crustiest old slugcats this side of rubicon
been working on this crossover for a good while now. was like "it'd be funny to put a pile bunker on a rainworld vulture" and then i doodled a 621 slugcat to go with their pet pilebunker and the rest is history
arquebus and balam are also iterators now (advancement despite division/through material force). not iterators in the traditional sense, they're here to serve as staging grounds/living quarters/war platforms for their respective peoples, who originally had their eyes set on a specific void-affected region with weird properties and were willing to fight each other for access to it.
the iterator solitary overseer was built over a very void-affected region as a research outpost, which went fine until the arquebus/balam ancient facrions saw the region and decided they wanted it
mostly because everyone wanted to be the first ones to figure out the whole deal with it, and perhaps get famous off sparking a second scientific void revolution if they're lucky. whole space race type situation except it's a void race and all sides are not above straightup killing each other.
when the ancients all disappeared their iterators did not stop. when sapient life popped up ADD and TMF both grabbed their local slugcats and scavengers and enlisted them in the conflict. after enough fighting, SO tried to stop it all and their plan triggered the rainworld equivalent of the fires of ibis. congrats dude that's the worst anyone's done it
snail's from ADD's region outright and grew up in a time when they were already very well known- he aimed to become one of their most trusted agents and got there. this went directly to his head and now he thinks that he speaks their will.
michigan's originally from a nomadic slugcat colony who passed througn TMF's region and basically got detained. he initially led his colony to fight back, but eventually managed to strike a deal with TMF to stay if the rest of his colony was is allowed to gtfo
walter was found as a slugpup by iterator solitary overseer (rubicon research institute narrative equivalent). they're dead now and he's trying to finish what they could not, as per canon. i think he actually got handed off to michigan's colony pre-fires which is how the two of 'em know each other
rusty's from SO's region, post-fires, same with the rest of the rubicon liberation front. here they just wanna fucking live can these goddamn iterators stop sending purposed organisms and other slugcat/scavengers to fight right over their homes ffs
also SO is named after overseer despite being the RRI equivalent because walter's using their comms equipment and therefore their name in the current day. yes it gets confusing sorry
