I have an idea for what happens after the AoS wake-up. As it says in the title, the Order could gain an outrageous amount of control over NYC.

For those who don't know, Lori Faust is responsible for many of the terrible things that have gone wrong in the Csendes family's lives, which lead into the creation of the Church of Everlasting Life by Sebastian. Furthermore, she's had very far-reaching and long-term plans in place which are intended to not only turn Sebastian into the ultimate villain, but also to gain power by leading the charge against him.

What if that plan works? What if the Order successfully uses the post-wakeup public outrage against the Church of Everlasting Life to put people they control in positions of serious power in NYC? After all, the AoS plot is set to end during an important part of the election year.

The Order could extend its tendrils into city government, becoming the power behind the throne and gaining substantial control over almost everything within the city, including the NYPD. "Order Territory" would no longer be a term that describes the majority of Brooklyn, and it would start to mean "the entire city." Corruption would be widespread, crime would be rampant and the police would find themselves unable to do much of anything about it, because the Order would secretly control the legal system that the police have to operate with. Instead of maintaining justice and keeping the peace, the NYPD would become a tool of the Order, and they would use this tool to help them eliminate opponents in the criminal underworld and politically ruin anybody who threatens their grip on the city government.

Just because the police would have trouble dealing with Order-sponsored crimes doesn't mean that they wouldn't be a problem. That's where those pesky X vigilantes would come into play. The logical thing for the Order to do here would be to play the X-Men against the police. But I really think it would be stupid to solve the problem by destroying the Mansion. Why destroy it, when you could try to take control of it and use it to inspire the next generation of mutants? (also, because we've learned that attempting to destroy that building is pointless, since any damaged architecture would magically grow back)

And, of course, the Order's influence would be a secret. They would exert this control through a large number of officials and politicians that fit snugly in their pockets, from all major political parties. The very existence of the Order would be a mere rumor for those outside of certain circles in the Mutant world.

While the Order is becoming rich and powerful with their chokehold on NYC, why not use this power to start manipulating the rest of the country? In many ways, NYC is a seat of serious power in the United States. With total control over everything in the city comes control over multiple national news agencies, which, by posing as sources of information, already have the power to manipulate public opinion IRL. The Order could take advantage of that to start controlling public opinion!

Additionally, NYC is the home of multiple powerful financial institutions. Because money = power in Washington DC, the Order could even start gaining control over the federal government. At the very least, this could mean disrupting FBI initiatives to take the Order down. At the most, this could mean nationally imposed mutant supremacy.

Any control that the Order could gain over the entire country would necessarily have to be extremely gradual (ie we probably won't get to actually play anything serious with it because of how long we would have to stick with this plot) but the Oracle would see it. Having seen it, he would try to warn people, like the X-Men, and do everything in his power to stop that from happening. Unless he got really disheartened by the whole "I almost ended the world by doing crazy stuff like this" thing.

Meanwhile, by riding the wave of popular outrage created by the AoS wakeup, the Order could feasibly be very efficient in getting control of NYC. We could probably manage near-total Order control of NYC within a month or two of the wakeup. Then, NYC becomes prohibition-era Chicago, but with mutants and the M-drug instead of gunslingers and alcohol.

Also, holy crap! We could turn inter-faction rivalry into the focus of the plot! Again, this would be all about the Order gaining power in a partially legal manner, and the X-Men fighting them from the other side of the law, with the NYPD stuck awkwardly and painfully in the middle. I feel this needs saying because inter-faction conflict hasn't really been a huge thing lately. All of the factions seem to have just been doing their own thing, lately. (That isn't necessarily a criticism; they've largely been doing cool things, but we have to admit they haven't interacted much.)

Now that I've put my idea forth, what do we all think about it? Comments? Questions? Concerns? Accusations of heresy? We have a few months to decide~

I think this could be really interesting, if just for the setting. I... don't really know what else to add, except that I thought AoS was ending in a few months, not a year?

Derp. Original post modified accordingly.

Thanks, Alli <3

I like the idea, and im always supportive of inter-faction conflict. Though the Mansion should remain in control of the x-men i would think. I do like the idea though

I'm Syn and I approve this message!

It's an interesting thought at least. Some of the older x-men, Streak and CS mainly, would know about the order because of their past interactions.

Ironically not to long ago I was just thinking that it sure has been a while since we've had a good old fashioned site brawl. I'll definitely be following this it has merit.

Markus could be a political figure to support the order and feed false information to the public to remain calm and not worry about the matter. Whoray for political injustice!

My concern with this: this would change the entire site dynamics, not for just a plot, but for years to come.

Politicians and a corrupted system are not soon remedied, once they're in place; they tend to breed more of the same. The repercussions of this are large enough that they wouldn't be a plot, they'd be a fundamental change in our site dynamics. Personally, I tend to favor a more "Factions are evenly balanced" baseline for our setting, with events to tip that balance to either direction now and then. We've been in a "Order violence rampant and unchecked" before that. It's definitely time for the Order to get another tip, given the cozy state of the X's and the NYPD, but I'm not sure I'd favor something that could cause a permanent shift.

If we could scale it down--have the the Order/Lori play up the "we're your champions" angle and gain public support for awhile, perhaps set up the X's to take the fall for some things, which could cause them to fall out of favor with the politicians and the NYPD (without the government/NYPD becoming infested by Order plants)... that could have potential as a plot, without changing the underlying balance of the site forevermore.

[/unofficial Mod opinion]

I agree with Calley, False Flag tactics could be employed to relinquish public and political appeal from the X-Men and give the Order the upper hand in a fair aspect.

Two cents incoming: For one, I agree with Calley, there's potential for this to shift the site dynamic, though I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing, I just think there is no surefire way to predict how it would change the dynamic. Now, if it shifted it into a good and proper turf war between areas controlled by the order and areas controlled by X/NYPD, yeah, for sure, could be fun to have a bit of gang warfare going, but it would create stupid amounts of work for all involved to track the effects of it, people would get grumpy about certain losses, X-men/NYPD having an advantage in numbers (I believe) would surely bring up some arguments about fair (and the site rating needs to be considered).

However it could also turn it into No Consequences the online RP, and SEVERELY impact upon the T for Teen rating, not to mention it would be hard to have an impact without some important deaths and off the top of my head only DocProf stands out as being a huge NPC loss to a faction, and we worked hard on our characters and may be thinking killing them in a plot that is really a dream could be all funsies, but if we actually lost them, well I know I happen to enjoy writing Cafas.

Further thoughts, controlling the Federal government and international financial institutions and news stations seems cool until you realise that if/when this arc comes to an end and the order is presumably defeated it would cause a collapse of pretty much the entire country, phasing them into power is one thing, but it would take decades of complacency to phase the order out, and too rip them out all at once... something to consider.

Also >.> HERETIC! The Mansion is repaired by our resident un named NPC who undoes destruction, the same guy that replaces Cafas' door handle. Clearly... Who also, sadly, died when NYC got Kait-nuked. He doesn't repair other things because he can only repair places he knows as well as the mansion, having lived there since he was but a boy >.>

I think it's a cool idea, I like the thought of it, the theory is awesome, but putting into practice scares me. I think some of it could be hand waved, but yeah, NYC would be left a crippled husk in the aftermath. I would think to avoid changing the site permanently we'd need another future plot and... well... Let's leave some time between drinks shall we? The plan being put into action and started would be cool for a few years later to re-use "Guy who sees future puts everyone into future seeing sleep state." or however this works.

I agree the factions are just kinda ignoring each other right now though... That needs to change.

PS: Anyone can start a turf war, any time. The only reason there hasn't been much X v. O action is the X and O players haven't done it. If you guys want that... do it!

A few things, which I feel pretty late in bringing up.

First off, I don't think these kinds of changes would impact the site rating, or call for the deaths of more important characters. We've had some seriously dark things going on here already, up to and including rape and mass murder. We have managed repeatedly to keep those things within the ratings system. Turning NYC into some kind of mutant-infested Gotham City shouldn't change that. And sure, there would be a good deal more violence flying around, but not so much that major NPCs need to get killed off. We're dealing with a subtler kind of Order now.

I may have gone a little bit overboard with some of the "what could the Order do if they took over EVERYTHING?" speculation. But honestly, I doubt that's something that the Order should ever achieve. I meant to suggest a lot of it as something the Oracle could warn a few people about.

And if the people getting warned by Alister were X's, the X-Men would have a legitimate reason to start working against the Order. Which is a thing that I honestly don't think they have right now. Heck, the Order might not even be the worst that organized crime has to offer in NYC, as far as disrupting society is concerned (they probably are the most powerful, though). The only X who seems to be doing a lot about organized crime at the moment is Saphirus, but he operates outside the X-Men when he does that, and even he hasn't been doing much with the Order.

I haven't seen any reason to stop saying that something big needs to be done to get the Order and the X-Men at each other's throats again. As it stands, unless the Order makes themselves a much bigger nuisance and/or the X-Men actually make a point of stopping organized crime, any conflict between them today might seem contrived, and it seems unlikely that X-Men / Order conflict would keep happening unless the plot and/or the factions' respective leaders called for it.

We probably could manage to scale things down a bit, though. The Order doesn't need to take over the whole city government, and I don't think their plans of gaining political power by villifying Sebby through black flag operations would honestly be that likely to work, unless we collectively decided to get together and made it work because plot.. That wouldn't stop them from running black flag operations to try villifying him more anyway, but efforts to turn the anger generated by this into political momentum would be mixed at best. Using the hatred of a particular religion as a political platform on the executive or legislative level could strike many people, Democratic and Republican, as anti-First Amendment. Even so, Markus and I have done some plotting, and he's offered his fledgeling Conformatist Party's services to the Order <3. Maybe we could do a thing with that?

However, imagine what they could achieve if they only managed to put some people they can control (if only a little) in charge of the local judicial system, and/or if they used bribery / intimidation on the police chief, to make it harder for the NYPD to act against them. This wouldn't exactly cripple the NYPD; in fact, the Order might actually drop a lot of info to help them handle non-Order elements of the criminal underworld. And the NYPD would still be able to work against the Order, there would just be way too much red tape in place for them to make any real progress. And while playing the X's against the NYPD probably wouldn't be feasible no matter what the Order did, they could certainly cause friction between the two groups.

The Order's secrecy being what it is, I don't think that the Order could play up a "we're your champions" angle unless they set up a separate, more public front (or fronts) for their interests to play up that angle for them. Perhaps such a front would be a movement in favor of legalizing the M drug. I don't know the in-universe legal standing of M, but I'm thinking that the federal government might have gone in and said "oh look, another drug to classify as Schedule 1! This'll be almost as fun as banning procodine~"

If M became more popular, it could generate a growing group of people who think legalizing M could change the world for the better, and make a lot of noise against people getting prosecuted over it.

In summary, The Order could just take (less-than-absolute) control of parts of the judicial system somehow and get a public "legalize M!" movement going that could make a lot of normal people feel like the cops and the X's were the bad guys. No (successful) political power-grabbing necessary.