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’s hand was cupped around darkness. Black, yes: but only darkness. There was nothing there.
There is nothing there, Katrina, he said, folding his hands over her own, to prove it to her. Her hands were on his face. It was a curious sensation. Somehow—
(sisterfriendsupporter)
—familiar.
But it was gone, like his dream.
“I think there was a dragon in mine,” the former Kabal leader said, to fill the darkness. “Also, people who would not listen to commands.”
It was hard to see in the dark—the only light came in from around a window curtain’s edge, across the room. However, there seemed to be an unusual level of movement coming from her vicinity. As his forehead could attest.
But how? Despite the dragon, despite the flames, despite the black threads falling, the protestors marched on. They were too focused to see what was happening all around them.
And they were not listening to him.
“Everyone, you must— It is imperative that you—”
Laughter. He could hear laughter, from—where? He turned his head, but it was gone.
The protestors marched on, their chants drowning him out. Slate pushed his way forward, and grabbed the black thread. Pulled. It came slowly, heavier than death, but it came. Another pair of arms joined his: the Chineseman, still covered in blood. Then another: the Egyptian. The man with the eye patch, and more: they pulled it together, and more joined in, until they were a circle within the circle. They dragged the black thread outwards, and it shoved back any who were in their way.
They all have to move.
And they did, whether they helped him or not. Finally there was nothing left in the old circle but a dragon screeching above, and the blonde girl, below. Slate gathered himself, and leapt inside the black circle.
The gray wolfhound stood in front of her, its paws braced as the dragon came crashing down. It hit the empty space, and shattered into ash and white bone.
“I will always protect you,” the wolfhound said, muzzle tipped up, baby blue eyes looking up into the blonde’s.
The laughter returned.
“Right,” the boy with the candlestick said, sitting on the black thread the others still held. “Past and future. We’ll see how well that works.” He laughed again: then with a hop off the thread, he was gone.
The wolfhound turned its muzzle to the dragon’s skeleton. I can’t heal death, he remembered. And something else. Something important. Something that walked and talked every day, but was no longer there with him. Its snout swung in the darkness, searching for Katrina—
They were walking all over his circle. It was really quite upsetting. The blue-eyed young man stepped down from his own podium, and caught an Eyptian’s arm. “Stay within the lines,” he instructed reasonably. “You are smudging—”
The man crossed a division, and it was no longer either a man or an Egyptian whose arm he grasped: it was a boy, and he held a candlestick. From the podium, the man with the eye patch waved at him to come over, but Slate did not have time. This was important. “If you simply do as I say, everything will be perfect—“
The boy gave him an irate look, and tried to shake him off. Slate kept his grip as they jumped—into the next partition, where it was a Chinese man’s arm he held. He was old, or circumstances had made him so: his somber, trusting eyes were sunken into his face. “I did what you said. Am I perfect now?”
Slate recoiled. Red. This part of the circle was all red. Red bloomed over the man’s heart; he fell to his knees, at Slate’s feet. Now Slate could see behind him, to the podium.
The blonde woman smiled, and beckoned him as the man with the eye patch had. She wore a tank top; she smelled of burning. She stretched her arms out at him: and behind her, he spied another blonde. Shorter, younger.
Sisterfriendsupporterwife—
“Katrina!” He shouted, running to take her hand as above them, the other blonde rose in the air as a crimson dragon, her outstretched arms becoming sulfur wings that smelled of burning and destruction.
Dinner was a slightly rough. Slate picked up on this. It was only later, as he stared up an unfamiliar ceiling with a pounding head and tried to sleep, that a simple fact occurred to him: if dinner was rough, and he had picked up on it, then it must have been catastrophic in Katrina’s eyes.
The woman had not said anything to them. But she’d had a certain way of clicking her knife and fork as she cut that silenced anything that anyone else said. When Gavrilo offered them the use of his couch and floor for the night (he apologized, but they had no spare bed—) she stated that she would be spending the night at her sister’s. She then took the plates, and went to the kitchen to wash them.
Slate had still been eating from his.
He would rather not have attended dinner at all. It was not important. Likewise, he did not think that an early bedtime for himself was at all appropriate. The word ‘wobbly’ may have been applied to his situation, but that was likewise unimportant.
The important thing was finding the teleporter. Before he left. It was inconceivable that he would simply drop them here and leave, of course. In Serbia. In 1913. It was—
They would find him. That was the important thing.
Teleporter, Slate tried, while sitting down. (He was not wobbly. A former Faction Leader, a Colombian drug lord, was never to be classified as wobbly.)
Teleporter, he continued, attempting to sound… loud? Did one increase one’s range by shouting? Why had he not given more practice to this?
Likely because of his Blackberry. It got better reception than he did.
Teleporter.
Get out of my head—!
This should have been reassuring. It was. That last syllable, it had not been oddly shortened, as if cut off. Slate had reached him. That was the important thing.
Teleporter, we require your assistance in returning to—
…Teleporter?
Slate slept on the floor. Katrina, of course, got the couch.
He could tell the woman was not happy with him. This seemed strange, since the woman did not know him. At least, he did not know her voice.
“—complete strangers, Gavrilo. You let complete strangers into our apartment—”
“No no, not complete strangers—protestors! Young Bosnians, like us! The girl’s friend, he just got a little sick in the sun. He’ll be fine soon.”
“That girl, she’d dressed like a— I won’t even say it. They will be out by tonight?”
“Of course, of course.”
“…I am going to the store. We need groceries for dinner.”
“Buy enough for four, would you? In case they stay for dinner.”
“…You’re impossible. All right: dinner for four.”
“And the girl can borrow one of your dresses?”
“Oh, so you’re asking now? Yes, Gavrilo, she can. But tonight--!”
“They’ll be out, they’ll be out. It’s not like they’re homeless.”
A door shut, in another room close by. Slate’s eyes opened slowly. He seemed to be on a couch, that was slightly smaller in length than he was. On the floor across the room was a handmade sign; Unity for all Yugoslavs. It did not seem particularly catchy, compared to other signs they had seen today.
Slate pushed himself up, slowly. He did not see Katrina in the room. And his head hurt.
“Ah, friend! Good to see you awake. Are you feeling any better?” This would be the owner of the second voice. The one that was not female, and did not dislike him. Slate blinked at the young man.
“I am conscious.”
“Ha! That you are.” The young man seemed to find this statement very funny. He seemed somewhere between Katrina’s age and Slate’s own—the age Slate looked, in any case. He was wearing a fairly nice shirt, and a pair of trousers. It seemed rather dressy, compared to the jeans and T-shirts most protestors seemed to favor. Slate himself was in his usual khaki slacks and button-up shirt, but he was generally not a representative sample of the surrounding population.
Slate rubbed at his temple. “If I may ask, where am I?”
“You may ask, and your answer: my apartment.”
“Are we near Tahrir Square still?” The young man’s puzzled but pleasant smile persisted. “Cairo,” Slate elaborated, as the silence stretched on too long. “…Egypt?”
“Egypt? Ha! You must have had an interesting dream, friend. No; we are still in Serbia. What’s your name?”
“Slate. Slate Swartz.”
The man stuck out his hand. “Well, Slate, Slate Swartz, I am Gavrilo. Gavrilo Princip.”
Though Katrina’s hand was approximately the same size as his Blackberry, it lacked some of its functionality. It did not have wifi, nor texting; there was no browsing to any sites what-so-ever. It did, however, allow for status updates. As they twined their way through the crowd, her hand cheerfully tugged his along.
As she bumped into the dark-skinned boy with the curious hair cut and accessories, the hand tightened briefly. Surprise, he interpreted, after a glance down at it.
It continued to tighten. Slate blinked, idly wondering what the blood flow rate to his fingers now was. As the initial surprise should be past, he was not entirely certain what had trig—
Ah. Looking up provided clarification. Large, muscular clarification, which was attempting to push itself through cracks in the crowd significantly smaller than its biceps. Unsurprisingly, it was succeeding.
Slate found his own hand squeezing back. It seemed appropriate.
Next to them, the dark-skinned boy had found their side of the crowd a bit less willing to yield. He looked panicked for a moment. Then… somehow smug.
—just a jump, and I’m gone, suckers—
Slate caught, by way of thoughts spoken far too loudly. The boy furtively set his candlestick down as the man continued to push towards them. Slate allowed his grip to relax, and then gave Katrina’s hand a small squeeze.
I believe the candlestick boy is some sort of teleporter, he informed her. I advise us going with him.
The man burst through the crowd. Was it too late to upgrade to ‘strongly advise’? Yes, Slate decided. Instead, he grabbed for the boy’s arm as he made his just a jump. The crowd flickered and disappeared; a moment of darkness; then touch and sight and smell flared up again. Around them, a crowd still held signs and chanted, but any and all men with muscles were not paying attention to them. The other side of the Square? Very convenient.
The boy shot them a dirty look, picked up his candle, and ran off.
“Well,” Slate stated, “that was—”
Pain lanced through his head. It was quite an intriguing phenomenon, actually, as if a hollow had just opened up in his skull. With nothing better to fill it, the pain graciously stepped in.
Were his knees on the ground? How odd. He didn’t remember—
Slate’s hand briefly tightened around Katrina’s; then it slid loose.
Those were cobblestones against his cheek. Very curious.
Slate was technically twenty-one years old (and very nearly five). Therefore, he felt obligated to be the responsible party in this excursion. Using experience hard-won from his years as both Kabal Leader and Mondragon Labs CEO, he delegated with great efficiency.
Noin Mortman, of course, was charged with procuring their airplane tickets and forwarding the e-confirmation to his Blackberry.
Emile Verhulst and the other Belgian grad students, already on the ground, were tasked with securing adjacent hotel rooms in a reputable establishment. As opposed to the sort of establishment that grad students who had already blown their money on plane tickets might prefer.
To Katrina, of course, were left all other details. He had signed off on her itinerary before boarding the plane.
So it was that Slate soon found himself walking the Khan El Khalilli Bazaar (after some thought, he bought a small cat statue for Calley, and a small satchel for himself, to carry such things as small cat statues), boarding a bus to the Giza Pyramids (it was quite stifling inside them, but also quite fascinating, if one was not bothered by being entombed alive in a literal sense), and pursuing the collection at the Egyptian Museum (whose main exhibit—King Tut—was, for whatever reason, currently in… Minnesota. Still, they bought a nice postcard for Katrina’s mother).
The main event, of course—the very reason they were here—was today. Friday. A day that had, in recent months, become a traditional time for protestors to flock to Tahrir Square.
Emile’s elbow was on Slate’s shoulder. It was rather hard to dislodge, once it had settled there. “Twitter! Facebook! Social media! What did I tell you, Swartzy, eh? This is how our generation runs a revolution.”
“…What was that?” Slate blinked up from his Blackberry, where he had been updating his Facebook status. Emile smiled fondly down at him.
“I am so happy with you, I could cry. Isn’t he just precious when he uses modern technology, Katty?”
Going to Tahrir Square in Cairo. Term paper for Modern History: on hiatus.
He had three “likes” before they finished crossing the street. He did not post, of course, that he’d brought one of his smaller text books there with him. It was in his satchel from the bazaar. His grade in Modern History was something he was not fond of discussing, recently. The paper was about World War I. He would have preferred something about South America. And… more during his lifespan. World War I did not strike him as particularly “modern.”
Kelliann Schmidt—not Kelli, and not Ann, thanks—was not an officer of the law. She was a reserve officer of the law. A sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly volunteer when the regular cops couldn’t be bothered to come out in force and deal with teenagers, brawling, vampires, et al.
“Vampires?”
“Vampires,” Clancy confirmed.
By the very definition of ‘volunteering,’ Kelliann was not getting paid enough to deal with this. None the less...
“We’re going to need backup at Central Park,” she spoke into her shoulder-radio. Reserve officers: they did get some cool gadgets, and they did get to wear the blues. Most people completely missed the little “reserve” patch sewed under her “Schmidt.”
“Yeah. You heard me. Vampires.”
This got just as warm a reaction from the folks on the other end as other such calls. Like ‘Stampeding Douglas Firs’, or ‘Giant Lovecraftian Monstrosity with Tentacles.’ Honestly? Kelliann would take the vampires. Maybe, if she was extra lucky, they weren’t even real. Or the real cops would deal with them, for her.
She waded towards the brawl and the screaming teen(s). And the tackling, and the pepper spray, and the yeah.
“POLICE!” She yelled, as Clancy went on crowd-herding duty.
“STEP!” Some other guy yelled, one last desperate time.
“All vampires, hands and fangs where I can see them!”
For a moment, some punk with watery blue eyes and a goatee raised his hands. Then a large blur of ninja black scooped him up, made a grab for the Girl Who’d Cried Vampire, and disappeared into the night. There might or might not have been a violent brown-haired women taken along for the ride.
Pepper spray. Frequently used in riot control, crowd control, and self-defense. Besides mere humans, it was also effective against dogs, bears, and vampires.
The physical effects were immediate and quite curious. Slate’s eyes involuntarily closed, already beginning to swell despite his conscientious efforts to blink the irritant out. It rather hurt. Also, as some had gotten into his lungs, he found himself doubled over and coughing. This ‘LARPing’ was more serious than he had originally given it credit. In game, had that been ‘garlic spray’...? It was super effective.
With a ninja-narrowing of eyes, Nigel aimed a stealthy bear hug of entrapment around LaviKat. If it succeeded, she would be comfortably obliged to give up her weapons and drown in black suit. Equip item: bite-sized hostage.
In this situation, what was a vampiric drug lord to do...?
The goatee raised itself, with utmost dignity. (Blinking its eyes painfully, with much excessive IC tearing.)
“Now is the point, I believe, when I am obliged to inform you,” the young immortal wheezed, with no change in his monotone, “that you are all going to die.”
A smile quirked at Slate’s lips as Katrina bombarded him with a stereo rendition. Plus hand motions. Though she was no longer twelve, she was still—
>> “I mean, two years ago you were planning a company trip. One year ago, another company trip. And each time after you come back, that area of the world miraculously finds a way to become suddenly peaceful? That's what I mean by big. Where are you going this year?”
--A highly intuitive guesser. Who seemed to have practiced her kitten eyes more than her polynomial long division.
“There are such things as coincidences,” the Kabal Leader stated, in a suitably boring adult-like manner. “Now. How did your Geography final go? The last time we studied that, you did not know Denmark from Luxemburg. Let us review... Africa.”
Not to hint, or anything. Slate was not yet sure where the Kabal would go next: the last few months had been spent stabilizing his bases of power. Before he had quite realized it, the months had become a year. It likely was time for the Kabal to move again. And he had once had a dream about China, with a girl from Sudan in it.
A society that had thrown off the burdens of European history would naturally give birth to a nation that saw itself as exceptional—
Under the edge of the book, Slate’s goatee could be seen. It was acute today, its longer sides tapering down to a refined point that disappeared into his gray turtleneck. If it had an opinion on American history, as presented by the textbook he’d gotten from the American embassy the last time he was passing through Europe, it made no comment. Slate himself thought that an eyebrow raise would be appropriate. Seeing as he could not be seen behind his book, however, he declined to do so. He simply turned the page. Then another. Ah: the Civil War. That sounded more... something. Yes.
>> “So.”
Katrina seemed just as engaged in her own studies as Slate was in his.
>> “Any big plans coming up?”
“What, exactly,” the technically-twenty-year-old asked, “do you define as ‘big’?”
Slate did not have a foam sword, but he had an excellent slow look—tempered with the slightest hint of a smile—for anyone who did.
“The Asian?” He said, one hand tracing the triangle of his goatee as he tried to place... ah. She was talking about the restaurant. So they could make real events into a part of this game? “I did not much care for it. Ms. Susan, however...” A quirking of the lips was deemed to be appropriately villainous. “You have such good taste in friends, Arianna.” He raised an eyebrow at Katrina. “Does it run in the family?”
“Edward.” Slate said, and the next word to pass through the sometimes-Sorcerer’s mind was too loud to ignore: “Cullen. I... see. From Washington, are you not? I have heard of you.”
The secretaries’ judo club had gone to see a certain movie on its opening night. Slate had left the theatre with less understanding of women than when he had gone in. Also, ten less dollars. At least it had not been in 3D.
“Welcome to our city.”
He took the offered hand, and shook it with practiced politeness. Warm or cold was a curious question.
Freshly feed, he decided upon, by way of answer. Yourself, Mr. Cullen?
An explicit phrase concerning an archer’s parentage went through Edward’s mind. It was inappropriate for slayers-in-training.
After dropping off the witch, the drug lord was still left with a ninja. Somehow, in the time it had taken Slate to walk Susan to the door of the Mansion and stand with her awkwardly for a moment, Nigel had claimed the driver's seat of Slate's car. He could have ordered the man to stand down, of course. It would have been a simple matter. Somehow, however, he got distracted from this thought.
"How was your date?" Nigel asked.
"It was not a date. It was a pre-arranged social engagement--"
And so it went, until they reached Central Park. There was a bit of a traffic jam up ahead, likely due to that night's concert. The view seemed strange to Slate for a moment; things were closer, or... more on eye level. Ah. He had forgotten that they were riding in the blue car, rather than the standard Kabal black jeep. Other drivers seemed significant from this angle: how quaint.
Slate was pondering switching seats with Nigel again when both their gazes settled quite suddenly on a parked car. The traditional Kabal black jeep, to be specific. Nigel's eyes narrowed.
Are they LARPing without me again? The bleach-blonde man thought. How... quaint.
"What is LARPing?" Slate asked, checking the jeep's license plate as they edged by. OMG-337. Most certainly Kabal, and most likely Edward. When he turned back, the man was watching him thoughtfully.
"...It's like a game, Slate. Want to play?"
It took longer to park the car than to track the wayward low-levels to their stage. Or their seats, as the case might be. The three year old watched at curious attention as Nigel picked up their trail from the jeep. They had stood around briefly (all five of them--Nigel narrowed his eyes at the distinctive trace of a fourteen year old's flip-flops, and another set of light tracks likely female and recently picked up from a certain pre-arranged social engagement). Two sets of tracks branched off into the underbrush, as the girls and one seasoned LARPer headed straight for the lights of the concert. Not far down the trail, one of the stalkers rejoined them in time for the show.
It was the process of elimination, then, that put Nigel's hand over Artemis' mouth.
"Hello, Archer. Miss me?" The ninja whispered into his ear.
One heart attack and a debriefing later, Slate's goatee slipped from the darkness, followed closely by a pair of baby blue eyes and a bleach-blonde hulk of black suit and dark skin at his left shoulder.
The goatee quirked as the mouth above it smiled, like a poor actor's play at amusement. "Ah, Miss... Arianna. What a pleasure to see you again so soon. So this is your sister. ...What was her name again?" Slate could not remember. Something with an "L"?
Nigel slid into a seat behind the slayers, like a bolder slidding down a hill. Percy moved hastily ahead of the manslide. Soon Percy was seated behind a mere civilian and Nigel behind Katrina. Slate took his seat directly behind Noel. The goatee glinted in the concert lights.
