Game History
x_emplary exists in an alternate present where mutants have been in the spotlight for decades now. First emerging into the public eye during the 1970s, their public knowledge and presence has only increased since then. Homo-Sapiens have had to become used to Homo-Superior and while that's happened, the latter are by no means accepted into society with welcomed arms.

Close friends Charles Xavier and Eric Lensherr met in 1960. Both men were twenty and found they had several things in common, not least of all their ability to do things that no normal humans could do. Their ideologies were similar as well and with the continuing tension between humans and mutants they agreed that something had to be done. They'd known each other just slightly over twenty years when Xavier's School for the Gifted opened in Westchester, New York.

Scott Summers and Jean Grey were the school's first students, though it wasn't soon after they and other students arrived that Charles and Erik had a falling out which left Charles paralyzed and their friendship understandably strained. The incident, coupled with the changing viewpoints of the two, caused a split. Erik left the school, leaving Charles to continue what had been a shared dream. It would be years before Charles would hear from his friend again, and in the meantime the school continued. Students came and left, while some stayed on as teachers to help the future generation of mutants.

Though anti-mutant sentiment had always been present in the country, it exploded in the year 1993 when a group called the Friends of Humanity was started by Graydon Creed. Creed, a junior senator and a presidential hopeful for the '96 election, had been an anti-mutant advocate since his state senate days in Maryland and he'd taken his beliefs with him to the United States Senate by the year 1990. With a small group of support from other senators Creed began to work on changing the opinions of his colleagues. From this sprang and early draft if the Mutant Registration Act and the beginnings of a running platform for Creed and his running mate, Senator Robert Kelly. Though they would lose the upcoming election, the two secured their places in the anti-mutant right wing and continued to pursue the corresponding agenda throughout the decade.

There were small protests against the MRA throughout the decade, mostly from mutants. They were mostly nonviolent, as encouraged by Charles Xavier –who by this time had become on of the main faces of mutant civil rights. Violent protests against the act were seen more than a few times during the process. Bombings targeting favoured spots of Kelly, Creed and his Friends of Humanity in the nation's capital weren’t uncommon, though the perpetrators were never caught. The language in the MRA was completed and polished by the year 2000 and it was brought before congress and the senate in 2001. It was on its way to passing until the events of September 11th, 2001 which derailed the bill entirely for the remainder of the year as Americans banned together against a newly perceived force of evil. But the war dragged on and eventually attentions were turned back towards mutants: the threat actually on American soil.

Throughout all of this Xavier's School continued running, bringing in young mutants who had no where else to turn and needed help controlling their powers. Granted, the school's purpose had changed ever so slightly as Xavier noticed the change in political climate and protest activity within the country. With Creed and Kelly's rise in popularity in the '90s Xavier became worried about mutants' status and at the same time the protests against the two politicians, for they seemed too familiar. He believed in giving back and in his own way, starting the X-Men was his way of doing so. If mutants showed that they were willing to use their powers for unselfish purposes, then perhaps society wouldn't treat them as such outcasts.

The idea came to Xavier in the early '90s, but a team on the level he was considering would take time. Basic power training was already taking place within the school, but other training would be needed for Xavier's dream. Not to mention the equipment and renovations the mansion would need in order to support such a team. The X-Men did not make their debut until the year 2002 and almost immediately the backlash began. While some heralded the mutant team as saviours, others wondered why they'd chosen that point in time to show up. Where had they been during the attacks in New York. Every other local hero had been there, why hadn't they? Neither Charles Xavier nor Scott Summers, the team leader, could give a sufficient answer to this question.

People's apprehension towards the team didn't stop the them from acting. They were doing good work, things that despite everything, sometimes the local authorities couldn't handle. Unfortunately, the villains that tended to crop up in New York City, Philadelphia, and the surrounding areas had things like metal arms and the ability to travel dimensions; even the most modern law enforcement wasn't prepared to deal with things like that. Nor were they prepared to deal with the reemerged presence of Erik Lensherr who, over the years, had gathered his own band of misfit mutants who all stood in opposition of everything that Creed and Kelly pushed for. Erik had been behind the attacks during the 1990s and once the MRA was pushed front and center again in post-9/11 America (to help fight the terror at home, of course) the attacks began again.

By 2006 there was an effective rivalry between Xavier's X-Men and Lensherr's Brotherhood of Mutants. It didn't surface often in open confrontation, but there was a tension between the two groups. Often the Brotherhood would commit some sort of terrorist attack against the senate or in retaliation to an FoH statement; the X-Men would come in and clean up their mess. It tended to happen this way, that the birth of a group of heroes would birth a group of equally powered villains. It had happened here and average citizens, not to mention Creed, Kelly, and a good chunk of the United States Government, blamed the vigilante hero team. In July of that year the government went as far as to force Xavier to close his school, telling him that under no circumstances could he have a school for mutant children in the same building where he was training adult mutant vigilantes.

The school and the X-Men split that summer, with the school moving to Salem Academy, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The X-Men remained in Westchester with the government watching them carefully. They were allowed to continue their work, but both sides knew it was only because the government simply didn't have the resources to handle their wars and attacks from villains and Erik Lensherr all at the same time. The X-Men took care of quite a few of their problems and they did it for free. The pros outweighed the cons, even if one of the cons was that there was an SR-71 being stored underneath a basketball court.

Now, in 2008, Xavier's team has been fully functional vigilante team for nearly six years. Though Xavier's beliefs are based in non-violent methods, the X-Men tend to stray from that. Creed and Kelly –older, wiser, more experienced, and once again presidential hopefuls for the year 2008-- would claim that the X-Men have done more harm than good, as would a good deal of American citizens. Of course, as soon as there's an attack and the X-Men neglect to show up, they are the same people who demand to know why they weren't there. Still, Xavier's dream continues, carried out by his former students as they do their part to save the world.