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.
Zek slid across the hood of the car and quickly ducked down on the other side of it, just as golfball-sized chunks of ice soared right through the space where his head had been. The ice chunks cracked against the bricks of a building and shattered into bits. They weren't enough to kill anyone - probably - but many did they pack a punch! Zek knew he was gonna have bruises in the morning. His trenchcoat and extra layers hadn't helped too much and the first several salvos he'd taken that even felt like paintballs.
Speaking of paintballs.
There was a break in the hailfire so Zek quickly shot up and twisted around, taking aim with his paintball gun and firing off a couple of controlled bursts before ducking back down behind the car again. It was late in the evening and on the cold side outside, so there weren't a ton of random pedestrians around, but it was still a busy part of the city. Enough so that even Zek had thought twice about simply hurling molotov cocktails and dropping cars on his enemy.
The dude with the hail was Bobby Cool. He wore a white faux-fur jacket that reached his ankles. Under it he was shirtless and wore black leather pants. His chest had clearly been waxed that day and he'd gone overboard on the bronzer. A single gaudy gold chain hung around his neck. The rest of his gold chains were in Zek's pockets.
"You're a dead man!" Bobby Cool shouted as he launched another salvo of ice pellets at Zek's location. Then the angel of attack changed as Bobby started shooting hail in an arc.
"As least I don't look like a a carrot rolled in a lint trap!" Zek shouted back even as he ducked into a forward roll and came up sprinting down an alley, where he ducked behind a dumpster for temporary cover.
Huh, so that was it then. "Huh, so that's it then," Zek said as final bits of debris and dust settled down in the now-relatively still office space. Shooter McGee was now...just tying someone up. "Ohh, he's not dead? Dang," he said. Zek was wanting to know if the guy exploded into rainbows when he died. Ah well, guess he wasn't finding out just then. The day was still young though...
Zek shook his head and the song from Zekworld cut off as Zek paused the sound system. Then he switched off the EDM and LED lights on the disco staff, leaving the whole place far, far quieter than before and lit up only by splotches of glowing paintball splatters and the ten foot right of white light from Zekworld that was blasting out from behind Zek.
"No sirree, Bobby Boy," Zek said unrepentedly, "I don't bother with the paperwork. Allergies, you know. Besides--ack! The Moontians!" Zek's glowing eyes widened. "Dangit, I forgot about them! I gotta find Cracker! Portal awaayyyyy!"
With that, Zek swiped his staff in front of him and threw himself back into Zekworld, allowing the portal to iris shut, leaving the office in darkness and ruin and feeble whimpers of wounded baddies.
Zek's eyes practically bulged out of his head and his mouth stretched wide enough to reveal all of his teeth. "Ha-hah! I can't believe that actually worked!" he cried as the cubicles squashed one of the people who were annoying him. Usually people were smart enough to duck out of the way of falling objects.
Zek immediately began celebrating. Twirling his disco staff around like a baton, he immediately began to do the Running Man while dabbing. The corresponding motions were in complete contrast to the song blasting out of Zekworld, but it went decently with the EDM from the staff. "Now it's a party!" he said, twisting his next around to find LiteBlight. They could use more rainbows in the place.
Then he saw Mr. Big Shot jump into the ceiling, ricochet off, and lay a smackdown on Prismaniac after one final blast of pretty lights.
"Oh nevermind," Zek said, seeing the dude go limper than a wet noodle. "So is that it, then? We get 'em all?"
Zek clutched the pearls around his neck in outrage as the woman's words were brought to his attention. "Why, Ah do declar-uh," he said in the mosat insulted tone he could find, "That is downright rude, madame! Now, you're lucky I am a gen-tul-mun or I'd be fixing to fight you over my honor!" Zek turned his nose up high, giving her a good look at his oversized 'stache. "Ah say, Ah say Ah say Ah say, good day, madam!" he said, to a small chorus of "ooohhhs!" from the nearby partygoers.
Then he spun on his heel and marched off into the crowd. "Onwards, to the bacon!"
About a third of the room away, Helios leaned back with laughter as he finished shaking James Erickson's hand. "Your partners say a lot about me, do they? All good things, I hope! I'd hate to fire them all!" he chortled in a louder-than-polite voice as he laughed at his own joke, yet a keen observer might notice the smile didn't make its way to his eyes.
He moved to shake Sara Erickson's hand. "I'm delighted you're enjoying yourself! Here, have some more champagne! I had it flown in from my private island just this morning!" he said, snagging a flute from a passing server and handed it to the woman. "It adds a nice touch of class to a place as rugged as this, does it not?"
Then he was looking at William. His smile grew wider, though it still didn't touch his eyes, and his hand might've squeezed just more than was comfortable. "Ah, my boy, I fear even a party as acceptable as this one has few delights for a child of your age." He leaned down a bit to get more on William's eye level. "How about in a little bit, I arrange a small tour for you of my latest acquisition of Greek artifacts? Lots of shiny swords and armor! You'll love it, I'm sure!"
Then there was a loud clattering from about thirty feet away. Zek stood with hands filled with bacon-wrapped shrimp as a silver tray sputtered to a standstill on the floor as a server tried to vanish in horror. "Ah found the bac'n! And shrimp!" Zek shouted.
"Why, Ah do declar-uh," Zek said in his best Hollywood Southern accent. "This cheeseburger slider is just downright terrable! It boggles the midn that anyone would evah serve this at just a fancy shindig like this," he said, shoving the rest of the slider past his big white bushy mustache and into his maw.
"Sir, that's a roasted oyster," the server said respectfully as she readjusted the silver tray on her hand.
Zek blinked at the black-clad woman and than back down at his hand. He took his monocle out and rubbed it against his solid white jacket before popping it back into his eye. "Why, so it is!" he said exuberantly. "Then in that case, I'll take another!" Zek reached out and snagged another oyster off the tray with the aid of a little tiny napkin and spun around to find his Featherbutt, his fellow party crasher and co-masquerader.
"Ah say, Ah mean Ah say, Clarence, you have got to try these oyster sliders! They're simply the cat's meow!" Zek said with gusto. "They even make this awful music and the most recent events in the headlines seem acceptable, by their sheer presence!"
The two of them were dressed up like high society snobs and had picked out different accents and costumes, all the better to blend into the black tie gala. So of course Zek was dressed in his favorite powder blue suit, monocle, wingtip shoes, complete with bamboo cane, boater hat, fake mustache, and dyed-white hair. All the better to attend this "wellness" or "whalesaving" or "well, drinking" event that was also supposed to be about formally acknowledging the acquisiton and merger of some company into the "Helios Foundation" or whatever, but after hearing it was supposed to be a "magical" experience, Zek didn't need to hear any more. So he'd invited his partner in crime along to enjoy.
As Zek, tried to catch Featherbutt's attention, a burly man in the finest black tuxedo you ever saw - its quality emphasized by just how valiantly it held itself together when stretched around the man's generous paunch - started making his way through the crowd towards a man, a woman, and their son.
"James Erickson! Welcome! I'm glad you could make it!" the man said in a not-quite-booming tone tinged with a thick Greek accent as he approached the trio. "And this must be your wife and son! Sara and William, yes?" he said, turning to shake each of their hands in order. "I'm Isaac Helios, the founder of well, the Helios Foundation!" He waved a hand at one of the banners nearby, which had "Helios Foundation" brazenly plastered in front of a stylized sun.
"Tell me, are you enjoying the party?" Helios asked with sudden intensity. "I hope you are! I hired simply the best event organizers in this tawdry city and I truly hope they were up to the task!"
The lady was quickly boring Zek. She seemed content to just lock herself in a car and...was she trying to bash her way out of it? Now Zek couldn't look away if he tried. It was like watching a car crash, accept she was already crashing and the car wasn't going anywhere.
He tilted his head. It tilted way farther than most human people heads could. Maybe this chick didn't need a straightjacket after all - she seemed bound and determined to lock herself up.
But then actually interesting stuff happened. A man in a suit and sunglasses appeared from the busted door of the building and started running off. Zek's head began swiveling around to track the man's movements and golden lights of interest formed in his irises. Now this was interesting! Mystery! Excitement! Not some brain-addled person who locked themselves in a car and passed out. This was Sunglasses at Night exciting.
Zek glanced at the demon lady once again and shrugged. The ambulance sounded and looked like it was almost there, so as it's red and white lights began bouncing off walls, Zek pressed a white ball of light into the air, where it turned into a white portal edged in blue light. He stepped through it and vanished from the scene of whatever all this was.
A zipline through Zekworld later, and Zek stepped out on top of a building further down the street, just overhead of where the bald due was running. Zek watched him for another minute or so as he ran by before opening another portal and another, until he was a couple more buildings down the street, following the man.
Zek finished the call after giving the address and the symptoms he'd seen and then hung up the pay phone. Working pay phones were so rare these days, but still so dang useful! Zek made a mental note of where this one was and then turned around to maybe go back and tell Devil Chick that an ambulance was on its way.
Then he screamed. "Aiiii!"
She was banging into buildings and walking like a zombie! She looked truly awful, even worse than she had when Zek first started watching her! Like seriously, ruby lips were so last year and they totally clashed with her black-then-blue eyes.
Then she got weird. Was that...was that flirting? "Look, lady," he began, spreading his hands out. For most people it was a pacifying gesture - for Zek, it just left him ready to start throwing energy orbs. "I don't know what your deal is, but you look like ten kinds of trouble and none of the fun kinds."
"You just went from 'I'm dying' to 'I need your help' to 'You are GOING to help me' to 'are you even coming because clearly I can move around and leave on my own because I'm obviously able to rip up a car' in like, five seconds," he said. "I don't really know what you're on, and normally I wouldn't care, but you're kinda messed up in the head. How about you just hangout here and let the nice men with the straight white jackets come and help you out, okay?"
A lot of stuff happened. So many things. Well, potentially. Very quickly, Demon was hurled into the building and the guy went in after her. Then things got boring. He couldn't see anything, couldn't even really hear anything. There was a lot of things he could've done about that though. He could've left. He could've trekked through portals until he was in the building and watching the chaos. He could've moved back to the other building. There was certainly time for him to do that while the woman got busted up or whatever, but it just felt like there really wasn't a chance for him to do anything at all.
Eh.
She yelled up at him and Zek shrugged and shouted indignantly through his megaphone, "My clown shoes are still in their locker, thank you very much!" The nerve! "And maybe I would help if you, you know, asked for it or even gave me a chance!"
And then...she did ask for his help. Without any context whatsoever. Then she flew like a lead duck, bumping into everything she could until crash landing at his feet. For once, Zek didn't really have a ready reply. "What the dead gods...?" he said, his eyes losing their lights and returning to a normal, confused brown.
Then he smiled as he figured out what was going on. Paranoia? Check. She'd practically assaulted him after dripping ice cream and wanted to know who he worked for. Lack of balance? Check check. Violent mood swings? Triple check. Erratic breathing? Looked like it, but Zek wasn't getting close enough to find out. Eyes dilated or freaky? Yup, although that maybe didn't mean anything special. Drool? Disgustingly checked. Blackouts? You betcha.
He blinked down at the woman a few more times, glanced around the empty streets, and then sighed. Well, there went his entertainment for the night. His shoulders slumped and he dropped the megaphone through a portal to Zekworld. Another two portals later, he was in front of a payphone right beside the building he'd been sitting on, where Demon now lay. "Hi, 911? I'd like to report an overdose...."
Zek just grinned. Well, it looked like the night was starting to look up. "Maybe you should be better at dodging falling food," he said sagely. Not that he had any intention of dropping more food. He gave the vanilla cone a very long swipe with his tongue as he twisted it around, to get any drops of melty ice cream.
He watched as Devil Girl went through many of the classic stages of people who dealt with him. Annoyance, frustration, anger, physical assault on local scenery, before finally making up her mind. And acceding to his ask. When she leaped over the edge of the building, Zek spun his head around and leaned forward again, watching her crawl down like a mishapen beetle. A few drops of ice cream feel past her but it was okay as long as he didn't lose anymore scoops.
But then Zek realized he had a really bad viewpoint for what was happening below him. He ddin't even see Senor Suit come out until a bullet was flying toward his face!
"Eep!" he squeaked before jerking backward. Okay, this wasn't a great perch anymore. He glanced across the street at the building Dragon Woman had previously perched on and nodded. He transferred a cone to the other handing, freeing his left hand to drop a white ball that turned into a portal behind him and he tumbled backwards into Zekworld. He handed off one of his ice cream cones to a holographic Zek (who could eat the ice cream, to the Prime Zek's relief) and hopped into a golf cart that a second holo-Zek was driving. They drove above a street's width across the baseball field on Zekworld and Zek threw another ball, opening a portal back to Dullworld. Stepping through, he appeared on the building across the street from Demon.
And now she was getting a piggy-back ride from the guy. That just wouldn't do. He re-opened the portal to Zekworld and pulled a folding chair and a megaphone out of the coach's office. He plopped down into the chair and dismissed the portal. "Oi!" he shouted through the megaphone. "Quit playing around! I wanna see some action!"
Finally, the woman interrupted Zek. He just kept grinning his Cheshire grin and licked up his cones where the ice cream had started dripping. He was impressed and maybe a little worried about the woman - most people figured out what was going on within fifteen seconds or so and got fed up. She had taken a bit longer than that and it was all he could do to not break character and devolve into chortling during the whole thing.
He pointedly looked at her legs, which were not in his hands, and then returned to staring into her eyes. "I am definitely not pulling your leg," Zek said, licking his ice cream again while still keeping that eye contact. He licked it again but way slower.
Zek twisted around so he could swing his legs back over the side of the building and dangle them in mid-air. His head remained in the same position though, so he could still keep that eye contact. He wasn't blinking either, like at all. "I'm just having ice cream and enjoying the show," Zek said with a shrug. "Haven't seen a killer yet though. Unless you're one. I'm not judging you if you are - some of my best friends are killers."
He glanced at the outstretched hand and did nothing else with it. His own hands, also clad in his customary fingerless gloves, were full of drippy ice cream cones. No way was he gonna drop them just to touch someone. "Howdy doody, Dee," Zek said with a cheerful nod of his backwards head. "My name's Zek, but you can call me Your Majesty. Don't let me get in the way of your hunt though - I could use some entertainment. This street was starting to get boring."
Lick. Lick. Liiiiiiick. And the eye contact was still there.
Now he only had to half-cones, instead of one and a half. It was almost enough to make a man cry. But Zek wouldn't cry. No. Because he still had two half cones and he wouldn't cry in front of them.
He was mid-lick on the vanilla cone, showing off his very blue tongue, when Bat Lady flew up. She didn't have much ice cream on her anymore. Hmm, she probably licked it off. That's what Zek would've done. Ice cream on face was still free game, unlike ice cream on ground.
Zek blinked at the woman. "I never laugh about fallen ice cream," he said deadly seriously. "Thank you for intercepting it. It would've hated its last moment to be that of concrete frosting." He licked his cone again without breaking eye contact.
But there were more questions. "I know this building is not that tall," he said after a moment's thought. "And it probably has at least one bathroom. But I'm definitely not one of them. I'm firmly an us." When it came down to us vs. them, us was always the better option, right? At least that's how it seemed to Zek.
Then came the clincher. She wanted to know what he knew. He started grinning and his smile stretched from cheek to cheek, far wider than a regular smile. "Well, if you really wanna know," he began. "Albert Einstein was born in...."
And he began listing off everything he knew about inventors and Germans. Even so, he was preparing topics around food, classical music, interpretive dance, automobile repair, and world series statistics. And the whole time, he stared at her with unblinking eyes.
Zek took another lick of his chocolate ice cream cone. The vanilla was was already half gone. Sure, he could've gotten two swirly cones, but he like being able to alternate flavors as the mood struck him. So he had one in each hand as he sat on the edge of the roof of a non-descript building that could've been a government agency, or it could've been an apartment building. He didn't know either. Nor did he care. What he liked about it was that it had a good view of the street and was perfect for people watching.
Like the winged and tailed woman who had been perching on a building across the street before flying down. Zek watched with an pleasantly amused smile as she crossed the street. Finally, some action. The night was starting to get boring. He'd been on the roof all evening long, ever since he'd witnessed a viral marriage proposal on the street, hoping something else would happen. He'd noticed the woman but kept forgetting about her because she didn't do anything interesting for a long time, but now she seemed to be on the move.
As she got to the front door of the building, Zek leaned forward to better track her. In doing so, he accidentally tipped his chocolate cone too far forward and the whole top scoop slide up and started plummeting right toward the part of the steps in front of the door.
So Gunsmoke was some kind of cop. Yep, Zek was definitely glad he hadn't pulled out his morningstar. From his experience, law enforcement tended to not like people bashing other peoples' heads in with medieval weaponry. Not that medieval weapons were great against rainbow rays of death. Nope. Guns were way better. but Zek also realized that he didn't have a carry permit so maybe guns weren't the best option right now either. Ah well, he had other toys.
"I have way better ideas all the time," Zek said with a snooty sniff. He thrust a hand out and a golden ball whizzed into a cubicle. It vanished in a flash of light. Another golden ball swiped a second cubicle. Then Zek threw the corresponding scarlet balls of light over at the other guy who made light (but not melty light) and right before the orbs hit the ceiling, they flashed and the two cubicles started falling.
"Git wrecked," Zek said, rubbing his fingerless-glove-clad hands together.