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 Welldrinker Cult
A shadowy group is gaining power, drawing in people who are curious, vulnerable, or malicious, and turning them into Mystics. They are recruiting people into their ranks to spread the influence of magic in the world, but for what end goal?
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.
If years of running from the law and psychologists had taught the paranoid schizophrenic mutant one thing, it was not to accept an invitation anywhere. The note on her door at the Sanctuary read:
"Please see front desk for information on your appointment."
It had no signature and no information that could trace the source of the author. To find more information, Ahorta approached the front desk with it in hand. The mere use of a desk receptionist made it more professional, that she needed to see someone who had business to discuss and not an ambush. Though some desk clerks could be tipped enough money to help ambush a resident, though she doubted that was the case here. At the Sanctuary, there were too many mutants that seemed a little aggressive, too many that seemed like the wrong crowd to mess with. It was not exactly a happy little mutant human-hugging cult.
The woman at the desk gave her directions to some company and told her to look for a woman named Lori Faust. Females were not usually sent to fetch the crazed woman, men were mostly relied upon due to their brute force, but they had failed plenty of times before. Maybe they had switched it up. Still, Ahorta stuffed the directions in her pocket and began walking. Public transportation tended to have its side effects: humans. The loud clunking from her black boots kept her company during the entire walk and when she finally reached where her presence was requested, she stood outside the door.
Blinking a few times, she kept herself pinned up against the window, watching everyone inside. She hated medications, it was possible to , overdose on them, it was possible they were poisoned, but despite the long and quite complicated name, Faust Pharmeceuticals was not a store full of drugs. Still, the thought triggered schizophrenic re-enactments of her days at the psych ward. All of the psychologists loved to pump her full of drugs. "Hello, [human name censored due to memory fail and utter hatred], it's time for your yummy pills. Haven't seen any rats after taking this have you? We've made you blind, [censored], we've taken your eyes, you can't see! You can't see us for what we really are! You fool! You idiot! You're nothing better than your mother or father! Failure! FAILURE!" Ahorta shook her head to clear her memories from flooding her. Hardly any of her memories were untainted by schizophrenic episodes.
Finally, she pulled herself away from the windowed front of the building and walked up to the automatic door. It swung open, expecting her. Securing her face mask, she walked inside and stopped an employee who seemed a little confused with the paperwork she was handling at the reception desk. "Um...Lori Faust," she said, more as a fact than a locating question. The woman stared at her for a minute with a raised eyebrow before pointing to the other side of the first floor, to the elevator. Without another word, Ahorta turned and walked in that direction, her eyes fixed on the exact location that the woman had pointed to, even when she walked around a barrier of medications. There was the elevator door dead ahead, maybe thirty feet off from the woman's pointed finger. Taking a deep breath, Ahorta lifted a gloved hand and clicked for one to pick her up. After a few moments, it blinked to life, signaling her to enter. The buttons inside were labeled, informing her which one to press to get to higher ranking offices. The elevator blinked up, passing each floor quickly until it opened to the floor Ahorta had pushed for. Slowly, she exited the elevator, only just jumping out before the door closed. She gave her name to the desk clerk who told her to have a seat and she patiently sat down. It was too well roleplayed to be a trap, maybe her captor was innocent, or a professional.
The front desk ladies buzzed over the intercom to let Lori know she had a visitor on the way up. Lisa had called a while ago too letting her know that someone had asked about the note left at their door. That meant one thing. Order potential or Sanctuary misfit. Potentially both if the misfit could clear the air surrounding their poor behavior in their complex.
The elevator dinged outside of her door and Lori worked harder to finish scribbling the notes of what she might want to say in this meeting. Ah. She was so ill prepared. She should have known the name and background of who was showing up here today not just let anyone wander in off the street. Lori made note of that too. Information was power and she wanted more.
"Come in." She was very near the elevator and there was a placard outside with her name on it. No one had missed her small but functional office yet, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be a first time for something.
Lori's office wasn't a corner office, didn't boast opulent furniture or elephantine amounts of space. It did not look like the office of the woman who wore the name of the office building. And that was sort of the point sometimes. At other, more honest times, Lori might admit to herself that she didn't especially like drawing attention to herself and was even less comfortable with the sudden flow of cash that she saw day to day when dealing with Sanctuary affairs.
"My name is Lori. Please, sit down. Did Lisa fill you in at all?" The Order leader could twist this lack of information to her advantage yet. She motioned to one of the sleek modern leather chairs that sat across from her desk. They looked spectacular but were uncomfortable. They were the perfect office guest chairs.
This girl was odd, face mask and generally twitchy movements. Lori wasn't even sure what kind of mutant she was, but if she had to guess it was something viral or breath based. She'd know more as soon as the other girl opened her lips.
Ms. Faust had finished whatever it was she occupied herself with and called Ahorta into the office. It was hard to miss which one was her's since the placard on the door read her name. Slowly slithering into the room, Ahorta looked around, searching for any clues as to why she had been called into the office in the first place. The few times she had been called into an office were bad: the principle called her in to discuss the behavior of children at the school and their reflections on Ahorta's mother compared to whether or not Ahorta would take violent actions against them, the office at the mental hospital where her father took her after her mother died and they pried at her brain with questions about her mental stability, the interrogation room where she had been caught by the cops and asked about her involvement in a murder at a diner. Though she had escaped each of those places, offices were scary places.
Though Ms. Faust had given her a place to live, so that put her at more of an advantage than the principle, psychologist, and officer. Ahorta was asked to sit down and she blinked for a moment, still taking in the room, she would not make a move until she was comfortable. When she had found every blunt object, everything that could be made sharp (paperclips, staples, pens), and everything that could be poisoned (anything that is ingested), she turned her attention to the chair. Looking it up and down carefully, her gloved hands slid between the cushions, looking for any hidden yet unwelcome surprises. When she had come up empty handed, she took a seat, her back straight and her hands on her knees, ready to spring up in an instant if an attack were to occur.
Lisa must have been the woman who gave her directions. Thinking back, she could not remember anything this Lisa said that would inform Ahorta the real reason as to why she was at the office. "No, Lisa gave me directions," she said, keeping her words to a minimum until she found the reason why she had been called. Her room was clean, majestically clean, actually. It had white walls so she could see if anyone entered her room and left oily fingerprints on her walls. Everything was thoroughly cleaned using rags, her power, and minor cleaning supplies, the smells they emitted were poisonous. Aside from possibly the magnets lining her door to wipe clean any technological memories that entered or exited her room, the bubble wrap on the floor so she could hear anyone entering, and the minor booby traps around her bed and dresser, the room was fairly well maintained.
Looking up at the business lady, Ahorta raised an eyebrow, one of the few facial expressions she could give through a mask. "My room is spotless and I have not brought any police...work... home with me," she said, finding her mistake in an instant. In a pitiful attempt, she tried to cover the word police with work, hoping that she sounded more like a cop than a cop killer. Most people shrugged it off, only letting it add to how crazy they thought she was. She was a little crazy...only a little.
The blonde watched the girl go through what she imagined to be some sort of routine. Her eyes tracked around the room noting certain important things. Maybe exit strategies? Weapons? She even checked the cushions before sitting. Sitting and defending herself. "You're not in any trouble." At least not if her room was spotless and she was without a police escort home. That narrowed down Lori's list considerably.
"I wanted to invite you here today to ask if there was something wrong with the food in the cafeteria. I haven't seen you at dinner time and I wanted to be sure you are well taken care of in my Sanctuary." That was true enough. From the girl's answer Lori could likely puzzle out which of her exact Order potentials this was. For now, Lori's money was on the paranoid one. The paranoid one that Lori thought would make the best ever head of security provided that she could loosen up enough to accept such a position.
Ms. Faust assured Ahorta that she was not there due to any trouble. A wave of relief flooded over her, for a moment, she was afraid she was going to be handed over to the police. Police were never nice with her, they always poked and prodded and enjoyed watching her psychotic episodes. Though she was never nice with them, the last cop that got too close to her cell while she was cowering in a corner definitely learned to never approach again. He spent the next two months in the hospital rethinking his strategy on approaching paranoid schizophrenic murders. That was a hard night to escape.
The food? She wished to talk about the food? "I don't usually eat in cafeterias. That's how they get you. A large place where plenty eat, they could slip something in your food and you wouldn't know until you're spewing spit from your mouth with your eyes rolled back on the floor. Then they take you away..." she said, never explaining who they were. Truth be told, that word never held a specific person or organization, it was the vocabulary word to describe everything Ahorta was afraid of and all that came after her.
"No, I have my own food locked up in my room. Still, I have to test it before eating. Someone could have my system figured out," she nodded non-chalantly. So most people did not lock up every single piece of food they had with all sorts of different combinations. Eating out was always difficult, people would stare at her weird when she would bring out her testing kit. People didn't like women with masks and food testing kits, especially when she paid cash and never left a tip. Most waiters and waitresses wanted to take her away.
The blonde nodded as if everything that came out from behind the sick mask was logical and made perfect sense. It was at least logical.
She really was paranoid. Probably clinically. Would it be good or bad to make her in charge of security, Lori wondered...
"Even if the food isn't—" She cast around for a word like a hand reaching around in the dark for a light switch. The Order Leader had to settle. "—up to your specifications, I would appreciate the opportunity to get to know you. I would like us all to know each other, to maybe even" someday possibly "trust each other. Do you think that's possible?" Lori wasn't sure she wanted the other girl to think it was possible, but at least she would need the girl to trust in her if Lori was ever going to get what she wanted out of her.
Under the mask, Ahorta bit her lip and dove into a large mental battle. Trust? Who could she trust? She did trust this orb who entered her dreams, but he wasn't human, was he? She trusted a woman to discuss their powers alone in a hotel room. Then again, she trusted the psychiatrists to take care of her. She trusted the psychologists to make her feel at home. She trusted her father to not hurt her when he was sober. She's trusted before and sometimes, it ended badly, sometimes it ended well. Mostly, it ended bad. This was different, this was her home, this was where she lived and she needed to be at least a little trusting of the lady that ran it.
Looking around, she searched the room for any form of mold, something to tell her the air quality in the room. The reflective surfaces did not have a thin layer of any sort of mist and the trash can was not full enough to hide any sort of gas releaser. When she had searched the room to her satisfaction, she took a deep breath and reached for her face mask. Pausing momentarily, she took one last scan at the woman ahead of her, judging her morality, or at least her attitude towards Ahorta. If this woman had violent behavior towards others, it did not matter so long as she did not show any of that towards Ahorta. The woman was calm, so Ahorta removed her facemask to reveal a perfectly normal face.
"I suppose I could come down more often. Though if there is to be any trust, humans are a problem," she outed it without asking if Ms. Faust was a mutant as well, but she was being trusting, right? "I see them for what they really are. No one else does. I don't get how the can walk around as giant spiders, bright nosed clowns, walking tornadoes, or slimy newts and no one else sees it but me. I don't trust them, I don't like them," she said, finally assigning the majority of the word them to humans.
That... was not the response that Lori had been expecting. The girl pulled down her mask. Her face was not malformed or missing chunks or anything besides normal average every day super psycho. Lori remained still and placid as a lake's surface. Trust was a hard thing for people like them. What with the internment camps, years of forced lies and even hiding. Mutants had it easy nowadays. But Lori especially had built years of her life around the gaining and shattering of others' trust.
While building her empire, she hadn't been trying to shatter anything.
Finally an idea gurgled to the top of her mind like the inside of a magic 8 ball. "I don't see humans that way, but you could show me." If she really saw them that way, would it register in her mind's visual center? Lori could always pretend. She'd pretended for years, but... something told her that nothing less than sharing her experience with someone would earn this woman's trust.
And bosses were supposed to have it easy.
She moved slowly, putting her hands on the desk in order to help herself to her feet at an even pace. She moved at a measured pace around the desk, but left room between herself an the girl. Left her an escape route. "Can you touch my skin? I won't harm you." Skin to skin contact was what this trick required. "If you do, I can see what you see." In fact, she would see nothing else until whatever made it stop made it stop. She really needed to figure out how to properly work her powers before using them, but... well, she'd done alright for herself so far.
Ms. Faust stood up, asking a question that Ahorta had rarely ever granted: touching her skin. If it wasn't the fear of being touched that made it nearly impossible to touch her, it was the acidic properties of her body. If, and only if, she let Ms. Faust touch her skin, it would have to be somewhere that was far away from bone, most of those body parts were inappropriate, like her rump or stomach. It would have to be her neck. Her vulnerable neck that was further away from her acidic bones. Though if someone were to wrap their hands around her neck, they would immediately regret it.
"My bones are acid, you'd have to..." she paused for a moment, almost afraid of the word as well, "touch the neck... How long do you have to keep contact? What powers do you have? If you touched my skin, I wouldn't be paralyzed or anything? Right? Would I be poisoned or rendered unconscious?" While Ahorta was beginning to trust this woman, it was not a straight dive to trust. Maybe she took a shortcut, but there was still a bit of a journey to go.
Her trenchcoat made it a little difficult to touch her neck and she left it like that, if this woman did confess to her intentions being harmless, it wouldn't be too difficult to simply push down the material pressed against her skin. And if she meant to hurt, maybe that litlle bit of material could save her life, if not by just a little. The mention of how humans were tingled at her memories, evoking those dark images of giant worms, snakes, reptiles, clowns, tornadoes, needles, and every other form humans have taken in front of her.
Neck? Didn't that seem like a dangerous place to allow a person? It was a squeeze away from a crushed windpipe, a slice away from a spurting vein. If that was what the paranoid lady wanted, Lori wouldn't question her. She knew her power the best. Just as Lori understood her own power to the best of her abilities.
'It doesn't have to be sustained contact, but the closer we stay the better." Not because it would break the link but because she would literally be plugged into the woman's visual center and standing opposite of her got hekka confusing. "I don't know how long it will take initially. If I'm in danger, you could break the connection, right?" She would have to trust her to know how much was too much and if this was acid... Lori visiting Sebastian later today.
"What I want to do should have no effect on you at all. In fact, I'm more likely to take the hit since it will affect me and how I see the world. I'll only be looking through your eyes. Promise." Concise, precise, business-like with a hint of maternal instinct. That was Lori Faust, Order Leader.
Once she seemed agreeable, Lori moved slowly toward the woman lining up their shoulders so that they faced the same way even if their height diference made their shoulder levels uneven. She put up her hand and waited for the girl to initiate contact. Once contact was made she would begin the process. "I will have to ask you to blink a few times at my mark. Ready when you are," She didn't want to treat the woman like an invalid so she didn't coddle her, just remained respectful of her boundaries.
The woman assured her that no harm would be done and that contact could be broken just by her pulling away. Being unpredictable was the key and Ahorta was quite the key master. When Ms. Faust signalled that she was ready for contact, Ahorta rolled up her sleeve and touched her forearm to Ms. Faust's hand. It was not the neck, but it was equally far enough from the bone and less likely to put her in immediate and undeniable harm. The forearm would do just fine.
Unsure of what to do next, Ahorta frose, remaining completely motionless. The only movements she made were from the gears in her head turning. At first, they were directed on the surroundings, immediately Ms. Faust and what her intentions were. Soon though, as the all-together-too-familiar feeling of fear took over, her mind twisted and fell into the world she had discovered, the human's real world. Every inhabitant had beady eyes that were not of an average color. Some were blood red, some unsaturated gray, while others were an emerald green. Everyone had disfigured teeth, crooked and sharp, or at least those who resembled reptiles.
Green scales stretched over tan skin and claws tore from under fingernails. The world Ahorta hd seen was terrifying at best. Her heart rate increased, only a little, but it was enough to cause her to try to calm down. If she became too afraid, she would begin to sweat acid, and no physical contact with her while she was sweating ever resulted well. "What do I have to do then?" she asked, tempted to close her eyes. Yet the psychologists would always tell her to close her eyes if they requested her to think back on something deep, something she did not want to remember.
"Close your eyes." She got the forearm and not the neck which was fine by Lori. She wouldn't be tempted to strangle her for no other reason than the fact that she had vulnerable skin under her hands. A bonus for both of them, really. "Open them." Lori had to clear her head and hone in on where the activity was fluttering in time with the actions of the previously masked girl.
"Open." There was a spark where the mind recognized the request and the slightest of delays before some command was issued. That wasn't the important part. She wasn't looking for that. She was looking for the stream of information. "Close." There. A majority interruption. Not ever a complete one. There was always light or some other perception that permeated the eyelids.
Lori closed her eyes and flipped the switch in her own brain. As soon as it clicked, she let go of the other woman's arm. "Finished. You can open your eyes now, but stay close." With her eyes wide open, still all the Order leader could see was the backs of Ahorta's eyelids.
As long as they weren't going too far or too fast, Lori could follow the girl to view any human they wanted. (Though bumping into her was a real and present danger since her view did not include the other woman.) There was still the secretary outside Lori's office. She was human as far as Lori knew. "Show me what you see."
The routine only took seconds and Ahorta opened and her eyes and closed them at Ms. Faust's command. When it was all over, she took an extra minute to open her eyes, just to make sure that the coast was completely clear. What had happened? Did anything happen at all? She did not feel any pain and nothing seemed to have changed. When they released, she pulled back her arm to examine it. Nothing was amisss, her arm was perfectly fine. Out of precautionary steps, she pulled her sleeve back over her skin and blinked a few times.
"So what now?" she asked, looking around the room for any blatant sign saying "AHORTA, TAP DANCE", but she could not find any clear sign she needed to do anything. Ms. Faust told her to show her what she saw. Did she want her to draw it? Describe it? Or did she actually want Ahorta to have a schizophrenic episodes? Of course, the crazy one would never refer to it as a schizophrenic attack since she did not recognize what it was in the first place. Standing up, she moved to the door, unsure of what to do. She needed to stay close and show Ms. Faust what she saw?
Opening the door, she peered out at the lady at her desk. The woman looked fine, staring down at her computer. For a few moments, she remained like this, all until she looked up to see why her boss's door was open. When she saw Ahorta, she raised an eyebrow and her eyes turned to slits. Yellow burned through her blue eyes and a snake-ish tongue flickered out. Ahorta froze, tempted to slam the door shut, but it was such a small episode, it could get worse. Scales broke through her skin as her body thinned up. She opened her mouth, saying something, but all that escaped her lips were hisses, at least to Ahorta. Afraid to see the rest, Ahorta slammed the door shut and rushed back into her chair, her feet pulled up to her chin.
The girl did just that. She moved toward the door. Lori moved with her, a shadow in her wake. If she only moved when the vision moved, and if she stopped when it stopped then in theory, Lori wouldn't bump into the girl... of course. Or she could just stand where she was. Find out her range... but then she would be left behind and unable to reach the girl if she needed her.
Roland's secretary looked up from her post. She wasn't a mutant last Lori had checked, but here she was right in front of Lori, her face twisting into something much less than normal.
A door slammed and Lori took a few hasty steps to catch up to the girl, but suddenly she collided into something hard. She saw herself... bumping into a chair near where her vision was sitting... Lori didn't think she would ever get this borrowed vision stuff worked out in her head. Seeing first person what someone else was seeing was really disorienting.
"Does that happen every time? Reptilian people?" She felt along the back line of the chair until she thought that she had its positioning worked out. Lori plopped awkwardly into the bucket seat and did her best to turn her face toward the girl's face though in all reality she had no idea if she was facing the plant next to her desk or the girl.
"What is your name?" She was asking the girl, for the record, not the plant.
Ms. Faust did something...different. It seemed like she ran into a chair. Then she continued her odd behaviors by sitting in the chair and looking at Ahorta's shoulder, addressing it as though it were Ahorta's face. At least it was proven, Ms. Faust was a mutant, and that calmed Ahorta down a little, if only just a little. Slowly, she put one of her feet on the ground, constantly checking the door and then turning back to Ms. Faust as if to ask her if the reptile was on her way in. Ms. Faust asked if Ahorta experienced this every time and she thought for a moment.
"Sometimes, they disguise themselves really well. I can see it most of the time, but sometimes it takes a few minutes before they reveal their real faces. Sometimes they can stay hidden for an hour, then I see their true faces. Others, they don't realize I can see them, so they reveal themselves early," she said, confiding her secrets with the head of the Order. "They aren't always reptiles. Some of them are clowns, some are alcoholics, prostitutes, frogs, newts, diseases, tornadoes, worms, maggots, injection needles, and all other sorts of stuff you don't want to mess with."
Ms. Faust asked for her name, another thing she was warey about giving information on. Then again, the insane asylum called her by a different name, a name she no longer recognized anymore and no longer had on her police files. While the woman she once was could produce a finger print, any time they pressed her thumb on paper, she'd eat right through it, thus no one was able to connect her to the girl she once was, unless it was her father or one of the employees at the psych ward. The name she had given herself no longer was a nickname, but her official name. "My name's Ahorta McCoy," she said, slowly putting her other leg on the ground. She quickly swept the floor with her eyes to make sure no rats were scurrying across it before planting her foot flat on the ground below her chair.