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.
"Why...?" She didn't mean to be insulting. Kalos just used an unfiltered tone of voice. She really and truly didn't get why she'd want to give it up, let alone need to.
And he was the first person not to make noises and dismiss her fears of what was often just too much. Because he knew.... he worse hats to stay tethered to the ground!
"Hats keep you down?" Hmm. That was something to think about. She couldn't fit in most hats due to the coral growths but... Oh. He wasn't done talking. Kalos put her hands on her knees and tried to take Mr. Cockaroach so very, incredibly seriously.
> "...the outside isn't as scary to you as being found, is it?"
She... hadn't thought about that.
"There aren't so many places left!" She lamented her lost hiding places. The cubby in the kitchen had been most ideally situated of them all, and far too conspicuous for a pink girl in a room full of tasteful neutrals, as it turned out. "If- if I give up my spot, then there's nowhere that's just mine!" She rolled her arms and hands together in front of her chest because that was what it was to be safe. It was being rolled up and spooned and hidden. She had a room, sure, but it was connected to Gawain's. The laundry was communal, but rarely occupied for more than a few minutes at a time. It was warm and soft and smelled like clean safety.
He was right, though... She'd abandoned that for the outside in order to preserve that sanctity.
"I had a umbrella and stayed close to a wall." Kalos admitted. "I didn't want to not be under the roof that hangs out." And she had made it to this appointment. All. By. Herself.
"What's a digress? Is it a female diger? Like how a female tiger is a tigress?" That would make her a coraless, right? Maybe she was getting the hang of this English.
Mister Dangerous insisted he had never killed anything, and then said he killed ants. Kalos had followed a line of ants once. They had been tattling about where her food hiding was happening, but once they went outside, they had disappeared.
"I am told the spiders eat the other bugs, but I has not seen this. So they should go outside instead of screaming." She was not the one screaming, for the record. But screaming was certainly a common reaction to them.
"So, if you do not have a gun and you do not kill things and you do not have an ability to make oceans... you do the writing. But... that's not a danger?" She held her place, hands folded together so she might look as regal as possible.
The girl didn’t do much. Maybe she’d thought that Kalos’ voice was a part of the movie. That was probably for the best since Kalos wasn’t intending to start a conversation. She’d really just wanted to agree to a point that was correct.
The coral girl traced a fat, black wire with her finger, enjoying the rubbery feeling and the way it pulled against her fingertips. When she looked up again, the girl was standing up.
Oh? Leaving already?
Then she walked closer. The closer she walked, the more alarmed Kalos became. The television turned off and she spoke… she had to be meaning to talk to Kalos.
Kalos froze. She should say hello back! She should. It was, like, a rule or something.
But she choked. Quiet was better. This girl was studying. Surely Kalos was interrupting, HAD already interrupted, the girl’s studies.
The seconds ticked by and Kalos’ anxiety ticked up. Until finally, quietly, she felt she had to say something. It was that or explode.
Kalos, with a small amount of help from the Gregory, drove the teacher away temporarily. She left with a promise for blankets and Kalos pulled back under the table, her cheer almost immediately abandoned for more practical and serious consideration.
"You asked on the 'why' for hiding." And smiling at the teacher had given her time to think on it. "Being secret is better. Being alone is for very strong or very weak. I'm not either. So being secret means I choose. If a thing is too much? Secret escape. If it was not enough food, no one is insulted. Secret food. I take care of myself with secrets."
She liked that he scooted so they were nearly knee to knee. This conversation felt like a secret. Or a party for secrets.
> "Did you dislike being outside?"
Her delight evaporated.
"You don't fall up, you know." She tried and failed to make that sound like fact. Kalos was yet to be convinced, even after more than a year. "It's very… a lot. A lot of outside, I mean. There are a lot of big things that fall fast. It's bright. There's no roof! Like in the water, there's an end to the water. After water is sky. Below water is ground. After the sky… after that… it's forever." And forever was terrifying.
She was tying her fingers into knots as she tried to articulate. A girl her age should have a better command of the language, normally, but the teachers and staff had let Kalos get away with a lot.
Was a spot ruined if seen? "Yes." Plain as day, clear as crystal. There was zero doubt about that answer. "It is worthless once it's known. If I want to not be found or if I need to hide something away, I can't be in a place where I've been found before. I only told you of the laundry because the teachers said that I should tell you things." Everythings, to be exact. He was supposed to be the one that she could tell anythings and everythings to without fear of repercussion. It helped that he did not live here. It doubly helped that he was supposed to not tattle to Mirror or any of the X-men.
The door was knocked upon and the insectoid's arm was re-strangled. It was good that he asked permission.
"Yes. Unless you don't want to be found?" She searched his face and only once satisfied that he wouldn't mind, Kalos started to stand. She was forgetting that the table-hat was sheltering her and crunched a few of her coral crown pieces into it. His arm was abandoned in favor of her holding her extra head-pendages. Just a few crumbles off the top. She was constantly growing and breaking pieces. Thankfully any hard parts didn't really have feeling. It just hurt to jar her skull.
"I'm already here." She called loudly enough to be easily heard, just in case they'd missed the table jumping from her trying to stand through it. "Please don't have to waste time looking." Little bleached coral fingers gripped the edge of the table and she pulled herself out far enough to be seen waving and not being a menace.
"We're under the table!" She helpfully supplied a nothing answer with all the enthusiasm that would assure the teacher that she could, in fact, go away.
"No." But he kept talking anyway. Kalos took the moment to use a single finger to nose through his papers. Squiggles, mostly. Sometimes a picture, much better than her own. She liked the one with the cape, best. Heroes should have capes. "We're not characters, Mister human. We're not in a story, or all cool, or anything much at all." Though, those people did sound really incredibly cool.
"Somes of us are just pink." She clicked her fingers together as she laced them in front of herself. She left the papers where they were.
What was she to do with a human vassal? Or, a vassal at all.
A better question might be, what had she always wanted to know about humans...
"Can you answer questions for me? About outside? And the human kind?" Of course he could. He was a proven talker. She was being polite and hoping that he would. She would start with an easy one.
"How many people have you killed?" She took a half step toward him before remembering how dangerous he was. She put her feet back where they originally were.
Ohhhhh boy. Red started in on a lot of grown up words that didn't actually work in the moment, but at least he fessed up to punching people. She'd been ready to be a brat to him. She felt it bubbling up and ready to pop out, but she was incredibly mollified to hear that he was a puncher. Though she did give his big hands a serious inspection. It would be hard to see blood on red skin, wouldn't it?
So of course, he couldn't refute her chihuahua truth so he went back to dancing around with his words.
"I think you're a better puncher than explainer." But this goose things sounded interesting. Kalos brushed crumbs from her person, not caring where they fell. In fact, seeing them in stark contrast with the perfect, clean floor of the eating area brought her great joy.
Crumbs meant DJ Roomba would appear.
"When I grow to be as big as you, I think I will be a goose."
People sometimes found Kalos hard to understand or read. Other times, it wasn't an issue. Like now when she was peeled off of the Gregory gorgon to stand on her feet which were bare and resembled bones much more than demigod feet. Another thing that Kalos presumed Gregory gorgon would not mind. He'd even left her one of his extra arms, which she cherished. His offered hand was tempting to snub, but he'd been nothing but kind thus far. He deserved her best.
Kalos put her hand, another extremity that looked like bone, into Gregory's insectoid hand. She also kept his arm. He'd given it to her. It was hers now.
"It is nice to meeting you." She recited the litany she had been taught to say as one shakes hands. It meant a whole heap of nothing to her. Nice was a tepid insult at best.
To her question of seating, Gregory agreed. That was for the best, since his arm was never going to NOT go with her under the table. Once she felt adequately sheltered Kalos relaxed further.
"I like your hat." She ventured her very honest compliment, unsure if it was misplaced since he'd had to leave it above. At least it seemed to be staying. The brilliance of being inside.
> "So... I take it you've had an interesting morning?"
"I like the laundry chute. It's very small and good for climbing. It's the best for going between floors without people knowing. The room for laundry is nice and teachers almost found my place. I would be coming here, but they were looking." In fact, the teacher who'd been tasked to find her might still be out there looking. "It's my spot. They already found the window spot and the food spot and the front spot and the--" It seemed like the list was going to continue for some time...
She was trying. Sometimes. Sometimes Kalos was hiding instead.
> "We shouldn't try to be mean to anything."
"Shouldn't is a promise word. Not an action word. Don't promise if you don't mean it." And by Kalos' reckoning some people did deserve meanness.
"What about bad guys? Don't they deserve a mean?" Bad guys who were not reforming, so clearly not her minion bad guy Red. He was exempt by the nature of his attempts at becoming good. So. He wasn't bad. He was just... middle?
It was funny to watch him think so completely with his face and his body getting into the thinking as well as his brain. And even after a hard think, Red did not come back with an answer. The poor dear. He was just a bad guy, after all. Thinking would be easier when he got more middle-to-good. Instead he tried to make this about her. Ha! The fool.
> "I do think you should go to a petting zoo or something to learn that one bad experience doesn't mean all of that sort of animals are evil. Almost all babies are cute."
"People babies are helpless. And animal babies are still bity sometimes. Maybe not all one type of creature thing is in the same way of biting, but... do you know this Chiuaua dog? Yeah. All those are bad." She rested her case. Angua was the gentle giant dog that was an exception to the "dogs are bad" rule. She was raised by kind people. So she was kind. She still spooked Kalos by her very size and the nature of how she moved, though.
"What's a geese?" An inferior creature if it was an eaten one. Though people ate cows, too...
It took him a moment, but the large bugman came for her.
He didn't sound mad, even as he offered his arms and lifted her in. She abandoned the umbrella entirely and hugged his arms. In fact, as much as she was able Kalos scrambled up Gregory's body to cling better to the core of him and bury her face in his carapace.
It didn't matter a bit that he was a bugman. She'd known a gorgon, one of the oldest in fact, who'd been part locust. She hugged him tight, a safe anchor to the ground, while her body was wracked by uncontrollable shivers. He wanted to know why the window instead of the door. Well, that was easy.
"They almost f-found..." She had to stop and breathe rather than talk. It was that bad. Again, he didn't even seem to mind. Kalos relaxed incrementally and tried to think of all the reasons why this was okay and she should calm down.
She was inside again. She was in the safe proximity of a friendly gorgon. The sky would not make her fall up.
> "I am Gregory. Here to chat with you for a bit! You are Kalos, correct?"
He didn't know that she had picked her name, that the word in ancient Greek meant beautiful, or that sometimes when strangers said her name with strange accents it made her stop and consider if she was beautiful, like she'd decided she could be.
"I am Kalos." She confirmed in a steady voice both the beauty and the name. Though she was less sure of what she was meant to do, really. Surely she wouldn't be allowed to cling to him like an overgrown polyp.
"Can I sit under the table?" The more things she could put between herself and the sky, the better.
Her hiding spot was quite cozy. Behind the television, she got the benefit of the heat the large screen put off and she still got to hear the movie without having to see the scary parts. Like now. The music was intense and people were panicked. It was better, she told herself, that she couldn't see what was on screen.
She could, however, see from the little crack between the base of the television and its stand that there was a girl. She was sort of watching the movie. Sort of poking her pencil against papers.
> "Stupid school."
"Yeah. Stupid school." She had to agree, even if she was still hiding. School was just that stupid. Solid blue eyes continued to monitor the girl for her reaction to Kalos' voice and for the reaction to the movie. Once it was done, maybe then the gorgon would come out. Maybe.
The devil's fruit was a name for hot things. Not, er... the more reproductive things that she'd been trying and failing to hand motion instead of say. It was good he didn't know. Him not knowing was the best case scenario, really.
"I want to try everything. But the favorite so far is sweet things. Chocolate. I never met nobody who doesn't like chocolate so far." Lots of spices may have been a foreign concept, but nearly everything had been a foreign concept at first. Like pants.
She did have to concede the make-you-cry point. Try as she might to resist, and she did try, Kalos had cried. The tears had rolled down her cheeks. She pat the same cheeks again just to make double sure they were dry again. It wasn't her cheeks that she was feeling, though. It was her nose still running.
"I would try your not crying spice." If for no other reason than it looked like something important to Beau. Kalos would do anything to keep the people she liked around her happy.
He told her that she was cool. Her look, her bossiness. He had a point, but she stared at him while he said it. He sounded like he... liked? Being bossed around?
"Oh. I can make more good ideas." She did smile, then. And she found that mint chocolate he liked and broke off a piece to... well, not share. She broke the broken piece in half and then she offered him one half.
He had no powers. Her jaw fell open in the most un-queenly way. As soon as she realized she was gaping like a moron, she shut her mouth and blinked a few times in order to marshall her face. Human! He really, really was. Kalos took a step backwards even though all he did was enthuse about demigod powers. And... write?
He said she could check his things. He had no gun that she could see... That was the most tempting reason to get her to step forward again. And she couldn't deny the request, in the end. Every human she'd ever seen had something dangerous about them.
Kalos walked toward the human as he spoke with tempting human offers of lies and promises he would no doubt break.
"You can just... stay. Very still. Right- right where you are." She was going to be very brave and she just needed to work up to it.
And also there was a couch there.
Kalos went around the couch, but hesitated once there was nothing between them. His papers were right there. On the cushion. She could snatch them up to use as leverage. He had even said she could look at them, but most importantly she didn't trust that he was harmless. There was hardly the length of a single lunge between them. His hands looked strong enough to do damage.
Beau had said so many interesting things that Kalos wasn't even sure where to start. "I thought the devil's fruit was... you know... with the part that... you know?" She was making some odd motions with her hands that weren't really helping. And the more she looked between Beau and her hand motions... Kalos turned a few shades of purple and gave up. More than gave up, she put her hands down on the carpet and put her knees over them to keep them from escaping.
"Well where I'm from there wasn't spicy... or many spices. There was figs, though. And olives." Nobody ate figs here. It sorta made a disproportionate amount of her life feel like a lie. "Am I supposed to go my whole life without knowing what spicy is tasting like?" Or feeling like? She sorta still felt it making her nose run.
He... he thought she was cooler than him? She scooted closer for better inspection of his face in case it was a lying face.
"Why would you think I'm cool? You make slime. That's way more fighty." Was this all her idea? She rocked back and forth as she thought that over. Yeah. She'd sort of bossed Beau a bit... and Beau hadn't even minded.
"Why do you do as your told?" She hadn't yet settled into that, though Kalos was assured that some day she would want to.
If Kalos had learned any one thing from her best friends Chase and Toby, it was hiding. The Mansion was an old building, many times remodeled and rebuilt. It had hidey holes upon hidey holes. Twists so twisty and turns so delightfully circular, that they were near impossible to pry a young gorgon out of.
The laundry room was her most sacred of safe spaces. The smell was nice. There was sunlight. It was a small room, but not too small. No pets allowed. The dryers were always rumbling and the window ledge was wide enough for most of her bottom. A defunct laundry chute was an excellent escape hatch from the second floor, down to her hidey hole in the south-facing window. There were lots of nooks and crannies to hide in should someone come looking, and an infinite array of colors and clothing choices to look through.
That's where she was now, despite the fact that she was supposed to be in therapy.
It wasn't that she didn't want to go meet a giant bug. He sounded like a very nice gorgon. It was more that she didn't want to leave her favorite spot. Not when so many people were actively looking for her. If they saw her leave... then they'd know where she was next time. And next time, she might actually be hiding.
The most logical thing would be to go out the window. But outside was... outside. She didn't do outside. But if she opened the door to the hallway, she would have to face the adults who'd been looking for her. The adults who were not happy.
When the doorknob rattled, Kalos took a chance.
A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad chance.
As it turned out, umbrellas did not make you fall any slower like cartoons and video games had lead her to believe. It was only one floor. She wasn't hurt, physically. It was the risk of the sky sucking her out to infinity that had her scared.
Shaking, sweating, grassy, and huddled beneath a very broken umbrella, Kalos knocked on the outside window of the conference room where a gorgon sat waiting for her. It may not have been a traditional entrance, but she'd made it to her appointment.
