INTRODUCTION TO THE OFFICERS
Roman Mattus is an Assistant Gamemaster who plays many parts in the game, including Gambit (male), Joseph (male) and his original character Arsenal on both Blue and Gold teams. Roman also plays all of the villains in the RPG, male and female. In the past he has portrayed Sabretooth, Mr. Sinister, Graydon Creed and many original villains.
GOLD TEAM
BEAST (Leader) |
CYCLOPS |
WHITE QUEEN |
ICEGIRL |
PYRO |
NIGHTCRAWLER |
BLUE TEAM
SHADOWCAT (Leader) |
WOLVERINE |
GAMBIT |
ROGUE |
DOMINO |
JOSEPH |
RULES
1. This is a PG-13 game. Strong curse words and sexual situations
will not be tolerated.
2. Arguments, catfights or off-topic discussions in-game are grounds for a demerit.
3.You must be in the chat room no more
than 15 minutes after the start time of the game. If you are late you will not be allowed
to play.
5. If you are absent from more than three games without an explanation or a notice you will be dropped from the rosters and a new player will replace you.
6. Officers can hand out demerits for any infraction they deem necessary. If you wish to discuss your demerit, do it outside the gameplay window.
7. Prejudiced remarks, racial, sexual or religious slurs are grounds for immediate and permanent expulsion from the game.
8. All players must know the rules of play, the backstory and the current mod so they can participate properly (this means reading all game-related emails that are sent to you.)
9. Games start promptly at 9pm Eastern Time. If you are late (within the 15-minute limit) make sure you know what is occurring in the game before you jump in.
11. Most important…have fun!
Due to the large number of players in this RPG, our officers have put a demerit system in place to resolve any disputes quickly. A player may earn a demerit for a repeated or grievous infraction of the rules. Three demerits warrant a review of the player’s ability to participate in the game in a beneficial way, and may warrant expulsion from the RPG. Demerits are handed out by officers or the gamemistress, and can be earned for the following reasons: repeated lateness without explanation, excessive use of foul or derogatory language, violation of the rules of play, a complaint by another player. Rest assured, however, that you have to work pretty hard to earn a demerit, and the main object of this game is for all of us X-fans to have fun in a friendly environment.
THE ‘MOD’ SYSTEM
As an easy and efficient way to inform the players of the content of the game each week, Caitlin will send them all an email with the subject line ‘X-Women Episode __’. The email will contain a ‘mod’ or adventure for the players to base their actions on, similar to games such as Dungeons & Dragons. Think of mods as issues of a comic book, contained within story arcs that can run anywhere from 5 to 12 episodes. We try to give all players an equal amount of ‘screen time’, but bear in mind every player cannot start in every episode. Non-officer player ideas are accepted for mods, between Sunday and Wednesday every week. Please email them to either Caitlin or Beth.
The Atom Cell Saga
In the beginning, the Xavier Institute was a defunct school that still harbored Cyclops, Rogue and Wolverine. This skeleton crew was abruptly called back into action with the arrival of Atom, a mutant from space who could control the atomic energies of the universe itself. After their first battle with Atom Wolverine was captured, and the nations of the world threatened to fire nuclear missiles at his base on the moon. No longer useless in a peaceful world, other X-Women began to return to the team.
The X-Women Face Purgatory
The Atom Cell had not yet played its last card, and this time took over Wolverine’s archenemy Sabretooth, transforming him into the superpowerful villain Purgatory. Purgatory proved invulnerable to most attacks, and kidnapped Cyclops’s husband Slash to force the team to surrender. Gambit was becoming more withdrawn and depressed by the day, the majority of the team was young and inexperienced, and Rogue and Wolverine’s continuing feud was pulling the X-Women apart at the seams. Only when Purgatory attacked the mansion did the two make amends and band together to fight off the attack. Purgatory was defeated by their combined powers and reverted to a badly wounded Sabretooth. Raven, an omnipotent alien being who had been sent to retrieve the Atom Cell for the Shi’AR, instead sunk it into the sun, ending it’s evil forever.
Just as the team was recovering from the Atom Cell crisis, a new evil burst onto the scene in the form of Cosmic, an alien entity with the power to travel, bend and manipulate space, time, and dimensions. Cosmic’s first act was to go back in time and introduce himself to Rogue while she was still a lost and scared teenage girl. Cosmic’s one mistake in that even was to also make contact with Wolverine, who remembered him when he came calling as Rogue’s long-lost friend over a decade later.
Rogue
did indeed remember ‘Zeke’, the kind boy who had aided her years before,
and after a whirlwind courtship the two became engaged.
The only members of the team to distrust Zeke were Wolverine and
the reformed Sabretooth, now a teammate and romantic interest of Logan’s. Cosmic didn’t wait long before he revealed
his true purpose—destruction of the X-Women from within and total domination
of the earth. With this revelation
also came the truth about Raven—he was a entity of the same race as Cosmic,
the only survivor when the madman massacred the other members of the race,
and the only one with the means to stop him.
But in the thousand-odd years since Raven had seen Cosmic, the other
being had grown powerful, and in the X-Women’s darkest hour he killed Slash
and thrust Wolverine, Sabretooth and Icegirl into an alternate timeline.
While
trying to find a way out of the past, the three mutants met with some most
unpleasant surprises—Wolverine discovered the buried truth about her lover
Silver Fox and his death, and Sabretooth found himself powerless to save
his childhood self from the abuse of his father.
No longer enemies, Logan and Creed found a wormhole back to the real
timeline and set about to defeat Cosmic once and for all.
It was Gambit and Raven who devised a way to defeat Cosmic, by creating a psychic wormhole that would plunge the evil entity into the deepest reaches of the astral plane. Raven could create the physical aspect, but it was Gambit who had to use his talents to send Cosmic’s mind into perdition. In a battle of galactic proportions, Cosmic was defeated, but Gambit paid the ultimate price when Cosmic melded minds with him, taking Remy’s soul down into the black whirlpool Raven had created. Distraught, the remaining members of the team vowed that they would fight in Gambit’s name against any evil that would occur.
The grief-stricken X-Women got only a temporary reprieve before a new threat came into view—two mutant twins calling themselves Deus Ex and Potentia, with the power to alter reality and an insatiable thirst for power. In their first and most nefarious act, they took control of Wolverine’s mind and convinced her to murder the leader of Westchester’s chapter of the Friends of Humanity. Believe that her dangerous berserker side had surfaced again, Cyclops held a trial for Wolverine and then kicked her off the team.
Wolverine
went to Japan, intending to center herself and find a way back onto the
team, but she soon found herself fighting evil under the new code name of
Exile, battling against a mutant named Masque who could seemingly vanish
into thin air. It took some time before Wolverine and the rest of the team realized
that the twins and Masque were connected, each working in their own way
to bring the X-Women down. Deus
Ex wanted a trained team of mutant soldiers to serve his will, while Masque
was revealed to be Silver Fox, Wolverine’s Weapon X teammate whom she thought
had committed suicide years before. Silver
Fox, however, was very much alive and blamed Logan for his death. In the end, Deus Ex self-destructed, and took
the other members of his plot down with him. Wolverine was welcomed back onto the team, and the X-Women felt
a solidarity that had been missing all along.
The next chapter of the X-Women’s adventures began when Cyclops discovered her husband Slash cheating on her with another woman. She promptly separated from him, and fortuitously Gene Grey returned from Shi’AR space to fill the rift that he had left behind. Gene, however, was not without his complications, both from Logan and the Iron Fist, a group of mutants descended from Magneto’s Brotherhood, and intent on similar goals. They were led by the magnetic mutant Mesmeric, the illegitimate son of Magneto, Phantom, a shadowy being capable of interdimensional travel, Diviner, a telepath with abilities equal to that of Phoenix, Nuclear, a scared mutant boy with cataclysmic powers, and Stronghold, an android who made up for his lack of intelligence with his adamantium body. Phantom had developed a doomsday device that could safely harness the Phoenix force, and the team did succeed in capturing Gene Grey, but they underestimated the abilities of the X-Women, helped by Nuclear, who defected after the first battle. Lead by the young man, the team infiltrated the Iron Fist’s stronghold under Notre Dame cathedral, freed Gene and destroyed the device. The battle was not over, however, when the X-Women discovered that Phantom was more than a mere lackey to Mesmeric. He was the real mastermind, keeping the other four mutants under mind control and determined to transfer the power of the Phoenix to himself, to become what Gene had fought so hard against—Dark Phoenix, the destroyer of worlds. Ultimately, however, Phantom was consumed by his own lust for power, as the Phoenix incinerated him and then was recaptured by Gene, never to be used again. In the end, things were bittersweet for Cyclops and the team, as Gene returned to space, leaving two broken hearts behind him.
Ultimate Gamble
When an insignificant Army colonel announces the reinstatement of the Sentinel project, the X-Women at first dismiss the rumor as his delusion. When Beast and new teammate Nuclear are attacked by one of the mutant-hunting robots, however, they decide to investigate further, and find shocking results. Colonel Drake Dubois has ties throughout the government that have allowed him to build a new army of Sentinels completely out of the public's view. Dubois's first target is the X-Women, but that fact isn't half as terrifying as the shadowy precense controlling Drake, an ancient evil that the X-Women know well, and an evil that will do anything to reign supreme once again. When Gambit is revealed to be alive, and comes back to the Institute with a new mutant named Arsenal, the team agrees to take in the former spy in exchange for his help revealing the true extent of Dubois's plan. Before they can, however, Dubois convinces the U.S. Senate to pass the Mutant Registration Act, declaring martial law throughout the United States and herding all mutants into holding camps. This is no alternate reality or possible future, this is real, and the X-Women are forced to flee to Madripoor with hatred at their backs and an unknown evil before them...
(In the episode between the death of Gambit and the beginning of the Exile arc, the X-Women actually engaged in an Elseworlds tale that transported them to the Old West!)
For a complete synopsis of every game episode, please refer to the Episode Guide.
THANK YOU FOR READING THE X-WOMEN HANDBOOK! HAPPY GAMING!