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.
He...forgot. Well, he was a very busy person. Who did important things. And she was just a teenager with consistently plummeting math scores and a penchant for finding herself in troublesome situations.
“I thought it would be like when we lived with the Resistance.” Katrina frowned at Slate, not caring that he wasn't looking at her. She had been planning on helping out behind the scenes, holding down the fort at whatever hideout they ended up choosing. It hadn't worked out that way at all.
Katrina's own lips tugged downward at the corners as Slate chastised her for trying to get involved in Romania. Who did he think he was, the king of the world? Or her mother? She had one of those, thanks.
Authority + teenager = sarcasm.
“If it is so dangerous, why did you go? Why did you ask Fausto to go? And Zephyr? And Ghost? And Sam?” It's not fair that they should all risk their lives to help save the world while Katrina had to sit home and wait to hear if any of her friends had died. She didn't envy the danger, but she wished that she could have done something to help. Something other than sign an internet petition and post peacefully inspiring quotations on Twitter.
The library door opened without its familiar creek. Someone had oiled it while she had been away. There stood Slate by the old comfy chair, smiling at her as she entered. She almost returned the expression, but his greeting froze it like an early spring frost before it ever had a chance to fully bloom. In its place, a grimace. She flopped into the comfy chair next to him with a sigh. (And without a hug.)
“Ask my math teacher.” Translated: not well. She shifted her gaze from the ceiling over to Slate's face.
“I had more important things to worry about last semester, like most of my friends in a foreign country where people were dying.” She searched his face. Had he known what he was asking them to do, when he had brought them all over there?
The temperature had started to plummet around the time Zephyr had dropped her off back at the mansion. Her excuses seemed to satisfy the other students, the teachers were so used to students drifting in and out that they hadn't noticed, or, as in the case with a few of them, where not in the country to notice in the first place, and her mother naively asked, “How was the band tour? Cursive Rotation... right? ”
Katrina had then spent the rest of the calendar year with one ear bud constantly tuned into national public radio. She obsessively checked British news sites, ignoring the American ones that only cared about the Lion Forest scandal and whether or not he'd lose all his endorsements, and painstakingly combed through Tweets to sort out the probably true information from the almost assuredly false rumors.
The information coming out of Romania did not paint a pretty picture of what was happening.
Protests turned riotous, assassinations, mutants disappearing off the streets, terrorism, shootings, bombings, and throughout it all whispers of the dreaded camps. And no word from her friends that were over there. Ghost. Fausto. Slate.
Suddenly, things changed. The camps were freed, politicians changed their attitudes, people started returning home. Shin. Nurse Alex. Sam. They seemed a little worse for the wear; tattered, torn, and tired. Scarred and shell shocked, but alive.
It was getting warmer.
Slate had not come to see her.
It was nearly Spring.
And Slate had not come to see her.
She failed the first semester of math.
And if Slate was at Mondragon Labs Medical, Miss Noin had better page him right now.
"Sam!" Katrina squeeked with excitement. Sure, she knew she'd be seeing him, since this was his class and everything, but it was still the first time she had actually seen him since he got back from Romania. And Sam was cool in a way that had nothing to do with his icy ability.
(She still was unsure of how Sam and so many of the other X-men went to Romania when it was Slate that had ordered Fausto to go. Was Slate secretly in charge of the X-men, too? She'd have to ask Slate if they ever got around to doing a study session now that he was back.)
"Welcome back! What happened to your eye?" She tilted her head and turned the motion into a neck stretch. An eye patch had to have a story behind it, there was no other alternative. Depending on the story, it could greatly add to the cool factor he already had going for him. Eyepatch, +2 badass.
Sam expressed his diappointment that Katrina hadn't been in one of his classes already. Katrina reached for her toes again. She'd already done it, but she didn't know very many stretches and this one had the added benefit of hiding her face. Yeah. She actually had been signed up for his class last semester. The first month she had sort of gotten in the habit of not going to it, and after that it had been cancelled anyway, due to the teacher being out of the country.
>>>”How have you been? Heard you were pretty busy during Christmas.”
That was easier to answer, with much less rhetorical and slightly less disapproval mixed in, "I've been good," Mostly. A little confused by boy-stuff, perhaps, but he didn't need to know that, "We all helped protect the city from a clay Cthulhu monster on Christmas." She nodded in affirmation. Not to mention the extra curricular activities that took place the day after Christmas.
"Well, I kind of rallied everyone, but my ability wasn't very helpful in that situation. I got a cool scar, though! See?" She rolled up her shirt sleeve to show off the three parallel lines that a griffin had carved on her inner arm when he had caught her as she fell off his back. "It's not as cool* as an eyepatch though." (*Cool factor pending the story behind the patch. Her scar had been earned falling off a griffin. Falling wasn't so smooth, but the griffin definitely added cool points.)
>>>”And if you mind me asking can I ask why your mother was so intent on you taking lessons when I have to offer flight lessons to get you to come here, she told me the situation but I was wondering if I could get some details, Koga, Fausto and Kaz gave me a little info as well but, I want to hear it from you.”
And that effectively wiped the cheerful smile right off her face. Did he mean she had to talk about that, now? It had been, she calculated in her head, eight months since that had happened and it was still difficult to talk about. How much did he already know? Not much from her mother. Possibly more from Kaz. Koga and Fausto she wouldn't have expected to talk about it much.
"I asked about the eyepatch first," she pointed out glumly. If he insisted, she'd give him some of the facts, but if she could weasle out of it by not answering at first and he didn't press her, she wouldn't say anything further. It was not pleasant to think about, let alone relive by telling or showing.
Katrina swung her arms around, touched her toes, and rolled her shoulders a couple of times. Were there other stretches she was supposed to do to get warmed up for this? In a real self defense situation, did the attacker ever give the victim a chance to stretch first? Highly unlikely.
Katrina's winter clothes lay in a pile by the door; a striped sweater, a grey pea coat, a red ninja scarf, and a pair of mittens her mother had brought to match. On top of the whole pile, a pair of aviator goggles. The winter clothes were mostly for her other classes, where it still felt (to her) like someone had decided that Spring was close enough and they no longer needed to heat the building. At least in self defense class she'd probably keep warm by moving around. (Though, with Sam teaching the class, maybe she'd need them this hour, too.) The goggles were for her next class.
That was part of the bargain. Since she had kind of shirked her duty to go to self defense classes for a couple of weeks, and then the teacher had been out of the country for a couple months... Well, she had sort of hoped that everyone would have forgotten about the whole thing. Not so.
Sam still wanted her to take the classes (he'd even called her on her phone when he found out she wasn't signed up). She didn't want to. He'd promised that after wards he would give her flying lessons in the Blackbird. She had agreed to his terms without a moment's hesitation. Hence, the goggles.
Nevermind that the little damsel had already been in distress more than once in the last forty eight hours. Or more than twice. What the Lady knight should really be paying attention to was the shwiss of the claws at the ends of the beast's freakishly long arm as they raked the air next to her head. Or perhaps the stomp of razorsharp hooves almost (but not quite) the size of a garden shed. Each. Or perhaps the whip-like tail, tipped in delicately sharpened death.
The lady knight charged, and her lance hit true, right in the center of a tree tru...err...Cerberutaur's left shin. Had the silly girl braced the lance against her stomach? That's what it looked like from up above in any case. Katrina gave another shout of terror to encourage the older girl.
“Help me!” She tried to make her voice sound strained, like the twiggy fingers that held her were doing so quite a bit too tightly.
The beast howled again and stomped it's feet, but didn't advance toward the fallen hero. Not yet. For now it was content to flail it's deadly extremities threateningly and show off it's fangs. Lady Knight had better think twice about approaching again.
Katrina had never done anything quite like this with her powers before. Taking away sensations rather than giving someone false sensations was strange, but it seemed to be working. At least, through the muffled half-nothing she couldn't hear Koga's suffering any more. That was a good thing. She just hoped she could hold out as long as Koga needed her.
She kept the illusion of the void going as long as she could, but since she had little practice with single recipient illusions and even less with ones that deprived the senses, it didn't seem like a very long time at all. She could tell when she was reaching the end of her energy when, despite laying down and having her eyes closed, she began to feel dizzy and light headed.
Sorry Koga, that's the best I can do, she thought as she released him from the illusion.
Her own eyes fluttered open again. It was dark, much too dark to still be in the hallway. It reminded her of the pitch black of the sewers. Moving slowly so she didn't hit anything, she sat up.
“Where did everyone go?” Her own voice sounded odd, as if someone had shoved a half dozen cotton balls in her ears while she was asleep. She couldn't hear it well, but she thought she heard a muffled response for very far away.
“It's not funny, where did you guys go?” She groped the floor in the dark, trying to feel where she was. It was like trying to feel for texture while wearing a thick pair of mittens. Was that soft carpet or something else she was feeling?
Katrina waited, her breath fogging the air even through the bright red ninja scarf tied around her face. That little wisp, however, was nothing compared to the thick blanket of woolly fog that had settled on the mansion grounds.
It was crazy to be out in the cold at such an hour just as it was crazy to jump straight out from the infirmary bed into another adventure. At least this time the adventure was all just for fun and even close to the insanity level of trying to take on an elder god in clay form. It had been a very close fight. They had just barely defeated it, and Katrina hadn't been of much help at all. If she was going to be of any assistance next time, she (and a few other members of the party) would need more practice. Just in case that wasn't the final boss, they definitely needed to level up more.
Despite being cold, she felt good. As he had done with everyone who had joined in the fight, Doc. Prof had healed her up in no time, leaving no trace of her injuries other than three parallel lines on the skin of her upper left forearm where Carrick's claws had apparently raked her as he tried to stop her from falling to her death. A little scar was small price to pay to not be dead, she thought.
She waited some more, trying to keep her mind from wandering too far from its task.
Hark! The sound of heroic hoof beats gallantly approached from the area of the swimming pool. Cue: the lance growing up from the eternally emerald vine that would retain its color through the coldest of seasons even until the end of time, or until the little illusionist stopped imagining it to be so, whichever came first.
The horse and his rider galloped into the clearing. They could not see her from where she was perched in the tree, but she could see them. Maya, as the girl was called, looked a little like a sack of potatoes on Calley's back. It might not be her first time on horseback, but it was probably close to it. Nevertheless, she managed to take the lance that had been placed for her there.
Cue: a terrifyingly mysterious roar from the distance and appropriate tree shivers and leaf drops. The fair knight did not look afraid. At least, not yet.
The black horse trotted out of the clearing and Katrina let the eternal emerald vine withered away. Another appeared hanging from a different tree, this one holding a shield. It had been there all along, but the knight didn't need to know that. Moments later, horse and rider were back. The next clearing was actually the same clearing as before, but who could tell in the fog?
This time the roaring was closer. Was that a twinge of worry on the lady knight's face? Katrina smiled an invisible smile as once again the pair rode out of her clearing.
The branch she was sitting on rippled in the moonlight. Roughly carved muscles stretched and flexed beneath dark black fur. Twigs became fingers that wrapped tightly around her midriff. The arm was connect to long, hard trunk of a torso. Three snarling black dog heads turned this way and that, searching for prey with watery yellow eyes. Drool dripped from sharp, moon-white, hungry teeth. Down and down the monster stretched into the fog below, where it stood on four strong horse hooves, each seemingly as wide across as small tree trunks. The finishing touch, two long snakelike tails thrashed behind the beast, each tipped with a deadly curved bone, as sharp as a sickle.
Cerberutaur roared again to challenge those hoot beats that once again approached. Katrina screamed a real scream, as loudly and shrilly as she could.
The sound of her name on Shin's lips cut through her cocoon of nothingness and her concentration wavered. With her eyes still closed, Katrina frowned slightly and moaned as she tried to get the numb feeling out of her lips long enough to talk.
“M'm okay. M'm trying to help Koga,” she mumbled. She was afraid if she stopped concentrating the pain would come back to him.
“Gotta sleep for awhile longer, just in case.” Was Koga stirring or was that her imagination? Katrina resumed ignoring the whole world except for her memory of the void and her thoughts of Koga. Nothing else was important right now.
Katrina was drawn aback by Fausto's request. Share her room with the blonde girl from who knew where? She paused while she tried to think of a single good reason why that couldn't happen, but anything she came up with sounded terribly selfish or petty even in her thoughts, so she voiced no excuses.
Would she like to? No. Would she anyway?
“Sure,” she tried to keep her voice even and was surprised at how well she did. “The room is upstairs, first door on the right. I'll, uh, take the bag up for you.”
Again she started walking without waiting for them. This time, though, she didn't have the excuse of escaping the cold. So what was she trying to escape? One moment she felt like she was in control of her emotions and the next she found herself running away again. It was like trying to steer a tiny ship in a storm; one moment it looked like she would be fine, the next a wave washed over her flooded her poor vessel with water. She was afraid she was going to sink soon.
The suitcase wasn't heavy, but it was still awkward on the grand staircase and consequently Katrina had to turn somewhat sideways in order to make it work. Why was she running away, she asked herself. She wanted to be happy for Fausto so badly that it hurt, and she didn't know why it hurt. Was she concerned that he was moving too quickly? Or was she more concerned that he was moving so quickly that he was leaving her behind?
She only got up the steps about a quarter of the way before Fausto asked her a question. She paused on the step to give her response, “I'm sure Kenzie will learn to love her very quickly.”
Their voices sounded muffled, as if she was listening through a wall of water. She could tell that Koga's screams had stopped. That was good. It meant that what she was trying to do was working.
Katrina continued to focus on nothing; Koga and nothing. She had to keep him in her thoughts to make sure the lack of feeling didn't spill over to the others in the hallway, at least not too much. It helped also to ignore what little sensory input was making its way through her blanket of numb.
DocProf's voice, though she wasn't listening to what he was saying, sounded reassuring. Carrick spoke, too, and he sounded like he was back to his normal sarcastic self.
Katrina's void went from dark to light as someone flipped her from face down in the carpet to lying on her back facing the lights on the ceiling. Her brow was creased in concentration. She wasn't unconscious, she was trying hard not to be distracted so she wouldn't slip up and let the hurt course through Koga's nerves again. If that meant that she had to experience her own illusion of non feeling too, that was a small price to pay for her frien... for Koga's comfort.
It was horrible to watch her friend suffering. It was even worse not being able to do anything to help him. It was as if his own body was torturing him, tearing him up from the inside. The screams, the blood splashing, the pitiful apologies, it was all so heartbreaking.
If only she could take away the pain.
DocProf appeared, huffing to catch his breath. Carrick was shortly behind him, asking what he thought was wrong. The doctor knelt beside Katrina to put his hands on the lizard boy's skin.
Katrina didn't move away. She figured she didn't take up much room and Koga needed someone to stay by his side. DocProf frowned and nothing appeared to happen. Katrina could only send wishful thoughts Koga's way as she watched him squirm under the doctor's touch.
She remembered the numbness of being in the abyss. That was what would really help Koga right now: not feeling anything at all. She closed her eyes. In her mind she imagined numbness all over, as if all of Koga's limbs went to sleep.
Floating in nothingness. Drifting on air. Disconnected.
Katrina couldn't feel that she had collapsed on the floor next to Koga.
Even in the midst of great pain, Koga was able to recite from a text book entry. No wonder he got straight A's.
“Power growths can hurt?” Katrina glanced at Shin for confirmation, her brow knit with worry. “I thought he might have eaten something that gave him food poisoning.”
But food poisoning didn't cause pinpricks of blood to appear on lizard boy's foreheads and make parallel trails down toward the carpet. Why did the mansion have carpet, again? Wasn't that the sort of thing that was fairly easily ruined by pretty much everything from water to mud to blood? Apparently it was handy for grabbing onto, for lizard boys in intense pain. For that reason she was glad for the carpet.
Katrina pulled off her outer layer, a hooded sweatshirt, and folded it into the closest approximation to a pillow shape that she could get.
“Do you want a pillow?” She set it down so Koga could rest his head on it if he wanted. All she really felt like she could do was make him comfortable until DocProf got here. She looked down the hall to see if he was coming yet. Not yet.
She used the sleeve of the shirt to wipe off Koga's forehead as best she could. The fabric snagged a little on something sharp. What?
Katrina knelt next to Koga, unsure of exactly what to do to help. Instinctively, she did what her mother always did when she was sick; she put her hand on Koga's forehead. It was hot, which was very strange indeed for the cold blooded boy. When he spoke, Katrina winced both at the blood and the conjecture.
“No,” she shook her head. Not because it wasn't possible, but because she didn't want to believe it was possible that anyone would want to kill Koga. He was just sick and sickness meant he just needed a doctor and he'd be better in no time.
Katrina glanced up to meet the winged boy's gaze with a worried one of her own. “Carrick, go get DocProf. He needs a healer.” Carrick seemed to understand the urgency in her voice and without so much as a sarcastic remark (for once) was rushing down the hallway. He didn't even stop when he knocked over a vase with his wing.
“Help is coming soon,” Katrina crooned softly as she stroked Koga's forehead. If she could have absorbed his pain with her touch, she would have.