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.
Adder let out a tiny, tiny huff of air through his nostrils. It would have been much larger if he'd actually noticed Cafas' laudable attempts to not laugh, because then he would have been quite offended at being considered worthy of entertainment. He wasn't trying to be funny!
If Cafas were going to go to his room at ten, then Adder would have to make sure he was there at some point before then and then wait. That would be the way to be there at the right time. Okay, that could work. He could pull that off. It was easier than avoiding people who wandered the streets without noticeable pattern. People like that he basically had to stalk, or trust purely to his senses and ability to dodge and hide if he picked up on them. Neither were good for the nerves or resource management.
Adder set down his mug with less firmness than would have been required to clear away his thoughts, and spoke with a similar degree of reservation. "They always think I'm trying to steal stuff, even if I have money or if my feet are just cold," he muttered. "Or they say things like they'll catch something from me." Or that the world would be better off if he'd just crawl into some alley and die, but he was too stubborn to listen to that.
...The person who had given him food and tea left. Adder remained as he'd been for a few moments longer, almost-maybe-not-really-but-kind-of hoping she'd come back, but her scent faded with the speed of the fully gone. Just the traces of fuzzy-tingly-sharp-air drifted through the room now, probably stronger where she'd been but it wasn't like her smell would do things like get food and tea.
He also didn't need food or tea now. He'd had them both. So Maya leaving wasn't that bad. But it still felt a little bit odd.
He shook himself. It was just being left alone with a strange person. That was the odd part. He tilted his head at the younger guy who had given him food and smelled of ground and old things. Now what was he supposed to do? What did Maya mean by 'play nice?' Was it a warning not to fight? He wasn't looking for a fight.
Did that mean that this guy looked for fights? Was he going to attack?
Get him... a... cell phone? Adder's forehead knotted a bit. Why would Cafas do that? Other than the reasons he just gave.
Something else knotted a bit at the passing thought of being able to call on someone else for help -
but that was something he'd learned not to think about so long ago it was almost before Before, and his thoughts turned away without even planning on it so well had he learned it. It was better to think about not thinking about it than to think about it, and then he could go on to other things.
Like why there wasn't any more tea in his mug, just the bag that kept slipping down and hitting him in the nose. It smelled like tea. It hadn't seemed like it was meant to be eaten when Maya made it, but then Cafas had made it differently. Not that Cafas showed any indication of eating it. Was it like nose-burning-numbing-spice-stuff, making food but not being food, or was it like tomato, both making food and being food?
Ew flaky leaf bits. Adder grimaced and tore the bag off the tooth it had snagged on. Tea bag was like nose-burning-numbing-spice stuff. Noted.
"Ten?" Adder glanced around quickly. There was a clock on the stove he could read. Those round ones with sticks didn't make much sense, although he got the overall concept, but for actual time numbers he liked clocks with, well, numbers. He'd just have to stalk the kitchen so he knew when it was time to meet Cafas.
He felt something vaguely positive about that. Was it just having a plan, something specific to do? Probably. Probably.
Wait, Cafas was serious about the phone thing? Adder's ears shifted back, uncertain about - so much of it. "I... don't think I'd be welcome," he said quietly, finally settling on not well received by stores as something to say.
Adder glanced at not-jock-Austin with more interest. Shift to what? He couldn't smell any sort of animal, although that wasn't a guarantee. Something not-usually-alive? He'd run into a water shifter before. Eerie woman. Smelled like algae and snaggle-toothed-scaly-anger-lazy. Mostly algae. But creepy and enough to spook him off waterways until another gang killed her.
Side note, he was a little bit tempted to smack not-jock-Austin upside the head. Could she fly. She'd just flown down from the top of a building. She had probably flown to the top of that building, or at least glided from another one. Getting to the roof of an occupied private building was hard, especially on the nerves.
"You don't know where we're going or why," Adder answered, trying for flat but succeeding in suspicious. "Why would you want to come?"
At the very least, minimally dangerous to him sort of option, she'd probably chatter with not-jock-Austin and make his ears ache. She looked like a chatterer even if she spoke like a toddler.
Not-cop-face-shifter laughed. Adder flinched, though he contained it well and mostly kept it to a momentary haze of almost-becoming-fur across the back of his neck and shoulders. Breathe.
"More than you'd expect," he muttered, slowly letting some of the tension ease up and flow away like water on his guard-hairs. Technically speaking, he didn't know if his nose worked differently from street dogs - there were things that they never reacted to in the same way humans never reacted to smells, but which leapt out in unbelievable vividness to him - because he was wolf and not dog or because he was mutant and not dog. Maybe because mutant wolf?
Not a train of thought to share with other people, especially not-cop-face-shifter who made jokes about arresting him. He set his teeth and reminded himself firmly that he could outrun the not-cop here just fine. There was nothing shiny, just trees and grass and dirt and birds, unless not-cop-face-shifter could use reflections in eyes, so it would just be outrunning by foot.
"Like I'd bother going out of my way to threaten someone," he muttered. "Good way to get dead, that."
Adder glanced quickly at the metal girl, ears taut and jaw muscles tensed. Play along? What, was she going to hold them up and distract them if he had an opening? Was she actually trying to get him caught? That was it, wasn't it? She was trying to help the animal control people. So the longer he stayed here the more it played into her plots -
of calming the situation? His ears flicked hesitantly, but the about-to-bolt tension lingered full-force all through his neck and back and legs. Even his fingers were slightly flexed, ready to react. He glanced between metal-and-electric-girl and tracker-weirdo and annoying-animal-cops, suspended between complete motionlessness and stressed vibration.
And then he eased back and to the side a bit, putting metal-and-electric-girl more between him and the other people. Just in case. Barring additional senses, she probably had a more limited field of vision, and anyway keeping all of his potential pursuers in the same direction was better than being surrounded.
Adder prodded his mug again, impatient for it to cool enough to drink but also thinking about Cafas' phrasing. He didn't see an immediate difference, but after a moment he saw the comparison between running into dark allies waving money around and not bolting from every threat. All right. Adder still thought that there was a little too much intention in Cafas' going and getting hurt, but he wasn't going to press it.
Once again, the concept of outside-the-city skimmed over Adder's head, barely rustling his hair. Knowing, vaguely, that something existed wasn't the same as knowing what it was like. Like how he knew what a cellphone was, but had approximately zero idea of how to use one. He shook his head to Cafas' question and prodded his tea again. Still hot, but.... He pulled it toward himself to give it the telling test.
Tolerable! At least to his fully healed mouth-skin. The mint-flavour, weaker in his mouth than in his nose, made the back of his throat tingle a little bit. If anything, it made it feel clean, not that that was a place he ever thought of as getting dirty.
Never hurts. Well, that couldn't be literal because Cafas had been literally hurt by it just today. He should think about this logically, though. If he were spending time doing this stuff, well the time cost wasn't significant right now because he had more of it than he needed. But he'd use more of other resources, because exercise made him hungry and thirsty and tired. Mostly hungry and thirsty, unless he was doing it once he was already hungry. Food in particular was actually in excess here, although a lot of it remained in forms he couldn't just eat. Other people did things with those forms to make them food, like the nose-burning stuff Cafas used, but he didn't know how to do those things, or why they made non-food-things into food.
So all the costs were to things to which he had sufficient access. If that changed at all, then he could just stop the 'training' stuff. That was logical.
"I could try it," he said, unhesitant in his eventual answer. There wasn't any excitement or resignation to his tone either; he simply said it like he was commenting on something idle and pointless like rich people always seemed to be doing.
Was he starting to act like a rich person? The skin of his back flicked a bit like a wave ran through the fur that wasn't there right now, and he drank more tea.
Trenton didn't sound like any of the neighbourhoods Adder knew- oh. Other city. Having never been able to run beyond the sprawl of New York City, the idea of an end to it was more hazy theoretical than fully understood knowledge. He knew that many people were from other places, and that there was world beyond the city, but he hadn't experienced any of it for himself.
Not-jock from Trenton-New-Jersey was Austin. Adder barely filed the name away, since he was more than comfortable identifying people by smell and it wasn't like he expected to talk about this guy to anyone else, so it didn't matter if no one else could pick up on the same scent or that he couldn't really describe it well.
Oh fiiiiiiiiine. "Adder," the wolf shifter said, not muttering his name as much as he usually did but still hesitating a little bit. He liked being a vague, overlooked shadow that no one noticed or reacted to. Then he could just do his thing and not be bothered. But today he also had energy and was far more open to doing things that caught his attention at the moment.
Even if this kid was getting chatty. Adder rolled his eyes before glancing sidelong at not-jock-Austin. "You've met plenty. You just didn't notice," he said drily. "Although they might not have noticed either." And he just wasn't going to answer the other question. If not-jock-Austin couldn't figure out the gist from the shape of Adder's ears, and his teeth and his eyes, then he didn't deserve to know at all~ but mostly Adder just didn't like giving out information about himself, especially to people he'd only run into once.
His avoidance may have been covered by interruption, though, so he might even get away without defending the lack of answer. He followed feather-rustle behind them with his ears, and simply blinked slowly at the young girl who landed nearby. She smelled sharp-edged, not like the clean-heat-sharp of the mansion healer but more like a weapon. A small weapon.
A very small weapon, though still sharp. One that could double for general use, like a small knife weighted well enough to throw with reasonable accuracy. Hm. He was going to get out of practice at throwing pointy things. He shouldn't let that happen.
Regardless of what not-jock-Austin was doing, Adder yawned at little-pointy-weapon with zero attempt to hide or disguise it. "Somewhere that notices when people sit on the roof and throw things at people."
Okay, maybe he was going to take the one kid back, but two seemed extra weird and unbelievable.
"Sounds like you go out of your way to get hurt," Adder muttered. He eyed Cafas, a bit sidelong, and tried to decide if he was joking, had some magical reason to WANT to get hurt, or was just stupid. People were so weird and made no sense so much of the time.
He worked his way steadily through his second round of food stuff, not as rapidly as the first but still definitely practiced for maximum food ingestion without choking. Eating fast was probably much easier with his teeth than other people's, but it wasn't something he could or wanted to bother trying to test.
What he would much rather would be to know what half of what Cafas was saying meant. He was throwing around words Adder might have heard before but wasn't used to using. They were words that described things in a world he hadn't touched even when his parents had been alive.
Whatever it was he truly meant, though, he seemed to be hoping for Adder to agree. That was suspicious, very suspicious... But when Added thought about what he knew of Cafas, what the metal manipulator had done and what he had asked and what he had assumed, the suspicious weakened. A tiny bit. It was still an improvement over his usual reaction-
Although his other type of usual reaction was still fully available. Complete confusion. "Can't you just find me?" he asked, and only belated realized that he hadn't told Cafas he wasn't interested in the weird 'training' stuff. Whatever it was. He could hardly make a decision without knowing what was involved.
....that worked surprisingly well. Now Cafas was talking, and he just had to kind of listen. Except he listened properly, because maybe Cafas would actually have something to do.
Early ideas were not helpful. Classes? Education? Like, school? Sit in a room and carry bags to and from that room? How would that help anything? Wouldn't that just make things worse? A lot worse?
His disbelief miiiiight have shown up a bit in his face, but Cafas moved on and Adder debated giving him a second chance to suggest something useful.
Idea number two wasn't much better. He didn't want to do that stuff. He didn't see a point to the games he saw rich kids playing. They just yelled at each other and wasted energy and then yelled at each other more. Maybe he should have bolted with the tea. This was turning into a waste of-
"Weren't you 'training' when you got your face beat up?" he asked, surprised into a moment of open incredulity. His face also clearly said something along the lines of and you expect me to do that with you, but don't like me fighting?
Adder very nearly threw himself out of his chair, restlessness irritated by the failure to solve it, and stalked to where he could more easily reach the food. In all honesty, he wasn't even hungry any more, but what else was he supposed to do?
Adder snorted quietly and let his ears settle back again, and even waited quietly while Cafas made the tea. This time he watched more closely, but Cafas used water from some other kid's pot on the stove??? That was not what Maya had done.
He shifted a bit higher in his chair, sitting on his ankles as usual, and inhaled deeply as Cafas turned and headed back with the two mugs. Mint? And it didn't smell like there was anything weird in it, despite the strange water source. He reached for the mug-
and then Cafas wanted to talk more. Adder'd already talked a lot today! More than most days ever, probably. And Cafas wanted more? Sure, words weren't a horrible trade for food, depending on the words, and he had brought tea even if it was late and too hot to drink yet if the words made his throat hurt. He huffed. But what else was he going to do? Steal the mug in front of a very fit, very large x-man and try to go to ground somewhere with it without spilling boiling water on himself?
Fine. He could try to talk for a bit. A little.
Not that he had an answer that seemed like it would satisfy Cafas one bit. "I am fine. It's not like I started the fight. The other guy did." He prodded the mug with a finger. Still too warm, gah. "I can't just sleep all day." Never mind that he still didn't really sleep much most nights, although these days it was more just nightmares and less jumping at every sound and vibration.
Adder eyed Cafas over his food. He could hear every sound the metal manipulating x-man made, down to the soft rustling of his clothing as he shifted and the fainter gurgling of his food-excited guts. However, being able to hear that mangled smush of sounds did not translate to magical understanding. He got 'raw,' and what was probably 'never.' Everything else was sketchy at best and completely unintelligible at worst.
He slid the last bit of his wrap into his mouth and made short work of it as well; his teeth went through the meat with as much ease as a human's teeth would have gone through the tomatoes. Now he was thirsty.
...
He'd almost decided to bring it up when Cafas spoke and interrupted the hesitant process before it had a chance to show itself. "M'fine," he muttered. What was he supposed to say? How was he supposed to describe life? It was life. It existed and he did stuff. And did Cafas even really care? No one else would or had, not in close to his entire life. Besides, there were more important things going on right now, or rather not going on. He looked at Cafas.
"Tea?" he said, somewhere between masquerading as a question and bluntly reminding Cafas of what he'd agreed to.
So, cbox had an idea! This is my super informal formalization of it.
Horrible stuff has happened in Orlando recently. Perhaps in MROverse there was a similar event, related to mutants, and now people are reacting in NYC.
We're thinking a peaceful anti-murder rally and public first aid lessons, with current volunteers Firefly as nurse educator and Memo as Super Realistic Patient (c), and a few public school classes as well.
Might this escalate into more anti-mutant violence and possibly another round of riots?
Kid was so out of place here, but at least he knew it. Heck, he looked more out of sorts than Adder remembered feeling when he first walked into the mansion behind Cafas!
That was surprisingly long ago. Whatever. Not what he intended to think about right now.
When Adder started moving and the richling guy was slow to follow, he could have just kept going to see how things would play out, what he would do out of desperation. Would he even become desperate?
- except Adder had felt the ragged edge of desperation too much to enjoy giving it to another for mere amusement, and he paused. He even turned back, although movement caught his eye briefly. That little figure on the rooftop. Had it moved? He squinted, but if it had moved it had paused again, or was more shadowed at this angle.
Half a year? Adder's ears flicked to attention at the kid with renewed interest. That was a winter on the street, at least. Only one, but not something he would have expected from someone who looked so much like those braggart jocks he avoided.
"I'm going to the mansion," he said drily. "A couple of seasons is hardly a record there, by the way." He didn't mention that he probably held that record, or was at least close to it. It would be easier to hold it if he could put a number to his not-with-parents life, but defining time never seemed to work.
When not-jock caught up, he resumed walking, though at a subtly easier pace. He could stroll for a while; he'd run much of the way here, simply because he could, so he could put up not running for a while. "I haven't seen you around before," he said after a moment, vaguely gesturing to the streets around them with his chin. 'Seen' was such an awkward term. People didn't understand much if he said he had smelled them before, but that was what he did far more than seeing people.
