The Repercussions of Abe’s actions
I’m telling ya’, it’s that Abe guy! Sell! Dump it! Lose it! Get rid of it!
We can witness a Slig saying this memorable line, while he flails his arm wildly in one of the cutscenes of Abe’s Exoddus. While the scene is definitely humorous, It contains some of the best parts of released lore hidden in it in my opinion. Until this scene happened Abe’s exploits were always a bit “isolated”. Sure some facilities went down in flames after he has visited them and neither of the leading Glukkons lived through meeting him alive, but we never once saw the world itself responding to the situation.
Yet in this little clip, hiding behind the funny characters, we see nothing else than a stock market display. And those who have keen eyes can notice a very alarming thing on this screen. Every stock is in red and all the arrows point downwards. These prices are falling, the Magog is in big trouble. The aforementioned Slig is trying to make the best of the situation by instructing whoever is on the other side of the phone (presumably another Slig) to sell the stocks while they’re still worth something.
And before anyone thinks this is seeing too much into a background, it is very much not. At the EGX Soulstorm presentation Lanning has spent several minutes explaining the “ripples” Abe’s actions caused to the greater Industrialist hierarchy, which shows that yes, this was planned a long time ago.
On the left side we can see RuptureFarms burning down, on the right the new design of Molluck in Soulstorm.
The Mudokon uprising is actually such a big problem, that Lady Margaret, current leader of the Magog Cartel and Glukkon queen can’t deal with it herself. Molluck is gone and the Investors demand an explanation or else she will be the one who pays for their wasted financial support. Not knowing how to deal with the situation, she actually had to turn to her grandmother, who suffers from a deadly illness named “Gorman Disenza”1.
The symptoms of this disease are not known, but it is lethal and it only affects the very wealthy. There is no known cure, but the process can be halted by criogenically freezing the patient. This is what happened to the elderly queen, who has less than fifty unfrozen days left of her life.
Because of this one can imagine how furious she was when her grandchild unfreezes her for something so “trivial” as a slave uprising. While Margaret is cruel and would gladly decimate the Mudokon population to teach them their place, her grandmother is different. Next to her antagonistical nature nearly every other Industrialist character is almost symphatetic. Her opinion about the situation is that Margaret shouldn’t play around. She should bring out the big guns, salt the earth and genocide every single Mudokon who has any suspicion on themselves of supporting the uprising.
I won’t even try justifying this character’s action as she doesn’t deserve it, but there is an important notion here: She choses this method, because even she is afraid of their Investors. Let this sink in: The elderly leader of a huge cartel, spanning over several factories, controlling a small army is so gravely afraid of the people who pay her that she won’t even consider anything less than total eradication. What could they be like then?