Three years after this story died out, I'm back to let you guys know what happened next. Writing fiction is no easy feat, and it's always painful to come to the end of a good story or series to find that it was never finished, and you will be forever left wondering what would have happened next. I remember trying to piece together threads of Sl'Askia's stories using hints given in annotations to her art and in Teal's partner-stories.
So, encouraged by the birth of the Fanfiction Library, I have decided to write a summary of the unwritten parts of this story to let any past or future readers know where the quest of the Orb would have ended. I hope readers new and old can enjoy this conclusion and I'm just sorry I never finished it!
Of the next chapter I wrote only the first paragraph, but for the sake of posterity, here it is!
Chapter 7, Goal
It was only a few hours the next day before they came out from under the trees to a wide plain of thin grass. Looking up, Barry could see 3 tall chimneys standing over the horizon, blowing thick clouds of smoke into the air.
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And that is pretty much the end of this story as it was written. The main reason it died was partly a long lasting writer’s block and also a dip in my interest in Oddworld. By the time I go back into the amazing universe that this story called home, I’d really moved on as a writer and as a person, and really by then this story was never going to get finished, despite what I told myself at the time and for a while afterwards.
But as a reader I hate to find a story unfinished, and so I now dedicate myself to telling you what happened to the Orb and its bearers; how would this story have ended?
Well…
Barry is led to the factory and as he enters he fakes one more attempt at getting away, during which he hides the Orb behind a machine near the factory entrance. He is stopped, searched by vykkers and then made a slave.
In the factory, he strikes up a relationship built upon mutual dislike with another mudokon called Frank. He generally causes small trouble, to get the management’s attention, walking the fine line between getting thrown into the caves and getting shot, and when he has the opportunity he goes to the place where he hid the Orb and retrieves it. Later, as his troublemaking grows more serious and he senses the end is near, he drops the Orb down a water overflow pipe that leads into the caves below the factory.
Eventually he pulls off a big stunt that gets him in so much trouble that he’s thrown into the caves. Unfortunately, Frank was caught up in the mess too, and is thrown down beside him. Barry tells Frank about his quest and after a few arguments, the two set off together to find the Orb and escape.
Exploring the cave by touch and hearing alone, they find the water overflow pipe and follow the stream of water that runs from it, in search of the Orb.
They loose sense of time as they walk, but many days pass and their hunger becomes unbearable. The stream gets wider as more rivulets of cave water join it and they are afraid that they will never find the Orb.
Eventually they are captured by a tribe of mudokons who moved into the caves generations ago to escape the marauding industrialists and now inhabit the caves, living in the cold and dark. The tribe feeds them fish and bats’ meat but hates outsiders passionately and plans to sacrifice them to the Darkness. The pair discovers that these mudokons fished the Orb from the stream and are keeping it as a holy relic.
With much difficulty, the two mudokons manage to escape, steal the Orb and run for it. Pursued by enemies who know the caves and the darkness much better than they do, their only hope is to reach the daylight where the cave-mudokons would never dare to set foot.
Travelling night and day and with their enemies closing in, they finally reach the surface, but as they run out from a rocky hillside into a green forest, Frank is struck in the back by a poisoned dart; a last payback from the furious cave-mudokons. Dying almost instantly (anyone who has played Abe’s Oddysee will know how terrible a bat’s venom is) his body falls into the now deep and powerful stream. The Orb, which he was carrying, is lost and Barry is unable to find it. He follows the stream until it becomes a river, until it joins a great inland sea, until the day he dies. He never finds or hears rumour of the Orb again.
Part 5 begins 10 years later in a much darker world.
Abe is dead, executed in the city of Nolybab before Queen Margaret. The mudokon’s few attempts at mustering an army are crushed and all seems lost for native Oddworld.
A mudokon warrior named Godfrey is hunting one day when he is injured and stumbles into a cold river to slow his blood flow and hopefully save himself from the wound. In the river, he finds a metallic green ball, and not knowing what he has found, takes it back to his tiny village. He and a few friends, with nothing else to live for but life itself, decide to take it to a hermit of a shaman who lives some distance away. They take a dangerous journey through industrial territory in which many of them are killed or captured. Godfrey and three of his friends reach the blind, old shaman’s hut, where he identifies the Orb and recognises that he must take it to the temple of Paramonia and activate it.
In part 6, the shaman, ancient, blind and lacking any hope for a happy future, heads to Paramonia with Godfrey and his friends as guards in the hopes of restoring peace to Oddworld.
The once great forest of Paramonia is now overrun with industrials, logging and hunting and raping the earth. They journey through the bleak territory, collecting a minute amount of spooce still growing where it can. The shaman refuses to acknowledge it but the mudokons, still possessing some will to fight, collect it and prepare it and give it to the shaman. Avoiding sligs at all costs, with many near misses and the shaman growing daily weaker, they come to what remains of the temple itself. It is decomposing, dying, being slowly destroyed by the usurping industrial world.
One of Godfrey’s friends is captured by sligs, and they are forced to leave him to torture and eventually death at the hands of his captors. Climbing higher, Godfrey himself and the other two mudokons die to sligs or to the temple’s own traps (one naturally had to go to the enormous spikey pendulum-boulders that were the bane of every AO player). The blind shaman, using the last of his strength, climbs towards the top of the temple. Alone, he finds himself face to face with a gang of sligs who he narrowly defeats using the tiny amount of spooce the warriors collected for him. In the process he looses his shaman’s mask. Alone, he enters the top room of the temple, overlooking the decrepit Paramonian forests. He places the Orb on a pedestal in the centre of the room and light like a new-bon sun bursts forth from it. Suddenly he can see again.
The shaman stands at one of the windows of the temple, looking down on the wasteland below. Hundreds of masks and metal pants lie where they were abandoned, and sligs gather near the base of the temple, sharing with each other the brotherhood and companionship that they had long forgotten and always craved. A mudokon stands beside the old shaman; the warrior who was captured in the lowest levels of the temple. He asks, “What will happen now?”
The shaman smiles, looking down on the burnt ground that was once the great Paramonian forest; “The world will heal itself. It will take time, but the earth is laid bare for planting and the soil thirsts for new life. This place will be a swamp for those below. As for the rest, we will nurture it as we find it. The creatures of Mudos will come back out of the corners of the world and will be restored to the land that was once theirs. The smoke will clear as the furnaces die and the sun will shine out on a ready world.”
“You have given Oddworld a future, Old Man.”
The shaman nods and casts the broken pieces of his mask out of the window. “Then let us be the first in centuries to breathe of free air.”
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So ends my first attempt at making an epic saga. It’s sad to let it go and to an extent I do regret not finishing it, but at least now you can all see it and enjoy a conclusion that I hope was satisfying. This story will always be pretty close to my heart, as it really seems to cover the point where my writing went from somewhat childish and scattered to actually becoming solid and something near good. Reading the first section or so always makes me shudder at my cheesiness, but I won’t forget the feelings of pride I had as I churned out some of the later chapters.
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback and encouragement during the original run of this story; I really couldn’t have accomplished anything without the support I get from my readers.
So thanks for reading, enjoying and commenting.
Splat.
(Oh, and sorry Searge; I don't remember what game it was
)
Yup... It's me ^_^ And now i'm up-to-date with both of ya stories 
...
), I'll probably finish it then if it isn't, I might be thinking of this one actually... I'm not sure now!
