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.
His suspicions were immediately confirmed. Dr. Cama’s spite was palpable, but not as much as the lumbering Hercules still making his way over. “I never said I’d kill you,” Rex said. “You are not worth a stain on my soul. Nevertheless, you will be held accountable for your actions.” Rex did not bother hiding the disgust in his voice.
“You will not escape, you abomination.”
Rex turned his attention to Hercules, who was nearly upon him. Only the plant’s lousy puppetry and clear lack of practice in controlling a mobile, bipedal host was giving Rex breathing room. He considered Cama’s words and his own abilities, and then he began speaking rapidly.
”Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet….”
Baseball-sized fireballs began appearing on the floor in front of Rex, a new one appearing with each iteration of his spell.
”....Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet…”
Each ball hovered somewhere between an inch and a foot off the ground, some were only a foot or two away from Rex, others ranged a couple yards away, almost to Hercules, and they started spreading out, as new fireballs began creating a floating floor of fire and light between Hercules and the others.
Dr. Cama gasped in pain and surprise. “You…you’re magic…too,” he managed to say. Then he started to slumped as the pressure Rex had been applying to his throat cut off his airways long enough to push him into a loss of consciousness.
Rex started backpedaling. ”Thy word is a lamp unto my feet….”
Rex released the gurney as soon as he felt it sink satisfyingly into the doctor’s stomach, a sudden expulsion of air being music to his ears. By the time the bed was shoved back in his direction, Rex was moving. He crossed the short distance to the doctor, yanked the doctor forward while sliding behind him and pulled him into a chokehold.
Rex swiveled, so the doctor and the gurney were between him and Hercules, now that Rex had gotten out of the brawny man’s way.
“Back off, Hercules,” Rex said as he started to squeeze Cama’s throat between his bicep and forearm. He fully expected nothing to happen, but he had to make the warning anyway.
Taking his own advice, Rex backed up a few steps, taking Cama with him, in order to keep Cama out of the way of any other sharp items. “Okay, Cama, it’s time to shut all this down. Turn off the Gravevine,” he barked into the man’s ear.
Rex arrested his forward momentum when he saw the knife. Very quickly, Hercules was brought around and now Rex faced two opponents. It seemed the doctor was not unprepared for such an encounter. Rex was cut off from the door and he was unarmed.
“Nobody said anything about killing you,” Rex said to Cama. “Even if it is just penance for your actions.” Rex stared at the man and his eyes flicked to the knife and then Hercules. Firelight still glinted in his eyes as he focused on the plant. A tickling of suspicion crossed his mind as he now saw it fully in the light and in the presence of Dr. Cama. He frowned and concentrated.
“Father, is this Cama’s work?” he whispered, seemingly to nobody.
Yes.
It wasn’t a word, per se, that he heard. It was more of a feeling. It was enough, though.
Confirmation resounded in Rex’s mind. He had seen this before, if not in person than in a book. Cama’s book of mad science and sorcery. Rex had perused it from time to time, always saying each time would be his last, but constantly coming back to it. Parts of it made sense. The anatomy drawings, the scientific principles it was founded upon, but then it would start going awry in ways that mostly made no sense at all to Rex. That was the part where the magic began.
Amidst the many machinations, there were sections on plantforms and hortiurgy, the magic of plant-shaping. What Cama had made looked somewhat like the drawings of a person infested with Gravevine.
It also seemed Cama did not have full knowledge of his own creation.
“Hercules is tough,” Rex said. “You are not.” He grabbed the gurney that was thrust lengthwise toward him and slipped around it just enough to grab the handles of one end, the other end aimed right at the dark doctor. Then Rex dug his heels into the floor and shoved the gurney violently at Cama’s midsection.
It was a macabre sight, seeing a partially flayed Hercules exposed on a table, a plant growing in his head. Tendrils and leaves shuddered in the dead, dusty air. Rex’s lip unconsciously curled up a hint in revulsion.
The feeling grew as Dr. Cama continued working, as nonchalantly as could be, before finally commanding Hercules to attack Rex. Rex took a single step back, leaving the fireball burning at knee height between him and the now lumbering Hercules. Rex knew the man’s power and he believed he had a benchmark of the power these plants could bring to bear. Unlike those poor souls in the hallway, Hercules did not look like he was one step from the grave already. The only salvation Rex could see was the lack of awareness in Hercules' eyes.
Good. That meant he wasn’t in control of his actions.
Rex lobbed the hovering fireball up toward Hercules’s plant. The fire burst into a quick flash of flame and then vanished before it could touch anything, having exceeded the boundaries of Rex’s spell. The firefighter wasn’t concerned - he didn’t need it anymore.
Rex was already ducking around Hercules and lunging at the mad doctor. Hercules was normally quick, but Rex was betting his life that controlling him through the grapevine and a non-bipedal plant would leave Hercules every bit as awkward and slow as the guards Rex had already faced.
The sense of warmth surrounded Rex as he stopped in front of a grimy door labeled “Operating Room.” His lip curled in disgust. Then his brow furrowed. He hadn’t been imagining things, had he?
“Did I not see Hercules, infested with one of those flowers?”
A moment later, he felt a surety that he had indeed seen that. He didn’t know what that meant, although he knew in his gut that it wasn’t good, especially if he was going to end up like those other people.
“This is why I’m here,” he said. He gently tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked. Interesting. As quietly as he could, he twisted the knob and opened the door half an inch.
Then he leaned back and kicked the door in, a loud BAM echoing through the halls.
A cloud of dust erupted and lit up in the firelight of the hovering orb in front of his knee, a twisted parallel to the bright lights coming from the operating room. Rex didn’t dawdle, looking at the sights however. He had a mission to do.
Rex burst into the room and immediately caught sight of that man holding up…skin. Skin with some of Hercules’s tattoos. “Get away from him!” Rex snarled, firelight glowing in his eyes.
Behind the red rubber nose and the facepaint, the clown’s eyes lit up and he caught his breath. “Oh,” he said slowly, settling into a pleased look as a grin stretched across his face. “Helloooo sailor! What’s a guy like you doing in a port like this?” He reached up and squeezed a fake flower pinned over his left pec. It squeaked.
Rex, for his part, was gathering a few undersized instruments into a tiny pile. A trumpet, a mini accordion, even a little drum. As the normally-dressed man stooped down to join him and apologize, Rex brushed it off. “No need - I’m happy to help,” he said. “It’s good to help others.”
Helping others meant he didn’t have to think about himself, or what he had lost. No, not lost. Merely…displaced. You will get them back some day.
It was just a moment when he slid back into the sunken reverie, his thoughts dwelling on past and common angst, but it was still enough to miss the clown’s sudden head swivel and widening of his smile.
“Heading to a party?” Rex asked the clown, hoping to divert attention. The clown’s smile drooped a bit.
“Something like that,” the clown said, refusing to be the first to take his hand away from the other man’s. “Let’s just say a couple of guys are going to have a night they’ll never forget.”
“Oh. OH!” Rex’s cheeks burned a bit. The clown’s grin grew wider.
Rex coughed and hitched his breath immediately. His throat felt like it was on fire and breathing was agonizing. Still, he had to do it. He sucked in a painful bout of air and stumbled against the wall. The creature was still writhing and Rex kept the fire burning close to it, preferring to keep it in quiet convulsions rather than attempting to pick itself up and attack again.
Like the other creature was doing.
Alien intelligence had adapted to a bipedal form and it had learned how to orient itself and regain balance. The abomination Rex had slammed into the wall was back on ungainly feet and Rex gasped in pain as it took a halting, clumsy step toward him. Petals had fallen from the flower and a couple of vines hung limply, as did an arm, but it kept coming.
Rex sized up the situation. The hallway seemed both short and wide at the same time. He was moving slower, but so was the creature.
He slammed it into the wall again. Then he did it again. When it fell, he kicked the plant-side of the creature’s head and watched it stop moving.
The other creature’s contortions were slowly down. Its neck rolled around on the floor in a sickening fashion.
There was no time for triage though. The immediate threat was down. The larger threat?
Rex started panicking and gasping for as much air as he could get, but the fingers were crushing his throat. He grabbed and twisted at the hands but he couldn’t budge them. He didn’t have the leverage. He was losing air fast. The symptoms of asphyxiation coursed through his mind unbidden, his training coming to the surface.
His vision was already going. His heart was beating. He tried to call an inferno but he could barely open his mouth, but less get the words to quote a passage from the Bible. The fireball blazed in his vision and he had a vague thought about how it was soaking up the oxygen in the room.
Then two neurons connected.
The fireball was still there. It hadn’t burned out.
With a surge of focus, Rex yanked on the mental tether that connected the fireball to him, the one that continuously fed extranormal energy into the burning specter and that he use to move it around, albeit only near the floor.
Thank the Lord Rex was on the floor.
The fireball whizzed over and smashed into the flower on the side of the creature’s head. The hands immediately released Rex and every single vine and plant part began writhing and reeling in a torrid mess. Rex rolled off the creature and immediately and painfully gasped. Then he rolled again to get some more distance.
The body was convulsing and twitching and jerking, almost like a spider, as vines contracted and whipped around. Rex had the impression that the plant was screaming. The fireball didn’t ignite the plant, for better or worse, but Rex moved it around between him and the creature. The creature shied away from it even as Rex started to push himself to his feet.
His breath fogged in the air as Rex walked by a small basketball court with a chain link fence and no net around the rim. There was a handful of teenagers and younger kids playing - it was rare to see a kid alone in this place - but they seemed to be having fun regardless. Rex thought he recognized one or two of them from prior dealings on the street, but he had no personal connections there. Certainly not enough to just stand and watch kids being kids.
Especially when he hadn’t seen his own kids in nearly two years.
Rex forced himself to keep walking, lest his thoughts be consumed once again by that dark rabbithole. Those deep dwellings that kept sucking him down over and over.
There was a squawk of alarm and suddenly Rex realized he wasn't the only distracted pedestrian on the street.
“D’oh!” cried a flamboyantly dressed clown as he executed a perfect pratfall after a man walked into him. The clown’s feet flew out from under him and he came straight down on his butt, where a whoopee cushion had previously been placed. A brown paper bag full of dozens and dozens or….gimmicks, they looked like….flew into the air. Fake vomit, colorful strips of cloth, a stuffed bunny, and heaps of rubber balls went everywhere.
“Huh,” the clown said. “I’ve been wanting to take a trip lately, but not like this!”
Rex immediately stooped over to start picking things up. “Here, let me help.” Anything to get his mind out of the gloom.
Stiff, rigid fingers closed around Rex’s neck and he immediately tried to reach behind him to grab the wrists. His hands brushed against something silky and oddly smooth and with a stab of horror realized he was touching the petals of the flower. His mouth dropped open and his own hands dropped to the wrists that were clutching at him.
“Aaah!” he shouted before fingers choked off the sound. He quickly bent forward and pulled violently.
The creature swung like an upside-down pendulum and slammed bodily on the ground not far from his light. Against any normal person, this would’ve been enough to break the hold on Rex’s throat. These were abominations though.
My God! Rex thought as the fingers continued to tighten and the hands yanked him forward to the ground.
He fell face-first into the mass of vines on the thing’s chest. He could feel tiny leaves, bristles, and tendrils caressing him, as well as the cool feeling of the man beneath the plant.
Panic fought to seize Rex even as he felt his air supply closing. “Dios…” he gasped before that got choked off. The creature wasn’t fast or dextrous, but it was strong. It was like something else was controlling it like a puppet, not used to having independent limbs. It was, however, used to cracking rocks.
It wasn’t a great part of town. It was a place you tended to only go if you had to be there, whether the reason was business or because you lived there. Nobody came there to visit and if you just so happened to find yourself there, even in broad daylight, you tended to try to get out as quickly as you could, but without running. No sense looking like prey.
Rex shut the door to the Widow Roosevelt’s home gently behind him. He’d been by to drop off groceries she’d ordered and to deliver a care package from their church. She was getting very up in years and lately had been nearly homebound due to one medical issue or another. Rex was frequently asked by Father Lorenzo to check in on her, especially since her neighborhood was so rough and Rex tended to volunteer in the area a lot as it was.
The firefighter didn’t mind. It was better than going home and feeling the emptiness there.
It wasn’t very late in the day, but the sky was already showing signs of darkening. Rex just sighed and started walking down the street. He was a couple miles from home, but he didn’t mind the walk. It helped keep his mind off everything else. It also gave him an unparalleled closeness to this community he’d adopted.
One day, one day, this neighborhood can be a shining beacon in the city.
It was possible. That day might be very, very far away, but Rex believed things could get better.
Twisted shadows danced across the walls as the predominant source of light now flickered behind Rex as he fought the plant-guard. Not that it was much of a fight. It moved too slowly, too stiffly. It clutched at his back but Rex banged it’s head into the desk once, twice, three times. Then he grabbed it by the mass of vines trailing down its chest and swung it around before releasing it into a cinderblock wall.
The creature smashed into the wall and collapsed to the floor. It was still moving, arms and legs raising and lowering, but for all that it seemed like a turtle flipped over on its back. For the single moment Rex watched it, it seemed to have no understanding of how to simply roll over and push itself up.
Whatever was done to these people, it wasn’t efficient.
Then the shadows quelled as another light appeared, one Rex knew all too well. “Hercules! By God, am I glad to see you!” he shouted. “There is evil in this place! Come, we need to…”
His voice trailed off as Hercules moved closer, revealing his own flowering growth. “Dios mio,” Rex breathed.
Then the other creature, the one with the bent neck, wrapped its hands around Rex’s throat.
----------------------
“All right!” Dr. Cama cried as the last of his preparations finished up. He had the materials he believed he needed. Everything was set. Now he just needed Hercules. “Come to me, my monster, come to me!” he called out, his fingers dancing in the air and sending his magic reaching across floors and rooms to reach Hercules and his parasite. “Return to me now!”
The plant-ridden horrors did not stop at Rex’s command. Not for long, anyways. There was an eerie moment where he could feel them assessing him, despite heads not aimed in his direction, and the man repressed a shudder.
Then the creatures pressed forward, their motions jerky and unnatural, like marionettes. They were slow and clumsy-looking, yet they just added to the horror.They looked human. They had been human. They might still be human. There was more involved.
The sickly green light just beginning to glow in the hallway added to his resolve. The creatures were nearing arm’s reach. More of their features could be seen. Appearing black in the firelight, rivulets of liquid were slowly oozing down the sides of their heads, emerging from where the plants were growing. Lumps and bulges appeared all over their face and presumably elsewhere, as if something had burrowed under their skin. and was still spreading. Dark veins stood out starkly on pallid skin. Leaves of the flowers suddenly startled rustling, quivering, as if in anticipation.
The two split apart to evade the fire. They started to circle around. “You will not get those children,” Rex swore. He left the fire burning in midair and then he tackled the person on his left, his full weight and power slamming the creature into a reception area counter.
He heard the shuffling first. Heavy, uncertain steps thudding on the ancient, filthy tiles. Clanks as stiff legs and knees banged into metal chairs.
Then the creatures came into view as Rex rounded a corner.
“God in Heaven!” Rex breathed as the shambling creatures were birthed by the darkness into his firelight.
He could see uniform pants and work shirts beneath a swarming mass of vinery and plant parts. The rafflesias on their heads gleamed in the light of his fireball even as the vines appeared blackened by the same light. One of the heads was bent at a horrifying angle.
These were surely the monsters the children had witnessed. “Stop!” Rex thundered, standing tall in the middle of the hallways with his hand outstretched as if to halt them with his mind. The fireball burned in front of his knees. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I command you to stop, you things of darkness!”
A glimmer of phantom flames flickered around his hand, matching the embers that were beginning to glow in his eyes.
If there was nothing else Rex specialized in, it was making his way through dangerous buildings.
The fireball led the way as Rex dashed up stairs and careened down hallways. He was getting deeper and deeper into the place and the screams were getting louder and more numerous. Rex wasn’t someone who watched many horror movies, but he felt like he was in the beginning of one, especially as the angry light of his fire swarmed over the dirt encrusted walls and abandoned equipment and tools.
It was not long until the screams seemed to be nearly upon him. Double doors at the end of the hallway burst open and a trio of people charged out of the gloom.
“Help us!” one of the guys screamed and Rex was able to tell they were teenagers, albeit aged by terrible decisions.
“There’s a monster! He tried to kill us!” the girl added as they zeroed in on Rex.
“Zombies! Zombies!” the third teen shouted.
Before Rex had time to do more than blink, they were on him, grabbing his arms and clutching him while still half-running. “We have to go!” one shouted.
None of them paid any attention to the fireball, even when one brushed an arm against it and got burned. Their terror and whatever they’d been up to was overtaking everything.
“Quiet!” he stage-whispered harshly. He planted his feet and arrested the teens’ momentum. “Tell me what you are running from.”
The first guy stared up with wide bloodshot eyes. “Monsters, man! They tried to kill us! Swamp creatures or something!””
The other guy chimed in. “It almost killed Stacy!”
At that moment, Rex stared at the teens. He read their fear like a book of horrors. He did not need to pray. He believed. This was why he was there.
He leaned down so he was on their level and he grabbed two of their shoulders. “I will take care of this,” he said, flickers of firelight dancing in his eyes. “Do you know the church on Broad Street?”[/color]
One of the kids nodded quickly. “Go there. Tell Father Lorenzo that Rex sent you. I will be along soon. Now go!” he said forcibly.
He gave the kids a push and after seeing them vanished into the hallway that he’d just come from, he turned and he started making his way toward the darkness they’d left. “Guide my steps, O Father.”
