A mildly rhetorical question.
 

I'm curious about something. As we all(probably) know, all the sligs in the work force are born from the same mother- Queen Skillya -and are generally born nice enough until the Gluck society beats them into lazy killers. Here's my question. As far as I know, there's no canonical artwork of the queen herself. We don't know what she really looks like, but we can guess.

Some things just don't make sense to me. Seeing as how sligs don't behave like hive-minded creatures, we can't assume that Skillya was born into this life. There may be a queen caste, but the fact of the matter is that in order to breed an effective workforce the sligs cannot be directly inbred, so she has to be breeding with another male. Also, since there are no wild sligs running about, her mate is most likely either singular, or not alive and a genetically cloned sperm supply. We can probably assume the latter, because male sligs seem to have a pretty short lifespan, either by age or gunfire. She can't have lived this life herself though, because she probably would have died before she was able to reproduce.

So, we have a single female from a species extinct in the wild, reproducing at a wildly fast rate most likely through constant in-vitro fertilization. She is of a species born with a kind and loving heart, and each and every one of her children is being hoisted slithery tail first into the Magog cartel to get mean or die trying.

Why the hell does everyone draw her looking mean? Imagine if you had that life. Either she is one hell of a twisted slig, or she is absolutely miserable and held against her will. If anyone knows any more about her, please do tell. I'm always annoyed when something interesting is under explained and then abandoned as a concept. Either way I prefer to draw her as a chained and tied amputee.

She isn't a bowl of cherries. Insubordinate sligs have to face her in person, and then she eats them.

Many queen insects mate only once, and use that stock of sperm to fertile all of her eggs for the rest of her life.

Hmm, so that's the assumption? It's funny, I thought of that about ten seconds after posting... Some biology student I am. Still, the point stands.

Skillya is not the only Slig queen, nor the only one who leases her children off as security grunts. The Sligs so far seen are not male, they are sexless workers. And she is indeed mean and greedy. The queens has no motherly feelings towards their children supposedly because of how painful they are to give birth to.

I don’t see them in chains, but it would stand to reason there is a not-so-clearcut but as yet unrevealed backstory to their industrialization.

What Max said. With the addendum that just because we haven't seen something yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Although Sligs are gender-neutral, they have a male personality - in a similar way to the Mudokons. Skillya seems to be akin to Sam, the mating male scenario seems unlikely, since we haven't heard about that at all. The Sligs do look incredibly similar so far (although this could be due to lack of technology at the time of the games), so it might be potentially possible that they are all cloned? I'm not sure.

It's true that Sligs aren't quite like hive creatures. They smoke, socialize and gamble. However, keep in mind the fact that there are many creatures on this world who act in unusual ways and display strange behavior. There are animals which do not fit into one specific animal kingdom. Example: Platypus (classed as mammals) lay eggs and milk is produced from their sweat glands!

I would think of Skillya in a similar way to the way I think about Sam. I would probably write about Skillya in the same way, someone who is mentally devoid of emotion, has been pushed to the limits through chemicals and is ready to snap at anything she deems 'wrong'. Slig soup must be nice if she enjoys eating it a lot :D

(Yes I love Sligs!)

Milk is produced from our sweat glands. And there are stranger things about platypus than egg-laying.

I read this title as "a mildly retarded question". Not being funny. I did a little double take.