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.
"That's... terrifying." She couldn't imagine being connected to something in that way. If she were him, she would have dearly hoped it was just a dream.
"That would frighten me." She fidgeted, watching the animals around him. Then, on the meager meal he had stolen for himself. "You can't have gotten much energy from that. It's not exactly a ribeye. You won't lose them, will you?"
She nodded to the rats, but was thinking about all of the constructs in general. She hated seeing things die, even if they weren't real animals. It'd be like watching pinocchio turn back into a puppet, or sawdust, if his 'dust' description had any merit.
The whole package. Huh. Guts and all. He was a virtual cloning machine, then? Eying the small creature, she shifted her attention between him and the insect. "You eat and sleep for them? A mental connection?"
She wasn't exactly sure how that would work, but considering all of the vastly different mutations out there she supposed she had no right to question it. Even though her brain was firmly centered in reality, she knew that there were some things that defied explanation.
"If you don't eat or sleep, does it affect them like it would you?"
Her hand stopped a centimeter away from her purse flap. He was staring at her. Hadn't said a goddamn word. Her breath hitched in her throat and she fought hard to control her breathing. It wouldn't do any good to hyperventilate now and end up a nameless blob floating through the underground passages.
Her eyes barely flickered back towards the tunnel that would lead her out, when he moved and she was suddenly constricted by his tail. She still couldn't get over that he had a tail. With a gasp, she stiffened and her knees threatened to give out from under her. Oh god. She was going to die, wasn't she? She was going to die in a pisshole in an unfamiliar city, and when someone eventually found her corpse rats will have eaten her into an unidentifiable mess. Her bottom lip trembled, but she tried to keep it together even though she was starting to panic.
Keep it together... keep it together... You can still walk away from this.
Digging into her pockets she dug out a pen, some gum, her phone, one used roll of film and one yet-to-be opened roll. Each item clattered to the ground, and she wriggled slightly. "I can't get my purse o-off with you holding me..."
Not a lie. Her bag was a shoulder strap, so it was hooked around her. She couldn't get it off without her arms being free.
...unless you counted the buckle conveniently located next to her left hand, but what she didn't mention probably wouldn't kill her... hopefully. Truthfully, she didn't really care for any of the items on her person. Not more than her life, anyway. But, she really wanted that can of bear spray. Her mom has always told her to fight in situations like this, because once you let yourself get disarmed you'd lost the fight. OF course, that had been about metaphorical human attackers... not... not this dude.
She really hoped her ploy worked for an entirely different reason, too. Because it was getting really hard to breath without her ribs expanding into his dangerous looking tail.
It growled at her, and she flinched. Really, she should have been running, but her knees were locked with fear, and she hadn't had a decent lungful of air since she had spotted it. She doubted she'd make it more than a few steps before she tripped over herself and it... she?... whatever it pounced on her.
Her right foot inched back a fraction of an inch the moment he dropped from the ceiling, before locking in place again when he unfurled before her. It was a he, if she could hazard a guess from the clothes. The hair had thrown her off, as well as the skin tone and eyes. Pitch black eyes. She didn't give them any more thought than that, before his demand hit her and she all but tossed the camera at his feet.
"Y-yeah, sure. All yours."
It bounced, flickered once, but thankfully stayed on. Unfortunately it wasn't aimed directly at him anymore, but across the waterway that ran past them, which cast horrible shadows all around them and limited what she cud see. Was that a tail? Why'd it have to look so horrifyingly pointy?
"I'll...uh... just be going then. I can go now, right?" Her suddenly free hands hung at her sides, but the right was twitching back towards her purse. She knew she had a handheld can of bear spray in there, as it tended to make her feel a little safer maneuvering the streets of such a big city. At the moment, she wanted a few of them. Or a stun gun. Or a gun. Maybe an army.
The batteries had sunk to the very bottom of her purse, underneath her wallet and capstick. The next step was getting her the battery trap on her camera open, and the old ones out. This required her to precariously wedge her phone between her chin and collar bone, so her hands were free. She ignored the soft sounds that started up behind her, figuring it was just coming from a rat or something, and fixed her lightsource.
Snapping the trap shut, she tucked the drained batteries into her back pocket turned her camera light back on. The tunnel lit up around her, way better than her cell phone screen had been.
And then, something hissed. Immediately the girl froze. She didn't budge an inch, didn't squeal or shout. She turned into a pink, fleshy statue and kept her light pointed in front of her. Her first thought was that it was a snake... but she had never heard of sewer snakes... unless it was someones escaped boa pet. In which case, she really didn't want to tangle with it. She had a thing about strangulation and broken bones.
The second thing she thought about was a rather large rat, they could get pretty big after all... and the potential of getting bitten. She really didn't want to have to get a rabies shot. She'd rather go mad and die slowly than get stabbed in the shoulder by one of those horrible hollow needled. Well, maybe not die, but still. After a moment of standing shock still like moving would be the end of her, she started to turn very, very slowly. The light in her hands edged over the walls, swung across the waterway, until it was angled in a halfass fashion behind her. When no monster rat or anacondas immediately jumped out, she turned fully and shined her light at all of the nooks and crannies, looking for something anything that could have made the sound. Was she hearing things? That tended to happen underground and in tunnels. Sounds echoing from far away carried in just the right way to make them sound as if they were right on top of you. The root cause of a tons of ghost stories, no doubt.
Heart hammering in her chest, she sucked a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She'd scared herself half to death, letting herself get all paranoid like that. Her light swung up the wall slightly, while she scoffed at herself, before angling toward the ceili-
"...ha" A sound like a mix between a laugh and a whimper left her as her spotlight landed on half of a creature. No, not a creature. A horrible mix between human and monster. Her hands trembled, the light swayed off of him for a moment before locking on fully. She froze again, and didn't dare to even breath. The face was human, mostly. There was hair. There were clothes.There was a tail she could just barely make out in her peripherals; she couldn't move her eyes away from his face lest the action cause him to attack.
HE WAS ON THE CEILING WHO DOES THAT.
Her finger twitched over the shutter button as if it had a mind of it's own, and the telltale click-snap of a picture being taken echoed in the tunnel.
Arching a brow at him quizzically, she watched him as he worked. The process, and result, were spectacular enough to earn a slight gasp from the girl. Her eyes widened a fraction of an inch behind her glasses, and she leaned in slightly. Hesitantly, when he offered the butterfly to her, she reached out for it.
..It felt real. It's legs tickled her skin, tugging at the invisible hairs on the back of her hand. She stared at it for an uncomfortably long while, taking in the patters on its wings, it's delicate antenna, and the soft, fluffy hair on its body... while struggling internally to come up with the proper words. "...neat!"
Rolling her eyes mentally, she shifted her gaze from the butterfly to the bird, and then to the boy. She really wanted to ask how he did it... like... how he changed one item, like glass, into something so different and complex. Or, for that matter, if it was really life. He couldn't just make like, after all. Right? Could Mutants do that?
"So it is just a shell? Like, a pretty outside, but nothing inside? Or is it the whole package?"
Could it eat? Mate? Die? She glanced at the hawk again. Does it taste like chicken?
Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, though just barely. Her camera swung in that direction seconds too late, from where she had been inspecting a water drain in the wall at her side.
Nothing. There was nothing in front of her but trickling water, cement, and shadows. Her hackles rose and she gulped. She'd never been much of a fan of darkness. Her imagination was too powerful at times, conjuring all sorts of nightmarish creatures.
"Keep it together, Shelbs. Get in, snap a few pictures of rats and poo water, get out. Rub it in Jennifers smug face. A lot."
Continuing on, she found a passage opening off to her left and turned toward it, aiming her light down into the darkness. It flickered, and she swore quietly. Checking the battery gauge, she found it dangerously low. Considering how long she'd been out snapping pictures that night, it didn't surprise her. She hadn't changed batteries once. Using the flash as a light source burned through what was left of the charge too quickly. She reached for her purse to dig out her spare batteries, when the light flickered off permanently, and she swore again a little louder.
Fumbling around in the dark blindly, she found her phone first and woke it. The screen light nearly blinded her, but she quickly got to work digging around in her purse.
The sole of her sneakers met the ground and something squelched. The sound was bad enough to sent her reeling back up onto the ladder with a barely contained whimper. Oh,god, she was in a freakin' sewer! What was she doing in a SEWER?!
Pausing for a moment to suck in a brea- ohlord. The air was rancid. Her elbow hooked around the ladder, she covered her mouth with her hand and tried to breathe through her sleeve. Almond butter wafted into her nose, with just a hint of putrid swamp, and she sighed in relief. Porta Potties were the closest she had every been to a sewer, and now she was standing inside of one. She dearly hoped the floor wouldn't flood when people flushed, like they did in the movies.
Testing the floor again, she left herself down slowly and gripped her camera in her hands. Flipping the power on and removing the lens cover, she shifted to a low light settle and started off in the near pitch darkness. A few feet in and she could hardly see, which resulted in her switching the flash bulb of her camera on. immediately she wished she hadn't. The floor, walls, and whatever was running quietly past in the drainage ditch was better left unseen.
"Oh, gross." Shuffling on, avoiding touching anything but the walkway, she swung her light back and forth to search for signs of where the mystery shape had gone.
"Geeze it's been so long...Well I guess, first things first. Ace really isn't a real bird, neither are the rats, they're constructs actually. Something that I made because...well I'm a mutant."
She stiffened ever so slightly. Not necessarily because he had admitted to being a mutant, but because he was an unknown mutant and she was alone in a small side street park with him. What if it had all been some elaborate ruse to lure in unsuspecting birdwatchers to their horrific ends?
She blinked. "Cool. What kinda constructs? They look pretty real." The flutter of anxiety was still present, but the paranoid thoughts flew away.
She wasn't ignorant of mutants. Far from it. She knew what they were, and how they came about; or at least everything that had ever been published and made readily available to the public. She knew there were a few bad ones, just like with every species, but that most were good. Probably. There were the X-men, who she had only just begun to learn about, and the mutants who she knew were cops, and then all of the assorted mutant citizens who held a rainbow of jobs throughout the city.
.... but some mutations just made her plain nervous. She'd heard all sorts of things about people not being able to control their own powers. Shelby honestly wanted nothing to do with it. She did not want to be accidentally frozen into in a Ginger-sicle, or set on fire, or struck by lightning.
If, however, Alex's power stopped at making adorable rodents and majestic birds out of whatever, she was pretty sure she could handle it.
Ah. Homeless. That made sense, at least. Squirming uncomfortably, she turned her eyes back to the hawk. She never knew what to say in situations like this. Gee, sorry you have no home. Hope it gets better!?
"That's pretty cool." Her old dog wouldn't even fetch a toy for her, but he had his bird trained to bring him lunch. She was totally jealous deep down. "No, I don't mind."
She settled on her haunches further, wary of getting dirt on herself and chewed on the insides of her bottom lip. She didn't know why she allowed herself to offer to stay, maybe it was the animals. Maybe it was himy admitting his homeless condition. She'd always had a soft spot for people like that, even if she spent most of her time back home avoiding them.
This guy didn't look like he had and problems other than lacking a home, though. He couldn't have been any older than her... maybe even younger.
Red Tailed hawk. Hm. Sounded familiar. Her eyes darted to him for a moment, before sliding back to the birds. She wasn't aware she was invading the birds space, heck, she wasn't even aware birds had space. "I used to see birds like them all the time back home. He's beautiful."
She paused when he stopped his story, not really minding so long as it was related to the bird. Then, when he brought up her name, again, her cheeks reddened again. "Oh... uh... sorry. I was a bit distracted." Scratching at the back of her neck, she shifted and debated offering her hand out for him ti shake. It was proper, but she didn't like touching people. Ultimately, she chose not to. "I'm Shelby."
"And I don't mind life stories, as long as they aren't too dumb." Tucking her hair behind one ear, she settled her bag in her lap and blinked at him.
"But...uh... Why'd you have your bird out snagging food for you? Why not just go get it yourself? Most places allow animals inside, these days."
She has been gazing up, trying to snap a picture of raindrops in the street light, and failing horribly. All she managed to get was a soaked lens, and a face full of water.
With her chin tucked into her chest, as she dried the lens off with her sleeve, a glimmering in the light caught her attention. Off down the sidewalk she spotted something... swaying? Gracefully, almost. Like a gentle metronome arm, her eyes followed it as they tried and failed to make out what it was. All too suddenly it moved off, a clang and a crash echoed out of an alley somewhere, and Shelby found herself sprinting after it. Whatever it was.
Rounding a corner, she edged past an overturned trashcan and managed to catch sight of the object sinking quickly into a hole in the ground up ahead of her. The hole, as it were, turned out to be a manhole. The cover had been tossed away haphazardly, which... really gave her a reason to pause. Whatever had gone down there was strong enough to toss the solid metal disk like a pop can. Did she really want follow it in? Nope. Not even slightly.
But, as she swirled on her heels with the intent of booking it the hell out of there, her roommates words came floating back to her. Something about a boogeyman lurking around in the middle of the night. Some said it lived the the sewers like a crocodile...er... alligator. whatever. Pft.
Shelby turned and cast a skeptical eye at the hole in the ground. She didn't believe in monsters. Mystical creatures didn't exist, after all.
..But... if it wasn't the legend her roommate had spoken of, what had it been? Human? Mutant? Either, if there was any truth to the story, were both equally as horrifying as the myth. Monsters and ghosts were one thing, but to Shelby, cold, calculating people who did the things she had been warned of, were more horrifying. Let her be eaten by Dracula anyday, just keep the serial killers and psychopaths away.
Frowning, she shifted on her feet and fidgeted with her camera. Maybe if she were very, very careful, she could sneak in after whoever it was and snag a picture. If only to prove to everyone that there wasn't a monster skulking around New York. Or, silver lining here, that she'd get a really really good picture and shock her teacher into an A+.
Fear bundled expertly into the back of her throat, she peered into the darkness of the manhole for a few moments silently, waiting to see if someone was going to try reach out for her like a horror movie, before slinging her camera around her neck and closing her umbrella. Then, she edged herself in slowly, happy to find a ladder was present.
Squatting, she sat on her knees and listened. It surprised her how long he had been with them, or the bird at least. She shrugged at the admission that it was probably stolen. "Whoever you got it from probably didn't need it anyway." Was her sardonic reply.
On a whim, she leaned in to get a better look at the bird. Her eyes widened, mouth slightly open in unabashed awe. Condors were her favorite, probably. But Hawks were right up there with them. The color pattern of their wings varied greatly from class to class, but each was special in its own right.
Funny thing about her Digital Arts teacher was that the woman demanded 100% in everything. You couldn't snatch a few descriptive words from an article, steal an idea from your desk partner, and never ever could you use pictures from the internet for your projects. Doing so, if she found out, was an automatic F on the project.
Hence why Shelby was shuffling around at a god awful hour of the night, snapping pictures of vines, park benches, windows with lights on, and people shuffling past with umbrellas. Oh, it was also raining. She has an umbrella with her, tucked into the crook of one arm as she attempted to use her artistic eye to take a picture of a dented tin can on the wet, moonlit sidewalk.
Heaving a sigh, she hauled her hood back up for the fifth time, and tucked her camera back under the safety of her umbrella. She had 52 pictures logged away so far, but she didn't think it was nearly enough. Her teacher was a harsh mistress who demanded a lot, and damnit, Shelby wanted that blasted A!
She would give herself another hour before turning in, though. There were three days left before the project was due, and she still have to find inventive ways to alter the pictures, frame them, and have them on her on her teachers desk.
Alex. Well, Alex seemed like a perfectly reasonable name. Not serial killer-y at all. Flicking a glance behind her to make sure her escape route was still open, she moved further in to join him and hand is rat over. "No prob. It kinda sat on my foot and all."
Eyeballing the hawk up close, and then the two rats, she hummed in response to him giving his name, before her eyes dipped down to his meal. Well, at least it wasn't a rabbit or a cat.
"Uh... no thanks. I just ate a little while ago." A polite lie. She was starving, but wasn't about to sit down and munch on a happy meal with a perfect stranger.
The bird made a noise, which came off eerily like it was replying to Alex's suggestion. She shrugged the notion off. Animals couldn't do that, even if they were smarter than most humans. "So how do you keep the hawk from eating the rats? well fed? Full belly or something?"
And also.. "... and how the heck did you train it to bring you food? That was what it was holding, wasn't it?" Dammit, if they made birdy delivery services now, she wanted in on it!
