Sally, The Runaway Seamstress
Finally put together a full reference sheet of my girl Sally, sort of a finalized/rebooted version of her after bringing this blog back to life! She’s my daughter my booboo keys and I love her very much wehh
General backstory for her under the cut—
Following the RuptureFarms revolt of 1029, the meat industry of Oddworld did what it always did best; adapt, rebrand, and expand. Though the development of Mudokon Pops had taken a temporary hit, the underlying demand never went away. A “limited-time” softlaunch eventually became a quiet relaunch under new subsidiaries such as Anklebiterz Industries, co-owned through a lattice of shell corporations so tangled that even the Board could claim plausible deniability.
Before “Sally” ever named herself, before she could think to have a name, she was only a number attached to a barcode. A product that was meant to be fresh chopped up meat. These weren’t children, her and her siblings, they were livestock. She was ready to be sent to the chopping block alongside the rest of her clutch when she turned barely half a month, never knowing anything, barely any thought, outside of the mechanical lull that designated feeding time and the blaring lights that made the blood stain all the brighter. Her whole life, barely even one, was set in stone, only for a soft-hearted Slig to break his working oath to free her. It was a split second decision, with even fewer time to commit. He had barely managed to smash her free of the cuffs around the wrists, and left a single ankle chain bound tightly around her before preparing her in the time they had for the outside.
He gave her bits of food that wasn’t specially processed paste. He gave her clothes - the only clothes she’d ever been given, a large cream shirt so baggy it nearly dragged at her ankles. But the fabric was soft, and even just the covering with this soft shirt felt comforting. Something inside of her already began to shift. Finally, the Slig used a small rope to tie around her waist a sack of supplies before ultimately tossing her out through a nearby garbage chute.
Where most chutes of garbage led to a bloodier and bladed death sentence, this one was connected to the sewer pipes that cascaded all the way to the wall outside. The child only knew then that she had to run. Run. Run. The cold wind burned against her face and the darkness of the outside world overloaded her senses from the sights, the smells, the feeling of gravel and sand and dirt. She didn’t know anything but to run, because despite her curiosity she was scared, and alone, and didn’t know what she was, except that the scary people on the inside of that sterile place wanted her dead. By now, her siblings all already were.
It didn’t take long though for her ears to catch the sound of pained whimpering. Through the frigid cold, the young Mudokon found an escaped slog puppy, one of its ankles clearly hurt from how it struggled to stand on just one paw. It was small, terrified, and abused, just like her. She didn’t want this young sloggie to also be scared. With neither incapable of speech, there was still an understanding that neither wanted to hurt each other, and instead curled up against one another to be protected from the terrifying cold wind until the morning.
Through teary eyes, there was one sliver of light that caught her attention. Up in the sky, pushed past the darkened clouds, was the moon. And the little girl lifted her paw up towards it, matching it to the one cratered into the moon’s surface.
From then on, as the years flew by, the young girl traveled alongside the sloggie, who she named “Ruth” from the sounds of her barks. A lot of their wandering in the early years mostly consisted of them hiding away from the manufacturing and industrial factories planted throughout Mudos, working together to hunt for fruits and meats, and outrunning anything that tried to hunt them. She uses communication with Ruth through a series of whistling patterns and clicks of the tongue, primarily for needing to call her, for her to attack, or to send her out to smell out any danger.
She’d come to know a few circles of the free muds as well through her travels, where even when she was young, refused to take her from being an enslaved mudokon. They considered her a lost cause that wouldn’t be able to properly survive and understand their culture. Her slaving brand was unfortunately shown clear to all that saw her, on account of the permanent branding on the back of her neck and her ankle chain. However, the longer she survived and encountered these natives, the more they did consider her. And while she still wasn’t permitted to sleep or be close to their tribes, they did start establishing trading with her, offering to give her different beads, fabrics and material in return for the meats and skins she’s able to hunt.
Sally has witnessed a great deal of misery and enslavement, and the violence that upholds it throughout these years in her struggle to survive out in Mudos. She’s gained a clear understanding of the ‘what’ when it comes to this horrible, bloody mangling of her kind, but the answers being refused to her are the ‘why.’ The natives are tight-lipped about it, and no one else she’s come across wants to share those secrets whenever they’re not trying to shoot at her. Her only comforts through these terrors are Ruth, the identity she’s slowly been managing to stitch out for herself, and her weapon. There is the comfort in being able to kill whatever enemies come to try and take her back to Anklebiterz, or any other place that wants her dead.
All of this has made her a brave seven year old (14 human years). She still retains a curious naivety towards discovering new places that are left waiting to be found in Mudos, and has found that she carries a great fondness towards crochet, sewing, and stitching together clothes. She’s found herself wise beyond her years and is capable of taking care of herself and those around her. Having to practically raise herself in an environment where modern standards and values are irrelevant towards her kind, Sally is considerably rash, foul-mouthed, impulsive, and temperamental, and is unfazed by the notion of using violence as a means to an end or profanity as a way of expressing how she feels. However, she manages to maintain a particular innocence as she has yet to see the darkest sides of Glukkon nature, and retains a palpable trust in people.
Sally is also perceptibly clever and witty, and will do whatever it takes to keep Ruth and herself alive. She has a good survival instinct and she can be resourceful. She’s willing to take orders from any adult Mudokon she has a respect for, but all the while makes it clear that she doesn’t need “any babysitting” about it.
She’s managed to collect all sorts of trinkets relating to her status in sewing: rotary cutters, scissors, marking tools, and a variety of needles and pins. Not even counting the patches of differing fabrics and material she’s adapted to work with. One of the first things she was able to pilfer from some abandoned housing was an industrial picture book, and thought the zappflys were cute, but fuzzles frightened her.
Sally also suffers severely from survivor’s guilt, reflected in how she isolates herself from others in fear of being a cause in losing anybody else she gets close to. The cause of these pains stem from her being the only one that was able to be saved from her clutch, with the knowledge that the rest, and clutches of young afterwards were doomed to become Mudokon Pops. She finds herself haunted by waking nightmares of her siblings, sometimes even feeling as if the very spirits of her clutch are looming over her. Various jingles and semblances of those times in her pen are enough to send her into a frozen panic. She tends to clamp up during those periods of pain; wringing her hands together, plucking her feathers off, and becoming prone to snapping and lashing out.
Sally also shows difficulties in positioning herself as a young mud in a good handful of adults’ eyes, and sometimes even tends to “supervise” adults with how often she takes up hunting and killing for them. She also takes “justice” into her own hands on her relationship with anyone, and does not think she requires any adults’ consent for her actions.
Initially when first running from Anklebiterz, she’s fairly unskilled in survival techniques and self-defense in combat, especially hand-to-hand or against other animals. She had to rely on Ruth to be able to take down other creatures and gain ground from enemies. Her first weapon that she keeps on her is a switchblade, which is her main tool for a while until she’s able to use her pins and needles for projectile weaponry. But through time she’s able to become more proficient with combat, especially with a bow and arrow set. And with Ruth growing to an above average size of a slog she’s able to ride on her to easily travel and run from any danger as well. Sally’s small size and agility also gives her a great advantage, learning to maneuver quickly through terrain and hazardous traps that cross her path.
It’s going to take a while before she feels ready to combat Anklebiterz Corporation, and any other industry that is determined to strip the land of its people of everything, but the moment she understands the threads that have been stitched into the fabric of this world’s history, she’ll be ready to return every moment of that cruelty in kind.
