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.
The lovely scent of bacon-wrapped burger patties wafted out of the container, even cold and stuck to the bottom in a puddle of congealed grease. He had no idea how something so wonderful had lasted all night, but from the texture of the grease-gel only one patty had been taken since it had all cooled.
Adder flipped the top one up and into his mouth with a fingertip and thumb, only to hear a familiar voice behind him. A familiar sleepy voice, saying his name.
He didn't intend to look quite so incredibly caught-red-handed-absolutely-no-getting-out-of-this-even-if-he-ran-for-it-on-the-spot, but his first reaction was definitely guilt. For... something? The food sticking rather comically out of his mouth, flecks of colourful grease still clinging to his fingers until one lost its grip and plummeted to the floor.
...
...
""....hi" he attempted, talking out of the side of his mouth because the front and his teeth were all occupied by bacon and hamburger.
Cafas was not happy with the pair Adder had grabbed. He could see that. Why would he offer something he didn't agree with, though? Adder hesitated, pant leg still between his fingertips. What was he supposed to do now? Cafas was talking about all sorts of things that didn't make sense, with words Adder could hear but not make sense of, and he could barely fixate on the ideas of dry and hard to damage. Those were good things, though, so why...?
Red?
He blinked at the pants. Red? They didn't look any different from some of the other ones. He didn't think it likely that Cafas would get mostly shades of red if he didn't think red was good, but then he hadn't thought that Cafas would get red at all if he didn't like red. So...
What was he supposed to do? What expectations he'd managed to form were gone, and now he just felt... lost.
He could ask Cafas, though, couldn't he? That might help. "Aren't pretty much all of these the same colour?"
Cafas had some devious plan. Should Adder try to interfere or just wait to see what the plan was? Cafas had come up with the fuzzy sweater. Adder could follow him a bit and see what happened.
He caught the salesperson watching and slid behind a rack again, but slipped after Cafas. She didn't move, and after a while Adder moved back into the middle of the aisle as he moved down it. He didn't move as quickly as Cafas, but that turned out to be just fine: the metal manipulator grabbed a few things and then turned to come back.
Cafas had pants. A bunch of pants, some lighter and some darker. Maybe some of the ones that looked the same were different sizes? Cafas was pretty concerned with sizes. It was harder to wear big pants, it was true. They had to be small enough that they didn't fall down, but not so small that they were like a twisty vine choking his legs.
They did have pockets, and Adder found himself nodding a little bit. Yes, pockets. Pockets were good. And his offering had made Cafas happy and focused again! Some of the tightness from watching the salesperson watch him faded out of the middle of his chest, and he reached out to take a pair from Cafas. It was one of the middlish darkish but not dark ones; he didn't really care which; and it felt... weird in his hands. Coarse but not coarse, smoother than jeans like even the rough parts of his hands couldn't catch on the material.
"It feels weird." Neither negative nor positive, simply observation. Still, though, the first observation he had freely offered in some time.
Adder liked mornings like this, he was finding: awake before not-jock-Austin and then out the door, down the hall, into the kitchen before anyone else showed up. Usually, not always. If there was anyone else, they usually wanted to avoid people too, and were quiet and didn't want to talk.
He prowled into the quiet room, rubbed cinnamon-smell out of his nose as it sort of floofed into his face. So much spicy-sweet. There'd been a lot of meat leftovers last night. There should still be some now.
Adder had his head in the fridge when his ears suddenly perked and he glanced over. just peering over the top of the door. Salt softy. Sleepy salt softy. He glanced down at himself. He was not wolf. Would she be bothered? But if he shifted now, he wouldn't be able to get the container off of the back of the top shelf. He needed hands.
So, logically, he first pulled out the container, then checked salt softy again to see if she'd noticed him yet. Best to check before shifting. It would also be easier to open the container with hands.
Lurking in the crowd again, moving as it shifted so that everyone around him would think he was just part of the group, Adder watched the animal-cops turn and gather their nasty tools. Good. Now they could go away and he could relax a bit. He chafed at their slowness. They were leaving, now they just had to hurry up about it!
As he drifted, Adder caught the odd glimpse of metal-and-electric-girl. Was she following him or just trying to leave? The crowd was beginning to disperse, painfully slowly, but she seemed to be looking around.
He saw her movement catch, so briefly. She was looking in his direction until it wasn't his direction anymore. She didn't seem... angry at him. Although it was hard to tell. She didn't have the same sort of expressions. But she didn't smell like a nasty person, even if he wasn't fond of the smell of metal. It always seemed to carry a trace of heat, although maybe that was the electricity that seemed to follow it everywhere. Sharp-tzpp nastiness. But that was just what that smelled like. It wasn't nasty-person stink.
Adder drifted in her direction again, gradually circling around behind her. "What do you want?" he asked when he felt he was close enough. Close enough to hear, but far enough to be out of reach.
Adder closed his eyes almost completely against the flush of sunlight, leaning on scent and sound to place his feet. They flew open again as a shout rang out, and he dropped into a roll and crouch to kill his momentum.
The shouter was downwind from him, and it took him a moment to catch the scent and place it. He hadn't been paying enough attention to identify person-by-sound, and in his defence he hadn't really heard not-cop-face-shifter shout before.
And then he waited, pressed low to his raised thigh, and tried to figure out what exactly was going on. It was also a chance to let his breath even out, and so if not-cop-face-shifter did anything, being not-cop-face-shifter, he could run full bore once again.
Adder watched Cafas think from the fuzziness of the sweater collar. Apparently he hadn't been expecting that question. That was kind of okay. Adder hadn't been expecting to ask it. It just kind of happened.
He had made Cafas uncertain, though, and the uncertainty was contagious. Not that Adder was often all that certain, especially in situations involving people and not basic survival. This was definitely not basic survival.
There had to be some way to fix this, but Adder would have had an easier time climbing a branchless tree with paws instead of hands. Still, he floundered around in his head, looking and looking and looking.
"I... " He felt like 'like' was the word Cafas would use here, although it really wasn't something that came to mind for him. But if Cafas would understand it, maybe it would work? "I like pants with pockets?" he offered slowly, waiting and watching to see how Cafas would react.
Time passed. There was nothing left to eat. Salt softy was still asleep. Maybe he should just go to sleep too. Then he wouldn't have to try to not move so he didn't wake her up.
Sleep would be so easy...
Some time later, he felt vague movement vaguely, but couldn't bring himself to open his eyes for a while. Then the snuggly warmth against his side stopped being snuggly against his side, and he hauled his head off the floor. It took a few blinks to clear his eyes enough to see in the dark room, but he adjusted quickly. His face was so sleepy. Where was salt softy?
Oh, she was just up on the bed. She had been warm. The sleepy wolf pushed himself upright, wobbling a little bit as he stretched and yawned, and then plodded over to the bed. He hopped up and plopped down where he landed, stretching out over salt softy's toes. He was asleep again almost immediately, having never really woken up very far to begin with.
Adder tucked his sleeved hands under his chin and trailed after Cafas. Pants weren't like his vest. They were still fine. And these were all. Well. At least Cafas seemed to see some differences between them. He'd just let Cafas pick-
nope, Cafas was still making him pick. He huffed. "Colour doesn't matter." Cafas was still going to make him choose, though, and probably wouldn't take a random grab well. It didn't seem like something Cafas would accept.
He knew jeans. He was used to jeans. He was used to jeans not-tearing best, but if Cafas thought that these would be good, then maybe they would. Except that went right back to not being able to pick. He shifted where he stood. Fuzzy. But pants shouldn't be fuzzy or they would die, and he had the sweater for fuzzy. Fuzzy on his throat and hands.
The metal manipulator was all smiles and Adder did not trust that much smiling. He maybealmostkindanotreallynotactuallyreallybutmaybekindaalmost-trusted Cafas, but not the smiling. The smiling was very suspicious, and if Adder wasn't preoccupied with staying in the fuzzy sweater maybe he would have done more about it than glare.
He put a lot into that glare, though, even when Cafas tried to pass him off on pants. His pants weren't even that torn up. And none of these pants were fuzzy so it wasn't going to be like they had anything in common with the sweater. They were just pants. They just had to not die fast.
There was absolutely no way he was going to follow Cafas over the salesperson for whatever weird rich person ritual was going on, where Adder could wear one thing and not another and not have a problem, and maybe Cafas wasn't actually going to sneak anything out, but then it didn't make sense that he had to put his old shirts back on, but getting to keep the sweater on also made that not make sense. Not that he was trying to have to take it off, mind!
So, pants.
Pants.
Pants.
They all looked like variants of pants. Apparently some said tear proof or something, but he would have had to take his hands out of the sleeves to move the tags so he could see. So he just kind of wandered a bit, eyes and ears flashing back to Cafas every now and then.
"They just look like pants," he muttered when Cafas returned. "They aren't the same but they kind of are."
Did he like it? Adder shrugged. Like wasn't a word he used. He wasn't giving it up -
what was Cafas doing? There was no way he was going to put it back. Adder would bite him so very very very hard if he tried, and it wasn't a bluff because he would actually do it even if people tasted gross. And sneaking around behind to try to get it off wouldn't work either! Adder moved to follow him, not nearly calm enough despite his façade to let someone, anyone, circle around behind him unwatched, but not fast enough before Cafas struck.
Adder was going for angry mauling and was halfway to shifting, almost-fur hazing his exposed skin, before there was supersupersuper fuzzy hood on his head and in his face.
Full stop.
Cafas... hadn't been trying to take it off. It was a prank. Cafas was being silly. Why was Cafas being silly?
But it was fuzzy.
And also really warm okay okay okay he really needed to not have the hood on if he was going to tolerate the temperature that went with the fuzziness. Like right now. Adder shoved at the hood, getting it off of his head (mostly) before he started panting, but left his hands in the fuzzy folds for a moment.
Tag? Pay? Don't have to take it off?
He could totally blame the slower processing time on the heat. And maybe also on this being a new thing. Um, tag. If he took the tag off and gave it to Cafas, then he could keep the sweater on. The fuzzy sweater. Why didn't matter. What mattered was that he could keep it on. If he gave Cafas the tag. Which would be the papery plasticy thing kind of poking the back of his neck, probably? It was definitely something which his normal old clothes never had, and was therefore something that should come off. And his hands were already right by it! So he tugged it off and reluctantly pulled out one hand so he could hold the tag where Cafas could grab it.
Three years. Long enough to be vague, not long enough to be like Before. Vague like 'biology basic class.' And the words Adder didn't know. He could piece things together quickly, though: he knew what a lot of innards looked like, and he connected the line drawing with the actual shape and colour and scent and taste. Lots of animals he'd eaten had had that organ. It really was very similar.
Adder blinked once at the 'biology' guy. Mutation display? With no indication of threat. Okay. Adder's ears perked forward a bit, and then suddenly instead of food there was a frog. An actual frog.
There were still traces of food-smell, but he definitely smelled frog now. He inhaled deeply. Very much frog.
"Can you make bad food into frogs too?" he asked, still watching the frog. Imagine that. Turning rotten, sickening food into live things, not-rotten moving food.
Right size? But they all fit. There were advantages to all sorts of sizes. Adder didn't bring any of them up, though, because Cafas was holding something that looked infinitely warmer than his vest.
It looked fuzzy.
And Cafas was offering it to him, so he snatched it. It was fuzzy. It was actually soft and fuzzy in his hands. And smelled different from the other clothes. Different material? He could believe it was a very different material. It... it was so fuzzy. Fuzzy.
He didn't quite dart back into the change room, but he did haul it on the moment he was inside and the door was locked. It was fuzzy. It was fuzzy all over. And it didn't rub at his skin like the shirts' seams did. It was super warm, too warm for most of the summer, but if he was already stashing one thing...
He buried his face in the collar. And his hands in the sleeves, where they were enveloped in the fuzziness. He definitely hadn't had anything this fuzzy in all the time he had been alone. Ever. At all. Except maybe when a kitten let him pat it. But street kittens weren't often friendly, or if they were it was because they were super desperate and not fuzzy because they were miserable and wet or muddy or matted.
Cafas was probably waiting for him. Adder mostly wanted to just hang out with the fuzzy, though, so he dawdled a bit. He didn't want to take it off so Cafas could spirit it away, even if it would get to be his again afterwards. Just a bit longer. Then he would take it off and go out and let go of it but only for a while. Temporary. Or he would bite Cafas very hard, and probably shift a few times to see how much that would maul him when his teeth moved around.
But he didn't want to take it off, he wanted to keep it on.
So he did, and did his very, very best to be super casually casual as he left the privacy of the little room.
... It wasn't easy to understand the movie, which referenced a whooooole bunch of things he figured the makers expected everyone to know but most of which he had either forgotten or never learned. And the idea that completely different people who didn't know the range of things the other people knew could get along so well, and come to trust and rely on each other...
He didn't know what to make of that any more than he knew what to make of salt softy curling into him and mumbling. Nice to cuddle? Was that what she was doing? What was he supposed to do?
...
Great, now she was asleep. How was he supposed to figure out what was going on if she was asleep? And the movie had gone back to the menu screen, and kept playing the same tune over and over and over.
Adder waited a very long time for salt softy to wake up, and he even only moved to very very carefully pull the bowl closer to himself without moving salt softy. But then there was nothing left to eat.
There his tail went again, flopping around behind his back. Salt softy was kind of warm against his side and he shifted a little bit so that he wouldn't poke her with his elbow, and then stretched his neck so he could get his face into the popcorn. Wolf snout or no, he pulled out a mouthful quite neatly, and then leaned back a little bit to chomp it into delicious sweet-salty mush.
The movie was kind of weird. He remembered the concept of movies, of course, so the weird part was what was happening. Not the dad person leaving. It had taken him years to understand why so many other people on the street had living parents they couldn't be with, when his had been nice but were so undeniably dead, but he had eventually come to understand. People could be asses, basically.
What he didn't get was why the young guy person kept getting into trouble. It was one thing to have people assume you were doing bad things, but he was actually doing bad things. Repeatedly. Didn't he learn?
