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.
Katrina felt very under dressed for the occasion. It wasn't so much that she wasn't wearing fancy enough clothing, or warm enough clothing, she just didn't have anything with blades strapped onto her in any way. Nor would she know how to use them if she did. Looking around at her companions, she suddenly felt like it hadn't been a very good idea to tag along after all.
Koga, wearing an epic ninja suit and looking like he'd walked right out of a comic book, questioned her on the details of the earlier telephone conversation.
“They were pretty young, and I think they already tried everything they could try before running away. I told them they should get somewhere safe,” Katrina looked downcast. Had that been the wrong thing to tell them? Had she already messed up one of their opportunities to defeat the monster?
Kat saw a flash of red and realized that Koga had draped his scarf around her neck. Equip item: red ninja scarf, +2 warmth, +2 epic.
She barely had time to grin at him when something even more epic raced past with clattering of hooves. Katrina took a glance behind him and her eyes widened.
“Look out!” Cthulhu was here, and he was throwing trees at them. Katrina skittered to one side, shoving the mansion's somewhat newly acquired winged boy the relative safety behind a bus shelter before tree branches descended around them.
Now enveloped within a green piney thicket on three sides, Katrina looked up at him with wide eyes. “That was close, are you alright?”
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, How deadly are your branches! Not only green in weather fair, also while sailing through the air! Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, How deadly are your branches!
>>>“I’m sorry... I’m sorry. I won’t leave again. You can buy a leash for me. I’m sorry.”
The threads of life never stayed straight in the loom. Light and dark colored strands crossed, overlapped, and twisted around each other in a dizzying pattern until a person wasn't quite sure what to feel when.
Calley's not-tears were contagious, and the blonde teen found herself not-crying and sniffling along with him. At the same time, she couldn't help but smile at Slate's curious question and failure at subtlety. People didn't usually ask things like that so blatantly, especially when someone had just expressed concern that someone else had overheard something they weren't supposed to over hear. But this was Slate, and he was new to many things like this.
Usually things like kissing are considered private, so it's rude to ask about it. You normally should wait until someone volunteers the information. She didn't want him to feel bad though (she had enough people feeling bad because of her right now), so she added, It's okay this time, since you didn't know. And we're friends, so I don't mind telling you if you keep it a secret; it was Koga.
Katrina suddenly wondered if not-crying translated over into non-spoken words. Slate didn't have much of a mental tone when he spoke to her, so it was hard to tell if feelings and emotions could be heard over the mental link. Could anger be heard telepathically, or pain, or fear, or heartache?
Throughout her mental message to his twin, Katrina hugged Calley tight. She snuggled right up under his chin for comfort, like two threads the fates had twined together on the loom. Not light and dark this time, just two different colors trying to find their place in the overall pattern. She didn't want him to feel bad for her sake, but she didn't know what to say to make things better for him either.
“I forgive you,” she promised his shirt collar. Forgiving Calley was much simpler than forgiving the green eyed man, and much simpler than forgiving herself. It was love that made forgiveness so easy.
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the school, not an X-man patrolled, twas the children who ruled. The adults had left home, for a land 'cross the sea in hopes of making the world the best place it could be.
To keep them safe, in body an mind, they left the adventurous young X-kids behind. Perhaps it was folly, they should have known That children find trouble when left all alone.
When the telephone rang, with an alarming clatter, one child thought to answer, to see what was the matter. The voice on the line was young and afraid, as she relayed the tale of the creature she'd made.
A monsterous sculpture, a brotherly dare, a loss of control, it was all of it there; Infantile antics had gone awfully awry and Cthulhu stretched out his wings and darkened the sky.
--
A quarter of an hour later, traveling by air, hoof, and cab and any other way they could manage, the mansion students arrived at Central Park. It was cold, drizzly, and quiet when they arrived. Katrina stepped out of the cab and looked around, pulling her coat tighter around herself.
“Where is it do you think,” she asked her comrades. For there being a enlarged and enraged clay sculpture running amok, the park was a little too quiet for her tastes. From somewhere, the sound of carolers' song floated through the air
--
(OOC: Cthulhu is a gigantic, winged, tentacle-y, animated clay sculpture. It is made completely out of moist clay. The moist evening suits him well, and he won't be drying out any time soon in this weather. He is taller than most of the trees in the park and not incredibly fast, nor are his senses very sharp. In fact, it isn't really clear if he has normal senses at all. His body, being clay and rather squishy, has the ability to absorb injuries and reform any pieces that get sliced off. Feel free to make up any other details that you like.)
Katrina's mind was the sky, clouded over by the turbulent events of her recent past. Rupert's words blew over her like an honest wind, revealing the tiny pinpricks of starlight behind the clouds. One by one pieces of constellations appeared, shining with familiarity; a faithful dog, a prowling lion, twins- one dead and one living that together watched over all the happenings in the world, an emperor on his upside down throne, a dragon twisting like a golden banner through the sky.
>>>“Sorry. I must sound like a nut. Like I said, it was just a dream. Things have already started changing from the ‘future’ it showed.”
He looked her in the eyes and sort of smiled with that statement, but not a real smile. Still, it was a spark that lit up another small memory.
“You used to smile more,” she observed. Used to, in the 'future'. “There was a mermaid, too. She was going to have a baby. And I went to the white house, then rode in a plane that landed in the Valley of Death.”
Her own dream logic sounded just as odd as his. Every word made things just a little clearer, faces came back to her both familiar and strange and shined like the stars, but clouds still obscured the whole picture. She couldn't see how it all fit together. She also didn't understand how his dream could sound so familiar to her. She didn't know if the things in her dream would sound familiar to him either. It was strange to think that two people, let alone a lot of people, would have the same dream at the same time.
“I remember waking up from the dream, but right afterwards all the nightmares came and gobbled it up. They got all mixed together and I don't remember whether I was trying to kill the dragon or rescue it.”
>>>“How old are you?”
Maybe she was still a little young to be dreaming of missions to rescue dragons and whatnot, but give her a few years and she could do it. “Fourteen,” she answered, mirroring the smile that was twitching to stretch itself across his face. “How old are you?”
>>>¨ Sorry, I could not. I failed once, i will fail again.
The look on Fausto's face was one of someone who was drowning in sadness. Katrina couldn't look at him when he said that, because she was the one who had drowned him. Kaz tried to give some advice, but it didn't seem like the kind that was likely to cheer him up. Katrina wasn't sure if anything would ever make him happy again when he looked like that.
Kaz then made his exit, leaving Koga with some wise words, too. It sounded like the same type of advice some old samurai would give to a young warrior just starting out. Either the elf eared hall monitor had been watching too many samurai movies lately, or Katrina had. The red eyed man left her with a kiss on the top of her head as a parting gift; no advice, though, which was probably good, since she wasn't trying to be any kind of warrior or anything like that. She was happy to just be a survivor.
Once their adult chaperone was gone, Koga took the liberty of promising both his own and Fausto's services to her gaurdship, effective starting now with three sleeping bags lined up side by side. Though, it still looked like Fausto was frozen like a statue of despair. Katrina couldn't blame him. She was still in a bit of a daze too, from the emotional catharsis she had gone through and the abrupt words that had pulled her out of it again. She gave half a nod to the words 'in March' without really thinking about what he was saying. And then Koga was speaking in German, or something like it.
“Tengen tengen gurren, what?” She repeated as best she could, completely confused. She blinked as things all around her slowly returned to normal. From dark illusory images to the promise of brightly colorful animation, and dark thoughts of murder and torture back to children preparing for a slumber party, the dark spell around them was slowly beginning to break. She reached for one of the sleeping bags and unrolled it and wrapped it around herself like a blanket of comfortable normality.
She glanced up at Fausto to see if he had returned to normal, too. Her eyes were sad and questioning with their plea for him to return to his normal self again, a plea for him to sit next to her and watch the movie, a plea for him to forgive her for what she had said.
He answered her second question first. Three times, in fact, before he gave up and asked for a hint. The trouble was she didn't know the answer either. She sat silent for a few moments while he elaborated on all the bad mutants that he knew. Some of the words striking rather close to home.
>>>“...Half the fr—the muties I meet are killers ”
How many really close friends did she have that were her age? Koga, Slate, Calley, Fausto... four. Out of those, Calley killed two people in a car accident. Fausto murdered his parents' killer and took her to the funeral. Half were already killers. Did that mean she, too, had a fifty-fifty chance of becoming a killer, too? Eeny meeny miney moe, her toes ticked back and forth under the pew.
>>>“But you—you’re different. Maybe. You were.”
She hoped she was different. Even in self defense, even if it was an accident, she didn't think that she could kill anyone.
You were? In a dream. He had dreamed about her before they had ever met. She had been good in the dream, different from other mutants. Lots of people had this dream. A few weeks back. It was a lot of information all at once, and it took her a few moments to put together all the pieces in her head.
“Were we friends in the dream?” Maybe that would be an indicator that could help them answer his first question. She examined his face again, searching for any sign that she might have had a dream about him, too. There was something about his face that seemed familiar, but it wasn't so much his features as the colored light dancing across them. Her face scrunched with concentration as she tried to remember back, to the time right before... right before all her dreams had become nightmares.
“Was it a good dream? I know... I've had a lot of nightmares recently,” she confessed. The nightmares were so sharply vivid that trying to remember ones that weren't painful or terrifying were harder to remember right now.
She did feel a little bad, but it had been rather necessary to take a bite at that particular moment.
>>>"Very well Katrina, we shall play this your way; what are the objectives of your assignment? Who will you be working with? What is your timeframe? And finally, does your mother know you're here?"
Those were very technical questions, that she could make up very technical answers for. Except maybe the last one which was a simple yes or no question. However, she didn't particularly feel inclined to invent things she wouldn't be able to remember later, so she thought that a simple answer would probably be for the best in this situation. She set her muffin down and crossed her arms stubbornly.
“I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to answer you first three questions, and I doubt you'd answer mine if I asked the same things. As for the fourth, no. Did you tell your mother where you were going?”
She frowned as he shook his head, winced, pinched the top of his nose, and swallowed a pair of pills. He took his half of the muffin back, but didn't eat it. He must really have been saving it for later. Katrina nibbled another bite off of her half, and examined his pinched expression with one eyebrow raised in concern.
>>>"Indeed, imagine that, who would have thought that the airport security would have been lax enough to allow an invisible mutant stowaway."
Katrina's mouth dropped open. To take a big bite of Zephyr's muffin, mind you. Not at all because he had hit the nail squarely on the head with that comment.
“Mmm,” she mumbled thoughtfully before swallowing. “I wouldn't know anything about that.” In all seriousness, she scrutinized the muffin trying to decide if there was indeed cream cheese swirls in it. Never mind that she didn't have a scrap of metal anywhere on her body to ensure that she could easily slip though a metal detector without setting off any alarms, or the fact that she didn't have any luggage other than a backpack which Fausto had put through the x-ray for her, or the fact that she didn't actually have a ticket. Small details, those. Not really important ones at all. She took another bite of the muffin.
>>>"Katrina, what are you doing here?"
Swallowed. That was a much more direct question. She could answer that, probably.
“I am going to help Slate in Romania. There are things I can do that no one else can, like helping someone travel without being seen.” Both of those statements were technically true; even if Slate didn't know she would be helping him and she hadn't actually been assigned a task where she had to help people travel invisible, it was true that she could.
“How about you?” He hadn't actually responded to Slate's name before, nor had he questioned who that was. That made her think that he knew the name but had purposely ignored it. She took another bite of the muffin, considered it's enormous size, and decided that, delicious as it was, she probably couldn't eat the whole thing herself. She broke it into halves as evenly as she possibly could, with her own missing bites all on her side of the break, and offered the other half back to the wind manipulator still in its rippled muffin paper.
Katrina's hasty retreat was quickly thwarted by the unfortunately timed appearance of a stewardess piloted drink trolley. With the curtain in the way the invisible illusionist never saw it coming, and in her preoccupation with escaping unnoticed from the hazel haired passenger farther up she didn't hear the telltale clattering of the beverage containers either. Her first awareness of the trolley came from the solid knock she received to the ribs when she ran straight into the unmanned handle on the closest side of the cart. The surprise of the blow knocked her backwards and she only found equilibrium again only once she was sprawled flat on her back in the aisle.
Her supine position elicited pitying noises from the passengers on either side of her who were no longer dozing or reading their print media as they had previously been inclined to do. The young illusionist felt suddenly very exposed, especially for someone who had been hoping to make it through the entire flight undetected. She gasped to catch her breath and backed up onto her now bruised elbows.
“I'm.. okay,” she assured the witnesses, hoping that they would look anywhere else but at her. “I'm very sorry,” she added to the stewardess who was now bending over her with some kind of misplaced motherly concern.
>>>“I’m afraid it’s my fault really, I shouldn’t have let her run out like she did, with that being said though Katrina you really do need to look where you’re going, now why don’t you get back in your seat so the woman can pass through. I’m sure they’ll bring more food in a moment.”
And suddenly the very person she had been trying to elude became her best option for escape from this rather odd situation. The sooner people went back to minding their own business and not thinking about that fact that she had appeared as if out of 'thin air' the better. She wasn't sure that she liked that condescending tone, but he was offering an entire row of empty seats as a refuge, so she wasn't about to complain.
“Yes, brother,” she responded and scrambled back to her feet, across his lap without waiting for him to move out of the way, raising his tray on her way past to make room, and into the vacant seat next to him. She buckled her seatbelt around her stomach and adjusted her skirt so it lay flat on her lap. Yup, she belonged in this first class seat. Been here all along, in fact. And this muffin she had grabbed on the way over Zephyr's lap? Clearly he had just been saving it for his younger sister.
The stewardess gave her one last look with a raised eyebrow and went back to her duty of offering beverages to the passengers. Katrina ordered orange juice and tried to figure out how on earth she was going to explain her way out of this situation once the stewardess was out of earshot. The air elemental was bound to have questions.
“So... You're working for Slate, too? Imagine that, being on the same flight.” It was a complete guess on her part, but she figured if she was wrong the worst thing that would happen would be that he wouldn't know what she was talking about and if she was right he might buy that she was actually supposed to be here.
Her hand was brushed. The muffin was moved. She was reprimanded. By someone who didn't even bother to lower his paper whilst doing these things. Huh? He was clearly a talented multi-tasker and one handed paper reader with some talent for knowing about his surroundings without actually looking at them. Luckily his fellow first class passengers were not paying attention to the fact that he was now talking to himself. In a very familiar ennui laced drawl.
She pursed her lips suspiciously to one side and peered over the top of the paper with eyebrows drawn together. Now, where was her toy dart gun when she really needed it? No, she shouldn't talk to him, shouldn't let him know she was even here. If he was still thinking she was just some errant child that had attempted to steal a muffin, that was probably for the best; he didn't need to know exactly how errant she was, nor exactly which child.
Yeah, she'd best be going before he... Looked up. Didn't see her.
Yup, she'd just be going now. She turned on her heel and went the back the way she came, rather more hastily than she entered. Not running. Just walking briskly. Emphasis on briskly.
Oops. She hadn't meant to think quite that loudly. Sorry. Just... ignore me, I'll try not to be so loud. How did one go about not thinking loudly? She had no idea, really. Probably it was best just to not think about anything she didn't want over heard. For the time being. Until she could figure out how not to have Slate overhear her every thought.
>>>“I missed you, too. I tried to make you cupcakes, once, but I guess you weren’t here, then. And then I kinda...”
Yeah.
Luckily for him, Katrina was getting really good at the forgiveness thing. She'd had lots of practice lately.
>>>“Are you taller?”
She shrugged. She hadn't switched to wearing long pants for the winter yet, and it was hard to tell with skirts if they were a little shorter than they were supposed to be. “I dunno, maybe.” With all the things that had changed, height wasn't one to which she had paid much attention.
“Are you skinnier?” She poked his tummy. He was always a little scrawny, but nowhere near where he'd been the winter of the Resistance. She had thought he was going to shrivel up and vanish back then. These days he just skipped right to vanishing. At least, wherever he'd been he was eating alright. Probably. She couldn't help but worry. He had a bad habit of not talking good care of himself.
“I was so worried about you. I made posters and...” He already knew that. “And when I was hanging them up in the park...” It didn't get any easier to tell it, no matter how many times she tried. The words just seemed to catch in her throat and refuse to come out any farther than that. Mutinous vocal chords refused to let them pass any farther, no matter how much she wanted to tell him. Friends were supposed to tell stuff like that, the good stuff and the bad stuff. She'd told Slate that once, but it was easier to tell someone else to do something than it was to do it yourself.
Maybe if she started with something good, it would be easier to share the bad.
“I learned something new,” she said sitting up straight again so she could see his face and he could see hers. Then she closed her eyes and focused on seeing his face in her mind instead. Everything that was Calley, from silly grin to baby blues eyes, from spots here and there to all over stripes. Then she thought about what she wanted only him to hear. Without her lips moving at all, her voice spoke. Without her vocal chords dictating what she said or didn't say, words filled the space between them.
“I can tell secrets now that only one person can hear. Or see.” She swallowed, now for the hard part. ”Something bad happened, while you were gone. I was being stupid. I went to the park by myself, because no one was around to go with me.” Pictures were still easier than words, even if all she had to do was think them. So, pictures it was.
For Calley's eyes only, the room around them changed. It was still difficult to affect multiple senses at once on a large scale when she was blocking everyone but him from seeing, so there was no sounds or smells to accompany the pictures, just still snapshots of what had happened, like stepping into a comic book that was anything but funny.
The green eyed man trying to hand her a bottle of Coca Cola. Green-eyes pointing to the poster, then pointing down the pathway. Katrina, leaning over a sewer grate to look under a bush.
Darkness.
The sewer. Water running. Katrina running. Green eyes smiling menacingly down at her as he choked her into unconsciousness a second time.
Tied up. Hair and clothes sliced off. Burned. Cut. A bloody knife came dangerously close to her eye, but caught only tears.
And that was as far as her concentration could hold. The snapshots faded. She wiped one or two real tears off her cheeks with her sleeve.
“Slate saved me, in the end,” she added out loud, but still rather softly to be heard by anyone whose lap she wasn't sitting on. Her eyes were trained downwards, at his blue and black striped tie. Her fingers played with the top button of his coat. There. Now he knew.
His whole body seemed to go stiff all over and his hand made itself into a fist in his lap. Apparently her vague story, even in its most diluted form, was enough to make people uncomfortable. Or angry. Rupert looked kind of angry. Not the kind where you explode and yell at people and hit things, it was the kind where every action, every word is planned with deliberate coldness. It was the scary kind of angry
>>>“Have the police caught him yet?”
Cold words, but their coldness wasn't aimed at her in particular. Katrina slowly shook her head. She hadn't even thought to tell the police. And she hadn't told anyone who would think to tell the police. There was no way that anyone could have caught him, because no one was even looking.
His voice was still gruff when he spoke again, insisting that she had to forgive the man who had done such terrible things to her. She had to forgive him, to keep being the person that she was. Otherwise, the green eyed man was still hurting her, changing her.
Had she already become a different person because of what had happened? She thought back to the last few weeks. She had sulked, brooded, and ignored her friends. Her mother had tried dragging her out of her isolation, but she had dragged her feet all the way. That wasn't who she wanted to be.
“I'm trying,” she answered softly, keeping her gaze guiltily on her hands in her lap. Rupert's next words surprised her into looking into his face again, though.
>>>“You’re a mutant.”
It sounded like an accusation, and from the way the word 'mutant' fit into his mouth, it was fairly obvious that he didn't particularly like mutants. One moment, he was pulling her closer with his words, concerned for her mortal soul; the next moment, he pushed her away again, rejecting an essential part of her identity.
After all she had shared with him, was the existence of one small gene out of the hundred and thousands that occupied space in her chromosomes enough to... enough to what? Break some bond of friendship or companionship that had formed between them? This man was a stranger and she had offered him a tiny little piece of her soul. If he wanted to shove it back in her face because she wasn't good enough for him, whose fault was it that she would be hurt? If she had learned anything from her experience earlier this summer, she should have already learned not to trust strangers.
“How do you know,” she couldn't help but wonder out loud. He sounded so certain, and yet, he couldn't be a psychic or he wouldn't have such disdain dripping from his accusations. Except, that wasn't the most important question. A better one was, “Is that a bad thing?”