Major spoilers, direct lore reveal (not found by me)

Do not read if you haven't read the story, or you can if you really want to.

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ok spoilers start now

It is the 1980s, a plague originating from an unknown source deep from within the heart of the Polish forest Darkwood is infecting its inhabitants. To protect the outside world, the government has contained the plague by isolating the inhabitants and sending in teams to investigate its source. You were on one such team, but things went wrong after an attack on your camp, and you are now alone. Now you must find your way home, or be consumed by the woods.

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One night in August 1975, a bright object of unknown origin was seen falling from the sky over the heart of the forest Darkwood, as witnessed by the inhabitants of a nearby village that was located in would be later referred to as Sector 3C. The infection began to spread fairly rapidly, symptoms appearing within the next three years, the trees began to grow impossibly fast and thickly, animals and people began to develop symptoms of unknown and incurable diseases. The Sector 3C village, being the closest village in the vicinity was the first to be affected, and attempts were made by the government to contain the disease, such as having infected livestock and houses burnt to the ground.

Roads that allowed access to the heart of Darkwood (Sector 0) were closed, but these barriers were then consumed by the growing forest. At least a second row of road barriers were established further away by 1979, but these in turn were consumed by the forest. The forest began to form its own barriers, having encompassed much of the surrounding landscape (many hundreds of square kilometres), when seen from above it became clear the forest was taking on a honeycomb like structure, with thick walls of trees forming barriers, and slowly dividing up the forest interior into smaller cells.

Within these cells the inhabitants of the wood, were unable to leave, and they became completely isolated. In order to continue to monitoring the situation from ground level, the government built a series of tunnels (e.g. tunnel 21, 22 etc) beneath the ground to travel safely between the cells.

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By 1983, the village of Sector 3C had been on their own for a long time, their fields had flooded and they were all beginning to slowly starve to death. After years of not seeing anyone from the outside world, they noticed groups of strange people appear in the forest carrying guns. These secret groups were sent in by the government to continue their research on the source and nature of the infection. The surviving villagers were not helped, and those that tried to use the tunnels to escape were shot, likely to contain the infection or because of the risk posed to the outsiders by the increasing mental instability of the local inhabitants.

As the infection grew worse, so did the situation, the ever growing roots of the forest, increasingly replacing the earth in which they grew, began to cause small local earthquakes and for many of the tunnels to collapse. Attempts to study the forest had limited success, but knowledge was gathered on electrical activity within the root system, on the shape-shifting properties of the "fluid" and patterns of forest growth, but the absolute cause and means to control the woods remained out of reach. In 1987, the infection would at last came to an end when Darkwood, and much of the surrounding woodland, caught fire, and the mysterious infection ceased.

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The Story Itself:

In early September 1987, a group of outsiders were located at one of their camps close to Sector 0 (the deepest part of Darkwood). Studies appeared to be ongoing, to the west of the camp they dug pits (dig sites) to access the tree roots and attach electrodes. The camp was attacked by savages and overwhelmed. Three individuals, wearing hazard suits were tied to trees by the savages, a strange ritual they often performed, a lone boot found by itself nearby suggests a struggle.

At least one of the individuals tied to the tree was alive at the time, the Protagonist. It's unclear how long they were trapped there, but during this time, the woods sensed the Protagonist and one its unusual properties came into play, the shape-shifting abilities of the fluid substance that flows between the trees. Incapable of differentiating between different objects the woods began to duplicate the trapped Protagonist (see "Replica" section for further explanation), and this imperfect replica, with a hazard suit helmet grown as part of its body, the "Trader".

Somehow, the Protagonist was able to break free from his biding, possibly badly wounding himself in the process as indicated by the bloodied rope and shreds of his hazard suit that were left behind, and his viewfinder was smashed in. Badly wounded, from perhaps both his beating at the hands of the savages and his escape, for unknown reasons, the Protagonist discarded his hazard suit and swapped out his clothes for those of scarecrow on the field beside the camp. He then fled, badly injured, trying to escape the Swamp. He managed to reach as far as the Old Woods, before collapsing.

The Doctor found him and brought him back to his home, where he injected him with an unknown substance (strongly implied to be essence). The Protagonist undergoes a dramatic deterioration in the mental health, but when he next comes to, after being beaten by the Doctor for information, he had lost all memory of how he had gotten where he was from his camp. And after he breaks free he immediately begins to hallucinate, first imagining a radio becoming a man with dials for eyes, then imagining a dead man is taunting him, and finally witnessing a mob of black chompers breaking into and storming the house.

The mob of black chompers that the Protagonist saw were actually the villagers come seeking revenge for the Doctor failing to be able to save them. This is suggested by the presence of the Doctor's burnt bag begin found in a village fire (beside the village well) and the vengeful dialogue by the villager sitting beside the fire and the Doctor's own dialogue when spoken to within the train carriage; furthermore if the Protagonist returns to the Doctor's house later they will find that it was ransacked. On at least one other occasion, the Protagonist definitely hallucinates a human as a black chomper.

During the ransacking of the Doctor's house, the Protagonist somehow managed to end up outside. Lying in the forest, weak and confused, the Trader finally caught up with him, helping him to his feet and escorting him to the first hideout of Chapter 1.

The Protagonist is now infected by the plague, and is unknowingly under the wood's control. He begins to backtrack the way he had come, believing this is the way home, not knowing that the "road home" is actually the last road to the heart of the woods where the Being lives. Eventually, the Protagonist gets through the tunnel 21 and returns to the Swamp, and then eventually to Sector 0, to where the Being resides. Here, he begins to hallucinate once more, believing himself to at last have escaped woods and is home once more. He then realizes the horrific truth and breaks free of the mind control.

Breaking free of the hallucination, the Protagonist finds that he has crawled through an organic tunnel which has sealed itself behind him, and he has stripped off his clothes (in the dream, you cannot leave the front room until you have hung up your coat). He is trapped within a deep valley, completely made up of roots and dead trees, trapping him within and offering no chance of escape. The Protagonist may then confront and question the Being, but it offers no answers.

During his investigation of the surroundings, the Protagonist will then stumble upon another outsider, one he recognizes, Maciek, a sleeping soldier carrying nothing but a flamethrower wrapped in prayer beads. Taking this flamethrower, after fighting Maciek for it, the Protagonist will then proceed to burn down the Being, killing it and everyone trapped in the valley with it, including himself. The fire spreads, burning much of the surrounding forest over the next few days. At last the delusions, voices and whispers stop, and anyone surviving can now at long last walk free, as the first helicopters appear overhead.

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Replicas and the substance:

One of the properties of the Being is a clear substance, which it can control, and runs as a stream primarily through network of roots. This fluid has shape-shifting capabilities, and can grow new organisms by using dead or immobilized organisms as a template, the original often being overgrown with rootlets. The new organisms, the "replicas" are often noted to be imperfect imitations of the original, with solid inanimate objects often appearing to have pitted/bubbled surfaces as well as being softer and more bendable than would be expected; while moving living entities tend to become merged with other objects around them, both organic (most commonly) and inorganic. Quite often, replicas are paler in appearance and sometimes retain the mind and memories of their original counterpart, and are capable of acting independently of the Being, and even appear to be unaffected by its call (notable exception of the Snail). Replicas are not always mobile, and may be incomplete, forming snapshots of particular times, this seems to occur when the fluid does not have sufficient time to form a template from the host (notable exception with the Mushroom Granny).

Examples of replicas in-game.

• Wolfman

• Trader

• Mushroom Granny

• Snail

• Talking Tree

• Entire house of the Mushroom Granny, and the surrounding glade (including villagers and the shrine in front of her house).

• Centipedes, Swampers, Human Spiders, and Banshees.

• Numerous occasions in the Swamps you can see replicas that are in the process of forming, they appear as white, clouded and partial forms, often surrounded by mushrooms.

• ~85% of the trees [10].

The Wolfman is a replica of a huntsman whose lodge was in Old Woods, merged with a trophy of either a wolf or dog. Evidence for this comes in the form of the wedding ring upon his hand (commented to be a poor imitation by the Protagonist), and the man found encased in rootlets in the Hunter's Lodge.

The other evidence is that he is clearly a fusion of two creatures; a man and a canid. The plague distorts and deforms what is already there in living creatures (see varying effects of the plague), it does not cause them to become more like another creature in such a symmetrical and natural fashion. The Wolfman also clearly shares memories with that of the hunter, such as a love of collecting trophies, firearms and for the "Pretty Lady" who wears an identical ring to the man the Hunter's Lodge.

The Trader is a replica of the Protagonist, formed during the time he was tied up to the tree in his hazard suit before the prologue, the hazard suit helmet is literally part of him as the substance did not differentiate between a living and inorganic tissue. Evidence for the Trader being a replica of the Protagonist is strong, from his familiar appearance, similar height, to the most definite clues being the key to tunnel 21 and his journal ("weird book"), which are both clearly imperfect replicas when looked compared side by side with the Protagonist's own items. The Doctor also remarks in the prologue, on first finding the Protagonist, that he is carrying on him only a key and a journal. Like the Mushroom Granny he is observed to smell strongly of mushrooms and have paper white skin.

The Snail(s) are a replica of a man who lived within the cottage (which the Snail repeatedly refers to as his house), whose corpse can be found entwined in roots within, and whose diary states he had taken to eating snails shortly before his death by starvation. A strange clearly replica key can be found on him, growing out of the palm of his hand.

The Talking Tree is a replica of the starving village, and from its dialogue it can be gaged to be a conglomerate consisting of both individuals who managed to lock themselves in the basement (including a cow) and those who were locked out. Its connection to the substance being made particularly clear when the Protagonist accidentally breaks an arm of one of the conglomerate, only for it to reform before his eyes, a property it retains as it remains connected to the "stream"

And lastly, but most importantly of all, are the "trees" themselves, with only 15% of the "woods" being actual trees