How Mutagen Cluster Earned Its Name

A Jarring Transformation…

While searching for weird and wonderful materials for Arcanaut to transform into finely finished components for high end watches, James Thompson, also known as Black Badger, has been known to visit some very strange areas indeed.

Our friendly Canadien migrated from his homeland many centuries ago (he’s older than he looks) and settled in Europe. Thanks to his unnaturally long life, bestowed upon him by the accidental and regrettably undocumented inhalation of a cocktail of mildly poisonous particles ground from countless lumps of rock, metal, plastic, paint, and cursed objects, he’s been forced to adopt a transient lifestyle, reinventing himself and his backstory every few decades to avoid detection.

In between each reinvention, he’s been known to leave Europe and hide out in different locations around the globe, laying low until enough time has passed for him to return to the continent he now calls home without arousing suspicion. One such period of enforced absence occured during the 1980s and saw James living in the sewers of New York, where he befriended an anthropomorphic rat and his four students, known to the world as the “Heroes in a Half Shell”.

Given he is descended from a long line of Badgers, James fit in well with the Turtles and their master, frequently sharing their pizza, partaking in martial arts training, and lusting over a local news reporter who was, concerningly, more interested in one of the turtles than she was in him (there’s no accounting for taste, after all).

Over time, James learned their origin story and how it had everything to do with them having come into contact with a mysterious substance known as “Mutagen”. Intrigued, James decided to use some of the stealth training he undertook while hiding out in the subterranean network of the City That Never Sleeps, and break into the nearby lab responsible for its creation.

The details of that particular escapade cannot be relayed here due to the risk of incriminating the Badger in several felonies that remain unsolved thanks to his swift flight from the scene (being naturally quadripedal, James is surprisingly fast).

However, what we can tell you is that James managed to escape from New York, in possession of a single canister of the glowing-green mutagen, for which he was adament he would one day find a suitable application.

He didn’t have to wait long. The Greyhound bus he boarded at the New York Port Authority bus terminal, took him straight to Detroit, where he took a job under an assumed name, working as a paint bay operator in one of the city’s iconic automobile factories.

One day, a little dizzy after breathing in the solvent-based paint vapour, James thought it would be fun to spray a few cars with the Mutagen to see what happened. To his disappointment, the lack of organic matter meant no transformation occured, and, after the Mutagen/paint mixture had cured, the cars looked relatively normal (if slightly more vivid and distractingly glow-in-the-dark than his line manager had expected).

Unsurprisingly, James was fired immediately for creating a series of cars so eye-catching it wouldn’t have been safe to put them out on the road in that condition, for fear that their arresting appearance would distract other drivers and cause countless RTAs.

His last task before dismissal was to respray every Mutagen green car in either red, black, white, or silver — a task he performed dutifully, before leaving with his tail between his legs.

Saddened by wasting his one canister of Mutagen, he headed back to Europe and settled in Sweden, assuming he would never see that vivid green hue again.

And then Arcanaut happened. James got back in touch with an old colleague from Detroit, who became our loyal supplier of Fordite. One day, while cutting through a recently delivered block of Motor City Agate, James saw the recognisable flash of green he had thought lost to time and misadventure.

Nestled within that innocuous looking lump of cured paint, was the Mutagen overspray, layered with the subsequent colours he’d been forced to used to obscure it. Overjoyed, he began work on crafting the perfect homage to his time as a sewer dweller, proudly installing it in one of Arcanaut’s finest new pieces.

A little about Fordite…

Known also as Detroit or Motor City Agate, Fordite is a fascinating material created as a byproduct of the automobile industry.

Fordite is car paint that has accumulated over time in the paint bays of Detroit area car factories between the 1970s and 1990s.

Each piece is entirely unique, with hundreds of stories revealed by every slice. Sadly, modern car production techniques mean Fordite is no longer produced in such enduring quality, so these pieces are the first and last of their kind.