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.
Salt softy liked how he described people? Usually, on the very scarce occasions Adder happened to describe one person or scent or whatever to another person, they either tilted their head in complete confusion or started shouting at him. Or started with the one and then rapidly progressed to the second as Adder's attempts to clarify continued.
It never seemed to work...
But salt softy had liked the movie, so Adder found it easy to banish the meandering thoughts. And she was asking more questions. What was the weirdest part? Pretty much all of it was weird. But she wanted the weirdest part.
How was he supposed to choose?
"Why'd the bad fat guy who looked like he smelled really bad try to be nice at the end? And why'd the dad leave in the beginning but no one did anything about it?"
Whenever the kitten let go with one paw or its teeth, something else was locked into his skin or the wrist of his shirt long before he could actually make any progress on getting it off.
"I can see why they were so beat up," Adder growled. The muddy kitten mewed at him. "What, are you proud of that?" Apparently very proud, and of taunting him like this too. Know what, fine. Adder made his way out of the alley and far enough down the street for most of the smell to fade away, and then shifted.
...
Kitten didn't miss a beat and climbed right up his foreleg to the back of his neck. OH COME ON.
The two dogfighters made their way out of the alley. The motorcycles were long gone, and he could hear the two insulting each other for a few blocks. If they got beat up for coming back bloodied and empty-handed so be-
Something was pricking his leg through his pants. His good new pants.
His angry hand got pricked even more, and earned a hiss.
...
There was a cat the size of his hand on his knee and climbing higher. At least, it smelled like cat. And assorted garbage, mostly not-food garbage. Lots of papery smells. Some different flavours of slime. Banana peels. It was patchy with half dried, half wet mud - the patches being different levels of dry more than different amounts of mud - that he suspected wasn't all the same shade of brown.
And it was climbing up his leg, and getting mud all over his new pants.
He tried to grab it again, but whenever his hand came in range the little thing seemed to twist itself inside out to sink those very tiny but very, very, very sharp needle claws into his skin. He even tried pushing through the claws to grab it, but somehow it got its teeth in as well.
Although...
Adder looked at the kitten hanging from the ball of his thumb. It wasn't on his pants now, he supposed. Stubborn little thing.
Rude little thing too. And now it was meowing at him, or kind of hiss-growl-mew-ing, around his hand.
He wanted to dig his feet in and pull. Of course he did. That was wolf reaction to being trapped. Pull away.
He got fingers under the thing, the plasticy wire, before it tightened through his absent ruff. It still wrenched him into the air, but he could breathe.
And see, see the cat-scratched man running at him even as he shouted something ringingly useless. Adder brought both heels up and into the dogfighter's hesitant mug, hauling on the choking wire for leverage and shoving his back into the chest of the one he'd almost managed to miss. They both went down, but it gave Adder enough slack to get the wire off his head.
And then he kicked stick-and-loop-idiot in the throat. He stayed down, but the other one was moving away, hands over his very bloody nose and making little noises. Adder stalked towards him, rubbing his reddened throat gently as he glared down.
"D-didn't know you w-were a shifter," he stammered. "P-please, w-we're sorry!"
"Unless you want a job?"
Adder turned back so he could kick stick-idiot in the face again, but he just got hands. And a yelp. He liked the yelp. "Get out of here," he growled.
He could hear them behind him, kicking at the dumpster and swearing at the cat who apparently outright taunted them. Probably one of the wilier adults. They did find enjoyment in some crueler things, like stealing your food and then perching just out of reach.
Or sneaking up on you while you slept, just to swipe with their skinny hooked claws and bolt. He knew they were laughing at him.
An engine revved. Motorcycle? Ahead of him.
Two. Time to not go that way. Adder looped around an unlit streetpost and headed back up the street.
Movement caught his eye as he passed the cat-dumpster-idiots alley. His weight was on the other side, and he was still shifting it to dodge away when something too narrow to see closed around his neck.
Noise ahead. People-scent. Not especially familiar people, familiar stenches. Dirt and oil and sweat and blood. Not all human blood. Dog fighters? That noise made sense. People out trying to collect strays to do whatever and then dump their bloody carcasses back in the street? He'd found more than a few meals that way, but he had learned very quickly to only scavenge in those areas on two feet.
They left him alone that -
so that was which alley they were in. One of the ones with a bunch of dumpsters crammed together, overflowing with bags and boxes and stench. Adder skirted around it before the local scent could reach him. Two people, crouched at different corners of the dumpsters. Two swearing people, who smelled of fresh not-animal blood. Tough cat.
Best for him to get gone, though; he had no intention of fighting off a couple of idiots even if he had nothing against cats. They got less worked up at him than dogs.
Street lamps ahead. Adder passed through them unconcerned, eyes closing against the bright light but pace unaffected. He smelled people more recently now. The general stragglers of unsavoury places.
Would they still recognize him as one of those stragglers, or would they mistake him for a rich person now? Well, if he were to shift. Right now he was wolf and the most mistaking they would do would be to think he was an escaped pet or stray dog. And neither was true in any sense! He wasn't escaped, he wasn't a pet, he wasn't a stray (or astray), and he wasn't a dog!
He was wolf, and if the people in that car rolling past didn't see the smirk he gave them then they were completely clueless. He kept going, and they disappeared behind him with the stink of their exhaust.
And then he was alone on the street again, stretching his range and still just pad-pad-padding along, one paw in front of the other and the next behind it. On and on and on.
The wolf slowed to a trot, and then to a walk to pick his way through a puddle that stretched clear across the street. Well, street was a bit generous. It wasn't an alley, it had a name post... but it definitely wasn't well used or maintained. And the puddle was deep, rising well above his paws and even up to his rear dewclaws at its deepest point.
He hadn't liked rain in a very long time, but this last shower he'd barely even noticed. Tucked inside, with secure walls and a roof that seemed completely immune to leaks, the rain only affected him when he went out to run. The mansion property didn't flood like this. Most of the really rich places didn't.
He shook his feet to get the worst of the water, leaving muddy splatters across the grimy pavement, stretched his forelegs in a shallow bow, and rolled into a lope again. His breath came easily and the route, unplanned and impulsive but as yet completely familiar still, flowed through his paws without thought.
The back road petered out for a while, less pavement and more chunky blackish gravel that still bled oil in the rain, and Adder skipped around the potholes large enough for him to lie down in, had he been so inclined. The smaller ones he just stretched his stride into an almost-jump and soared past. The ground joined together again, and for a while his oily footprints padded behind him.
He had never expected this to happen. He had run every imaginable route through or across or around or within the mansion's entire property.
Within the last three days.
Plus training with Cafas, which involved a lot of running around.
This was almost getting frustrating. If he didn't run, then he twitched at everything and couldn't stay put. Prowling didn't help. It just made him run into more people. People who either tried to get him to do stupid stuff with them or were loud or smelly or tried to grab him or ran away. People he'd sort of met in a glancing way, but didn't know. He didn't want to hang around people he didn't know.
So he was out running, now in full night, and far enough away from the mansion-school for the streetlights to be faded and scarce, the debris to collect in the corners of building foundations, the alleys to go from street-wide paved pathways for almost-parked vehicles to the off-black recesses of violence and waste.
It felt less like home than the last time he'd been in this area. He watched the shadows without his breath or heart quickening, a levelness keeping his eyes steady from behind, and he didn't feel out of place but -
"I dunno what you'd call him. But when I met him he was drunk, and drinking more only pretending kind of that he wasn't, as if coffee could cover up that much alcohol. And he yaps and yaps and yaps and tries to pick fights. Like a Chihuahua. One of those tiny ones with bows and shiny collars that barely know how to walk because their richpeople always carry them." He huffed. Stupid city dogs like that, which weren't even dogs really, were so annoying. And loud. How did something so small make so much unceasing noise. And it was so squeaky.
How did their own ears stand it?
Adder tilted his head in confusion. Why was salt softy's mouth hanging open? Was she surprised at his outburst? He didn't really talk to her that much, so maybe that was it... Or was it something else? Was she somehow overwarm? She didn't look like she was panting and anyway most people didn't pant, so it probably wasn't that.
Movie...?
Oh! That.
"Not all of it made sense. A lot of it was really weird. But..." He hesitated. How was he supposed to really answer this? Hrmmm. "It wasn't bad." That was not a good answer. "I don't... exactly watch movies much." That was also not a good answer. He was making this worse.
Adder could maybe approve of how this guy thought, even if he hadn't been on the street for all that long. He had some sense, at least. The wolf shifter leaned in a bit closer. He didn't fit through vents, but then he could map places like this, with such a variety of people in residence, by scent instead. Different abilities, different advantages.
He tilted his head a bit. Now that he had learned more about this guy's powers, he couldn't find a way of actually using the information. He had been curious, and it wasn't as if he were bored, but now that he knew... what should he do with it? He had already known that this place had vents, but he also already knew that he couldn't travel through them. The most he could do was listen and scent through them. Hm. If he had the vents mapped, then he could better predict where scents and sounds were coming from, what part of the building, maybe even what room.
Not a ton of uses for that here, but it was a resource. Knowledge about local environments was a resource, and one that didn't get used up when he used it. More the opposite. The more he used it, the more of it he had.
He supposed knowledge about people could maybe be like that too, but he'd mostly rather just not be around people. So yeah.
except he didn't. His mood seemed to change quite a bit, and he asked. Adder hesitantly straightened up, ears still low, and blinked a few more times because his eyes still ached with dryness.
"They always squish or rub, or both. And they fall off, but not quite on every step so there's not really anything I can do. And they make me trip." He squished his toes against the cool, smooth ground. He liked being able to feel the ground. It felt more like he was part of the world, part of the background, and that was good. It was calm, reassuring.
Cafas was trying to draw him out of the background, towards the rich people who told all the stories and only told them about themselves and each other. He'd rather stay in the background, though. Just with some of the things that came with Cafas. The food and the security and the stability. He didn't want to be noticed.
He also didn't want to have to suddenly try to figure out what he was supposed to do now that Cafas was apologizing. And also rambling about city and people and some other stuff that Adder didn't really tune into. What was he supposed to make of a turnaround like that? Help and then anger and then whatever apologizing was. Was it all real? It had certainly seemed real, and he hadn't seemed especially deceitful thus far. Very much the opposite, really.
So Cafas had just lost his temper a little bit? Well, a lot bit. Adder shivered again and tucked himself into the sweater a little more. He did not like Cafas being angry. Not at all. But if Cafas were apologizing for it, did that mean that maybe Adder didn't have to leave? He didn't feel threatened anymore, but if he had ever known how to deal with a situation like this it had been so very much Before that it was long, long gone. He swallowed. Cafas expected him to say something, didn't he? But what could he say? What was he supposed to say? No problem, it's not like I thought I was going to die, nothing to think twice about?
Adder's ears slid back as soon as Cafas looked at him. There was the line. That was definitely the line. The line was very very much behind him.
He held Cafas' gaze, though, even if it felt like all the muscles and bones in his neck and shoulders were shrinking in on themselves. If this was where the line was for Cafas, these stupid shoes, then-
Then what?
Because he was not going to put those on his feet. Any of them. None of them. They were not going to go on his feet. He took a breath to tell Cafas that, but then the much bigger mutant when had he forgotten just how much bigger Cafas was than him he was advancing and there was something poking into his back but he didn't remember backing up
Adder somehow kept up the eye contact, albeit with pupils that contracted further the more Cafas loomed over him and feeling like every bit of him that could move relative to his skeleton was sliding backwards, like Cafas was the top of a big hill and everything else could do nothing but fall away. His breath quivered in his chest, silent as the wolf shifter had become in entirety.
He couldn't look away, couldn't dare break that eye contact, but he couldn't remember the way through the maze of clothes racks and they were too short for him to go through them on all fours but too tall to jump over, so he would have to go around, but also they were metal and Cafas manipulated metal so it would be almost impossible to get out if Cafas could react at all quickly, but this was Cafas so of course he'd react quickly, so he doubly couldn't shift his eyes away, except he'd been looking at the same looming threatening frightening eye, just Cafas' right eye because he couldn't stay looking at both at once, he had to focus his resources, he'd been looking at it for so long that everything else was kind of dark and fuzzy and he couldn't even really see Cafas' eye either, but he knew he was still looking at it so he had to keep looking at it
His vision was so out of sorts that it took a few moments to fully realize that Cafas had broken the staring first, and then he could close his eyes and feel cold damp all over his skin under the sweater, so cold despite the summer that he shivered and couldn't stop shivering, or stop his other muscles from tingling like they'd been clenched as hard as they could the entire time.
Freed of the challenge, released of Cafas' anger, Adder tightened his arms against himself. His eyes were still closed when Cafas began to speak again, and he didn't want to open them and start all over again, but his ears found the will to turn away from his skull a little bit, not enough to free themselves of his hair but just to maybe catch the sound properly and actually hear what the x-man was saying.
That was a stupid reason and it was stupid to just go along with it.
But he couldn't say that. Couldn't even think it more than once. But he still didn't want to wear them, ever. So he'd have to tell Cafas.. but his throat refused to move, and his tongue. He couldn't just stand there - well, mostly crouch, half curled in on himself - with his eyes closed and mouth useless.
He got his eyes open, but didn't want to try to find the will to look away from the floor. When he finally managed to make sound, it was quiet, defeated, but still stubborn.
Adder huffed. It was a very big huff. "Gloves don't tie your fingers together," he retorted, shoving his hands into his new fuzzy sweater's pockets. The softness on his skin was soothing, like finding a blanket that had been abandoned in the sun and rolling up in it.
But why wouldn't Cafas get it? Wearing shoes was way worse than not wearing shoes. "Your feet are probably all soft from always wearing shoes," he grumbled. "Mine aren't." They were sturdy, although not as sturdy as his wolf-feet, and he wasn't going to run around with clunky blobs flopping around on his feet.
Adder stood his ground quite literally. "I'm not going to wear them. What are you going to do, put them on yourself?"
... okay, he'd meant to stand up to Cafas, but he hadn't meant to outright challenge him, but now he had, so now he had to stand behind it.
He really, really hoped that Cafas didn't actually try to force shoes onto his feet. Adder was kind of sure he could get away, but that-
That led to having to avoid Cafas thereafter, and that meant avoiding the places Cafas went, and that meant leaving the mansion, and all the good things about the mansion and Cafas and...
But he still couldn't back down after a challenge, even an impulsive and unintentional one.
And now Cafas was staring at Adder's feet. He stood his ground, weight evenly and lightly spread, taking full casual advantage of the grip and sensation he got from the tough skin against the smooth floor.
"I go around sharp things," Adder replied. What did Cafas expect? It wasn't like he was blind. Well, apparently colourblind? But clearly not blind. "And if someone tries to step on me and succeeds, I'll bite them." Also seemed a pretty obvious answer. Cafas' third question made more sense, at least. Cold feet was unpleasant, and could be very, very bad. Especially if cold went with wet.
Still... "Fur is very warm. And when it does get cold enough and I have to be human, then sometimes I'll put things on them. But then I can't run." It was horrible and kind of humiliating. And also it felt weird. He didn't like it one bit. "Would you wrap your hands in stuff and tie everything together?"
Adder barely glanced at the shoes long enough for them to register as shoes. "They're still shoes." He didn't want shoes. "Besides, it's not like the mansion is cold." Rich people had heat. The mansion was super super rich, so obviously it had heat in winter.
