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.
Aaand he'd confused the guy. Eh. Hardly the first time he'd confused someone, although a lot of the time it was on purpose, and for a purpose. Say, to give himself a chance to gtfo.
He did a lot of that, honestly. While they were in this conversation, though... "Animals have reasons for things. Sometimes they're just different reasons. Mostly they're really the same." Food, territory - shelter, and access to other resources, really - water, warmth. The form of each varied between individuals, but they were all necessary in some way. The point of instincts were to get and hold onto those things.
And being a student wasn't required. Good. Even if not-being-a-student was only okay temporarily, it would still give him a chance to take cover temporarily. He didn't intend to stick around forever - and he didn't want to. It wasn't the world he knew and understood.
"Control my instincts?" Adder tilted his head. "I don't." They were a very useful part of him.
Sure, he'd been accused of stealing before, but he'd actually done it. Or at least been around to see someone else do it.
This... How exactly was this supposed to work?
"I know you did it!" The claimant was a middle-aged man, probably human since he was flinging spittle and oozing rage without anything mutant-level happening to him or around him, in a button-up shirt that definitely wasn't suit-quality, and he was very insistent on pointing at Adder.
That even Adder was taller than the sad, confused angry dude didn't seem to be smoothing things out at all. Adder also wasn't inclined to sit here and argue, or even bother to defend himself to some crazy guy, but there was a crowd gathering and there were definitely some higher-risk people in the uncomfortably evenly spread group.
"Whatever you lost, I didn't take it," he retorted, a hint of an exasperated growl slipping out at the end. He didn't even need to steal right now! He had bigger things to worry about, like not getting murdered by pink fog. He'd swapped out all the actual physical bills she'd given him, just in case, but he'd hardly relaxed.
Angry dude got a little redder in the face. "My wallet! It was just in my pocket, and then it was gone, and when I turned around YOU were right there! GIVE IT BACK!"
Angry dude was coming closer hell no. Adder darted backwards and to the side, dropping into a crouch and every appropriate nerve kicking into gear. He watched, carefully: a finger twitch, fresh foam across the corner of his mouth, a shift in weight - there was the lunge, trying to grab him.
Adder rolled sideways, stray rocks digging into his shoulder and ribs hard enough to leave pinpoint bruises, and came up out of angry dude's reach only to smell someone new, and bigger, at his back.
And a hell of a lot closer than Angry Dude had been.
Adder considered the not-cop levelly. She definitely had more sense than the murderer... but then, it didn't take much to do that. Her ability was more concerning than the vague assurance of her understanding, though, and his ears shifted backwards instinctively.
Teleporters.
Well, at least she wasn't an open-air teleport. He'd run into one of those before. Spectacular pain. Reflective things he could avoid; there were certainly few enough clean surfaces in the areas he frequented. Even if she did chase him, as she said she wouldn't, he had confidence that he could lose her.
Still, she'd been reasonably polite, given the circumstances, so he gave her a brief nod before melting away, ambling towards another street and leaving an open path between the not-cop and her wallet. He had no intention of backtracking towards it and forcing her to follow him, and leaving him to try to figure out if she were following him or just going for her belongings.
When he was out of sight and the money was securely tucked away, he took a moment to concentrate and dropped onto all fours. A gold-marked white wolf, grimy with the hard wear of the streets, padded across an intersection and on into the city. If the not-cop cared to look, she might even notice that his eyes never changed, but then he didn't give her much open attention as he moved onwards.
Adder didn't stop running until he'd heard the wild shout of rage. Cheated rage. Exactly the sort of rage he wanted to hear. The sort of rage that came from giving up.
He slowed to a trot, and kept moving for a few more blocks before coming to a walk and fishing his prize out. Meat. Actual meat, meat he hadn't had to catch and kill himself. Meat that was certified clean and safe, not that he wouldn't and hadn't eaten far worse and survived. He didn't like the risk, though. He'd take it, but he didn't like it.
So very far gone from the fiery-tempered heatsource, Adder tucked himself into a sheltered cranny and tore into the raw meat.
The wolf-guy might look and smell and act like he was unhappily part animal, but it looked like he did indeed still think like a human. Poor guy, didn't he realize he should be thinking like a mutant? But anyway; Adder didn't really bother to classify the way he thought except on infrequent whimsy, so he didn't truly expect it of others.
"Sometimes animals have the right idea," he replied casually, almost absently. Animals tended to be a bit more honest than people, though they were just as capable of bluffing and lying in order to protect themselves. He saw more open vulnerability than bluffing here, which was not really a common animal thing. Maybe a pet animal thing; they were used to relying on others to protect them, so they were more likely to show that they needed protection.
School. That did mesh with what the, er, mirror-walker not-cop had said, although he really wasn't sure what to make of schools. He'd been on school property before, to find food and nick things from unattended bags - high schools were especially good targets, as long as he was relatively clean. He blended in fairly well at those, and it made it much easier to get further in - and back out! - without drawing suspicion.
"Do you have to be a student?" Not really much way of asking that one without letting on his hesitation about school, although it probably wasn't too obvious that he'd never, ever attended one.
Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. He knew how to read and write, a bit, but that hadn't exactly come up, and in all honesty he knew he didn't look like most students did. Not the ears or the teeth or the eyes, even just his clothing. There, ah, was also the bit where he was sneaking around the back, not going through whatever proper channels probably existed.
Gunshot was too close, owwwwwww, but his skin was intact, he could feel that, and if he wasn't bleeding then it was just his ears and he was best served by getting the hell out of there.
That, he was pretty good at.
As he proved now, with a hint of a grin at the shout that tried out drown out the ringing in his ears. Bastard? Naw, his parents had been married. ***hole would be more appropriate, now wouldn't it? But she was clearly still alive so far, and so he didn't even hesitate in his vanishing.
The next time he was trying to sleep, if he weren't in his usual before-sleep state of extreme exhaustion, Adder might muse about whether or not his plan here was a good one, in some of the different forms of 'good.' He wasn't really much of one for morality, much less philosophizing, but sometimes he did think about the impacts and effects of things.
Right now, his focus was on not getting shot, and that focus didn't include not getting the girl shot. So. When she moved, Adder readied himself, and then threw himself out a heartbeat later - a slow heartbeat, to be honest, but still not too long afterwards.
He came up on the gunman's rear, kindly shouldered him in the kidneys - and then bolted out of the alley, putting the gunman between himself and the girl. He ran significantly faster than he had before, since he wasn't keeping pace with anyone and rather wanted to lose that person in the distance. Good bye, farewell, no hard feelings, you'd probably survive just fine.
Adder tilted his head at the hybrid. He was so unhappy, so out of sorts. Adder moved a little bit closer, still not approaching head-on but running with his curiosity nevertheless. "You do things you don't want to do?" he asked, head angling the other way consideringly. "Or you want things that you think you shouldn't want?" The former was far more concerning, at least to Adder; he saw the latter as a personal problem, something based in expectations more than reality.
"Tell me about this place," he said abruptly, changing the subject without warning or shift in expression. That was why he had come poking around here, after all. He was here to assess this place, and insider information, honest or not, was useful to that end.
Triggers? Too many triggers to stop feeling like a wolf? Since that was how Adder changed form, it made sense to him that it worked that way for others. He knew it didn't work like that for everyone, but it still made sense that it would for some.
Adder rolled a shoulder in a vague shrug. Sometimes he was on four feet without intending to, but it was always appropriate to him at the time. He just sometimes walked on four feet and sometimes walked on two. "Mostly too loud. Things are quieter like this. There is more.." he gestured at the world, trying to imply sound and smell and everything else that went along with it, "with fur than without."
When it came to instinct, Adder was just too well integrated with them to really notice their suggestions as other from his own mind. Their suggestions were his ideas, and they kept him alive.
He'd stayed alive for a long time thanks to his instincts. He trusted them to separate food from danger, shelter from exposure, victim from threat.
Adder rolled his eyes. He'd stripped the money out of that wallet. What did they take him for? Clearly the murderer thought he cared about the difference between mutant and human, so at least she wasn't too bright. That made him safer... by a few degrees. Not enough for him to rest easy.
And then she tossed him enough cash to get him jumped and murdered a block away and left.
Having too much money was an awkward dilemma. It made him a target, and was extremely risky to have, but it allowed him to buy fresh food and upgrade his clothing. He tucked it into his pocket, but he could feel the swell of its weight and knew it was visible to anyone who cared to look.
He kept an eye on the not-cop while the murderer left, keeping an ear and his nose on both, and then shifted when he lost the murderer to distance and the city. "How did you get in front of me?" he asked shortly. He had seen the murderer's power, but he didn't know enough about this woman's. Running away from someone with movement-based powers didn't always turn out well without knowing the limitations of that power.
Adder snorted at the rough pronunciation of his name, but accepted it. It hardly stood out among the other things the hybrid said, so he wouldn't take it as intentionally growly. Some mutants had difficulty speaking in English. It was hardly the end of the world.
Shapeshifter? Adder was usually far too busy surviving and planning the immediate details of his survival to think about how labels worked with him. He knew the term, of course; shapeshifters were a relatively common group of mutants, and he was fully aware that the mutant label applied to him. He did shift shape, so it would make sense to call him a shapeshifter, but most of the shapeshifters he'd come across and recognized as shapeshifters were visually indistinct from human when they weren't in their other forms.
"Not as much as some," he admitted, curving his ears forward and showing his teeth as proof. The teeth-showing wasn't accompanied by any form of aggression. "Are you always part-way?"
Adder snapped his teeth in irritation, but it achieved nothing. "Depends on how you define super," he growled, "but I'm not fast enough to dodge bullets and I have a headache in this form. It's your mess, you fix it."
And he'd bolt past the mess and get the hell out of here while she got herself shot up. He had no allegiance to her; why should it matter what happened to her?
Plus with sirens, he didn't want to stick around, gunman or no. If she got shot and cops were already coming, she'd probably even survive. He just needed her to be a distraction. So...
"I have an idea," he said quickly. "When he gets close, you go for the gun, I'll go for him." Fifty percent lie, completely even face, voice, and heartbeat. Well, situationally even heartbeat. There was kind of a lot going on.
Adder's ears continued to curve back and forth to sift through the sounds, and he tilted his head. Peculiar. That was a word to describe this. Strange, weird, odd, but also peculiar. A handful of other terms he'd heard to describe unusual things, but those had an air of rudeness he wasn't interested in using.
He moved to the side, not quite circling the stranger but trying to get a better look, and his steps were as soft and fluid as when he walked on four feet. If anything, he was more soft-stepped, for his human feet were more sensitive to the ground that the tough pads of his lupine feet.
So this guy raged at him like a chained dog guarding his yard, and then turned right around and was ashamed of it. It was definitely odd, but it reduced the perceived threat level. Intent outweighed ability. Not completely, but a bit.
Adder tilted his head a bit, considering the curious stranger and the request. Sheltering places did tend to want to know who sheltered there, yes? And his name didn't come with any particular reputation. He'd worked for that. He'd worked to be unnoticed rather than respected and feared. He believed it to have worked.
To choose to answer the request, though. The choice made it harder to choose, but Adder's expression was mostly small considering flicks of attention, examining fur or the curve of a joint or a set of claws. Indecision he had learned to hide as a child. Eventually, though, his expression changed, almost imperceptibly, and he came to a halt.
"I'm Adder," he said briefly, still-canid teeth flashing when his lips pulled back to pronounce his name.
Adder fought to his feet at the movement, but his head still pounded and his less-furry-but-still-pointed ears were still clamped flat under his hands.
And as the pain faded, senses far more comfortably dull now, he squinted at the guy who had just been snarling in his face with a full display of territorial aggression, and was now... miserable.
...
. . .
uh
That was unusual. He scratched his head a bit, finally letting his hands off his ears, and watched silently for a moment. That the other wolf didn't agree with his own instincts certainly didn't occur to him, given how integrated his own were and his casual lack of conscious consideration for instinct versus human rationality. He just figured the hybrid was, well, weird.
"Posturing isn't going to hurt me," he said flatly, and then a faint touch of curiosity rose up to reignite his interest in this place. "Is it this place or you that isn't safe?"
Adder wanted to huff and wander on his way. He wanted to avoid fighting, even with recent-ish actual meat in him. He'd had too much stress lately to want to waste resources on whatever this squabble would be -
Except for the part where he was trying very, very hard to get out of reach of a certain pink-glowing murderer before she decided she had any sort of interest in him. Not the sort of person he wanted anything to do with. The sort of person who could end his life so very easily, and with so very little consideration.
So he stood his ground against the wolf-man, unyielding but not pushing forward. His ears shifted a little bit to sort through the harsh almost-not-words of the stranger's growls, but the intent was vividly clear even if he hadn't been able to make it out. Leave? Not yet. Not unless this stranger was the average for this place, and the not-cop was a complete liar. Where the hell else could he go?
Adder's lupine jaws didn't allow even vague growly words, though, so he could hardly explain that. He didn't want to. Why would he explain himself to someone who charged him snarling like an animal? Territorialness was no excuse to be rude. Y'know, said someone just as territorial. Indifference was a safe route, wasn't it? It didn't escalate and it didn't show off that his back was against a metaphorical wall.
Indifference was a good call - LOUD!
The car crash in the distance was more abrupt than truly loud, but it was still more than loud enough to send pain spiking through Adder's head from both ears. He dropped to the ground, covering his ears with limbs that were losing their fur faster than he moved them upwards, and curled around his head until the rush of sensory overstimulation faded, whining all the while.
