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.
(( OOC: modified 3/27/08 to reflect power enhancements, character changes, and make easier to follow.))
General note: The character's actual identity is complex. Its primary persona (for now) is Sonya Defaz, a teenaged Hispanic girl from the Bronx. It maintains a secondary persona, Teresa Wilingscote, which Sonya uses in public. Its original persona is a mysterious figure that refers to itself in its own mind as "Eight." For simplicity, each of these is described separately.
Sonya
Character's “real” name: Sonya Luisa Defaz Codename/Alias: She doesn't really use one. But if she ever did, it would be "Template" Age: 19 (born September 12 1989) Gender: Female. Nationality/Ethnicity: American, Hispanic Birthplace: The Bronx, New York Personality: Sonya is subject to a kind of severe mood swing similar to bipolar affective disorder (aka manic-depression). In her case this is not a symptom of mental illness per se, but rather a consequence of having multiple distinct personas occupying her brain.
Loosely speaking, she tends to swing between the "original Sonya" (a fairly typical lower-class Bronx girl not in the least bit comfortable with, or equipped for, her new mutant-adventurer lifestyle) and "improved Sonya" (significantly more aggressive, independent, fierce, and self-centered). These are not distinct personas -- she still thinks of herself as one person throughout -- just different moods.
She is very smart and proud of it. She gets annoyed by stupid people, but also by people who try to show off how smart they are. She has little tolerance for authority figures, especially when she doesn't agree with their decisions. She enjoys intellectual play (debate, wordplay, puns, that sort of thing), especially in "improved" mode.
"Original Sonya" shares the ordinary teenager's desire for close friends she can trust and talk to, and is relatively easy to trick into treating you as a friend. She's cautious about trusting people, but once she decides to trust someone she tends to trust them completely. She is also prone to bouts of homesickness and depression when she feels betrayed. "Improved Sonya" is much more resigned to the fact that she is not going to make close friends in this life, and that's OK.
"Original Sonya" feels passionately about a lot of things, and her mouth tends to run away with her, often causing her to say more than she meant to about those subjects. "Improved Sonya" feels things less strongly, and is better about controlling her mouth.
"Original Sonya" has a strong phobia about touching animals, or anything else of less-than-human intelligence. "Improved Sonya" is cautious about this for practical reasons, but not phobic.
Sonya is cautious about new experiences, but once she decides to do something she tends to commit to it all the way. She is a voracious reader and enjoys pretty much all kinds of music (her favorites are classical pieces, though). She enjoys playing guitar and sketching, though she's not very good at either.
Allegiance:
"Original Sonya" wants to think of herself as a good person, though she's far from being a moral paragon. In other words, she's pretty much like most people... she'll do bad things, but she feels bad about it when she does and tries to justify it or to not think about it. Call her Neutral.
"Improved Sonya" is much more conscience-free, willing to do whatever the situation requires. She's not actively sadistic, but she borders on sociopathic in her lack of concern for others. (In this she resembles the majority of characters on-site.)
She is an active member of the Order. She joined them during the MRA period, when the government was interring mutants in concentration camps; she thought of the Order as a mutant resistance force. Since then, she's become more acquainted with their darker aspects, but has come to care less and less about it.
Hair color and style: Black hair, kept short and spiked. Eye color: Dark brown Skin color: Light brown Height: 5’3” Build: Slight Scars, Tattoos, Piercings: None Everyday clothing: Sonya rarely wears her own form, but when she does she tends towards dark, loose-fitting clothes. Pajamas: Sweatsuit, or similar-but-lighter garment when it's warm. Uniform:: Sonya wears a garment that resembles an elastic black bodysuit, but is in fact a relatively high-tech piece of equipment that can change its appearance in response to her cybernetic commands, both conscious and unconscious. She has no idea where it comes from.
Description of ability(ies):
Can perceive the genetic structure of organic material by touching it. This provides the same raw data as a genetic lab analysis, though she lacks formal training to interpret most of it. For example, she can tell someone's a mutant, and roughly categorize them -- shapeshifters "feel" one way, telepaths "feel" a different way, etc. -- but not determine their exact powers. She can tell how closely people are related; she can tell what animal a cut of meat came from; she can match a sample of hair or blood or skin to its owner; that sort of thing.
Can "imprint" a living thing by touching it. This stores both genetic and aquired characteristics of her target, physical and mental, in a form she can use later (a "template"). This does not affect the target itself at all; it's a perceptual process only. Her brain and nervous system change slightly when she does this, which allows her to subconsciously access template personalities even without adopting their form. Unless she reinforces them, templates fade away after a day or two. She can maintain multiple templates "live" at one time; her upper limit is not known.
Can shapeshift into a perfect copy of anything she has imprinted. When she does this, she adopts inherited and acquired characteristics (hairstyles, tattoos, build, etc.), though not completely artificial ones (prosthetic arms, for example). Her brain and nervous system change significantly when she does this:
This gives her access to memories, skills, and personality traits of the individual she copied, although her own personality remains dominant.
The skills she picks up are most likely to be deep-seated instinctive things, the sorts of things people don’t think about when they use them. For example, languages, navigating a well-known city, how to do a forward roll, remembering your daughter’s birthday.
She can also pick up recently memorized items reasonably effectively – passwords, combinations, that sort of thing. Things in between, that have to be searched for – your third-grade teacher’s name, who won the 1993 World Series, etc. – are less likely to be picked up.
The more time she spends in a form, and the more time she spends acquiring it, the more reliably she will pick up memories, skills, and attitudes.
Interference among the various templates in her brain make her mind difficult to read/influence via telepathy. Relatedly, to a minimal extent she can "amplify" a given template if she knows (or suspects) her mind is being read. While this increases the template's autonomy and is therefore risky, it also increases the odds that a telepathic scan will "confirm" her false identity.
Healing When she changes form, injuries to her body are healed, although toxins in her body remain unaffected. She can "reset" her current form, thereby healing it without changing form.
Enhanced strength, speed, and senses Sonya herself is not quite clear on how she obtained these abilities; all she knows is she gained them permanently after cloning Werecat's template.
Weaknesses/limitations of ability(ies):
She cannot necessarily control her templates, once she imprints on them. Usually, this is not a problem... the templates in her mind tend to lack much in the way autonomy, focus, or ambition. However, there are exceptions: imprinting on extreme personalities can unconsciously change her habits and attitudes, and strong-willed personalities can deliberately influence her behavior for their own ends. She doesn't even necessarily notice when it happens. This is even more a possibility when she actually clones a template, or artificially amplifies it. On several occasions, her templates have literally taken over her body, requiring intervention from "Eight" to eliminate them. The more time she spends in a form the more likely this is.
The worst case of this is when she clones templates that lack human intelligence, like animals. She becomes equally mindless, herself. She did this ONCE, with a stray dog, and woke up days time later with no memory of what happened, naked, filthy, with bite wounds all over her. She will NEVER do that again, and still has nightmares about it. (( OOC: This is essentially a genre limitation. She's a human-shifter, not an animal-shifter. ))
A related problem is that she can't partially adopt a template, or "peek" into it to determine its nature, etc. This can be a problem if a template has unpleasant properties (like blindness) especially if they affect her consciousness (like narcolepsy or autism).
Although she can usually control her imprinting and her cloning so it only happens when she wants it to, it can sometimes go off uncontrolled. (Her genetic perception happens with everything she touches, uncontrolled. This can be unappetizing, but doesn't cause her serious problems.)
She does not pick up superhuman mutant abilities from her templates unless they are purely innate physical abilities with no “paranormal” component, like superstrength or agility. So, no psychic powers, no telekinesis, no energy projection, no mysterious space-warping abilities, etc. Put another way: the less sense a mutant power makes from a real-world biology perspective, the less able she is to pick it up.
She cannot mix-and-match attributes... each template exists in isolation. (However, the native personality, "Eight", that resides in her body is capable of doing so, and has done so on a few occasions.)
Her enhanced senses can become a weakness -- for example, she is more vulnerable to noxious fumes and sonic attacks.
Fighting style (if any): Offensively, Sonya has minimal fighting "style" -- she prefers to use guns. She does have some minor martial-arts training (actually, it was Teresa's), but nothing significant. Defensively, she has the reflexes of a highly trained martial artist. She has absolutely no idea where this comes from.
History: Sonya DeFaz was born in 1989 to Andrea Defaz, a single mother and schoolteacher in the Bronx, and lived 18 years in a small apartment with her mother and two sisters fairly uneventfully. She dated a couple of guys, including one fairly active drug user who she dumped because of it.
On June 12th 2007 she found a hairless white-skinned humanoid figure in a black bodysuit lying unconscious in an alley. When she touched the figure, it immediately awoke and turned into a copy of her. She fled in terror and hasn't told anyone the story since then, for fear they'd think she was crazy or on drugs or something.
Meanwhile, the body she touched (which had absorbed her personalities and memories) went to Manhattan, believing itself to be the real Sonya (or, at least, trying hard to ignore the alternatives). Since then she has joined the Resistance and the Order (see thread logs below for details).
Teresa Character's “real” name: Teresa Willingscote Age: 24 (born February 12, 1984) Gender: Female. Nationality/Ethnicity: Canadian, Eastern European Birthplace: Toronto Personality: Teresa -- or, rather, the template of Teresa in Sonya's mind -- is not an autonomous personality. Rather, she is a template which has become unusually entangled with Sonya's own by virtue of frequent use. It is theoretically possible to interact with "Teresa" as a separate persona via telepathy, etc.
Teresa is far more adventurous than Sonya, and is enjoying the “mutant adventurer” lifestyle tremendously. She’s a physical-fitness buff, though she really likes good coffee and has learned to indulge more frequently in junk food, since Sonya can restore the Teresa body to its previous state once all the food is metabolized.
Allegiance: Teresa's allegiances are, de-facto, the same as Sonya's.
Hair color and style: Blond, long, usually ponytailed. Eye color: Blue Skin color: Tanned, Caucasian Height: 5’9” Build: Medium, athletic. Scars, Tattoos, Piercings: None
Description of ability(ies): Teresa has the same abilities as Sonya. Fighting style: Same as Sonya
History: Teresa Willingscote lived with her family in Toronto until moving away for college; she got her undergraduate pre-med degree at Harvard University and got her medical degree at Columbia University Medical Center, and is now serving her internship at Lenox Hill Hospital. Somewhere in there, she stopped for a cup of coffee in mid-Manhattan somewhere and shook hands with Sonya, who adopted her body (and, to some extent, her psyche).
Eight
Very little is known about Eight:
Neither Sonya, nor Teresa, nor really anybody is aware of his… um, its… existence; it has never spoken to anyone outside of her own brain and has edited out Sonya/Teresa’s memories of its existence.
It thinks of itself as “Eight” and as male, although its body is neuter.
It is humanoid, but completely hairless and white-skinned (not Caucasian, literally white).
It appears to be the original personality associated with Template’s body.
When it emerges, it describes itself as incomplete and in need of further repair.
It seems capable of taking over the body whenever it wishes, even more so than Sonya can, but thus far has only emerged when Sonya’s control over the body is challenged.
It has significantly more skill with manipulating templates than Sonya does. It has successfully edited templates to transfer physical capabilities and edit out mental ones, and it has manipulated the perceptions and thoughts of templates even while they were primary, for example.
Sonya would probably trust the government even less than she trusts anybody else right now... besides which, as time goes by she's going to get more and more of the "giving a damn about anybody else" beaten out of her. So that's probably not a fit.
Speed could potentially get into something like that, depending on the nature of the team and its missions. Basically, Speed wants to be part of a comic-book superhero team, and this could be close enough for, you'll pardon the expression, government work. But it will also depend a lot on how things work out with the X-Men, who he's currently obsessing over. Right now, the X-Men don't really exist as a faction, just a bunch of isolated prisoners, and I'm not sure what will happen after the prisoners are freed.
well, like I said to kai, if you wander into the calley/sebastian/andy thread, we can probably bring the conversation around to discovering our mutual mutantness and andy will make the suggestion. how kai and cameron will respond is up to you.
Sebastian - Andy sez: "please do this stupid thing with me?" and bats his eyes... (which is a disturbing stroboscopic affect) and, um... did I happen to mention that Andy has never had a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend?
Kai - easiest would be for Kai to join the Unicorn in New York thread, and for me to handwave chronology such that that thread comes _after_ he meets Fade.
Ted - yay! crushing the X-men's hopes! always fun.
Kaz - a few things: 1) My apologies for planning on a thread where planning isn't desirable. I've deleted the off-topic posts and will remain silent on the subject hereafter.
2) Several IC threads have already taken place with less than four Stalkers. Cyberdoc has been involved in these threads. Perhaps you and she should get that straight moving forward.
3) If you have a " high enough" number in mind before we can make further progress (10? 12? 15? 20?), you should probably announce it rather than make people guess.
If you need more people, I'm happy to have Sonya get involved. The best way to do this is probably for Abyss to give her a call and have her go in as one of his clones, since she's in general not much use in a fight.
Is there a thread somewhere that explains what the CaS plan is?
For those of us who are "outside" and introducing new characters/new players to the Resistance and/or inviting them to Mondragon Labs, please drop Kaz a PM letting the player know that this is happening.
That way he can arrange to RP the "Kaz is informed of this" scene, if he chooses to, and more easily play Kaz as being on top of the situation at the Labs, which (IC) he really ought to be.
This affects, I think: Sonya, Calley, Katrina's NPC... others?
Another modification to the first post in this thread: we aren’t going to wait for the Hide and Seek thread to end before starting the Capture a Stalker. Instead, we’re OOC planning the Capture-a-Stalker thread now here and will start it IC as soon as possible.
This will hopefully shave several weeks off our earlier schedule.
> I do hope Shade is able to find a way to escape. I'd hate to lose a new member already.
Teleporters do have an advantage wrt that sort of thing, so I'm not too worried about Shade.
That said, Sonya seems to be continuing her tradition of getting shot by normal humans with guns. I'm _sure_ I read somewhere that mutant menaces are supposed to be bullet-proof... good thing she can heal.
> <i>The thing I don't get is why some people think they can't be beaten. </i>
So, I came in pretty late in this process, but I think this was (and remains) essentially a plot/mod thing.
As I've observed before, for example: if I understand Gearhead's powers correctly, she should be able to shut down a Stalker with a thought. Similarly, there's no particular reason Hades shouldn't be able to build a gadget that jams Stalkers' AIs, or a weapon that can penetrate their armor, just as easily as he designed the serum to neutralize Syn's power, or the gadget to neutralize Vibe's, or any of the gazillion other things he builds.
Stalkers are just technology; any weapon one man can invent, some other man can invent a defense against.
But we've decided we aren't going to neutralize the Stalkers that way, because it's not as satisfying to folks from a plot/narrative/storytelling perspective. And all us players are going along with that, because it's the plot. I think that's where this "the stalkers can't be beaten" idea is coming from.
More precisely: they can be beaten, but we can't beat them now. We can only beat them after we've gone through sufficiently narratively satisfying months of plot buildup, training, misery in the Camps, etc.
> Skeletons of the Closet is not actually about the Stalkers, it's about the bracelets and the mutant database.
Two things:
Unexpected Harmonies of Strife picks up from Syn assigning Teresa to get her hands on the Mutant Registration database, and my making some assumptions about how that would work.
Rupert has made IC comments several times about being able to disable the bracelets, in his capacity as Camp Supervisor.
So if Skeletons is also about the bracelets and the database, we should decide how to reconcile that.
The easiest answer is that the Resistance doesn't allow its right hand to know what its left hand is doing, and we are in fact working on the same problem at cross-purposes to one another. Which would be emotionally unsatisfying, but entirely plausible. Is that acceptable? Do you have something else in mind?
> The Catching a Stalker mission will happen after the training is done [...] > Once we have a Stalker Ingram, Gearhead and Hades will examine it to find weaknesses > [..] for anti-Stalker weapons
(shrug) OK. If you already have all this planned, great... sorry to duplicate effort.
If we can include a pointer to or summary of those plans somewhere in the official plot summary, that would be good too. There's a lot of folks involved in this plot; it would be good for us to be able to see the progress that's being made and understand where we expect it to go.
> After that we have the final showdown (if people are still up for it) > where everyone gathers at Mondragon Labs and an army of Stalkers > amasses to attack. Now that will take some serious organizing, which > I again volunteer to do, and believe that with enough forethought can > pull it off so we don't get bogged down.
I would suggest we not commit to a second big fight until we actually get around to freeing people from the Camps. At the rate we're making progress, we may be more interested in moving on by the time we get there.
> only the origional Stalker would have information about Dr. Bishop,
Actually, I wasn't thinking the Stalkers would have information about him. I was thinking that Zane, being a amazingly uber-geniusy guy capable of designing these amazingly fantastic automated weapon things that are tougher than anything else ever built, probably has a characteristically geniusy design style that other experts in the field would recognize.
And, after all, it's not like he's some hermit in the woods; he's actively seeking sponsorship for his projects, so people with sufficient military security clearance (or good enough spies) ought to have heard of him, and it should not be impossible to find him.
But all of this is moot; if our plan for defeating the Stalkers is for Hunter and Hades to built Hunter-killer gadgets, then we don't need to involve Zane at all.
The Resistance does training exercises. This is happening now, in the various Hide and Seek threads.
Once that is done, a Resistance team will capture a Stalker. Revised, Feb 08, 2008 We aren’t going to wait for the Hide and Seek thread to end before starting Capture a Stalker.
Once that is done, Gearhead and Hades and Dr. Ingram (NPC) will study the Stalker and develop Stalker-destroying gadgets.
Once that is done, Hunter will organize the Resistance into independent-but-coordinated teams of four or less, give them orders, and lead the raid/rescue operation on the Camps to free the inmates. This will probably involve redundancy and duplicated effort, since not everyone in the Resistance is letting Hunter know what resources they have. For example, Rupert is in a position to neutralize the bracelets on command, which Syn knows but Hunter doesn’t.
Once the inmates are freed, the remaining Stalkers will attack Mondragon Labs, and be defeated.
In the aftermath of all of this, the Mutant Registration Act will be repealed (or, at least, will be modified so it’s actually a Mutant Registration Act rather than a Mutant Criminalization Act) and mutants will be free to wander the rest of the world again.
Yes?
Comments, corrections, complaints, additions and subtractions welcome.
Earlier post, superceded by the above.
So... if I recall correctly, the plan was:
Cassiel & co would lead an X-Men raid against the Camps, which would fail, bringing the concealed X-Men to the attention of the Resistance, but allowing Camps residents who wanted more RP opportunities to get out and play.
Near as I can tell, this is not actually happening. Is it still in the works?
Meanwhile, a Resistance team was going to lead a team to go hunt down a Stalker and examine its innards.
This is happening in Skeletons of the Closet with Hades, Nox, Abyss, Kami, Mandain and Shogun, as of a couple of days ago, I think.
Meanwhile, a bunch of Resistance types were going to do some training exercises.
This is happening in the various Hide and Seek threads.
Is there a plan yet for what happens once the Stalker is captured and the Hide and Seek exercise completes?
If not, here's a suggestion:
We find a way to neutralize the Stalkers. Some possibilities:
Upon inspecting Stalker innards, someone at the Labs recognizes the work as being Zane Bishop's. The Resistance promptly descends on Dr. Bishop's head and "convinces" him to reveal the weaknesses in his Stalkers.
Some possible weaknesses:
They are programmed to ignore non-moving targets.
They overheat quickly if their vents are clogged.
They always go after the nearest target rather than the most dangerous one
They don't respond to threats more than a thousand feet away
There's a relatively unarmored spot where the knee-bone connects to the hip-bone where they can be disabled
Extreme cold messes up their targeting sensors so that they miss with their ranged weapons
Etc, etc, etc.
Some clever investigator (possibly Crystal?) chases the money-trail behind the Stalker development and finds out about Dr. Bishop, without needing to investigate Stalker innards. Same result as above.
Upon inspecting Stalker innards, someone at the Labs is clever enough to figure out some of the above weaknesses on their own; Dr. Bishop stays out of it altogether.
(really cheesy option) Upon inspecting Stalker innards, someone at the Labs is clever enough to figure out a way to reprogram them remotely (for example, so they turn on the Camp guards instead of the inmates).
Once we find a way to neutralize the Stalkers, the Resistance organizes into N battalions as follows:
Stalker-killers. Anyone physically capable of defeating a Stalker in combat, once armed with knowledge of their weaknesses. (Note: if we go with the Stalker-reprogramming option, then this becomes moot. Which would be a pity, because blowing the #!@#!@$ out of some Stalkers would be emotionally very satisfying. That's why I label the reprogramming option as cheesy.)
Prisoner-rescuers. Anyone capable of carrying, teleporting, tunneling, cloaking, or otherwise getting prisoners out of the Camps safely.
Guard-disablers. Anyone capable of defeating Camp guards in combat (via mind-control, physical powers, turning them into llamas, whatever).
Distractions Everyone else! Especially those who can jam communications, confuse senses, create illusory targets, absorb damage, or generally cause havoc.
Each batallion breaks down into one or more squads, with no more than 4 players in each squad. (This is so we don't hang waiting for players to post.) The squads coordinate but operate independently.
Some PC is officially in charge of assembling squads and battalions (Kaz? Hunter? Other) but we shouldn't force the player to do all that work... we can do it OOC ourselves and just let them take IC credit for being tactical geniuses.
Similarly, IC there is a grand plan of attack, with maps and X's and Os and stuff. OOC, I don't think we need to bother with that.
Once the battalions and squads are organized, the Resistance uses its contacts in the Camps to prepare the ground:
Inform trusted inmates that a breakout is coming, so they can be ready.
Sabotage as much defensive equipment as possible.
Covertly eliminate the mutant-power-neutralizing-goop from inmate diets.
Get ready to neutralize the bracelets.
Once the ground is prepared... ATTACK!
Does this seem feasible? Comments, corrections, complaints, additions and subtractions welcome.
Note that there's also no reason we have to actually wait for various interim threads to complete. The "Catching a Stalker" thread can continue even while the "Investigating Stalker Innards" thread gets started (just like there's threads going on now that start after Hide and Seek is over, even though the Hide and Seek threads are ongoing.)
