow up into a strong confident woman who could teach, travel to foreign countries, and walk through the Valley of Death. She didn't think there was ever a way she could be ready for all of that in such a short time. Even just the teaching part seemed overwhelming to accomplish in such a short time considering she still couldn't even pass a geography test without help.
“Is that what's going to really happen?” She watched the stained light dance across the pews. Light colors and dark all mixed together; the bad and the good were all connected. The disease, war, and dead dragon couldn't be separated from the baby mermaid, the friendships with the unicorn and the lioness, the confidence her future self had. Was that all destiny? There were parts that she did want to come true and other parts that she didn't, but was it really fair to pick and choose only the parts of your destiny that were desirable? Was it even possible?
“I suppose I better brush up on math and geography before I become a teacher.”
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Jan 28, 2010 2:12:10 GMT -6
Haven
Member of Haven
Bi
822
9
Aug 29, 2018 17:15:00 GMT -6
Calley
>> “Is that what's going to really happen?”
Rupert was silent for a moment. He ended up leaning forward, elbows pressing into his legs again.
“No,” he said finally. “No. Things are changing already—just by dreaming it, we’re changing things. I guess that’s human nature: we want to change things. Fix them; make them better. There was a lot that went wrong, in that future. I guess... people wanted to wipe it clean. Try again.” He had to swallow back something; what, he wasn’t sure. Sadness, maybe. Regret, maybe. Shame... maybe. Haywire. The deaths. He’d trade them, to be the person he’d been. There’d been no guilt about it in the dream: he’d become that man because of all those deaths, but that was nothing to be guilty over. That’s just how things had turned out. This time around, if he could have forced everyone to make the same choices over again, just to have that future... he would have. He’d choose to let the deaths happen. Right there, with that thought, the future was changed: he could no longer reach it as an innocent.
“Haywire should have been released by now,” he continued, softly. “Someone must have stopped it; someone else who had the dream. And... the lioness; one of the teachers—she’s dead.” He’d killed her; shot her in the back of the head, as she’d walked away from him. Sitting next to Katrina Dumonde, that was a hard memory to face. His lips quirked into a twisted smile. “As for the mermaid and I: I don’t think we’ll be having any little swimmers anytime soon.”
>> “I suppose I better brush up on math and geography before I become a teacher.”
His smile relaxed again, into something more honest. “You’re going to be a great one. Don’t let anything change that.”
He stood, formally offering his hand while that smile still played across his lips. “Ms. Katrina Dumonde, it has been a pleasure meeting you. I hope to see you here again.” One of his eyebrows quirked. “If you promise to keep coming, I’ll promise to keep coming.”
Hmm. Then they’d both be church regulars again. The Lord could be a tricky one, like that.
So the future had already been changed. No virus outbreak meant that a lot of people who would have died would get to live; but it also meant that some people who were supposed to live might not. Katrina felt a pang of sadness for the lioness and the little baby that would never be born.
Her own future could also change. She might not grow up into the strong person that she had become in the dream because she hadn't really lived through those hardships. Except that she had lived them, once. And now that she knew what she could be, she had the choice of working toward that goal again.
“If I did it once, I can do it again,” she stated with a confident nod. Her gaze flicked to the doorway of the sanctuary, where her mother was returning with a whole armful of informational pamphlets.
Katrina returned Rupert's smile, “I'll see you next week!” And with that she slid off the bench and skipped back towards her mother. It was the first time in months that she'd skipped anywhere, but that thought didn't occur to her. She had too many other things to think about.