Brian's X-Men Game

Great Leap Forward

This is now home for my 1980's X-Men PBEM. The story picking up around the 180's of the classic X-Men series - issue 184 has been excised and 185 moved to its place. We open with a new issue 185 and the arrival of Rachel Summers in the 'real' timeline.

Great Leap Forward (GLF) is what game masters do when they refuse to write fan fiction. The goal is to pick up the story of the X-Men from the exact point where the book “jumped the shark” and produce a series of stories that are more like the ones that came before and superior to the ones that came after. Therefore the early stages of the game will operate on more visible “Plot Rails” as we will be picking up mid-arc and by the terms of the experiment I am obligated to abide by the plot threads and foreshadowing in place in the issues prior to #183-185 or thereabouts.

The alternate title for the game is "What if Louise Simonson (nee Jones) never stopped being the X-Men editor?"

At a fan's request, here is the list I gave the players of what will never be appearing in this game:

The Beyonder (aside from references to Secret Wars I); Fenris; Freedom Force; X-Factor; A living Jean Grey; Cyclops as a Deadbeat Dad; Magus; Warlock; Douglock; the technovirus in any way shape or form; The Marauders; anyone being brainwashed into becoming a Ninja; Mojo; Mojoworld; Longshot of the Mojoworld; People being mutated by the Mojoworld; "Dying in Dallas"; Siege Perilous; Infernos; Malice; Goblin Queens; Mr. Sinister; Nanny; Lady Deathstrike; X-Tinction Agendas; X-Men Team Blue and X-Men Team Gold; Cable; Bishop; X-icutioners Songs; Stryfe; Pretty much any Evil Clones; Apocalypse; Ages of Apocalypse; Ages of anything, really; Onslaughts; Cassandra Nova.

System

Systemically we’re using a modified version of the 1980s’ Marvel Super Heroes game. The modifications are as follows:

• Powers, Talents and Resources are all lumped together into Abilities. All Abilities are rated both in their Potency (how much damage they do, how great an effect they have, etc.) and Versatility (how easy it is for the character to develop new ability stunts).
• During character creation all attributes start at a fairly normal human level, but it is very common for abilities to either supplement attributes (i.e. Wolverine’s healing factor gives him “enhanced physical abilities” to the tune of +1 rank in Fighting, Agility, Strength and Endurance) or replace them (Colossus just replaced his Excellent Strength with a Monstrous one when in Organic Steel form).
• There is no Karma cost for Power Stunts. You may have to spend Karma to make the die roll work, but there’s no longer a 100 point cost for trying to be creative. It is also nominally easier for you to start and master stunts, in keeping with idea of higher character versatility: it now takes 5 successes to master a stunt, and the mechanics rolls are 2 yellow successes and 3 green for a stunt that clearly ties into the ability or 1 red, 2 yellow, 2 green for one that’s a stretch.
• All abilities have limitations. The more often you use a power the more often its limitation shows up.
• High skill (fighting Remarkable +) characters easily get multiple attacks on lower skill (Good or less) foes.
• The Karma gain/loss table is being modified to remove any Karma loss for losing a fight and award Karma for both finding ways to self-stress their limitations or conceding gracefully to genre appropriate actions. Your PCs still lose Popularity for losing fights, but not Karma. There is no Karma loss for Noble Deaths and only half the listed loss for Mysterious Deaths.

Regular game details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Super_Heroes_(role-playing_game)

Style

Stylistically remember that the GM is a Genre Hound. My thoughts on game mastering styles, dos and don’t are pretty well elucidated at my web page, https://sites.google.com/site/kudzugames/. As far as PBEM games go this is my first time out, so my style is far from settled. I can tell you a few things

• I’m aiming for a twice a week posting schedule (Thursday and Sunday) with larger turns on Sunday.
• Conversationally I’ll sometimes post swaths of dialogue with [response/comments/thoughts] spaces for people to insert text, while other times I’ll just throw out a line and ask for a response. When you’re writing dialogue I expect the same entries if you’re blocking out how you think a conversation will go, and everyone should abide by those conversational pauses as places to break in – no inserting your dialogue or internal monologue after every sentence. If you don’t have an idea of conversation direction, just throw out a line and wait for response. I will ask that people not edit other characters actions/dialogue without permission.
• At the same time I reserve the right to make minor tweaks to your text to improve flow and coherence, or to simply call the end to the scene.
• If the conversation is needed for the plot please keep it moving – no passive aggressive foot dragging.
• If we’re in the middle of a fight scene and you miss the twice a week posting deadline your character will not take a direct action: he may be stunned, have to dodge for cover, or pull an innocent bystander out of the line of the fire. I won’t make your PC look ridiculous but by the same token I won’t hold up the action.
• Fights should be relatively quick (in PBEM standards). In the comics we’re emulating most fights take just a few pages as “I hit him, I hit him again” is condensed visually or the characters find ways to trump or otherwise outmaneuver one another.
• Comic Book Morality is more or less in force. This should feel like an ‘edgy’ 1980’s comic.
• I am hoping that each month of play will produce enough action to fill 14 pages of a comic book. If the players get into a groove with talking to one another and produce reams of text on an in character, non-plot essential scene I shan’t complain, but remember that brevity is the soul of wit and all that rot.
• I will be using asides showing you-the-player what’s going on with key NPCs like Storm, Magneto, the Brotherhood, the Hellfire Club, the Morlocks and the New Mutants. I expect you to firewall this. Expect one such aside a week, with each month focusing on two of those groups. These asides, in total, will fill the other 8 “pages” of the book.
• Yes, this means I’m aiming for one whole “issue” of the comic per month. I’m a freak. We know this.

Starting Point

While the official moment of jumping the shark was at the end of issue 183 I am maintaining parts of the later story. Since I don’t want to force players through events with predetermined outcomes I’m manipulating the timeline to set them as just having happened. Here is a summary of recent events (Dramatus Persona are explained later):

• Kitty, who had not been involved in the Secret Wars, has just spent the last several weeks trapped by Emma Frost at the Massachusetts Academy, her elite private school that also trains a team of young mutants called the Hellions. Kitty had been trying to protect her friend Douglas Ramsey and was trapped by Frost, who goaded Kitty that she was providing Ramsey with a telepathic illusion of Kitty’s presence so he would not raise any alarms. Fortunately Kitty was rescued by the New Mutants – who were also spent a few weeks in captivity. This was an opportunity for her to bury the hatchet with the junior team. All of them eventually reached a détente with Frost, Sebastian Shaw and the Hellions that allowed them and Ramsey to return home lest their being held there against their will soured Frost’s work with the Hellions.
• The bulk of the team returned from the Secret Wars in Japan. Fearing for Kitty’s safety Professor Xavier told Rogue to fly ahead to the states. Rogue made it back to the mansion where a check of the mansions phone records included a panicked call from Michael Rossi, former government agent, friend of the X-men and Carol Danvers’ former lover. Exhausted, Rogue lost control of her personas and Carol Danvers took over, rescuing Rossi from the SHIELD Heli-Carrier but being framed for the murder of a SHIELD agent. The reunion with Rossi went poorly with her not really being Carol Danvers. Distraught Rogue fled to her childhood haunts on the Mississippi to reorient herself.
• The team reached the states to find Kitty safe but Rogue missing. Peter reveals to Kitty that while on Beyonder’s artificial world he was saved by, and fell in love with, a healer named Zsaji, who later died. Peter tells Kitty his feelings towards her have changed, breaking her heart. Logan and Kurt then take Peter out for a drink and a stern talking to, with Logan calling Peter a coward for thinking that his feelings for Zsaji were anything more than fear based infatuation and for being unwilling to fight for Kitty’s attentions when faced with a potential rival in Doug Ramsey. Then Juggernaut shows up and gives Peter a solid beat down.
• Rogue is located by a concerned Storm who tries to convince her to come home. Alas, a Project Wideawake assault team attacks, armed with a power neutralizer constructed by the mutant weapons manufacturer Forge. (We have been seeing Project Wideawake, Forge and Forge’s connection to the government through Rachel Darkholm, Mystique’s secret ID for some months in asides.) The agents shoot Storm instead of Rogue, stripping her of her powers, perhaps permanently. Rogue managed to escape the scene, but the unconscious Storm is taken by Forge (who, to his credit, tried to stop the assault) to his home in Dallas to recover. Xavier knows something bad has happened but can locate neither woman. This has happened within the last day.
• Unconnected with all of this Rachel Summers has just timeshifted from 2013 to the present, landing in downtown Manhattan. Her plan is to contact the X-Men and this time really and for true change the future, not realizing that both this and her previous attempt have moved into a different timeline. I’ve no intention of using the “Rachel was mentally broken and trained as a ‘hound’ to hunt mutants” aspects of her background because I find them demeaning and unnecessary, but she is the last survivor of the X-men in a dystopian future, used to be hunted for no reason and more than a little shaken up by the thimeshift.
• These last two events will be what shift the game into play.

Interpersonal Dynamics – the Team

Interpersonal dynamics are the heart and soul of the X-Men. Here’s where they stand for the PCs.

• Peter and Kitty are on the rocks. They may, or may not get back together romantically. If both are PCs they will have to learn to work together professionally. As a note, Peter and Kitty met 2 years and 3 months ago when Kitty was 13 and a half. She's now 15 years, 9 months. Peter has just turned 20. They had reached the point canoodling in private places around the house, but anything beyond that has just been discussed.
• Kurt and Logan are best friends. They drink beer together, talk philosophy and train. Logan will often ask Kurt to play wingman/jiminy cricket for him when he’s about to do something questionable.
• Logan thinks Peter is acting like a kid, but has already taken it out on him and considers the two of them square.
• Kurt wishes that Peter and Kitty could work things out, but isn’t going to push either. It would be in character for him to give Peter advice, as he once took a similar confidant role for Cyclops when they though Jean was dead (this was while the team was in the Savage Land and Jean though they were dead).
• Peter felt ashamed of his actions when confronted by Logan because he feels on some level Logan is correct. Emotionally right now he’s a grieving mess without the sense to just ask Kitty for time/space.
• Everyone is giving Rogue the benefit of the doubt based on her recent performance, but since Carol Danvers was a friend of the team she’s still not anyone’s favorite person. Oddly, Logan – Carol’s closest friend – is Rogue’s strongest advocate outside of Storm.
• Rachel had the 45 year old highly competent tough-as-nails Kate Pryde as her personal mentor. She is now older than the current Kitty Pryde, and has seen/felt Kurt, Ororo, Logan and Peter die.
• It’s very likely Kurt, Logan and Peter will see the physical similarities between Rachel and her parents. She looks more like Jean than Scott, but she’s clearly not Jean’s clone.
• Kurt, Logan, Kitty and Peter all love Ororo as a close friend/sister/mother figure. What’s happened to her should have ramifications emotionally.
• Professor X (whom everyone except Logan calls Professor – Logan calls him “Chuck” or “Charlie”) is the team father figure who now that he is ambulatory and has been more active in the field has become less of an overbearing taskmaster, softer around the edges and more willing to explain his reasoning. He will be staying in NPC advisor status for at least this first arc, but there will be reasons for him not to act as field leader, so there won’t be some know it all NPC ordering you about. Of course, no one in the current group other than Logan has any skill and a field leader and Logan has always flatly refused the job, either with the X-Men or with Alpha Flight. I leave it to you to figure out who’s in charge in the field.

The Supporting Cast

The X-Men books are just starting to get their sprawling cast, but here are they are. If and when new people show up I’ll include a comic book style blurb with an issue number reference and quick notes

• Ilyana Rasputin aka Magik: Peter’s sister and Kitty’s best friend, the six year old Ilyana was kidnapped from Russia by Arcade 18 months ago to use as a hostage against Peter. She stayed with her brother after that but a year ago she was again kidnapped, this time by Belasco (a demon sorcerer and former foe of Ka-Zar of the Savage Land) who trapped her in Limbo for seven years subjective time but just seconds on Earth. As of right now she is 15 years old, and has the mutant power of creating ‘stepping disks’ which are either teleportational or shift her into Limbo, from where she can return to any point in Earth’s time or space. She is also a magician of modest skill. Ilyana claimed to have amnesia, and while she has now remembered she’s reticent to discuss things with her family or friends. She has psi shields that prevent telepaths from easily reading her mind, so any knowledge of what happened to her must wait until she chooses to divulge it.
• Mariko Yashida: the head of Clan Yashida in Japan, she is Wolverine’s fiancé and cousin to Japan’s only known mutants, Sunfire (who has heat powers, Japan’s national hero) and Silver Samurai (who can create disintegration fields around metal objects and who works with the evil super-spy Viper). She is currently separated from Logan as she disentangles her clan from the Yakuza and her honor demands that Logan not just ride in and play White Knight. Samurai. Whatever.
• Amanda Sefton: An airline stewardess of Romany descent, she was Kurt’s childhood friend and now that they’ve been reunited after a long separation the two of them have become a couple. Amanda’s mother is a powerful gypsy witch and Amanda herself is a witch of modest talent. She is the X-Men’s only magical resource (outside of the Professor’s friendship with Doctor Strange) but is often out of the country. And can we say Airline Stewardess + Gypsy Witch = Hottie? I knew we could.
• Moira McTaggart: a Nobel Prize winning geneticist, Moira is a former girlfriend of and close confidant with Xavier. She maintains her own research facility on Muir Isle off of Scotland. She is currently romantically involved with Sean Cassidy. She is the adopted mother of the New Mutant Rhane Sinclair.
• Sean Cassidy aka Banshee: a former Interpol agent and former X-Man, Banshee burned out his mutant Sonic Scream ability more than two years ago saving the island of Japan. He isn’t holding out much hope it will heal, and shouldn’t since one of the world’s operating rules is “Heroic Sacrifices are Permanent.”
• Project Wideawake: a government watchdog organization tasked with keeping an eye on mutants. Their co-heads are Henry Gyrich, the Avengers former government liaisons and Val Cooper of the presidents National Security council. They have contracted with Shaw Industries to build Sentinels and are co-oping some DARPA research on anti-mutant weaponry.

The New Mutants

tThe school’s regular students, they are mutants who are learning to cope with their powers rather than to be evil-mutant-battling-ambassadors-of-mutantkind. They live in the mansion.

• Danielle Moonstar aka Mirage is a Cheyenne Indian and has the ability to generate illusions of your hopes, dreams and fears. Her parents are missing/dead due to some dark magic involving a Demon Bear. Her father fought with Xavier in the Korean War. She is the team’s co-leader.
• Roberto Da Costa aka Sunspot is the son of a billionaire Brazilian industrialist and an Amazon-focused anthropologist. He has the ability to absorb sunlight and use it as super-strength. His father, the readers know from asides, is being courted by the Hellfire Club. Roberto and his father are not on speaking terms over the father’s attempted exploitation of Nova Roma in the Amazon.
• Sam Guthire aka Cannonball has rocket-style flight and an 'invulnerable' force field while flying. His background as the eldest son of a Kansas coal mining family is normal and boring. He acts as co-leader of the team, and is the eldest (after Xian, who is missing).
• Rhane Sinclair aka Wolvesbane can shape shift into a wolf or a human wolf hybrid. The ward of Moira Mctaggart, Rhane was raised as a very prim Scottish lass and feels out of place in America. She worries that her powers are manifestations her internal wickedness (of which she has none).
• Amara Aquilla aka Magma has the ability to generate earthquakes, control magma flows and generate heat around her body/fire magma blasts. Her father is the first consul of the senate of Nova Roma in the Amazon. If you thought Rhane was out of her element….
• Xian Coy Mahn aka Karma was a Vietnamese ‘Boat Person’ who had the ability to possess people. She vanished while on a mission roughly 7 months ago. While the New Mutants think her dead Xavier knows she is alive but can't find her. Her uncle, a Vietnamese crime boss (who transplanted to America and used Xian’s twin brother Tran, another Mind Controller, as an agent until Tran’s death) is also missing. Her young brother and sister are being raised in an NYC Catholic School by Father Bowen, a friend of her family. They have not yet shown any sign of mutation.
• Doug Ramsey aka Cypher, as mentioned above, is Kitty’s friend and an expert computer hacker. This is because he has a mutant power of a gift for languages. While friends with both Kitty and the New Mutants he is blissfully ignorant that the school is anything other than it appears to be. He lives in Salem Center.
• Stevie Hunter: A former professional ballet dancer Stevie became acquainted with the X-Men when Kitty joined Hunter’s dance studio in Salem Center. She has since learned the team’s true identities (having been kidnapped by Arcade) and now serves as a physical fitness trainer for the New Mutants.

The Shi’ar Empire:

The Shi’ar are a race of aliens evolved from avians who rule over “an entire galaxy”. Their royal family is showing signs of madness due to inbreeding – the last emperor was ready to destroy the universe, the current usurper is an evolutionary throwback with functional wings and the empress in the middle has a human mutant telepath as her soul mate. Fortunately the imperial bureaucracy is robust.

• Empress Lilandra Neramani: she’s Charles Xavier’s soul mate and a good friend to the X-Men. She’s currently off the throne thanks to a coup by her sister and is in space reclaiming it. Shiar warp drives let them get back to Earth faster than you’d think.
• Deathbird: Cal'syee Neramani is the evolutionary throwback with razor tipped wings. She’s last year she managed a coup with the help of some military leaders and the alien Brood. The X-Men shattered the Brood power structure last year and Deathbird is at the core of a civil war.
• The Imperial Guard: Powerful superhumans from across the Shi’ar galaxy, they’re the Legion of Super-Heroes with the numbers filed off. Their ranks are split by the civil war as well. Their leader is Gladiator, who is not, I repeat, not a Kryptonian. Really, would a Kryptonian have that Mohawk?
• The Starjammers: a group of pirates against the mad emperor D’Ken, turned pirvateers when they threw their support behind Lilandra. They are led by Corsair, AKA Christopher Summers, Cyclops and Havok’s estranged father.

The Hellfire Club

The inner circle of this private club is made of up ruthless businessmen whose goal is the amassing of ever more power, wealth and resources and the pre-emptive elimination of those who would stand in their way. Several members of the inner circle are mutants who used their powers to help their rise to the top, and therefore they see mutants as successors to be cultivated or recruits to be exploited, which put them into pre-emptive combat with the X-Men. Known members (and you can add “wealthy important person to all these descriptions) are

• Sebastian Shaw, the Black King, who absorbs kinetic energy and turns it into strength. Co-leader. His company has the contract to build Sentinels for Project Wideawake.
• Emma Frost, the White Queen, a powerful telepath and head of the elite Massachusetts Academy. Co-Leader. She is training young mutant recruits, the Hellions, peers to the New Mutants.
• Harry Leland, the White Bishop, who can increase gravity.
• Donald Pierce, the Black Bishop, a cyborg who split with the club and has been “dealt with”.
• Emmanuel De Costa who is in line to become the White Rook, Sunspot’s father.
• Tessa: Shaw’s personal aide, her mutant power is computer like recall and correlation.

The Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants:

A successor to Magneto’s original group who use their powers to heighten fear of Mutants, aiming to spark a human-mutant war that they expect to win but subverting the human defenses from within. Blob, Pyro and Avalanche are currently in a federal holding facility after a nearly successful attempt on Colossus’ life 3 months ago.

• Mystique: shape shifting master spy, team leader. Aka Raven Darkholm, DARPA administrator. She’s an old enemy of Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel. She’s older than she appears.
• Destiny: Irene Adler, a blind precognitive. She is also Mystique’s long standing lover/partner. Destiny is a mature woman in her 50’s.
• Blob: Fred Dukes, the only member of Magneto’s original team, he’s a crude former carney who is “impossible to move or damage” when set in a place and can display super-strength style tricks.
• Pyro: St. John Allerdyce, an Australian who can control but not generate flame.
• Avalanche: a Cretan with the ability to generate seismic waves that cause earthquakes, shatter objects or act as highly limited projective telekinesis.

Alpha Flight

The Canadian national hero team, they were once adversaries of the X-Men in their attempt to return Wolverine to Canadian service. However, the two teams have reconciled. The team members are

• Vindicator: James MacDonald (Mac) Hudson, he has an EM energy controlling battle suit. He is one of Logan’s oldest friends. (In regular continuity he has either just died or is just about to die, but we’re holding that off in our continuity until we’re at a point where the PCs can address it.)
• Shaman: James Twoyoungman, a powerful magic-user and top flight surgeon.
• Sasquatch: Walter Langowski can change into this huge orange furry strongman.
• Snowbird: Anne Mackenzie, an animal metamorph and child of First Nations gods.
• Northstar: Jean Peaul Beaubier, professional skier, has mutant super-speed flight.
• Aurora: Anne-Marie Beaubier, a Cathonic school teacher, also has mutant super-speed flight. She and Northstar are brother and sister.
• Puck & Marrina:The team has recently added two members whom the X-Men do not know.
• Heather McNeil Hudson is Vidicator’s wife, and old friend of Logan’s and in some ways the spiritual center of the team.

The Morlocks

A group of outcasts and mutants living in the vast tunnel network under New York City. Storm is their nominal leader at the moment, having one the position in a blood duel with their old leader, Callisto. The full origins of the Morlock Community are unknown at this time.

• Caliban: a skull-faced albino with the power to both sense fellow mutants and gain strength from them – he is normally mildly super strong but gets stronger the more mutants there are in his vicinity. He’s infatuated with Kitty Pryde, and his powers were fundamental in forming the Morlocks, though he remains an outcast even among them.
• Callisto: the Morlock’s former leader, she has something akin to Wolverine’s Healing Factor that gives her enhanced scent and physical prowess but without the regeneration. Since Storm is never around Callisto acts as her unwilling but loyal viceroy until she can challenge her again and honorably regain control of the Morlocks. She was mildly infatuated with Angel for a time.
• Masque: born with severe facial deformities, he can change the appearance of anyone except himself. He’s mad and vengeful and just barely under Callisto’s control. Under Callisto’s orders Masque makes the other Morlocks appear suitably outcast-y.
• Sunder: Callisto’s right hand, he’s big and tough and super-strong.
• Plague: an older woman whose touch can carry and disease of her choosing.
• Leech: a dimunitive green skinned mutant whose presence dampens mutant powers. A plot device.
• Healer: an older man dresses like a wizard and can heal people with a touch. Another plot device.

The Original/Former X-Men

The team has had other members.

• Cyclops: Scott Summers former team leader, recently married and ‘retired’. Yeah, right.
• Angel: Warren Worthington III, millionaire playboy who sometimes funds super-teams for fun. He has wings and other birdlike advantages, like really good vision. He helps fund the X-Men as well.
• Iceman: Peter Drake, a CPA who tags along on Angel’s “Vanity Teams”, he can generate cold/ice.
• Beast: Hank McCoy, a bio-geneticist and now an Avenger in good standing. He’s also friends with the X-Men’s former foes turned Avengers Scarlet Witch (both mutant probability controller and actual magician) and Quicksilver (super-speed).
• Havok: Alex Summers, Cyclops’ brother, he absorbs cosmic energy and radiation and can fire it as force bolts. He’s engaged to Lorna Dane. They live and work in the New Mexico desert.
• Polaris: Lorna Dane, a magnetic controller (Not Magneto’s Daughter). Engaged to Havok.
• Thunderbird: a member of the “new X-Men” with enhanced physical capabilities, John Proudstar made a heroic sacrifice on their second mission and is quite dead. His younger brother, who shares his powers, is a member of the Hellions.

Other Mutants

The team has made friends with a variety of other mutants across the world, including

• Magneto: would be world conqueror in the name of mutant liberation and protection, he was forced to seriously re-evaluate his life after nearly killing Kitty Pryde 18 months ago. He fought alongside the X-Men in the Secret Wars. His current whereabouts are unknown.
• Forge: No real name known, he’s a Cheyenne Indian, a veteran of the Vietnam War and a mutant whose power is inventive expertise that he uses as a weapons designer for both SHIELD and DARPA. His DARPA contact is Raven Darkholm, and he is unaware of her true identity.
• Sunfire: Shiro Yashida, he can generate super-heated plasma. Arrogant and not suited for teamwork, he is the national hero of Japan.
• Dazzler: Alison Blaire is can absorb sound and transform it to light. She aspires to be a professional singer and clearly has the talent but suffers any number of mutant-related obstacles.
• Team America: A group of professional stunt riders who are repeatedly pulled into conflict with Hydra, AIM and similar villain organizations. The five man team (Honcho, Wolf, Cowboy, Wrench and R.U. Reddy) are the children of people who were experimented on by Hydra and as a result have a shared mutation – they are a Projecting Gestalt who can transmit all of their skills and experience onto a single person (often, but not exclusively, a teammate) who becomes the Black Rider. Non team members so possessed don’t recall the experienced, but thanks for Professor X’s training individual team members can chose to temporarily take the role and remember it. (I know: you’re thinking “Brian, you’re actually using Team America?" Darn tootin I am!)
• Carol Danvers: formerly Air Force intelligence (and a special ops field agent who worked with Logan), editor of WOMAN magazine, formerly the super-hero Ms. Marvel, formerly an Avenger, Carol Danvers had her life stripped away by Rogue permanently absorbing her powers and psyche. She has some of her memories (but none of their emotional import) back due to Professor X’s assistance, and last year a brutal experimentation by the Brood unleashed a new set of powers, linking Carol to a white hole. Now calling herself Binary she is assisting the Starjammers and Lilandra in the Shi’ar civil war.

There. I think that’s everyone.

Other Notes

Player Characters in Modifed Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP

• Ariel
• Colossus
• Nightcrawler
• Phoenix
• Wolverine
• Rogue
• Dazzler
• Scaret Witch

Essays on beat-structure of X-Men plot arcs:

X-Men Series Beats Part 1

X-Men Series Beats Part 2

Who are the Morlocks

I’ve had reason with recent plot arcs to further familiarize myself with what happened to the Morlocks after I stopped reading X-Men around issue 200. And the answer is that they fell prey to the Stupid. But since I’m not going to replicate much if anything from those stories in my own X-Men PBEM, and have already had significant divergences from them, its best I think to break down who the Morlocks are.

Issue List

These appear in reading order

• X-Men 185: Memento Mori
• X-Men 186: They're Possessed!
• X-Men 187: What Goes Around
• X-Men 188: Xavier Goes to War
• X-Men 189: Red Skies at Morning
• Marvel Team Up 150: Wound for Wound
• X-Men 190: Savage Magik
• X-Men Annual 8: The Lost Sentinel Story
• Marvel Team Up 151-176
• New Mutants 18-30
• X-Men 191: Resolutions
• Marvel Fanfare 19: The Bronx is Up and the Battery's Down
• X-Men 192: Star Death
• X-Men 193: Warhunt II
• X-Men 194: Pleace Love and Brotherhood (of evil mutants)
• X-Men 195: Hate & Hellfire
• X-Men 196: Appearances
• X-Men 197: Photographs & Memories
• Dazzler 39: Warrens Angels
• X-Men 198: Sentinel War 1: End of the Line
• X-Men 199: Sentinel War 2: Targeted Strikes
• X-Men Annual 9
• X-Men 200