Oddworld Forums - Oddworld: Actra's Rebellion

I don't have much time to post this, so I'll be breif.

Actra will be a fanfiction until I'm content with my art enough and ready willing to work on the comic.

PROLOGUE

After the fall of the insidious Molluck the Glukkon, the meat processing titan known as RuptureFarms was bought by an ambitious young Glukkon named Judd, who had big ideas not just for his new business, but for the entire Magag Cartel. Abe, the messiah of the Mudokon species, had posed a great threat to the Magog's operations for quite some time, freeing his enslaved brothers and whatnot, and frankly, a lot of Glukkons were on edge about it.

So Judd posed a new idea. His "new" business didn't yet have a workforce, so instead of using Mudokons and just having their asses handed back to them by Abe, they could search for "another poor, dumb race of drooling savages," (his words, not mine) capture a tribe or two of them, and put the poor saps to work. Not Abe's species, not Abe's problem.

Many Glukkons agreed that this plan had potential, including Queen Margeret herself (who had invested almost twenty-five million Moolah into the project with the hopes that Judd could ensure its success), and quickly gave it the green light. With his plan at the starting line, Judd amassed a team of elite Slig troops, who were all reining to go.

Judd had located a race of reclusive, carnivorous mammals known as the Noctero, who had locked themselves away in the caves of the winding canyons along hellish Mongo Rapids. The troops were sent, and quickly overpowered the creatures, who had not fought anything or anyone in nearly three centuries. They were loaded into the bellies of giant cargo ships and put to work, all in one day.

Now, Judd had to make sure that the Noctero behaved themselves for the next thirteen years, as were the terms of Margeret's agreement. At the end of that period of time, and assuming that there would be no major fuck-ups involving this new species, the Noctero would be deemed safe to use as a workforce. If Judd could not hold his end of the bargain and keep them under complete control, Margeret would be out twenty-five million, and Judd would be sentenced to death (hey, these guys practically worship money).

Eleven years and six months later, one of the slaves attempted to escape, a wily young Noc that the other workers called Antonias. He was quickly subdued and placed in a jail cell, but not before his left back fin was sliced in half as a stern reminder.

This story revolves around a 18 year old Noctero named Actra, a relatively quiet girl who makes an unintentional (yet successful) escape, and must make her way back to the factory to save her fellow Noctero from an unjust imprisonment, while learning about her people's history and gaining the aid of a few offbeat characters along the way.

Actra’s Rebellion, Chapter 1: New Rupturefarms

The worker’s floor of the mighty meat-processing titan, New Rupturefarms, is no place for any creature who expects to live to an old age. If the diseases from the raw meat don’t get you, the unprotected meat grinders will. Yet the employees here seem to have the place mapped to the last detail, and we rarely have any casualties.

Everyone working here works odd jobs to get by, and more importantly, to not get shot. The security here is murder, and if you don’t keep up the pace, you won’t last very long. Nobody knows where they take the slackers, but we all agree that it’s not a good place.

My current job was to work the crane on Zulag 12, lifting meat from one conveyer belt to the other. But with three consecutive sleepless days chained to your leg, one tends to become less effective. I was caught asleep at the helm.

I was having a very strange dream of a girl caught in a twisted hallway lined with doors, and behind each door was a horror more dreadful than the last. It was line nothing I’ve ever dreamed about, twisted, and perverted like some gruesome serpent. Then, suddenly, I felt something whack me on the side of my head.

I awoke from my nap to find that something had actually hit my head. I picked it up- it was a wingnut. Then, from the floor below the crane’s cockpit, I heard someone yelling to me.

“Wake up, stupid,” a female voice called up to me. “It’s my shift!”

I rubbed the side of my head and rushed to see who hit me. “Who the fuck throws a wingnut at someone?” I hollered back when I caught sight of them.

“GET OUT OF THE ODD-DAMNED SEAT, ACTRA!” she yelled. I had no idea who this was, but I didn’t want to grab attention. I opened the circular hatch and exited the cockpit, and slid down the ladder.

“What were you doing up there?” she demanded.

“I’ve been awake for three days, give me a break,” I replied, yawning.

“What’s with you, you hopped-up on caffeine or something?”

“Some of us take advantage of the soda machines on Zulag 3,” she replied snobbishly. “You should try it sometime…”

I started down the lit hall. “Yeah, and maybe I should try jamming a circular saw into your flat head, blade first,” I muttered. “There’s a waker-upper, bitch.”

~

I reluctantly grabbed a soda and made my way to the elevators. I had a few stops to make before getting back to my sleeping cell. The first stop was to visit my best friend Lyddea, who worked on the generators on Zulag 5.

Lyddea was a good person to be around. She and I have been friends since the day we were all “relocated” to “work” here. In the absence of my parents, she’s more like family to me, helping me with day-to-day dilemmas, and providing support when I need it.

Lydds is a bit… erm, shall I say… “bustier” than most of the female Noctero here. We’re only fed what the factory produces, and for some reason it all went to her chest. Because of this, she’s unable to fly. Well, scratch that. She can fly, just not very well.

I arrived at Zulag 5 and passed a row of grinders, when I heard wheezing, mumbling and creaking from down the hall adjacent to me. Then, out of the shadows, a hunched, wrinkled figure hobbled into plain view. Just my luck, I was being blocked by everyone’s favorite old, dilapidated, raving ex-preacher, Maresoph.

Now, there’s nothing good about Maresoph. When he speaks, it sounds like claws on glass. His eyes are glassy and faded; yet always seem to be fixed on you. His skin is wrinkled, his hair is greasy, and he smells like a dead slog. Most of all, he hates everyone and everything.

“Actree! Ye didn’t come to church today!” he barked at me. “Where you been that’s so important?!”

I groaned. “You haven’t held a church meeting in 12 years, Maresoph.”

“Ye’d be wise te watch yer tongue, ye filthy wench,” he hissed.

“What lip? I was stating a fact,” I said. “You’re the one who’s getting all pissy over nothing!”

“Do you think yer father would have missed a day of church? Neh, he’d be right here, at this spot, prayin’ to our gods with the rest of us!”

Maresoph pointed to a collaboration of different tubes, screws, bolts and wires that he had arranged to look like a church gathering, like the ones we would have back in Nocturnia. The poor Noctero was losing his mind, in the absence and inability to do what he had done for so many years. He had lost touch with reality, and seemed to actually beleive that the arrangement he had made was truly his old church.

“Wake up, Maresoph,” I said. “Look around you. We’re not in Nocturnia anymore. We’re in the innards of a cold, metal factory, being forced to work in horrible conditions with no pay. Times have changed, and I don’t have time to be praying to to the Fates, especially considering they’re the ones who put us here, in addition to watching my back to make sure I don’t get shot!”

Something about what I said set something off in the old codger’s mind, and he lunged at me with his claws out. I cringed, but felt no impact. I heard Maresoph yelp and looked to see him knocked back into a wall.

Lyddea had found me, apparently hearing the commotion, and gave old and moldy something to remember.

“Back off, Crypt Keeper!” She yelled. Maresoph scrambled up and bounded away on all fours, surprisingly nimble for someone his age.

I brushed my hair back and smiled. “Thanks, Lydds.”

“Girl, you need to be careful what you say to Musty over there. You know he ain’t right in the head.” She smiled back. “So, what’s new?”

“Not really that much,” I said. “You?”

“Ha, I finally found that ratchet I lost, and finally got around to fixing Bessie,” she said. She had a habit of giving each generator a pet name.

“Really? Where was it?” I asked. “Wait, let me guess…”

“Under the control console!” we said in unison.

“Yeah, I’ve lost everything but my own freaking head under there,” she said. “So, why was Golden Oldie back there giving you grief?”

“Eh, he’s going stir-crazy over not being able to hold a service,” I snorted. “Yeah, like we’ve got jack to praise.”

“Or time to do it,” she added. “You told him that, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what did it. The guy’s crazy.”

“No question,” she said. “So, want to grab a bite to eat? Ten Moolah gets us a pair of Slurg Sundaes at the bar.”

“Sure, why not?” I shrugged.