“You have faced such pain and rejection, yet returned here with nothing but courage and compassion within you. Take my blessing; you have always had it, even before proving yourself more than deserving.”
You ever summon God, take it back to your village, use its power to obliterate the industrialists trying to gouge your colony’s home right out of the cliff it’s built into, then try to get mad at it only for it to give you the affirmation you’ve always needed about being trans? Marek’s had a very long week.
MINI COMIC just went up on Patreon for $5+ patrons! as I do more of these this is where they’re gonna be going up first (along with all my other comics, including Beta Stratagem and A Plague of Smoke). I’ll be doing original stuff as well as Oddworld stuff and I might have some exclusive comics further down the line, so if you want in on it... go pledge :^)
Queens queens queens. I have characters too reliant on my own fanon to make a complete switch over to canon versions without their plotlines just totally collapsing buuuuuuuut I dig the canon designs and I want em to at least bear a clear resemblance, like they look like they could feasibly grow into canonical breeding queens
Some Mudrysi drone clothing/ceremonial stuff I was working on a couple months back before I changed up their designs ‘cause the stuff I’ve drawn before isn’t nearly big and over-the-top enough. Most of these would probably still hold up with some tweaking to adjust to the new body type I’m drawing them with
aaaaand then some redesign notes for pre-existing Dove Reki boys ft. some general notes on drone anatomy. I mostly wanted to pin down Arevik but I accidentally scratched out some good designs for some of the active drones too. Translating their old designs into this new shape is surprisingly tricky especially since a lot of my old drawings don’t have a whole lot of variation like they do now so I’m just kinda fumbling blindly trying to pin down their looks lmao
All of this information has essentially been in development for 18 months, and this post specifically has probably taken two or three to put together, so I’m really excited to post it finally! (Fullsize the hell out of this to read the text on the images)
Much of Marek’s story takes place away from Dove Reki, but their home is still very important to them and they have very strong familial and cultural ties. This is kind of a peek into the environment where they grew up and how it shaped them, and they do eventually go on to revisit it all some years down the line. I also just love to worldbuild within the existing framework that Oddworld provides and this kind of thing is REALLY fun to put together. Tbh I may do another one of these delving deeper into some stuff that’s only touched on here, but this is a pretty good summary of all of the basic important stuff about Dove Reki Mudrysi.
More info on Dove Reki under the cut!
INTRODUCTION
Dove Reki is a Mudrysi village, home to about 250 mudokons, including Nadira, the current active queen, and Radomir, Neveniy, Lazarik and Dalimil, the active drones.
The village has become something of a safe haven in recent years; as industrialists seek out new land to gouge out and profit from, many Mudrysi settlements have been destroyed, their residents driven out, killed, or enslaved.
Those that make it out alive often flock to Dove Reki, as one of the few villages left as yet untouched by industrial activity. As such, it is not uncommon for the village population to jump en-masse every now and again.
Despite the ever-dwindling numbers of their tribespeople and the threat of displacement and destruction looming, life in Dove Reki is still fairly peaceful. Its residents carry on with normal life as best they can, tending to crops, hunting and gathering food in the forest, crafting, singing, riding out in the forest, and communicating when possible with the scarce few other Mudrysi villages that are still standing.
SOCIAL ROLES
Social roles in Dove Reki and most Mudrysi clans see mudokons divided into four categories:
Active queens: the queen in any given village who has developed, or is in the process of developing, into her full reproductive state and is responsible for populating both her village and often some other intermediary villages between colony centres. Her drones play a large part in caring for her, and though her opinion carries much weight in politics and other serious issues that dictate the future of the whole village or colony, she has little to do with the day-to-day operations that keep the village running.
Active drones: drones that have married into a clan outside the one they were born into, and are or will be mating with the resident queen. Having several drone spouses is common, and they tend to many of the queen's needs, but tribal norms dictate that they need not necessarily be romantically involved with the queen. They may seek romantic relationships elsewhere, though the specific act of mating with another queen is heavily frowned upon.
Matricheks: young queens and drones who have yet to enter their active breeding state; these queens are termed "dormant" until the act of mating triggers the metamorphosis into their fully-developed state, and both queens and their drone siblings will be considered matricheks until they marry and/or begin reproducing, even if they are considered to have reached adulthood in terms of age. Marriage out of their home village takes place around the age of eight or nine, though most do not start reproducing until the age of 10.
Workers: everyone else; the term typically applies to the smaller, sterile mudokons that make up the bulk of the population, but it is also possible for matricheks to abdicate from their reproductive roles and assume the role of a worker. Referred to as worker-drones and worker-queens, this is an issue that has become a topic of heated discussion in recent years as the population of Mudrysi - and mudokons in general - have waned, and worker-queens and drones are currently viewed in poor light by most remaining Mudrysi.
Body paint and jewellery are used to denote status; gold jewellery is reserved for actives and matricheks, and body paint stripes on the shoulders, arms, hands, head/face and sometimes chest identify a mudokon as being of a particular role and/or status.
Head: horizontal stripes are used for actives and matricheks. Vertical stripes are used by shamans. Archers wear a target symbol.
Shoulders/arms: actives and matricheks have a symbol on the shoulder designating them as a queen (circle) or drone (triangle). Stripes on the arms correlate to status within the clan. This is not a rigid system, and is based on general life experience, though matricheks will automatically be of high status due to their vital importance in the future of their kind.
Lower arms/hands: if wearing sleeves, a person's stripes and reproductive designation may be painted on the forearms and backs of hands instead.
Chest: target patterns are worn by archers and hexagons by shamans.
Other: shamans' ceremonial paints may involve more, thicker stripes anywhere on the arms and legs. Ceremonial paints for non-shamans also vary wildly depending on the occasion and can be anywhere on the body.
In addition to paint, crowns are often worn for celebrations and other special occasions. These crowns are interwoven with flowers and feathers, with colour, flower choice and feather amounts/lengths varying by occasion and intended meaning. They are most commonly used in marriage ceremonies.
CLOTHING
Clothing is a key aspect of cultural identity for Mudrysi, both as members of the tribe at large and of their individual clans. Diamonds are a commonly-used pattern, and red and earthy colours chosen, though the specific styles will vary slightly between clans and colonies.
Dove Reki Mudrysi experience very varied weather, and their clothing can be minimal or heavy depending on what the season calls for. Layering of multiple garments is common. Linen wraps may be used to cover parts of the body when thinner fabric is required, preferred because they can be used for many different purposes aside from covering the body. Moccasins or footwraps are worn in the winter months.
PROMINENT LOCATIONS
The Thunder Plains are quite possibly the most important place to the Mudrysi. When a test of will, strength, faith or truth is necessary, the Thunder Plains are where these trials take place. Some simply require survival on the Plains for a short period of time; others involve longer stretches, deliberately trying to subject oneself to lightning strikes, and locating the temple chambers below to drop off or retrieve an item there.
The temple chambers are part of a larger network of caves under the surface of Mudos, with a path connecting to the Monsaic Lines somewhere deep within them. They have barely been utilised in recent years, with the Mudrysi population shrinking and those remaining not wanting to cause their numbers to fall even more out on the Plains where it is possible that one might die, but much of the infrastructure is still intact, if overgrown.
The temple itself is a huge, wooden tower constructed upon a stone plinth. Most of the interior is open space, but there are hundreds and hundreds of rooms build around the perimeter. Some use these rooms as meditation spaces; others have been turned into shrines for lesser spirits, or memorials for specific people of cultural and sometimes personal significance.
Mudrysi beliefs involve a number of lesser spirits and supernatural creatures, but the core of their worship centres around Perrun, a deity often depicted as a many-eyed worm or thunder cloud and strongly associated with lightning. In the centre of the temple stands Perrun's Post: a huge totem bearing Perrun's image, said to contain part of its spirit, which watches over ceremonies acted out on the altars and within the circle that it overlooks.
Similar rooms to those inside and beneath the temple are hewn into the rock all throughout the temple chambers. These rooms were once used as living and storage spaces, private ceremonial rooms, and had a slew of other uses, before the number of mudokons visiting them regularly plummeted. The temple chambers were a safe haven and sacred space, and on occasion will be visited by the few intrepid mudokons still dedicated enough to seek them out.
When you have nothing, where do you go?
What do you do when everything you’ve ever known,
is now but rubble and spilt blood in the snow?
Rokovek and an as-yet-unnamed friend, slogging through the worst of winter after their village fell to industrial interests like so many others. Eventually they find Dove Reki and, for at least a little while, can have some peace.
New boy new reference!!! Rokovek is a character I started thinking up back in like... September? I was doing a lot of studies of official Oddworld art at the time n realised for all the extra feathers that are worn/grown as depicted in a lot of the art for Munch’s Oddysee I needed to step my game up and stick more feathers on people
Roki is... an incredibly troubled individual who arrives in Dove Reki during the years Marek is absent. Traditionally, the core Mudrysi rules for resurrection are 1) spirits only, no physical bodies, 2) a short period of time only, and 3) only in the most dire circumstances where that person’s mind/experiences are vital to the problem at hand ‘cause it’s rude to drag people out of the afterlife bed for no good reason. Some clans are a little more lax about what’s deemed necessary, some outlaw resurrection in any shape or form no matter what. In recent years, though, with their numbers shrinking, some clans have... loosened these rules a bit; in Dove Reki, bolstering their numbers takes priority over the will of the universe, though resurrections are still limited to those deemed to have died “before their time”. It’s still a controversial issue, but resurrected muds (and those who resurrect them) aren’t completely ostracised or forcibly removed from the community. Other villages stand by their strict no resurrection rules. Some have completely given up on them.
Upon Marek’s return to Dove Reki some years after they left, they take quite a liking to Rokovek. Rokovek is actually related to Marek’s father (born of the same queen; technically a sibling, but Rokovek never knew Radomir prior to taking up residence in Dove Reki, so in terms of age and familiarity Rokovek is more of a sibling to Marek than to Radomir), and Marek sympathises a lot with Rokovek’s internal conflict over whether they’re doing right by their community while at the same time wanting to abandon responsibility for freedom.
