[OOC] X-Men: The New Era

[PapaOso]

Until recently you were just a run of the mill kid, or maybe you were a troubled teen, or even perhaps a college age young adult just trying to live your life, but not anymore. Now you're something else...something different; you are gifted.

This story will be set in the X-Men fandom, but honestly will be more of an AU than anything else. My intention is to set this RP in a world where mutants are still relatively unknown to the masses, where the "gifted" are feared and looked down upon by society, and where it would be detrimental for the public to find out the identities of those that are known about. The idea is this: Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters has been a haven for mutants for over a decade now, but one school can only do so much in a world where there are new mutants popping up all the time. So, Charles Xavier has entrusted one of his good friends, Malcolm Ashford, to open a new school to help ensure more mutants find the help they need. We will be the first class of students at the Ashford Institute for the Gifted, and will live the lives of mutants in a world made for humans. We together will learn how to control our gifts, find out who we truly are, make friends (and enemies) along the way, and train to one day join the ranks of the X-Men.

This is the official OOC for this RP; a place for us to get to know each other and discuss the game and our characters. Feel free to contact me for any questions or additional info you would like me to provide.

Here is the CS

(Picture of Character)
Name:
Nicknames/Aliases:
X-Men Code Name: (The "Hero Name" that you would like you character to eventually have.)
Gender:
Age: (14-19)
Physical Description: (weight, height, clothes, etc.)
Mutations: (Nothing crazy; i.e. no Wolverine healing factor, time manipulation, invincibility, telepaths/mind control.)
Personality:
Background: (Doesn't have to be a book, it's actually better to leave some things open ended so that you can learn about your character and watch them grow organically, but it's important to know the basics.)
Recap of your mutations awakening: (Was it a tragic event? Something that you've been keeping secret for a little while? Who all knows about your "gifts"? Etc.)

The Ashford Institute for the Gifted

The Ashford Manor itself is 3 stories tall and currently has enough dormitories to house just under 100 students, two to a room. The campus has a massive, beautiful courtyard that leads to the Victorian era cast iron gate. There are three main buildings on campus:

The Academy- Located in the center of the property, this is the academic and administrative hub of the campus. The majority of classrooms, offices, staff lodging, and medical services are located here.

The Dormitories- Located to the left of the Academy, the dorms are separated into two halls; Summers Hall is where the male students live & Grey Hall is for female students. These two halls are connected in the middle by the impressive student lounge and cafeteria services. This is the social hub of the campus and is where the students get to know each other, as well as grow together as students of the institute.

The Training Center- Referred to as the "TC" for short, is located at the right end of the campus and is the largest of the three buildings. Inside there is a full length basketball court, Olympic sized pool, a state of the art gymnasium with all the cardio/strength equipment one could ever dream of; which of course can be converted into the secret and highly beneficial "Danger Room" where the gifted students can hone their skills and learn to control their powers. Outside of the TC there is also a football/soccer field, a tennis court, track, and an outdoor swimming pool as well that has a full grill and snack bar during the warmer seasons.

The Staff

Headmaster Malcolm Ashford

Dr. Malcolm Ashford is a man with a brilliant mind and a kind heart. He is a self made millionaire that has earned his fortune by building one of the world's most successful pharmaceutical companies; Ashford Pharmaceuticals. He is known to be slightly eccentric and very curious when it comes to humanity and evolution. He has been an avid supporter and benefactor of Charles Xavier's for years and over time they have become close friends. It is assumed that Dr. Ashford is a mutant though his powers are unknown and he normally will change the subject when it's brought up. Being a life student of Charles Xavier and a believer in his vision of the world, Malcolm was the perfect choice to become Headmaster of the second official school and safe haven for mutant kind.

Professor Kaylee Everose

Kaylee Everose is the Educational Director for the Ashford Institute for the Gifted, as well as the mathematics and science professor. She is in charge of overseeing the academic growth of all students and acts as second in command at the institute. She is sweet and intelligent, but she takes her business seriously and isn't afraid to show her more fiery side. Professor Everose's mutation gives her the ability to sense other mutant powers through aura detection, and given enough focus she can also use astral projection.

Professor Adam Pierce

Adam Pierce is the type of man that doesn't smile very often. He is the "Athletics Director" of the institute, which really just means that he's the man in charge of training the gifted students and preparing them to become part of the X-Men. He is strict, harsh, standoffish, and stoic, but he sees the importance of his job and would do anything to protect his dear friends and fellow mutants among the staff; that means protecting the students as well and he does not take that job lightly. His mutation gives him the ability to memorize movements and stances that he observes, which he has used to master literally every known martial art in the world...as well as some unknown to most, even the most skilled and experienced martial artists. He has the heart of a soldier and the mind of a strategist and he holds a high expectation for his students. Let's hope you live up to it, or you'll end up on his bad side and that's not somewhere that you want to be. Mr. Pierce is also the resident advisor (RN) to Summers Hall, which is a part of his job that he hates...and honestly so do most of the male students that live there.

Professor Finn

Lawrence Finn would describe himself as an old man that loves old things. He is the History & Geography Professor at the Institute and has the mutant ability to see the stories and memories of things that he touches, and he has one of the most impressive historical/antique collection outside of the Natural History Museum. He's a distraction prone older man that is passionate about history and absolutely despises today's technology. He's slightly off his rocker, but loves his job and hopes to show some of the school's youngsters that just because the past is old doesn't mean it's boring.

Tabitha

Tabby is the bubbly, lovable, goofy, but bloody talented Professor of the Arts in the Institute. She's definitely unconventional as far as teachers go, and is only in her early 20s; making her one of the more relatable and favorable staff members to the students. She is fun loving and creative, and is also the resident advisor to Grey Hall. Her mutation gives her feline like abilities and features. The more she taps into them the more her physical body changes to look the part. She heightened senses and incredibly quick reflexes. Her self appointed code name is "Tabby Cat", and it's easy to see why.

More Staff Coming Soon

[Kaalee]

Appearance

Name: Valentina Naryshkina
Nicknames/Aliases: Val'a
X-Men Code Name: Static
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Physical Description: She stands about 5'10, with blond hair and green eyes. She weighs about 150 pounds but is quite fit and curvy where she feels she needs to be. She is commonly wearing black jeans and a green army jacket, a white shirt and black combat boots. Sometimes she's seen with black rubber gloves too.
Mutations: Transportation through Electric Currents
Personality: Valentina can be kind of standoffish when you first meet her, but after after she gets comfortable with you she's witty and likes to talk.
Background: Valentina was born the younger sister of Russian Politician. Her family was very much a 'secret' supporter of bringing the tsars back, mostly because their family was extremely intermixed with the Romanov family, and therefore the most likely to become the next Tsars if they were successful. However her brother drafted the most anti mutant legislation compared to everyone in both houses of the Russian Legislation. She wasn't nearly as conservative as her family, and labeled as something of a black sheep in her family.
Recap of your mutations awakening: Russia doesn't even allow some humans to live, mutants are to be killed on sight. So when Val'a was transported from Moscow to St. Petersburg in less than a minute after brushing against the tv, she was terrified. Every electrical outlet she touched, she was transported somewhere else. Finally, she figured out how to control her jumps a little bit, and made her way through Ukraine, to Poland, Germany, France, across the Channel to London and through the transatlantic telecommunication lines to Newfoundland and down to Xavier's school for the Gifted. They then directed her to Ashford's Institute for the Gifted and she's been there ever since.

[Sombrero]

Super excited, man! Should I post Da's app in the Char thread?

[PapaOso]

@Kaalee Whoa there's a blast from the past lol! Val is back :D! I'm glad that you decided to join in.

@Sombrero Me too! Yeah, go ahead and post it here and once it's accepted you can move it over to the Char thread.

[Kaalee]

@ShieldsOfWar I liked Val, and I don't want to make a new character so there we go

[Divine Darkness]

My current thinking for character is a girl with tactile telekinesis...

[Shard]

- edited

[Rhapsody]

@ShieldsOfWar I love your choice of David Tennant for the Headmaster :D

I've already tinkered a bit with the CS, won't be long now: :)

[PapaOso]

@Rhapsody Lol I had hoped you guys would like that :). He's amazing in Jessica Jones btw!

[PapaOso]

Btw,@Shard, @Kaalee, Val and Celestin are both approved.

[Shard]

@Rhapsody Lol I had hoped you guys would like that :). He's amazing in Jessica Jones btw!

@ShieldsOfWar

Yay thank you. I also just started watching Jessica Jones

[Rhapsody]

@ShieldsOfWar, @Shard: He is, right? I was rather surprised he plays the psycho so well after being so sweet as the 10th Doctor!

[PapaOso]

@Rhapsody He's my favorite Doctor, and seeing one of my heroes acting so devilishly really had an impact on me and made Jessica Jones that much better for me.

[Rhapsody]

@ShieldsOfWar yeah, initially very disturbing, I agree

[Rhapsody]

Alison

Name: Alison Darcy
Nicknames/Aliases: Ali
X-Men Code Name: ?
Gender: Female
Age: 18

Physical Description: Standing at 5'5", Alison is just barely of average height. She is slim and relatively fit, still in the habit of going jogging regularly after a childhood of being dragged along by her overly enthusiastic father. She has naturally brown hair she preferes to dye the reddest red she can get, loving the way the colour contrasts with her pale skin and green eyes. Which is also the reason she usually wears colours like green or blue that also go well with her hair. She wears little make up in everyday life, only bothers with doing it properly when there's an occasion she deems appropriate. Her usual outfit is a pair of comfortable, worn jeans, dark leather boots which she preferably wears not bound too tight, a black top with a green shirt overneath, the latter usually left open

Mutations: Illusion & (minor) Forcefield generation: To Alison her powers are like weaving nets and blankets out of strings of energy she can either channel from her surroundings, like electricity or simple energy and life force in nature, or from herself, which is limited and leaves her much weaker much quicker. The results of that 'weaving' need to be anchored somehow, which is easiest with cloth or rough surfaces. The illusions fade slower depending on if they have a continued energy source linked to them, if they don't have that because she used her own energy for creating them they last longer the smaller they are and the less detailed as well. There is no quick WA to replenish her energy unfortunately, which is why that is sort of a last resort most of the time. She had to rest and eat for anything from hours to days for that.

Personality: She is a very tolerant person, thanks to growing up with rather eccentric parents she is used to ignoring various kinds of questionable character traits. She is kind of a perfectionist and rather stubborn, which results in hours and hours of training with her powers until she gets something just right. Alison is not the most confident or outgoing person but she has a good sense of humor, if sometimes a little dry and sarcastic, and once she warms up a bit she is very social. She is very warm to people and extremely prefers to avoid all sorts of confrontations, since she cannot thinking properly she she's angry and her own inability to come up with good arguments or comebacks only makes her that much more angry. If that happens anyway, Alison needs some time to calm down on her own and gather herself, but she forgives other a bit too easily so fights never last long with her. Crowds and enclosed places make her various degrees of uncomfortable and she is not a touchy-feely person by nature. Alison has an unexpectedly strong spirit and is generally intelligent and independent.

Background: Alison comes from a small town in the middle of nowhere, so it's a given that everyone knows everyone and keeping a secret is close to impossible, right? Well, Alison managed to keep her powers hidden until she was 15. It was like they'd slowly started creeping in, colors she used when drawing would seem more colorful, scarfs she knitted or things she wore would take on a certain quality, sometimes glittering a little, sometimes glowing, that sort of thing. It happened without her noticing much, a lot of times she was actually surprised to find that she'd just thought how cute this or that would look with a little glod woven into it and the next moment she was staring at a beige cardigan with golden string woven into it here and there. She practiced, of course. And once she got the hang of it a bit, she tried to tell her parents. That didn't go too well. Although not really afraid, they behaved strangely around her, like they were unsure who she was now that they knew she was different. After a while, they decided to go with ignoring the whole thing. They didn't talk of her powers, they didn't want to see any evidence of them, and Alison, confused beyond repair, went along and hid them, keeping them a secret. Which went fine for years, until she discovered a new possible way to use them and did so quite openly, in the middle of a bustling market place, in fron of all her neighbours and in a rather showy way.
She'd been standing by the fountain beside the road, waiting for her mother to come back from chatting with a friend of hers somewhere. Everything happened so fast, she still had trouble recounting the events. It started with a car coming down the road, too fast and driving dangerously unsteady and going off the road just before it had passed the fountain. THe next moment it was coming towards her, she ran, the car hit the fountain, the statue on top of it gave a worrisome crack and fell. Alison remembered watching the huge ugly stone thing fall with quite some amusement, until she noticed the child standing right in its path, staring at an ice cream cone in it's hands. She remembered people creaming and trying to get to it fast enough. And then she remembered her powers acting almost on their own, weaving a big, glimmering, golden square, which then proceeded to appear just above the little boys head. How she had managed to put it there in the first place, was still mystery to her, she'd never done that again no matter how hard she tried. Well, to get done with the recap, the statue hit the, apparently, shield, fell off to the side and that was that. Noone hurt, everyone scared, Alison terrified. Not long after that, in fact only a week later, Alison had found herself at the Ashford Institute for the Gifted.

Recap of your mutations awakening: Alisons powers have started getting noticeable after she hit puberty and got more and more prominent in the years following their appearance. Whether she had been born with them was anyone's guess especially because her parents preferred to act like they never noticed any of it at all and that they didn't even exist. It couldn't be plausibly denied anymore though after a rather public demonstration during an almost fatal accident in the middle of the small towns market place. Not a week later, Alison had found herself at the academy at the age of 16.

P.S.: didn't check for grammar and spelling errors, yet, don't mind them ;)

[Shard]

I am guessing accepted characters go in the character section?

[PapaOso]

@Rhapsody Ali is accepted :).

@Shard Yup!

[Rhapsody]

@ShieldsOfWar great! Thanks! I'll post it in characters in a bit, I'm on my phone right now ^.^

[knighthawk]

Here is the CS

Name:Alexander "Xavier"
Nicknames/Aliases:Alex.
X-Men Code Name: Tomahawk
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Physical Description:
5'8" with an Olympic athletic tone. Usually he wears camouflage pants of various realistic patterns (no ridiculous pink with yellow) with combat boots using a zipper insert that keeps the cordage of the shoelace with the quickness the zipper provides. He dresses in layers as he was taught to do from a young age normally tank-top to t-shirt to button-up to coat. He makes sure his clothes always have pockets for his Altoid survival kits. His clothes are rarely new, often from second hand stores or army surplus of his own volition to save money for an emergency.
Mutations:
Powers: Increased speed strength and agility. Currently four times those of a normal human but tests show no signs of decrease or leveling off. Right now it seems like a mere extension of his martial arts but has the potential to be on par with spiderman if his mutation continues.
Personality:
Fun-loving most of the time with strong underpinnings of right and wrong. He HATES bullies and with always run to the aide of someone getting picked on no matter the odds. To him the bad guys are the biggest bullies he can see. He has been trained to prep and prepped to train so he is always looking around his environment to use whatever is on hand to get the advantage to survive.
Background:
Born to a fireman mom and cop dad. Sadly his dad died on the job while their child was still a baby, but Xanders mom would be consoled by his partner who eventually became his second mother before he was old enough to know any better. Raised by two women would make anyone a bit of an odd man out, but he took it as best he could with such a large target on his back.

When the bullying started, both moms agreed to have him take martial arts for the act of discipline more than anything else. He was taught how to use a hatchet both because of his parents Native American heritage to the tomahawk and his mom being a fireman that hatchets and axes were always available. After his dad had died, both his moms had started to become doomsday preppers with lots of focus on survival and bugging out with him being raised in the same ways as well in case he ever had to leave quickly for having two mothers. Part of that prepping included supervised gun use him his mothers standard issue shotgun, another part of that constant prepping meant taking him to both of their works and learning some tricks of the trade like how to use an emergency vehicle or any other huge vehicle. In case of, well, emergencies.

When he turned 15 his moms took him to a police impound auction to buy his first car with his permit, expecting him to get something cheap but running. He surprised them both with buying a totaled tow truck and spent a year rebuilding the engine instead. They had instilled in him a need to prepare so he opted for a vehicle with enough power to get him wherever he needed and pull anything behind he would need. His parent made him an emancipated minor as another tool to add to his survival skills since he could count himself as legally employed.

An incident occured at school when his powers activated for the first time. The cover story was that a low flying aircraft flew overhead that caused the boom and his earphones saved him from the stunning air pressure when he went to help the kid. He was expelled for violence but wasn't arrested for assault as he was stopping a hate crime in progress. He changed his last name to protect his moms who had him legally divorced then expunged from the family records and left home to learn how to use his talent.

Recap of your mutations awakening:
When he was 16 his power manifested as he saw the high school football team dragging a known gay student into the locker room clearly against his will. The speed that he ran to the rescue actually broke the sound barrier, the rest seemed to stand in slow motion as Alex began brutally beating on every one of them within an inch of their lives. 20 to 1 yet he didn't have a scratch on him except for the falling glass from blown out windows of the sonic boom, it was then that the x-men came for him.

Skills:
Dedicated studies of martial arts over ten years including hand ax/hatchet/tomahawk training
Licensed to drive standard vehicles and trained to drive emergency vehicles (class C license).
Doomsday preparation/survival folk
Proficient on 12 ga. shotgun, license to carry
Proficient on .45 Cal handgun, license to carry in 3 years
Fair/okay mechanic on diesel trucks (including hotwire of standard vehicles)
Questionable cook (Can boil an egg in a paper cup over a fire in the middle of a dry field without a problem, burns breakfast every time.)

Posessions:
Leatherman tool, Any number of altoid survival kits in his pocket of pants and jacket as well as every compartment of his truck. He keeps one tampon in every kit.
Multi-tool (one in truck behind seat, one in back hatch of truck, One in every duffel bag) Survival shotgun (move flashlight and knife to Piccadilly rails instead of extra attachment, replace saying on black metal with etched mirror instead). Owns a tow truck he bought from a police auction.

[Shard]

Knighthawk, I have a question concerning your character's powers since I'm a bit confused.

When you describe his powers, it's increased physical prowess essentially. I got that at this point, he's not stronger than Spiderman in terms of physical capabilities.

However, in your Awakening you wrote that he ran fast enough to break the sound barrier, and that the glass shattered from the sonic boom created from it. That's the speed of a bullet, or the power of Flash in the case of the sonic boom. I'm not the GM, but I'm just confused as to what he can do.