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.
Silly salt softy was too trusting and was going to get herself hurt if she wasn't careful. Fortunately, Adder had a solution.
He waited until she went into her room for the night, after keeping a distant watch on her in whichever form he thought would draw the least attention ever since he made sure she'd made it back to the mansion okay. And then he lay down in front of her door, and growled at anyone who went past and seemed to think it inappropriate for there to be a wolf lying in the residential hallway of the mansion.
So what if it were supposed to be the girls' hallway. This was where salt softy was, and so he was going to lie here and make sure she didn't sneak out and do anything else dangerous. And then he'd watch her in the morning too, until she grew out of this dangerous wandering nonsense.
Adder seriously wanted to laugh at not-jock-Austin's reaction. He was so uncoordinated. A starving puppy that made it into an unexpected growth spurt wasn't that ungainly. This was ridiculous. And briefly entertaining.
That didn't remove the issue, though.
"This is my room," he said firmly. No argument on that, although there wasn't exactly any indication that he lived in the bedroom part. It still smelled like him and no one else was supposed to be in it because it was his. He also didn't speak especially quietly, though he wasn't yelling now. It was a pretty quiet room.
"To eat." Why else would he have food? Food was for eating. The complete change of topic, paired with the moment of amusement, caught him off guard enough to earn a straightforward answer and not snark. "I have sausages too. The official meal times here are really loud but there's always food left over."
He snorted at the intruder on the bed he didn't use and padded over to the closet with its not-quite-completely-closed door: he liked to leave it at a memorable angle so it was more obvious if anyone had gone poking. There were mutants he couldn't smell well, after all, and some could poke from a distance. And there were so many kids here. Bleh.
Adder leveled a squinty glare at not-jock-Austin, then tucked himself into the closet and slid the door closed with a foot. He'd deal with this mess after he'd eaten.
It was getting late, and he'd had a sufficiently dramatic day. And enough crowds to hold off on dinner until the horrible rush had completely finished, lounging in a dead end of the maze that got a lot of sun during the afternoon and proved to stay pleasantly warm well into the evening. The heat faded after a while, though, and the white-and-gold wolf padded back inside with even less notice than when he had arrived. It was reassuring, not to be stared at or chased after. Sometimes little kids tried to catch up with him and pat him, but there weren't that many younger than their preteens. It was mostly the really little ones that ignored his warnings.
Into the darkened and quiet kitchen, and onto bare human feet to pull the fridge door open with fingers rather than claws. There were the sausages he had been smelling all afternoon. An entire container of them. The fat had just started to set, and he set the container on the counter, two sausages lighter already, while he poked through the rest of the fridge.
He chewed slowly, by his standards, as he shuffled through containers and plastic wrapped stuff. Oooooh peeled eggs. He hadn't had those in almost-forever! It wasn't actually forever because he knew what they were by sight and scent, and he quickly put a bunch of the hard-boiled wonders of nutrition in with the sausages. He didn't take all of them, because there were like fifty eggs and that was excessive even for him, but more than he would have been able to carry in one hand. Nothing else in the fridge interested him so he put the eggs back, collected his wonderful dinner, and headed back to his closet before anyone could come in and bother him.
He fished his door key, strung with a braided bit of various discarded string pieces, out of his jeans pocket with one hand while he balanced the container with the other. Into the lock -
He had left it locked. He always left it locked. He always left it locked.
It wasn't locked right now.
Hand still on the knob, he sniffed at the door frame. He needed the boost in this form, if he wanted to be sure. Someone had been inside recently, definitely. recently enough to still be inside. Someone new-familiar. Not nasty. Not someone like Cafas. Hmmmmmm-
Ah. Not-jock. Not-jock-Austin.
...
Why the #%^* was not-jock-Austin in his room? This needed resolution. Adder slipped the door open gently, fully aware of how it was more likely to squeak at certain points and how to avoid the noise. He moved inside.
And may have kind of yelled at the kid he'd so recently brought to this place. "What are you doing in here?!"
Annoying-animal-cop thought she could threaten him?
Adder's coiling and roiling stress thought very poorly of that action, although at first all he did was raise one hand, empty-palmed, and present an upright middle finger at the officer.
And then he darted into the crowd, ears flicked down and under his shaggy hair, eyes narrowed, and mouth closed, all so that he could disappear without simply running for it. He kept an eye out for the tracker, but in his experience (as hunter and hunted) crowds were horrible for tracking individuals.
He also kept an eye out for metal-and-electric-girl. He still wasn't sure what to make of her.
It took a moment for Adder to notice the strap Cafas had pulled over himself. Oh. Oh. Now he remembered what a seatbelt was. It had been a very long time. There was the one on his side. He pulled it out, glanced at Cafas' to see how it attached, and smushed the clippy part into the boxy part by his other hip. It clicked and stayed put!
Take that, rich people stuff.
Two years was... how long? Two summers-through-winters-through-summers. So Cafas had survived winters at least. That added a couple of respect points, although only enough for the two years. He didn't like relying on luck, though. Luck was unpredictable and messed with resource management and safety margins and so many other things Adder worked with but technically didn't have words for.
Were they going yet? He knew cars didn't just stop existing in one place and appear in another. They had to travel like everything else. They just could do it faster and louder and more angrily than people on foot. But were limited in where they could go. They were big so they didn't fit in lots of places. Maybe they couldn't leave designated places like roads at all. It was pretty large-scale for a mutant to be controlling that, though. Although some mutants were absurdly strong.
..."How far is it?" That wasn't the only thing he didn't know or had vague wonderings about right now. "Why'd you let it change? Or was it just that you were more used to Before?" For the moment, it didn't occur to Adder that Cafas might not have the same perception of time, split into only a few vague categories that got increasingly large and vague the farther from the present they became.
If only Miika had dared voice his opinion on the falseness of Adder's name. It would have completely ruined the whole friendly appearance salt softy was trying to make, but !!!
Instead, Adder was extremely unsure of what to make of salt softy grabbing his hand and holding onto it. His skin and ears jumped and twitched, and he nearly let his teeth show. His immediate stress faded after a moment, though, and then it was just weird.
And then the two kids started about ice cream, and the weirdness level scrambled even higher. He stayed silent, so very aware that he wasn't part of that world even if he'd moved a little bit closer, and also aware that he had absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation. He remembered ice cream from Way Before, but treat-things weren't really food-things and he couldn't even remember what it looked or tasted like. It didn't smell like much either.
Raspberries, though. He knew berries, especially ones that rich people grew in their laughably secured back yards in the summer. He'd remembered the name-berry pairings too, for the most part. He didn't like grapes; sometimes they made his stomach unhappy. Raspberries, though. They were good, and the seeds were small enough that they didn't get caught between his teeth.
Somewhat more relaxed, Adder straightened under the dog-headed mutant's dismissive gaze, ears as up as his side-mounted ones could, compared to the furrier version he faced. He stood with more vague amusement that this guy was telling him off already, but it wasn't exactly amusement in his voice. City-dog-not-even-good-enough-for-the-real-security-inside was trying to stop salt softy from whatever it was she and Miika-kitten wanted to do.
"Couldn't earn a real job?" he retorted. People with jobs tended to be very touchy about them, especially the insinuation that they weren't good enough for 'better' jobs. He kept walking towards the door, silly crossed arms or not. On a slowly-becoming-chronically-filled stomach like he had now, he was more than confident enough in his ability to tear into the bouncer. "The ice cream is for after, but I guess you wouldn't have figured that out."
And as for teeth? Hah. Even in his little human mouth his own teeth were more impressive, and his wolf jaw was infinitely more intimidating than a squished little half-dog face.
Feather-chatterer clearly had not thought this through. Adder's opinion of her impressiveness dropped a few more pegs. Somehow. He wasn't sure where the scale found the pegs for it to drop. It had to be at starving-and-thirsty-in-midwinter-in-a-blizzard by now.
He gave his head and shoulders a shake. He didn't want to drag in a chain of stray kids. It'd just make the mansion more crowded and more loud and it was already too much of both. Plus feather-chatterer was annoying and threw things. That was not the sort of person he wanted anywhere near him for whatever long term this weirdness of closet-sleeping lasted. Plus she was refusing to answer him usefully. She might be dangerous.
In theory.
Possibly to a chihuahua. Probably not even to a drunk chihuahua, though. Heh.
Adder resumed walking, path apparently to pass feather-chatterer by without actually going around her; avoidance wasn't worthy of her. "There's a playground a few blocks over," he said as he neared feather-chatterer, an edge of his mouth almost twitching against his teeth. "Even has a water fountain."
If that didn't annoy her, it ought at least confuse her. Either worked for him.
Posted by Adder on Jun 20, 2016 11:37:13 GMT -6
Jiri O'Leary likes this
Gamma Mutant
306
7
Jul 5, 2017 22:17:55 GMT -6
I have some suggestion details for this npc. I may have been considering using them for a character but nope yet another goody goody beat him out.
Dramatic, and wholly bent on being the Most Important Figurehead Ever tm. Fond of capes, unique hairstyles, and super vivid ornamentation/decoration. Really outgoing and showy, wants all the glory and none of the thinking.
Adder had been in car garages before, for a variety of reasons. To scrounge, to take shelter from the weather, to lose pursuit, because he was bored. They'd all been more open than this one felt, but it may have just been a matter of size. Or that they were more organized. This one did look more like a high school parking lot, with sleek and shiny super-rich vehicles here and there. His skin crawled at the sight of things so far removed from his reality, even when they drifted at high speed through the roads he wandered.
Some people targeted people in cars like that, but it seemed so high risk. The reward was nebulous too; Adder had found poorer-seeming people more likely to have cash and food on them at any given time. They were more likely to personally chase him down in retaliation, though.
And then OH GOD THE WAVE OF BACKSTORY WAS HE SUPPOSED TO SHARE THAT MUCH NOW NO NO NO THAT WASNT WHAT HE'D PLANNED FOR OR WANTED HOW WAS HE SUPPOSED TO STOP THIS
And then Cafas stopped talking on his own and the world kept existing, although the wolf shifter had fallen a bit behind. A lot had happened in Cafas' life. Adder had just been himself, surviving on the streets despite scattered attempts by multiple parties to get rid of him. Cafas had... Gone from the street to school? But he had gone to school before he was on the street. Most people had. Adder had never met anyone who even claimed to have been on the streets as long as he had. It started as young, rather. The odd old person had apparently been there for decades. The functional length of that unit of time was hazy.
Er, Cafas was getting into a car. Adder had seen this often enough. Other side, pull the latch, pull the door closed from the inside after he was in on the seat. So there was space for his feet. Lots of space! There was enough space to sleep in here. Too bad there hadnt been a lot of abandoned cars around on the streets. He could probably have slept very well in one, almost as well as in his closet.
"S'a lot of change," he said quietly, but his voice felt weirdly muffled in the close confines of seat and fabric ceiling and glass. "You weren't on the street very long." Part statement, part question, part dismissal, part disappointment from somewhere he couldn't identify, couldn't even track.
Adder sprang after Cafas. He hadn't eaten so much that he was weighed down, but his body seemed to get that it wasn't short on resources anymore. In return, nothing felt stiff or lagged when he wanted it to do something. Like move, rolling nearly silently through each barefoot step.
Moving also helped muffle his general confusion at what exactly Cafas was saying. How was he supposed to know what a stylist was? Plus the whole string of words was kind of... going over his head. Whatever. "I don't get it," he muttered, but it was as much to clear the thoughts out of his head as for Cafas to hear. He wasn't even sure Cafas would be able to hear him. Other people had weird and vague senses.
...Cafas hadn't always been as he was now? Then what had he been? How in the world was he supposed to sort that out? What words would let him even ask? "What were you before, then?" he tried, not satisfied by the phrasing. It was still the best he could come up with on the spot.
Cafas' excitement had Adder on his feet in the space between heartbeats, though even Adder was hard pressed to tell if it was fueled by nerves or maybe the ghost of wolfish interest. His focus was on Cafas, ears up and forward, and the excess of thoughts settled into background noise.
Bik- oh right. Adder could remember the cloying haze of fuel and the pounding noise. His ears shifted back at the unpleasant memory, but it didn't sound like he was going to have to go close to the thing. Cars were less weird, for all they were more dangerous to have driving towards him. They'd been normal, once upon a time. Not that the thought lingered for evaluation.
"Your bike smells bad," he said bluntly. "And what does it matter what clothing looks like?"
But if he were swapping out his clothes, he couldn't carry them all. What if he suddenly had to relocate? He'd lose it all, plus leave more stuff that could be used to track him. Plus it was summer. It was warm. He didn't need layers. Cafas would probably have some logical excuse around that too, like just stay in one place, but that didn't work, something always happened to ruin a corner. Always. Just because it hadn't happened here yet didn't mean that it wouldn't.
Cafas' long answer to his little 'why' covered much of his discomfort, at least. And made it worse, even if it was harder to pin down why that happened. Cafas was so serious about this, but he'd managed just fine without anyone watching out for him or even knowing he existed. If he had managed without than it wasn't necessary. Right? Right. Because if it were necessary, he wouldn't have managed by giving it up. Not that he'd chosen to give up the people who had been with him in the distant past. But he had chosen not to fall in with new groups who just tried to use him and control him and make him do dangerous things he didn't like.
...but he had decided to do something because he wanted to. And it had worked out. It had worked out well. Now he didn't hurt and he'd had food and tea, and he supposed he didn't entirely mind talking to Cafas, although he would rather do more listening and less talking because he always kind of felt that he didn't quite know the right words to say what he actually meant, or felt he should say.
So maybe doing things that weren't completely necessary wasn't so bad. Sometimes. He supposed it would be easier if his senses weren't the only ones that might pick up on some approaching threat, even if the other senses were human-dull. Cafas' eyes seemed to work okay, at least. So there was that. But existing in closer contact with Cafas didn't change other things. He still couldn't carry multiple sets of clothing around all summer, and he was possessive enough that he didn't want to risk losing them-
but he also didn't want to lose the shelter and food of this place. It got loud sometimes, yes, but the rampaging kids were more annoying than dangerous, and some of them weren't so bad. He couldn't remember actually being as little stressed as he was getting. Maybe that was dangerous in itself, but... he didn't want to leave.
So that left... what, exactly? He shifted on his chair. Leaving the clothes he wasn't wearing in one place? He supposed he could add them to the pile of blankets and pillows he'd pulled into the closet. That could work, as long as he didn't have to stop being in this place.
Okay. "I don't have anything else to do now," he said slowly. Later would work too, but he and Cafas had a plan for tomorrow already. One plan per day was enough or he might not have time to still get food and stuff so that meant that they should do this other stuff today, right? But that was kind of sudden and rushed and Adder still wasn't completely sure that he really needed more clothes, just that Cafas wanted him to have more.
Cafas' face darkened, and Adder shifted closer to the back of his chair. He watched the metal manipulator very, very closely, but Cafas made no real move before his face stopped looking so much like previous people who were about to hit things. Adder would much rather not get hit, especially by someone Cafas' size.
Which... kind of forced agreement with what the x-man said next. People did watch their tongues more when faced with solid threats. Angry Cafas definitely fit in that category. Adder did not want to see him fully angry, much less make him so.
That train of thought was so far removed from Cafas' next comment that it took Adder several heartbeats to make sense of it all. "New clothes?" He glanced down at himself. But he'd got most of it after he'd arrived here, from not-cop-face-shifter. They were new, by his standards. "They'll make it to fall!" His retort was edged with defensive protest on behalf of the maligned garments. They did fine.
Adder didn't breathe easier once metal-and-electric-girl started 'explaining.' He didn't have a problem with lying when it saved his skin, but he wasn't the one doing the lying. Someone else was, and he didn't know why. And he only had META bot experience to predict if he could outrun her or not. They were made to catch, but she was a mutant and therefore less predictable.
Her nudging was at least predictable enough to dodge, although Adder refused to move forward at all and kept his ears flattened against the sides of his head. He didn't want to go closer and she wasn't going to get him to go back between her and them. Not without a fight, anyway. A vicious fight; what was the point in fighting fair when no one else did and it was your life on the line?
He managed a sort of shrug at the officers, reluctant and stressed and everything else that made him into such a believably easily targeted young mutant. Not that that was intentional, but if it worked then he wouldn't complain. Much. If he somehow had someone to listen to a complaint.
