Mudokon

Mudokons are the main race in Mudos. Once a proud, spiritual people who lived off the land, their legacy has become lost because of exploitation by industrial forces. They are the primary slave labour of the Magog Cartel.

Role in Industrial Society

When they are enslaved by the Magog Cartel, Mudokons are forced to perform menial and undesirable tasks such as waxing floors, removing graffiti, felling trees, farming, butchering livestock, pulling levers and picking up Slog poo. In Necrum Mines they are blinded and made to dig up the bones of their ancestors. Military organisations test bullets and grenades on Mudokons. They are employed more sparingly by the Vykkers Conglomerate for cleaning, and much more likely used to test toxins and diets.

As well as providing slave labour, they are also a resource of sorts: Small security outposts are powered by Mudokons in a running wheel. SoulStorm Brew’s main ingredient is mined from Mudokon burial grounds, and the secret ingredient is extracted by suspending Mudokons upside down and repeatedly electrocuting them when they stop producing tears. Plans have also been made to use Mudokon meat in the latest Tasty Treat products, although Glukkons with a more exuberant palette are suspected to eat Mudokons already.

They are viewed by industrial society generally as being savage barbarians, as they are branded by Glukkon propaganda. Although some live the full consumer lifestyle in Mudos’s big cities, Mudokons are much more usually used as disposable fodder such as in the successful TV gameshow Name That Trauma and the popular sport Mudokon Tossing. Sligs love to exercise their sadistic tendencies by beating Mudokons with the butt of their rifle.

Employment

Mudokons are helpful and obedient and will follow the instructions of others without any care for their existing duties and responsibilities. This makes them prime targets for Magog Cartel employment, as they will forget the traditions they otherwise preserve with dedication when forced to work. They are also gullible and have addictive personalities, so they easily fall into Glukkon traps. One common tactic is to introduce natives to SoulStorm Brew or other addictive products and then satisfy their dependency only if they sign up for employment.

Native Society

The few remaining native Mudokons are a dying breed. They live their lives peacefully and in tune with nature and meditate in the hopes of reaching enlightenment. Their primary interest, however, is to strongly defend and protect what traditions and culture still remain in Mudokon society. Liberated workers, by contrast, are more happy to enjoy their freedom chatting, eating, and playing games such as Meep Tossing, SpooceBall and hackey sack. Beyond everyday tasks such as herding Meep and fishing for food, they put little effort into exploring deeper spiritual matters.

This dysfunctional relationship means that native Mudokons do not take kindly to escaped slaves. City folk are treated, in Monsaic Lines at least, with trepidation and are required to repeat password whistles to move about freely. However, with the help of Abe, the Mudokons have slowly been coming together to fight their common cause.

Native and liberated Mudokons now have to devote a lot of their time to defence against Slig security and ever‐approaching Glukkon forces, and to repairing the environmental damage left in the industrialists’ wake: regrowing trees, watering the land and nurturing growth. They fulfil sustainable subsistence roles such as fishing, hunting, stewarding animals, undertaking, and caring for the health of the land in order to proudly preserve their heritage.

The Mudokon mother tongue is a harmonious musical language comprising various whistled tunes. Their love of music, typical of all of Oddworld’s native races, is expressed in statues such as the Song Engine, which welcomes friends and wards off enemies with its mystic music. Mudokons perform ritualistic dances around fires to the highly rhythmic beating of huge drums.

Mudokon hideouts are scattered throughout Mudos, found in subterranean vaults and dense swamps, awaiting a true leader to bring together the strengths and dedication of all the Mudokon sub‐cultures. Forgotten temples and shrines on the fringes of Mudos contain accounts of the Mudokons’ mysterious past.

Physiology

Mudokons are very agile but very clumsy. Their paws and feet are very large and cumbersome, and they have only three fingers per paw. Typically, they are somewhat emaciated in the wild and in captivity, though cases of obesity are recorded. Mudokons evolved from birds and retain many anatomical features from their ancestry, such as their lightweight and possibly‐hollow bones, which give Mudokons their famous fragility, in particular their skulls. Their hair stems from a single point on the crown of their head and is remarkably feather‐like. They have evolved teeth, but in addition have a kind of gizzard for additional mechanical digestion.

Mudokons are green‐skinned except for the Messiah Abe, but are chameleonic and have the ability to change the pigmentation of their skill to better express their mood—​angry Mudokons turn red; happy and wired Mudokons turn more vividly green, even yellow; depressed and suicidal Muds become deep shades of blue; blind Mudokons become pale‐skinned, though this is most likely just a reaction to lack of sunlight. Mudokons live for around 40 years.

Status

• Scrubs

Employed Worker Class Mudokons are the lowliest of the lowly. They are dressed in black‐and‐white‐striped loincloths and caps and their ponytails are tied back or cut off before they are forced to perform slave labour, though other suitable outfits are available for workers in specialised professions, such as hardhats for deforesters and red‐and‐yellow‐striped clothes for those working in the service sector. Sometimes their lips are stitched together to prevent them talking, or their eyes are stapled closed so they are not aware of what they are doing.

• Flakes

Freed Worker Class Mudokons are not greeted with open arms by native Mudokons, but the relationship between the two subcultures in growing. Flakes are generally plain in appearance, but are rediscovering traditional fashions such as topknots and body paint.

• Posers

The lowest of the native status ranks, Posers untie their ponytails to let their feather‐like hair bush out from their heads. They also wear moderate body paints.

• Big Kahonees

These Muds have impressive hairstyles of flowing feathers.

• Shamans

The most spiritually‐awakened Mudokons have hair that reaches the ground and are covered from head to toe in body paint. They spend their time meditating, preserving the cultural iconography of their ancestors, and occasionally assisting other Mudokons in their search for greater spirituality.

• Tomahawkers

Tomahawkers carry gem‐encrusted tomahawks to defend their settlements.

• Mudarchers

Mudarchers wear gem‐firing, Spooce‐powered crossbows on their wrists.

History

Mudokons evolved in the forests of Mudos. Millennia ago, they and the Glukkons lived side by side peacefully until the appearance of what today is called Abe’s Moon. The Mudokons were quick to point out this was an omen stating their status as the Chosen Race, but this upset the Glukkons who formed their own closed society until they joined Oddworld’s industrial races and began employing Mudokons. However, this relationship degenerated into the one seen in modern times.

Little is known of Mudokon history before this scism, stories of their great deeds and accomplishments gone untold for so many generations. One legend that has survived tells of how Necrum was defended against invaders by creatures known as Guardians. Age‐old walkways and towering temples stand proud across Mudos, telling of the Mudokons’ once‐famed engineering skill, while historic rockart and giant sculptures standing in Monsaic Lines and Scrabania stand as testaments to their ancestors’ artistry. The poems and prophecies of ancient Mudokons can still be read, foretelling the coming of Abe the Messiah, and these are highly revered and believed.

Along with this forgotten achievement is a lack of knowledge of some of the more questionable activities performed by their ancestors. While not warlike themselves, many Mudokons were skilled in the art and tactics of warfare and freely advised races how best to battle one another.

In escaping from RuptureFarms and fulfilling ancient prophecies, the Mudokon Abe sparked a new hope for his race by shutting down Glukkon factories such as his former workplace and SoulStorm Brewery, saving the sacred dead from being disturbed and trapped, and rescuing the Mudokon queen Sam from the Vykkers.

Tribes

Mudokons were once a tribal people, each tribe having its own distinct culture. Individual identity was propagated through the now‐lost arts of body manipulation and tattoos, though these customs are now being rediscovered following the exodus of Scrubs from Magog Cartel facilities.

Mudomo

The Mudomo lived in the forests and were a constructive people who built great structures and statues. They took up the Paramites as a symbol of their peacefulness and put them in their vaults below Necrum to guard their bones.

Mudanchee

The Mudanchee were the second tribe of Necrum, famed for their adeptness at warfare. Accordingly, they assumed the symbol of the mighty Scrab. It is thought these are the origins of today’s worship of Scrabs and Paramites.

Mudmeechee/Mudoncho

It is suspected by some that there was a lost, black sheep of the Necrum tribes that worshipped the Meech, though such rumours are vehemently denied.

Mulletokon

In Mudos’s deep south, the fashion‐ and party‐oriented Mulletokon styled their hair with berries to be short at the front and long at the back. They kept Slogs, but were unhinged by their legendary Brew addiction, leaving the Slogs unfed and uncared for. It is suggested that this is the source of all Slogs’ temperaments today.

Architecture

Mudokons a highly skilled craftsmen even today, when their engineering lacks anywhere near the ability it had in the distant past. They established and controlled an intricate and complex system of transport fashioned from naturally‐occurring wells and built towering temples perfectly adapted to their purpose. All Mudokon structures are built from renewable resources such as wood, rock, vines and skins and powered by renewable energy sources like the sun, wind and water. Muscle power and spiritual energy are also used a lot.

Nowadays, Mudokon architecture is simple and practical, and designed to reintegrate with nature when Mudokons are forced to migrate because of encroaching industrial activity. Common buildings found in modern Mudokon villages include:

• Huts

Mudokon housing is small and basic, constructed of wood and bound with twine. It is not intended as permanent housing.

• Windmills

All villages have a windmill or two for the storage of grains and other supplies. Activated windmills will have smoke drifting from the top. Their shells are made from several layers of wood, and their sails are stretched animal skins. The interiors feature finely detailed woodwork.

• Grain silos
• Lookout towers

Watchtowers allow Mudokons to survey the land and watch out for Slig security. Pillboxes are supported on tall towers of wooden spires, or built into cliff faces or fortresses. Access is through wells, allowing the control of who enters the towers.

• Fortresses

These forts were built more as a resting place for weary travellers to be welcomed to and cared for at and a meeting place for natives, though as the lands surrounding the Big Well were occupied by Slig security and Glukkon factories, they offered defence against their invasion, though not for long.

• Zap Henges

Zap Henges intensify Mudokons’ Spooce mojo allowing great movements and activations to be performed. Several Mudokons chant around the circle and their energy is channelled into lightning.

• Resurrection Totems

Though Mudokons have far from attained enlightenment, they are so in tune with nature that the very‐recently deceased can be brought back into being by giving Spooce to Resurrection Totems.

• Transformation Shrines

Abe can upgrade the power of his Marching Mudokons by bringing them to Transformation Shrines and giving Spooce. Ten Spooce are needed to upgrade an unarmed native to a Tomahawker and again to a Mudarcher.

• Storm Circles

Storm Circles channel Mudokons’ spiritual energy to produce lightning and rain clouds. Usually this is to restore the health of the land, but reflecting devices can be held aloft above the circles by Meetles to direct the energy at industrial factories.

• Regeneration wells

Injured Mudokons can immerse themselves in these wells to be healed and rejuvenated.

• Story stones

Though not so much a construction as a device, story stones litter the lands of the Mudokons dispensing valuable information to travellers. Large amounts of Mudokon literature are placed on these spiritual parchments, such as the prophecies that foretold the coming of Abe.

Religion

Currently, the Mudokons worship the land and the animals that live on it (especially the Paramites and Scrabs, though they would still regard Meeches as sacred were they not extinct). Discovered Mudokon temples include the Paramonian Temple, Scrabanian Temple, Necrum Temple, Temple of Life and Windmill Temple. Monsaic Lines are the Mudokons’ holy caves where they explore their spirituality.

Over time they will discover that true enlightenment will come when their search their own souls, which will allow them to empower themselves and eventually overcome death.

See Also

Abraham Lure Monsaic Lines Paramonian Temple