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.
White light flashed in Rex's outstretched hand and a longsword of light appeared in his grasp.
The man had told him there was magic involved. Well, Rex had created this sword specifically to cut through magic. Although he had never used it upon the initial target that had necessitated the creation of such a thing, the firefighter had had plenty of cause in wielding the blade in defense of others.
The stalling for time helped. The X-Man was clearly used to this kind of thing. Rex ignored the taunts and the names, though. He didn't realize there was a joke until the X-Man said something, and then Rex ignored it. Despite the flaming shield he bore, he himself was cool-minded. He frowned in concentration, readying himself for that first salvo.
Heat intensified, far beyond the inherent heat of the spell which Rex was largely resistant too. This was not the worst fire he'd even been in though.
There was another series of attacks on the shield, something more typical and kinetic. But he held. The shield could take a lot more damage than was being dished out. The heat would be the true threat. Rex vowed to learn a way to deal with that too.
Firelight reflected off somethin shiny beside him and Rex turned to see a man in shining, shimmering, spiky, lion armor step up. Obviously the X-Men. Now Rex had a more solid grasp of which one of NYC's heroes this was. Rex nodded at the man and when the X-Man got to 1...
Rex dispelled the shield and jerked to the side of the alley. “Go in between the wheels,” he recited as he quickly made a grabbing motion with his left hand and came back with a hand filled with fire, yet he was unharmed. He'd cover the X-Man as needed.
It seemed that August, after all, was okay with diving into the Bible and even...possibly church. That earned a genuine small smile from Rex, which vanished quickly even as he offered up a silent prayer. Thank you, God, for small miracles, for allowing me to be a vessel through which another might come to find You.
The fireman wasn't going to expect too much or getting overly excited, but even a small step was progress. Rex would do what he could, without any expectations. Even if August seemed to be putting a lot of faith in him all of a sudden.
Well, he'd simply have to be up to the task.
"I'll do what I can," Rex said a bit awkwardly. He wasn't an expert himself most days on where to steer his own life. This could very well end up being the blind leading the blind. At the very least, Rex expected to do a lot more praying in the future.
Then he sighed. "Of course," he said inflectionlessly, so it wasn't too obvious if he was referring to the chicken man's habits or August's ability to make a bit of a mess out of the situation. Rex noticed the scratches and such too, but he didn't say anything about them. Pointedly so. It was a shame there were consequences for escalating the fight, even though there ended up being no fighting after all. Such a terrible shame.
"After you," Rex said, gesturing to the fire escape.
Rex stared into strange, geometric eyes and nodded. He laid his hand on the man's shoulder and immediately began reciting scripture, speaking as rapidly as he could without messing up the words. "And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.”
Warm energy began to flow from Rex's hand into the man's body, empowering the wounded man's body with an abundance of energy so that it could rapidly repair itself. It would not touch diseases, infections, or venoms, not could it regenerate missing limbs, but the body could become better. Nor woulda it break an enchantment, unless healing the body changed some condition that the spell required to exist.
Despite the blood and the injuries, Rex was hesitant to dump too much power into the spell. He could, in theory, heal the man completely in seconds, but in doing so he himself would be wiped out and down for the count. A glance down the street told him that wouldn't be an option.
Rex waited until the last second before cut the power off the spell. The open wounds had faded to scratches and gashes, but none of them should have been bleeding. He wasn't sure about internal injuries or potentially broken bones, but there wasn't time to set them. It was entirely possible those wounds could still re-open, but Rex hoped they were at least much smaller than they were before. Any damage could be fixed later. They just had to make it to later.
"Do what you can," he said, "I will protect you."
Then REx whirled and held up his left forearm in front of his face. "For the Lord God is a sun and shield!" he said triumphantly.
Sunfire blazed into burning, blinding existence in a round shield roughly centered on Rex's arm. It was as strong as titanium and quickly expanded until it formed a convex half-sphere as tall as Rex, conveniently blocking most of the alley (and the downed man behind Rex) from most lines of sight from the street. While the heat would be intense, the light would be as blinding as staring into the sun itself.
With his right hand to the side, Rex began speaking his next spell. "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword..."
Posted by Rex on Aug 28, 2024 15:13:02 GMT -6
Tetsuya Shinbo likes this
The Veil
The Evocation Guild
Crucible
Orangered
Heterosexual
Gloria Vidales
355
9
Nov 9, 2024 13:02:06 GMT -6
Zek
The city was starting to burn. In some cases, it couldn't be more literal. From earlier that morning when he and Hunter had learned of the nature of this trial, Rex had been moving non-stop. Alerting authorities, the Veil, the X-Men, the government, and anyone else they could think of. Then he'd been out in the field, traveling wherever he needed, continuously casting his prayer and asking a single question, "Where am I needed the most that is closet to me?"
He'd stopped two vandalisms and a car thief already. Now it was clear he was about to take on a bigger task.
The firefighter and trained EMT emerged from the alley, work boots coming to a stop on the sidewalk. His flannel sleeves were rolled up and he took a leather glove from his work utility belt and slid it onto his right hand. Warmth washed over Rex as he did so, a sign that the spell was over and he had arrived at a place where his answer could be found. Almost right on top of him was a wounded, bleeding, broken man.
"Mother of God!" Rex swore as he immediately crouched down beside the ma. Beyond him, down the street, he could see destruction and two individuals causing it. As he looked back at the man, he thought he recognized him. One of the X-Men?
"My name is Rex," he said quickly, reaching out a bare left hand to place on the man's shoulder. "Do not be alarmed. I can heal you. Can you tell me what is going on?"
Rex was still a little slow to respond as he kept his guard up in case this was a feint. If he needed to recreate the shield, he wanted as much time as possible in order to get the words out.
He did indulge himself in just a bit more of a smile though. "The Bible has everything to do with my magic," Rex said as he started walking toward the edge of the roof the man had jumped off. "My faith defines everything about me, even the energy I draw from an extradimensional plane."
He glanced over his shoulder. "It is good to hear that," he said. He hadn't pegged August as a man who would so easily attend a church. "I will certainly take you up on that," he said, peering over the edge. He didn't see the chicken-man. "But to put it simply, my power comes from the Word of God and my relationship with Him."
"Thy word is a lamp until my feet and a light unto my path," Rex quoted, turning back to face the other man. A fist-sized ball of fire appeared a couple feet in front of Rex and hovered about a foot off the rooftop. As he walked forward, it hovered at a fixed point in from of him, lighting the rooftop with warm firelight. "If you want to learn magic from me, you'll need to spend time in the Word."
Rex arched an eyebrow in invitation. "Are you up for that?"
Posted by Rex on Aug 27, 2024 14:22:03 GMT -6
Elliott likes this
The Veil
The Evocation Guild
Crucible
Orangered
Heterosexual
Gloria Vidales
355
9
Nov 9, 2024 13:02:06 GMT -6
Zek
The line slowly moved. Rex used that time to think about nothing. Nothing about fighting fires, about magic, about life and death situations, or even what he was doing after he left the bank. He already knew his plan for the day - there was no need to rehash it or think about it until he was done with the bank.
He was maybe halfway through the line when something started to happen to him.
"Aargh!" he shouted through gritted teeth as his flesh began bulging and bursting beneath his clothes. Tendons expanded and he heard a deep intense crunching, crashing and groaning as...as...as....his internal organs and bone structure began to warp and change and most of all, grow.
He slapped himself on his chest as pain began to course through him like fire. He called upon magic as he began reciting a verse. “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings..." but before he could even get halfway through the healing spell, his jaw burst forward from his mouth and his vocal cords vanished.
Rex was bulking up and growing, growing, growing. He felt a sickening tearing sensation and then he burst out of all of his clothes, but there was no longer any skin to be show. It was all scales. So many scales.
Within a minute, Rex was gone, and a tyrannosaur stood in the middle of the bank.
A furious, still-hurting tyrannosaur.
With a basso roar that nearly rattled bones, the T-Rex started lunging for people, stomping on things, and swiftly smashed through the side of the bank and into the streets, where he immediately clamped his massive jaws down on a taxi, shook it like a dog with a toy, knocking the driver out of the passenger window, and then hurled the vehicle out into traffic.
Rex frowned as he walked into the bank. Normally he paid everything online, but the website had been going through some maintenance. He'd been in the area anyways on an unrelated matter, so he made a pit stop.
His work boots didn't quiet clomp on the neutral-colored carpet, but his tucked-in flannel shirt with rolled up sleeves and his customary jeans didn't particularly attract attention. There were a lot of people milling around but Rex had never been to this particular bank branch before so he studied the layout and the people, but there were just so many there. Instead of wasting any more time, Rex said a prayer.
"Father, where do I go to make a deposit?" he asked, calling upon magic. Then something came over him and his feet felt like moving. Thirty seconds later, warmth suffused him and the spell ended. He was in one of the lines for one of the tellers and the spell was over.
Rex crossed his arms. “So now we know what she’s after and how to stop her,” he said, frowning. “We just need to get that ankh from her. After we find out where she is. Can you help us with that?” He focused his frown on the Lady.
“I’d be delighted to,” she said with almost a purr. “I’d hate for my hands to be idle for too long while you boys are busy saving the city from Akh’s army of villains.”
Rex’s frown turned into a glare and faint firelight danced in his eyes. “What army of villains?” he said sternly.
“Put those flames out, dear, this is a library,” the Lady said with a finger wag. “I’m talking about the army of villains Akh has been recruiting since she escaped with the Ankh of Ascension. Did I not mention them already?”
Rex glared. “You did not.”
The Lady in Red. “My oh my, where has my head been? Too much looking at the future and you’ll forget your own past!” she said with a flirtatious chuckle. She reached into her red clutch and pulled out a notecard covered in an elegant handwritten script. “Here you go,” she said as she handed it to Ranger.
As the magic collapsed, Rex fell out of the vision and the world returned to normal. Rex immediately turned to glare at the Lady, but she winked before he could open his mouth.
He ended up not saying anything. The lip print on Hunter’s forehead was already fading and Rex assumed the same was happening to him. Having that vision cast upon him was not in the plan, but he had to admit, it was effective.
Rex ever-so-slightly raised an eyebrow at Hunter’s reference to the one true God, but he didn’t dwell on it. He filed it away for later. Instead, he proceeded with a report - he didn’t have vision spells, after all.
He nodded. “We believe Akh is trying to…somehow….use time travel to bring her pharoah to the present,” he said. “Even though I’m told time travel is beyond the powers of mystics. She may also be planning to bring back a pantheon of so-called gods that have been…’lost to time and memory’.”
The Lady sighed and took up the report. “Alas, we were unable to track down any records from that time, and it seems it was deliberate.” Her lips pursed into a pout. “It seems those ancient Egyptians did what they normally did after a sudden regime change - they wiped out all traces of the pharaoh, and even all the references to these gods. Even with all my tricks and skills, I couldn’t learn anything more about what to expect. Mutants? Mystics? Something else? Who knows?” She put a hand on her hip and tilted her head toward Ranger.
“All the oracles just pointed back to that ankh your researcher was studying,” she said. “Would you care to do the honors? Or shall I?”
The Lady inclined her head at Ranger’s greeting. “I’ve known so many things about you,” she said in reply, her ruby-red lips quirking into an ever-present smile.
Rex grunted. “Right,” he said as he held out a hand to the Lady, who passed him a folder. He placed it on the table with the tablets.
“The woman’s name is Akh,” Rex began, as if reading a report. “She’s a sorceress born approximately 5000 years ago in what is now Egypt. Her primary magical potential is what the Veil classifies as Invocation magic, which covers the areas of creating constructed beings, warping space and dimensions, controlling minds, and more. We saw most of that already, at the museum and the professor’s house. She also has abilities in Asceision magic. That means --”
“Enough of that!” The Lady said with a huff. “Really, Rex, you have no style.” She wagged a finger at him and then dazzled both men with a smile. “This is how you tell a story!”
She pressed the forefinger and middle finger of each hand to her lips and kissed them gently but not quickly. Then she reached out and pressed red-stained fingertips to Rex and Ranger’s forehead, right between their eyes. Instead of fingerprints however, an imprint of her lips appeared. Then she slapped her hands down on the evidence, one hand on the file Rex had and the other hand touching both of Ranger’s tablets.
“In the beginning…” she began as the world spun and went black for the three of them.
Rex glanced suspiciously beside him as his phone started ringing. “This wasn’t a coincidence, was it?” he grunted as he walked into easy speaking range with Hunter. It was a library after all.
Rex’s companion smiled, the brilliant ruby of her lipstick highlighting the brightness of her teeth. “A lady never reveals all of her secrets,” she said in amusement.
The two were a study in contrasts. Rex wore a black and blue flannel shirt that was tucked into his jeans. He was wearing work boots and a heavy leather belt. A five o’clock shadow and a frown were all the accessories he had. He towered over the woman beside him.
She was decked out in red. A red dress underneath a red longcoat with red boots and a red wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow over her face, obscuring her features other than her mouth that alway promised secrets but rarely seemed to reveal any.
That was about to change, however. When Rex had stepped into the stacks in the Veil’s magical sanctum, bewildered as to where to even begin looking for magical answers about that Egyptian sorceress he and Hunter had repeatedly encountered, the Lady in Red had approached him with a scroll in hand containing hieroglyphics and more.
She was a master of a branch of magic the Welldrinkers had formally called “Asceision,” a naming convention the Veil had generally continued. It was the branch of magics that focused on knowing and learning things past, present, and future. The Lady had been the former Asceision Supreme as well as the one who’d betrayed the Welldrinkers and led the mystic allies of the X-Men in a ritual to fully release magic into the world, ruining the plans of the Welldrinkers and well as the powers of the Supremes.
Now she seemed to appear here and there, passing out clues and hints when people had questions or needs. Little nudges to get them on the right paths, or at least the paths she thought were right.
That is why Rex was concerned when she began working with him for quite some time, lending her magical expertise to his burgeoning asceision talents as they sought to divine answers about who the Egyptian sorceress was and what her goals were. After researching and casting spells and praying, the two had been able to glean more from the aether and had finally approached Hunter.
This time the Lady went back to her usual tricks and had just given Rex a slip of paper with an address and a time, telling him they needed to be there at that time.
Rex grunted in acknowledgement. He really should’ve expected this from her by now. “Hunter,” Rex said in greeting as he went for a handshake. “This is the Lady in Red. We’ve got information on the sorceress’ plans.”
Rex froze, his mouth hanging open. In the last couple of years, he had see a lot of strange and unusual things. Wonders and nightmares and everything in between. He'd come to have a fairly high tolerance for weird things.
Nothing really came close to preparing him for a potential assailant to just...partially morph into a chicken and flutter off the building.
The shield dissipated as Rex completely forget to keep it running. He stood up straight and his arm dropped to his side. Well. They did say God had a sense of humor.
"....sure," Rex said to August as he eyed the rooftop edge in wariness. There was still a chance chicken-man would return. In which case Rex would be ready to respond appropriately. Fire tended to work very well on chicken.
On the subject of fire though, his mind then caught up to what August had said. Rex's lips twitched - his version of a huge grin. "Happy to teach you," he said enthusiastically, which is to say, with a vague amount of inflection that he usually lacked. "I'll buy you a Bible if you don't have one. I personally like using Exodus, but we'll start with Genesis and work from there."
The man chose to run. Good. That was an even better outcome. Rex wasn't law enforcement - he was under no need or compulsion to bring whomever it was to justice - he was just there to keep his...friend?...safe.
He relaxed a single iota as the man reached the edge of the rooftop. Good good good. Now he just needed to--
August started talking. He answered Rex's question. That was good. The added commentary, however...
The man ceased his flight.
"August," Rex growled warningly. "Shut. Up." He finished maneuvering in front of his fellow mystic in order to provide cover with the invisible shield. With his free hand, he motioned August to back up, toward the fire escape or...somewhere.
"Let's just go our separate ways," Rex barked. "No harm, no foul. Okay?"
A hero is the last thing anyone needs right now, Rex thought.
Rex was down on the ground, just like everyone else. Three people, at least one with the ability to explode walls. Whether that was a bomb or a power or a spell, it didn't really matter. Not to mention the the diamond people that seemed to obey the man in purple's command. Those things reminded him of Hercules in the worst ways. Still, if that was all the man could do, Rex thought he could handle the man.
If he were alone, that is. It wasn't just him though. Too many civilians around and more than a few were choking back sounds of distress. One woman, only a scant dozen feet away from him, looked like she was about to fail in holding back hysteria. Rex opened his mouth and as slightly and quietly as he could, his words barely audible, spoke scripture. "Neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth...
All potential sound from the woman's mouth ceased and her eyes opened wide in panic until Rex caught her eye and put a finger to his lips.
It was an action that did not go unnoticed.
"What have we here?" the caped man said as he started strolling over. Two of the diamond things accompanied him. Two more guarded the hole in the wall and every door to the room had one. It looked like there were eight in total.
"Doing some sign language, huh?" the man said, coming to a halt in front of Rex, giving Rex a good view of the man's scuffed black boots. Rex flattened his ungloved hand to the floor and didn't say anything. "Sign language is still talking and I said be quiet!" he continued, regardless of whatever sense he wasn't making. "Guess I'm gonna have to make an example of you. Such a pity."
It sounded like he was grinning. He was certainly enjoying this. Rex could tell that much even though he couldn't see from his angle. Then a diamond person stepped closer. Rex immediately began channeling magical power into his glove, causing tiny words etched into the leather to gently glow with golden light. He was only going to get one shot at this.
The feeling of warmth vanished as Rex entered the bank. It seemed the oracle from the Veil was on the money. Quite literally so. The spell Rex had used was an answer to a pray to lead him to wherever he was needed most. It just so happened to match up with what the oracle had said: "Problem at a bank downtown. Probably magical. Bring backup."
It was a little frustrating dealing with precognitive powers, particularly spells. Not all mystics had the same levels of aptitude or skill and the one who'd given Rex the heads-up was vague as typical. That's why he'd opted for his own method of double-checking.
Well, everything seemed to be in order for the moment. That meant nothing, of course, merely that he has some time to prepare, unless whatever was going to happen was quiet.
He would've brought backup but...well, again, he didn't place a lot of wait on this particular oracle. She tended to be wrong a lot. Besides, Rex had been accumulating quote a bit of experience with mystical threats and he felt like he could handle whatever was thrown at him. His Sword of the Spirit tended to stop most magical shenanigans cold.
Rex parked himself on a bench inside the bank. Now it was time to wait and see what was about to--
WHABOOMM!!!!!
An explosion rocked the building as as a wall collapsed. Instantly people began screaming and running for the exits, those who weren't struck by rubble or shock at the suddeness of the collapse. The runners were held up quickly though because at each entrance to the bank, the doors were blocked by shiny humanoid figures that glimmered like diamonds. When a woman tried to push past one, she discovered their skin was as sharp as a diamond, too.
Rex rocketed to his feet and slipped on a leather glove he'd enchanted, ready to take battle to the diamond creatures, when a trio entered through the collapsed wall.
A man of average height and build, bald, but with a silver band around hid head, set with....more diamonds? He wore an outfit of black and purple with a sleek silvery-white cape billowing behind him in the settling dust. The glinting across his costume suggested the white accents had metallic or gemstone pieces attached. "Alright, everyone get down! We're here for the vault - stay out of our way and nobody gets hurt!"
Flanking him were two women. A stout, squarely built woman in what looked like a red leather jumpsuit and badly dyed-red hair and a chain with a single large red gem on it harrumphed. "I really hope some of you try to get in our way!" she said wistfully.
A tall, willowy woman with deep crow's feet and a scowl that looked etched in stone stepped lightly over the rubble with a dismissive upturn of her nose. She wore a simple grey dress and went barefoot. An electric blue scarf was draped around her neck in a way that suggested it was purely fashionable and of no practical use at all. She tapped the floor with a tall metal staff, which had a gently glowing blue gem on top of it. "Control yourself, Firestone, you can have fun later," she said with the air of someone who'd said this a hundred times before.
Firestone just rolled her eyes and began stalking toward the back. "Fine, let's get on with it then," she said.
The tall woman gave the man a look and then followed after her.
The man just rubbed his hands together and looked out over the crowd of people who were settling down to the ground, under the watchful....heads of a couple diamond people. "It's time to play the quiet game, people," he said. "Any if anyone loses, well, game over. Forever."
He grinned wickedly and mimed smashing something with his hand. On cue, a diamond person lifted an arm and crushed a marble bust of some important person.
