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.
"And so you have." But Luigi did not at all look pleased, even when Noel handed him his coffee. Maybe especially when she handed him her coffee? He put his binoculars into a small leather satchel which was really just a nice way of saying that the man carried a purse.
"So what's with the binoculars?" She knew. Ty knew. But they didn't know she knew so this was really the best way to break the ice.
"I'm workin' my way in with this elite club. Maybe yous heard of us?"
"Mario, honestly." Luigi looked to be getting a headache from all his exasperation.
"We're Mutant Spotters."
"Like bird watchers?"
"Just the same. Maybe yous two wanna come around some time? It's an absolute sausagefest. No offense to the sausages present, but uh," Mario waggled his eyebrows, "we could use a couple more like you, ya know?"
She laughed. Who wouldn't? The guy was like a caricature drawing, totally over the top. "You have a business card or something?"
"Yeah, yeah." He dug around in his pockets until he pulled a metallic card holder out. He grabbed two cards and elbowed Luigi until he got a pen from the other man. He scribbled something on the back of one card and then offered it to Ty before he went to work scribbling on the back of the second business card.
CITY CAKES Mario Malestro Master Chef, Sugar Sculptor xxx-xxx-xxxx
On the back he'd written an address, date and time.
"Weekly meeting's tomorrow for locals if yous really are interested."
"If you think you can handle it, that is." Luigi just had to have his input.
Noel's card was much the same as Ty's except that Mario had added his cell number on the front and a little XOXO.
Cute. Not at all winning him points, but cute all the same.
"If you don't mind, we'll take our leave."
"Gotta get all the points in that we can before tomorrow."
"But wouldn't it be fun to see what their league is like?" Noel peeked at Ty over the binoculars before passing them back to him.
Well, it seemed she had two customers now: the one that had beat up the Church of Humanity guy and the guy that Ty had taken these binoculars from. "Can I interest you in a pastry or coffee?" Her smile was the dazzling i-didn't-do-anything-wrong brand of smile.
"So that's it? You're sending your monkey to steal people's stuff just to pedal more crap?" The binocular-less guy was dark-skinned, tall, slender, and fabulously mustached in a salt and pepper kind of way. He would have been right at home conducting an orchestra or playing an instrument or some other job where he would never have to see the light of day or lift anything over 20 pounds. The word debonair came to mind. At least, it would have if he didn't have that surly look on his face.
"I thought you handed them over?" She shot a displeased look at Ty.
"Geez, Luigi, lighten up. He coulda been halfway to 10th Street by now. Just be glad your peepers are in one piece." The Church of Humanity scrapper flashed perfectly white, capped teeth at Noel. Where the first guy was long and lean like a limousine, this man was short and stout and round about. His skin was tanned in a way that spoke of money which was... weird considering what they'd just witnessed him doing. "We'll take two coffees."
"We'll do no such thing."
"Two coffees." Shortie repeated himself more forcefully. "And notta bit of trouble from yous two."
"Nothing special? Just black? Small?" While Noel ironed out their orders, Mr. Grumpy Pants, who the other guy had called Luigi, held out his hand for his binoculars.
Noel accepted shortie's credit card and sputtered. Mario. "You... your name is Mario?"
"Yea? So what?"
"And your name is Luigi?"
"What? What's so funny?"
Noel rolled her lips together to keep from smiling. "Nothing. Just checking."
Ty seemed cnfused. In fact, so was Noel when Ty went off toward the dmall patch of greenery instead of toward the fight. Had Ty not spotted the binoculars on the guy who s trying to take down the Church of Humanity pamphlet passer-outer? He was trying now to disentangle himself from the altercation, but the passer-outer had him by the binocular strap.
On the other hand, Ty seemed to have spotted his... accomplice? He wasn't so subtle now that Ty was speaking with him. And whatever he said shocked the guy so completely that he just let Ty walk off with his binoculars. He sputtered and gestured after him, but otherwise sat tight.
"You didnt, like, threaten to kill him or anying did you?" Noel accepted the binoculars with one hand while shoving the last bit of that half of her grilled cheese into her mouth. "Care to join me in seeing what this nonsense is all abount?" She wiped her lips with one of the napkins at the booth and then took a lick of the binoculars.
Initiation wasn't as intense as gang initiation, but they liked to haze the newbies a bit. It was a close-knit community, after-all. One had to have a certain amount of pluck and more than a little luck in order to go mutant spotting. It was practically an extreme sport at times.
Infamous ones like Isabel, the bone mistress, were worth the most points since they were dangerous. Worth the next most amount of points, psychics and other non-appearance-altering mutations. Finally, the obvious mutants were only worth one point each since you could spot them without seeing them actively use their powers.
Making contact with the mutants wasn't disallowed, but usually discouraged... for health reasons.
She would have looked more deeply into it, but something had jostled Noel out of her investigation.
The owner of the binoculars.
In fact, the other guy had disentangled himself from the pamphlet guy (only a little worse for wear) and was headed to the coffee cart.
She hadn't licked the binoculars for long. Now Noel held them up to her face to test them out because... uhm... excuse time?
Yep. They made Ty's nose look bigger. "Do you guys have a guide book?" Wouldn't it be awesome to join this little club? They could totally rock the point system just with people they'd met through Sanctuary.
There was no chain connecting Noel's leg to the cart, but considering that this was New York the memorymancer didn't dare leave anything out in the open. Especially if it had wheels. As such, she could not intervene in the pathetic wet slap fight the tussle was quickly devolving into.
"You should go grab the guy with the binoculars." It wasn't as if the 'fight' wasn't amusing, but neither of the combatants seemed to be mutants and their whole subspecies was still getting verbally drug around in the mud much to binocular guy's horror. "Or just the binoculars." Considering their talents, either would work.
Noel shrugged and leaned her weight against her cart as she savored her sandwich. Heck, this was the most exciting thing to happen all day.
Fanning herself with a leaflet from the nearby Church of Humanity distributor just wasn't keeping Noel cool enough. Surely seeing Ty was a hallucination.
A delicious smelling, teeth flashing, speaking hallucination.
"Angel of cheese, you did hear my prayers!" Okay, so once the morning crowd was done it got seriously boring. Noel practically danced around the coffee cart to claim her grilled cheese.
>"Get out of here, scum!" >>"No way! Free speech, man."
Already with her mouth full and a cheese string dangling (that's how you know it's good!), Noel fully expected to see the Church of Humanity guy to be the transgressor.
>>"Help! I'm being repressed! Mutant attack! See how bold they are? They even attack by daylight!"
Noel looked at Ty and shrugged. Well, when he was acting like that it made Noel not want to help. "Is this staged?" If so, the attack was really rather pitiful. The "mutant" didn't even look weird, not that Ty and Noel were obvious mutants. He was just sort of shaking the other man by his collar and trying to push the guy down... unsuccessfully.
How would she know? "Because I have cooties." Straight faced, she delivered that gem. "You wouldn't want to risk it without a reeeeally good reason." With a teasing wink, she took her seat.
Yeah. He'd be fiiiine.
Noel poked gingerly at her tattoo. It sorta itched and sorta still hurt.
And he was going to get that on his chest? "Don't forget it's permanent..." Not that the art wasn't good. It was impressive that Drake pumped that kind of quality out in the time that had passed. Just... it was his body... Noel didn't really get a say.
This was so not what she was expecting when Noel set out to get a job. She was thinking law enforcement, private investigation, EMT tech, or maybe even going as soft as being a nurse or a doctor or something, but... barista?
"Uh, you're outta those little cream cups?"
"We have an actual pouring thing full of cream. Over next to the– yeah. That's it."
Noel was manning a coffee cart in Crown Heights. The store that the cart belonged to was swanky, a patisserie and coffee joint where police could often be found making their rounds rounder. The cart tried to be equally upscale with things like sugar cubes instead of packets and actual cream in an actual pouring thing, but it was still a coffee cart. She still sold paper cups of coffee alongside those sweating sfogliatelle.
Now that the morning rush was through and her shift was winding down there was little to do but watch the nearby fountain and swat kids away from the sugar cubes. Birds chirped. Despite the heat, a man walked by in a trench coat with bare legs and running shoes.
The memorymancer fanned herself with the sports section of a newspaper that had been orphaned at her stand this morning. "There has got to be a better use of my talents than this."
Nobody congratulated Noel on being a bada** so she silently rectified that as she inspected her new tattoo. "Perfect." The skin was red and starting to puff up. Totally bada** It looked slick under it's fresh wash of petroleum jelly which was not cool, but protected it... or something?
Noel hopped out of her seat and made room for Ty. "It's not as bad as you might think. Besides, there's not too much that's really sensitive on your chest." She offered him a little smile for reassurance before she got into the teasing. "I could hold your hand if it'd make you feel better." Just... probably not the tattooed one.
They swapped seats and now it was Ty's turn to be a man. They were really putting Drake through her paces.
It took a few ticks for that to compute. In the meantime, He'd taken her form of defense and donned it as a hat.
Name? Screw introductions! She was talking to a freaking GIANT BUG. Normalcy could freaking wait until she got some assurances that this bug wouldn't squash her. Afterall, he seemed a bit unhinged... Not that Noel had met many bugs by comparison...
"Let me guess. You don't really 'get' human interaction. You're more the type that grew up around bugs, fell into a vat of thermonuclear waste and now you eat people." Unfortunately for Noel this scenario included super strength for bug-face and pathetically useless kissing skills for Noel.
Genetics suck.
Not having a weapon sucked more. She edged around the vehicle so at least the black hood of the car was between them. Then she folded her arms.
"If you eat me, I will give you incredible indigestion." Just to spite him, really. Spite seemed her best weapon currently.
It hurt, but it was surprisingly not that big of a deal. The sensation was, in a word, intense. More like sensory overload than straight up pain. As she suspected, watching made it that much easier to bear. If Noel focused purely on the sensations, it felt like Drake was drawing a line straight up her arm. In reality, she was very prescice and kept to the plan with incredible finesse. Noel could almost pretend the artist was just doodling there on her wrist. Almost.
How much time passed, the brunette couldn't even guess. After a time the sensations just seemed to echo and build up and clash against each other. But Drake was almost through so, despite the moisture collecting in Noel's eyes and despite the permission that Drake had given her to call for a break, Noel decided to tough it out. If she could just get through it, it would be over. Stopping would just drag the whole ordeal out and make it worse.
Was she surprised to hear someone ask her something? Yeah. Or, well she would have been if she had a spare brain cell to devote to the issue. Instead, her everything was focused on putting all the physical strength she could into some jumps.
Noel answered with every jump.
"Trying. To. Ge-Whuh!" The nut budged finally when Noel went to jump on it again and, since the crossbeam of the socket wrench was suddenly not supporting her weight, her weight went suddenly forward.
TH-DONK! It was her hands that hit the hood of the car and not her face, but her face came in close second, her nose mere millimeters from shiny black hood.
"Whew." Close. She sniffed stiffly and grabbed up the cross shaped socket wrench and wiped the hair out of her face all in the same motion. Noel grabbed up the loose nut and plonked it next to the rest before turning around to see who had come to visit.
"Trying to get these nuts off-ew!" That wasn't a girly Ew! Come save me! that was a gut-felt, nose wrinkling Blech! There's something nasty here. Noel put the wrench between herself and the very, very large bug. "Roachman." Now she really had seen everything. Shudder. They made the grossest sounds when she crunched them under foot.
Lisa had interesting ideas about what kind of things were useful. Sweeping. KP. Changing light bulbs and swapping out broken doors and door handles. (Sactuary residents seemed to be particularly hard on doors.) Noel endured these because she felt she needed to earn her keep even if she was crashing in another resident's room. There was only one task that when Lisa suggested it, Noel actually looked forward to doing.
Garage.
There was a garage full of cars. Some needed new license plates and stickers installed. Some were trashed and needed to be disassembled. Some just needed oil changes. But, by God, all of them were problems that had very clear solutions. This was where Noel truly was able to shine.
A lick and some meditation on the vehicle meant that she could usually identify the problem, at lest if it was human-caused. Then came the fun part: using tools and elbow grease to get to the problem. Once she isolated the part, no amount of greasy licking could tell her how it was supposed to work. Bluh. She'd tried, but there must not have been enough human interaction with some of the parts. Not enough memory to draw on.
From there she got to fiddle with the problem just like anybody else might. She did research, got a few manuals for reference and soon had a parts list the front lobby secretary, Lisa to order for her.
Today's conundrum? A wheel that didn't want to come off. She had the vehicle, a sleek black beamer, up on its jack and the socket wrench was in place. Heck, she'd even gotten 4 our of the five nuts off, but that last one... no matter how she pushed, pulled tugged or jumped on the thing, it didn't budge. Noel's arms were smudged in grime half way to the elbow with little smears and scratches on her face.
Heh. The response that the physically intimidating mutant gave to hearing Noel's mutation was deserved. Especially after Noel had been so worried about getting squished earlier. "Don't worry. I won't do it on accident." At least, she would try. Pain was one of those triggers that was hard to fight off. Noel would just have to keep her eyes closed if it got bad then.
"Right." Noel nodded, but was relatively confident she could be a man about this. Or at least, she could be a man until she could afford to be a girl about it. "I'm ready when you are."
The alcohol felt cold against her skin as it dried. Should she... not flex? That was her best guess here. Also, she wanted to watch. That, in her experience, made things so much more tolerable.
"Perfect. " Noel was not about to complain. Free tattoo like a permanent sticky note to guarantee that she wouldn't loose the only thing she owned. Well, okay. Ty had fronted the money for some clothes, but that was the sort of thing that didn't feel like it was "hers" because she had nothing to do with earning it. But she would earn it someday. Just like she would earn this tattoo and keep what little honor those four letters maintained.
Noel held out her wrist at the ready for sterilization and eventual inking while she chewed over the idea of debts and talents and payment.
"If you ever needed something different from sweeping, Drake. I do have other talents." Because, really, who claimed "sweeping" as a talent on their resume? "I can see memories off of items, tell truths from lies and even erase memories." The last one especially explained her predicament.
"Ty, I'd offer the same to you. Not that I saw much that you'd want to forget."
