#would yall believe me if i said there's more. cause there's a lot more SDKJGHSDKJGH

[liturgusakrattorum]

runes story infodumping while i eat lunch :3 this ended up being a bit long so i’ll put this under a read more LOL

AtroCorp Biotechnologies is part medical company, part wildlife research startup. founded by Dr. Cassius Castellanos, the company's spent over 50 years finding ways to help humans by learning how animals have evolved to survive and incorporating it into their medical technology. Dr. Castellanos unfortunately passed away about a year ago, leaving his son, Corvus, to take up the reins.

during this year's international villains' convention, AtroCorp announced a partnership with Pave Nature, Inc. to build several new branches of its company. alongside that, both companies revealed a fantastic new technology AtroCorp had unearthed: Creature Power Runes. AtroCorp itself had been researching them for years beforehand, but they'd recently discovered the existence of several more beyond the few they already had.

Paisley, being this year's convention spokeswoman, introduced the Hunt — an international race among the villains to locate the remaining Runes. Whoever got their hands on one was free to use them however they wanted (they sell for incredibly high prices!). This obviously got the attention of Donita, Gourmand, and Zach, each for their own reasons.

Donita found that the Runes could be used for her new jewelry line, and the animalistic features that contact with one of them tended to create was the perfect way to accessorize her work. Gourmand believed the Runes could be refined into exquisite spices that he could sell at the next location he opens.

And Zach -- ever the robotic genius -- knew he could use the Runes to power his animal-based technology, should he find a way to tap into their full power. Plus, they were a hell of a lot easier to wrangle than live creatures.

Meanwhile, the Tortuga Crew (none the wiser to the Hunt that had been announced just a month or so before) have been doing their own research into the three Runes Aviva had found prior to putting the team together. At the time things kick off, the crew is in possession of the Arctic Wolf, Peregrine Falcon, and Cheetah Runes.

The crew gets roped into everything when Zach attempts to steal the Runes from them; Martin and Chris learn about the Hunt after stumbling upon Zach’s plans on his ship. The crew realizes. Hm! This could get ugly if the Runes end up in the wrong hands. And so they make it their goal to get their hands on whatever Runes they can before the villains do.

A majority of the story follows the crew as they travel around the world and do their thing (kinda similar to what we see in the canon show, except there’s that overarching plot of piecing together what’s happening in the background). Alongside doing their field work, Chris and Koki are working together to discover the origin of the Runes, although much of their research has turned up very little. The two of them have at least narrowed down their search to somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, but the exact location is still unknown.

Coincidentally, much of their progress comes from their run-ins with Pave Nature and AtroCorp. After discovering multiple excavation sites around the world, the crew learned that the two companies are looking for the same thing they are. (Also coincidentally, Aviva seems particularly uncomfortable every time the crew encounters AtroCorp...)

So far, Martin and Chris are the only ones who can use a Creature Power Suit. Aviva’s inventions are mostly compatible with the Runes, although there’s still a lot of malfunctions she needs to fix. The more the bros test em out, the better of an understanding she has of how Rune technology works. This actually ends up becoming the basis of the Creature Power Disks later :]