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.
Slate returned several minutes later, his bag somewhat bigger: even though he had neatly folded his former clothes, they were still rather bulky. He carried the bag over his shoulder, with his simple blue towel; his swim trunks were nearly knee-length, and light gray. In his wet hair perched the swim goggles. He had showered prior to going swimming, as advised by the large changing room posters.
Ms. Verdigris awaited him by the lockers. Slate neatly inserted his own bag inside, with hers.
"So now… we swim?" He ventured. "…Is the pool water cold?"
Slate stood up at the appropriate speed as Ms. Verdigris appeared: not to slow, and certainly not too eagerly fast. That would be undignified, particularly as her employer.
The receptionist raised an eyebrow at the "Mister" as she addressed him, then seemed to write it off as a teenage joke.
"Yes, Ms. Verdigris." He picked up his bag, holding it in both hands. "I brought my suit and a towel. Will that be sufficient? I also brought goggles. I… was not sure if they would be needed."
…Slate had the sudden, disquieting feeling that he was competing with himself. And he had lost.
"Oh." He replied levelly. "Yes. Saturday afternoon would be fine." It was fine. There was no real difference. It was simply… not Friday. Because Calley had already booked her for Friday.
"What day would you prefer, for recurring study sessions? I can schedule you in." He pulled his own Blackberry from his pants pocket, and navigated to the calendar with ease. Not that he was trying to appear technologically suave, or busy enough to need to schedule the girl in between other matters of Important Business: Slate had no particular ego of which to speak. Of course.
Dates and contact numbers were exchanged; farewells were said, and rides back to the Mansion arranged.
Slate did not mind meeting her on Saturday. There was no reason to mind it: therefore, he didn't. Of course.
Slate's lips quirked at Lenna's reply; enough to keep muggers at bay, indeed. Somehow, he suspected there was a story behind that.
"There is no particular training that you 'need' to know, combat-wise," Slate added. "The Kabal is not like the X-Men and the Order: we try to avoid combat. It is rarely useful for humanitarian goals." And when it was necessary, he had people who were already quite well trained in it. Henrietta would be going down a different career track, he believed. She struck him—and would likely strike others—as someone who intended no deception, and her abilities could help her escape if something went wrong. She could make a good forward face for their above-board humanitarian efforts. "I do expect all Labs and Kabal employees to train in self-defense, however. Myself included."
>> "Think we could get her a phone?"
"Ah, yes. Simply see Ms. Mortman, at the front desk. She can give you a temporary phone; we'll provide a stipend for you to purchase a more permanent one from a regular store. You may choose whatever you wish, but please be certain it can function internationally." Slate's lips twitched. "You will see a lot of the world, working with us."
"Oh, it's going quite well, of course. Only a few hundred more sovereign governments to undermine, and the UN to deceive. Or, rather, to continue to deceive." Serious business, indeed. He skated on with professional pride. "Though to be honest, I'm not quite certain what to do with Australia. It doesn't really interest me, but continent-wise, it is necessary to complete the collection."
>> "We weave the destiny of people who are trying to take over the world. We pull on the threads of fate, we read the signs of the future, we write... ouch dammit!"
"That is a most curious spell name," Slate observed, his lips quirking as he stared down at the witch.
It was as if someone had flicked a spinner: there were no newborns to nuzzle, or meadows to frolic in, so the unicorn had settled on ending the battle.
Slate laced his hands through its mane, and concentrated on not being heavy. He was glad he had been in the camp for a month: he had lost some weight. As the unicorn dragged people around by their own souls, pushing them back into their bodies or pulling combatants apart, he simply tried to be an innocuous presence on its back. A childish smile had latched onto his lips, and would not let go.
Slate had never ridden a unicorn before. Especially not through a battlefield.
His smile left as the unicorn set to work on a hulking form of red. One of the Abyss clones—he was not sure which one. They looked the same, for the most part. The only real difference came in their personalities. A dead body does not have a personality. But it was okay: the unicorn made it better.
The unicorn… made Ghost appear?
Slate frowned. He was not sure what Ms. Csendes had been doing inside of the clone's body, but he was fairly certain that it was not appropriate for a married woman. Also—and possibly on a related note—she was rather naked. What would her husband think? This unicorn might not mind, but he thought the other one would at least wish for his wife to wear clothing while in public. Sebastian was old-fashioned, like that.
Slate slid off of the unicorn's back, and dropped lightly down to Ms. Csendes' side. He removed his coat and draped it over her.
When she awoke, he would offer his pants, as well.
The Kabal's Leader nodded at Henrietta's continued explanation of her power. That made quite a bit of sense.
>> "Does this facility have such a place to train? Like a gym? Or do you know of any, close-by?"
Again, a nod. "It does. We have a training room capable of holographic and robotic displays, similar to the X-Men's danger room." Actually, they had several such rooms. The Kabal's former leader had liked to have more toys than the other children, it seemed; there had even been a replica of the Danger Room inside a replica of the Mansion, until Slate had ordered both of them disassembled. He did not want to explain to Cold Steel why the Kabal maintained a training ground in the shape of the X-Men's base. That would have been… poor for inter-team relations. "We also have a more standard gymnastics room, and weight room, as well as jogging trails around the grounds."
"If you would like to train now, one of the guards can show you the way," Slate offered.
The Kabal's Leader sat on the waiting bench in front of the reception desk. The telephone rang; he twitched. Children ran past. He twitched. Down the hall, a can of soda clanked down from the innards of a vending machine. He refrained from twitching (with effort). He was dressed in a blue polo shirt and khaki pants. Between his feet was a bag that contained a towel and swim goggles, still in their packaging. He had not been certain whether they would be required. In the end, he had opted to come prepared.
Slate waited just inside his local YMCA for his coach to arrive. He sat straight, his blue eyes focused on the doors. He was, perhaps, focusing a bit too hard on not appearing nervous. He had been sitting here for exactly twenty-two minutes. He had not wanted to be late to his first lesson.
Today, Ms. Verdigris was going to kindly teach him how to have a childhood.
Slate resumed his parallel trajectory next to her. This skating thing seemed to be more easily acquired when one took a holistic approach: the social angle seemed to function as a distracter, which caused him not to think about why he wasn't falling. This proved to be a vital role.
"I do what every respectable psychic does," Slate answered with a flawless deadpan, "Try to take over the world."
He turned a slight smirk her way. "What does your coven do on Saturdays?"
>> “How do you know they won't change their minds back once you stop paying or threatening? It doesn't sound very permanent.”
"Ah. Well." Slate found himself looking at a point on Katrina's shoulder, rather than at her eyes. "One can hope that the initial fear will last at least a few months, in the absence of evidence claiming the threats' removal." Which is to say: the Kabal saw no need to inform the Romanian politicians that the Order had not been working for them, and that they were not likely to return to smash in a few more heads. "In that time, popular political support can help to push through legislative changes that will be hard to overturn in the future, including desegregation laws and more tolerant educational policies to be taught in schools. The bribery, of course, will also be maintained for now. Better a government corrupted by good than one that kills its own citizens."
A stray hair had settled on her shirt; Slate innocuously brushed it off.
She had been worried about him, too. He did not know why that hadn't occurred to him. Or why it had not occurred to him to maintain basic contact with her. After all, he had a blackberry.
"Do you have a telephone, Katrina?" He asked, as if this would be a novel technology for a teenage girl to possess. "Or an email address? I could contact you the next time I go on a mission, or arrange for Ms. Mortman to send you updates as to my status, should I forget."
Personally, Slate did not find world peace to be too large a goal, if properly sectioned. He let Katrina continue to think things through for herself, however. Her question as to means earned a simple nod. "Means are anything you can make use of. Mutations, people, events. Anything."
Her continued goal-mulling earned a twitch at the corners of his lips. "I believe I have given you a homework assignment. Perhaps we can discuss this further, when I help you with your mathematics. How does tomorrow afternoon, after your classes end sound?"
Slate tilted his head and, for the first time that day, tried to pick up her thoughts. He closed his eyes in concentration. At first, he was not sure it was working: his mind was filled with color, but it seemed more like the color one could expect after receiving head trauma than anything of sense (or of senses). A small frown came to his lips. He opened his eyes again.
Her own eyes were black.
A brief baby's breath of white overlaid with her lips, in time with her breath. A man laughed behind her, the raucous red spreading out to join with his partner's orange chuckle. Silver and blue sparks traced visible--audible--lines all around them. The colors were hazy, and many of them made no sense to him at all, but he saw them.
Her eyes shifted red, and he realized something: she was seeing. That meant that the images he was viewing came from her point of view. That quite explained his problem understanding them --he was viewing things backwards, as it were. He forced himself to close his eyes again, and simply observe things as she was observing them. This sense was easier to understand: popular media had prepared him for heat vision. Heat vision included sight through scarves. Ah. That… did not help his cheeks to grow cooler.
The images changed again. He wondered what sense this was. The first seemed to line up with sound, and the second would likely be touch. That meant… that he smelt gray?
And tasted so as well, apparently. He wondered what she tasted like, but he only got a colored flavor of her coat and her nose. He suspected these were not representative, and resolved not to hold them against her.
>> "Well, that's it. The rest of much more confusing."
He took a few blinking moments to re-orient himself. He had not caught what she meant about the X-gene; there were too many other things, distinctly more basic, that he'd struggled with as the images changed.
"That was incredibly fascinating in a non-intuitive fashion," he stated. "Do those all make sense to you?"
'Interesting.' Between 'interesting' and 'lame,' her power was most certainly 'interesting.' Slate blinked at the animate filaments as they whipped through the air in the windless board room.
"Is it--are they--completely prehensile, then?" He asked. "Would they protect your head from trauma fully, or block harmful forces more like a helmet--stopping the offending object, but still transferring some of the impact force to your head?" Having an innocuous shield hanging from one's head could be beneficial in many mental scenarios.
>> "Have you had any experience in self defense?"
Slate listened for that answer, as well. If Ms. Lenna could start her training… that would be quite useful.
Slate double-checked to make sure his scarf was in place, hiding any disappointed set to his lips. Her descriptions were less than vivid. The ability itself sounded mostly indescribable; that would be why she was having trouble describing it. It was also why he wished to learn about it, in detail. The concept was simply fascinating.
"Did your mutation only recently activate, then?" He gathered. "How long have you know you were a mutant?"
>> "I try not to taste people. It just... doesn't seem right."
Her own scarf was not well positioned to hide blushes.
"Oh." Slate blinked. "I had not considered that." He continued to not fall on the ice. Colloquially, this was sometimes known as 'gliding.'
>> So many shades of grey... So, how does it feel like to hear people's thoughts?
It is more that I sometimes fail to not hear them, Slate clarified. "It can be annoying, particularly when someone is contemplating my murder. You would be surprised at the regularity with which people do that." Daydreams were all fun and games until a psychic came along. Roland had a rather vivid imagination, and Bacchus a rather linear one. Slate was glad the man was still in jail. Watching the giant crush his skull every time they spoke had been growing dull.
Blink.
I can hear images, as well, he said. Could you show me what you see?
He thought the scarf did an admirable job of maintaining his outward dignity. It was somewhat harder to keep the enthusiasm out of his thoughts, however.
>> "All of them. All possible combinations. Technically, I have 25 different ways of experiencing a sensory input, not counting the X-gene sense."
"You can sense the X-gene?" Slate blinked, and extrapolated from there. "...What does the X-gene sound like on your skin?" He asked, infinitely curious. "Does it vary from person to person, and power to power?"
>> "Um... I can't go backwards."
It took him a moment to refocus, and take note of what she meant. Ah. His proximity. With careful shuffling steps, Slate removed himself to a more socially appropriate distance. Which is to say, to approximately two point five feet away. Within that range, people seemed to grow uncomfortable; outside that range, they seemed to move closer to fill the gap. The precise range seemed to vary based upon situational factors such as relational closeness, mood, and privacy, but two point five feet seemed to be relatively safe for most situations.
Slate had developed a complex theory on this, but had some trouble remembering his own hypothesis when doing... field work.
"Perhaps if we attempt to skate in parallel, we can more successfully avoid collisions," Slate suggested. Shuffling himself around, he attempted to put this into practice with another few slide-steps.
"...What do I taste like to your ears?" He asked. Because it was really quite an intriguing question, when one thought about it.
"Surprisingly well, combined with the death threats." Slate stated, quite honestly. "Death threats as provided by the Order's rampant assassinations of pro-Registration politicians, that is. A monetary incentive not to die helps make the decision more obvious." He doubted strongly that the Order knew how helpful they'd been. Certainly, he was in no hurry to inform them. The politicians who did not accept the Kabal's offer, and had not repented accordingly in a public manner, had more or less ended up dead.
Survival of the fittest, indeed.
As Katrina continued to speak, and listen, she grew... less sure of herself. More aware of reality, and her own frustratingly small role in it. Slate suddenly wished he had shut up, and simply let her yell at him. He did not want Katrina realizing these things. She was Katrina: Katrina was sure she could go anywhere, do anything, and trust anyone. The green-eyed man had already stolen part of that from her. Slate had no right to take the rest.
When she curled up on his lap, he curled back, his arms wrapping around her in a hug. Hugs seemed to be an appropriate action, when feeling bad about oneself in the company of friends, or when friends themselves were feeling bad. Or both. He believed this had become a case of 'both.'
>> “I'm sorry. You're right. I shouldn't have gone.”
"Please do not apologize," he said quietly. "You did nothing wrong, and nothing wrong came of it. You were only being who you are. Please, do not apologize. I was just... very concerned, when I learned you had come."
>> “How else can I help?”
It was a big question. Slate was used to thinking about it, but only for himself, and for those he could use. He would not use Katrina.
"First," he asked, "what is it you want to do? Exactly. A concrete goal; it must be something reachable, and something that you can recognize when you've reached it. Other goals can come later; choose only one for now, and focus on it."
This was the process his own thoughts went through. Perhaps it would help her, too.
"Next, how can that goal be achieved, using the means you have on hand? What needs to be done? What is already happening, that you can turn to your own ends?"
Katrina was a leader, too, or she was going to be. Perhaps it was time she was trained as one.
