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Major Characters
The Stranger
That fucker stole my key.
The protagonist. A mute, disfigured individual with a mysterious, vague past. The Doctor found him and nursed him back to health, only to torture and leave him to die. He woke up, only to find himself no longer needing to drink, eat or sleep, with a strange craving for mushrooms.- Facial Horror: From what little we can see of him, it's clear that his face is very messed up, if the insults from Wolfman and the Snail is anything to go by. We get to see him in front of a mirror, and his skin is shown to be deathly white and is all wrinkled up.
- The Hero Dies: In the True Ending, he sacrifices himself in order to kill The Being and putting an end to the Plague by burning everything down, with the huge fire taking him with it.
- Heroic Mime: A rare justified in-universe example. The Stranger's physical deformations have rendered him speechless, forcing him to interact with the surrounding world via body gestures.
- Hope Crusher: Can sabotage Piotrek's rocket creation, (not without Wolfman, of course.) Resulting the latter dying off-screen.
- Improbable Weapon User: He fought various abominations and aggressive creatures with a shovel, axe, or even a 2x4 board with nails on one end. Having been in The Outsiders with a military background probably helps.
- Jerkass: Heavily implied to be one, through many lines of dialogue has him speaking ill of the many beings he came across. The player can even have him commit all sorts of asshattery, such as killing the Chicken Lady and the Pretty Lady, killing the Cripple, or even eat the Mushroom Granny alive.
- Mysterious Past: Downplayed. You start the game, knowing nothing about him nor his motivations. It doesn't help that being a Heroic Mime, his personality is not outwardly apparent. Regardless, various dream sequences and story items will gradually reveal crucial pieces of how he come to be in Darkwood, but never in full and requires deep reading between the lines. Special mentions include: he was part of the Outsiders, a military researcher group studying the phenomenon of the forest, has went into the woods for 5 times and likes watching children shows.
- The Needless: Needs neither food, drink, nor sleep. However, he can do all three, but he only sleeps when knocked out. He mentions that it's weird...
- No Name Given: Never mentioned.
- Self-Deprecation: He has a low opinion of himself, which is further proven as you interact with the mirror, which then he will call himself an ugly bastard, and said that he deserved it.
- Suddenly Speaking: In the Epilogue, the Stranger can greet his neighbour outside his apartment. This is a major tipoff that he hasn't escaped the woods.
- Super Serum: Can distill a potion from Mushrooms and Strange Meat that grants him certain abilities to help him survive longer.
- Terrible Artist: If the Creator's Studio dream is anything to go by, he seems to think of himself as this upon inspection of concept arts.
- Trademark Favourite Food: He craves for mushrooms, and can even learn a skill that allows him to heal by eating them.
- Was Once a Man: Before the events of the game, he is shown to be a normal guy, living in a cozy apartment with his dog and even had a woman in his life.
Wolfman
The likes of you always crawl back to me.
A half-man, half-wolf being that the Stranger can buy weapons and ammunition from.- Affectionate Nickname: He calls you "Meat" and "comrade" at times.
- Ambiguously Bi: Despite his obvious lust for Pretty Lady, he seems to be a little too close to the Stranger, calling him nicknames, squeezing his arms and even licking him in the face.
- Battle Trophy: It's heavily implied that he killed the hunter with his own gun, and took his coat as a keepsake/memento of the victory.
- The Beastmaster: All the monsters ignore him, hell, even the huge dogs obey him.
- Bodyguard Betrayal: The way he sees things, it's his forest. The only reason you live to see the dawn is because he allows it. If you don't honor his simple requests, he will come after you.
- Canine Companion: Albeit half-human.
- Jerkass: To an even greater degree than the Stranger. He's an open sadist who views everything in the woods as either playthings or prey. Following all his questlines will bring nothing but suffering to the remaining survivors of the forest.
- Destructive Romance: Seems to be the relationship between him and the Pretty Lady, if you can even call it that. If you follow through his questline, he will appear again and said that he got his "girl, his sweet little lady" back. If you went to the Chicken Lady's house, however, you'll find Pretty Lady's half-eaten corpse instead.
- Non-Indicative Name: Despite being called the wolfman, he looks more like a fox than a wolf.
- Pet the Dog: Despite his callous behavior, he does treat the protagonist with some respect due to sharing his mutated appearance, and rewards him fairly if his requests are fulfilled.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Wolfman detests Piotrek's Tragic Dream to build a space rocket so much that he's more than happy to sabotage his dreams.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Most of his dialogue is riddled with obscenities.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: His last major appearance is when he takes the Stranger to the Doctor's house, then never seen again. He can be rarely seen running through the mushroom glades in Chapter 2, but that's about it. Even both endings said that his ultimate fate is unknown.
Mushroom Granny
An old woman sits on a weathered rocking chair. Her sleep is deep and peaceful. A handful of ripe mushrooms grows out from beneath her thick hair.
A strange old lady with mushrooms growing on her head. She resides in her home at the Mushroom Glades, along with the Child.- Body Horror: She has invasive mushrooms growing all over her head, and by the looks of it, it appears that they have formed a symbiosis.
- Devoured by the Horde: Eventually, if you don't accept her Quest, the villagers will eat her.
- Festering Fungus: Has Red Mushrooms growing on her. She doesn't seem to be bothered by it though.
- Meaningful Name: She's a grandmother, and she has mushrooms growing on her.
- No Name Given: She is only ever known as the Mushroom Granny.
Doctor
I see hatred and fear in their eyes. As if I was responsible for the spreading disease. As if I were the source of all the misery plaguing this land.
A doctor who interrogates the Stranger at the beginning and left him to die, taking the Stranger's keys with him.- Action Survivor: He's physically frail compared to the protagonist, but has survived for years by himself in the woods.
- Decoy Protagonist: You play as him in the prologue, and as the Stranger for the rest of the game.
- Dr. Jerk: It's understandable, given that he's just an ordinary doctor left to combat the supernatural plagues of the forest, but the "treatments" he recommends to the townsfolk are either useless or lethal and he has nothing left but hatred to the people supposedly under his care.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He's always nervously twitching with a cigarette between his fingers.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Tries to beat information out of the Stranger, but to no avail.
- Sanity Slippage: His mind is already hanging on by a thread when the game starts, but deteriorates even more rapidly once he enters the Swamp, eventually going savage. By the looks of it, he appears to have been infected as well.
Chicken Lady
Better keep them hands off me hens, ya bloody scoundrel.
A old woman living a secluded life with her chickens and takes care of the Pretty Lady.- The Pig-Pen: Well, Chicken Pen. Everything in her house is coated in chicken feces.
- Replacement Goldfish: In one ending, she adopts the Musician into her home after they bond over their mutual loss of the Pretty Lady. She ends up taking care of him to fill the void.
- Trauma Conga Line: Depending on the players actions, she could lose her brother, her sister, and all of her chickens within the span of a month and she would be none the wiser that you were responsible. If all of this happens she eventually gives in to despair and dies in her home.
Pretty Lady
A huge, mutated woman who is kept hidden from everyone by the Chicken Lady under a heavy blanket. She is the object of affection to the Wolfman and the Musician.
Child
A young boy who is found in the Mushroom Granny's house, sitting quietly. It is revealed that he is the missing son of the Elephants, and that the Elephant mother is the Mushroom Granny's daughter.
Creepy Child: He never said anything, and only whispers a nursery rhyme.
Creepy Child: He never said anything, and only whispers a nursery rhyme.
Elephants
A family, consisted of a mother and two sons, all wearing gas masks with long hoses that resembles an elephant's trunk, hence the name.
- Abusive Parents: The mother is rather physical with her sons, at one point even smacking her youngest child on the back of his head just for trying to get closer to the Stranger.
- My Beloved Smother: The mother certainly is this, acting rather preachy and overbearing towards her surviving sons, while constantly praising her eldest son who gave them clean air, who is also a rotting corpse in their house.
- The Faceless: Their faces are never seen, since they are always obscured by the gas masks.
Musician
P-please don't go, mister sir! Y-you're my only hope, please don't be afraid of Ch-chicken Lady!
A deformed child who plays the violin. He appears after the player speaks to the Chicken Lady, hiding under the tractor. He adores the Pretty Lady and wants to free her from the Chicken Lady.- Body Horror: It's safe to say that he gets hit with this the hardest. The Plague has mutated him so much that he barely resembles a child anymore, and more like a malformed zombie. It's especially saddening since he's just a innocent, kindhearted child who just wants to play his violin and protect his parents, but is unable to do so since his hands are getting too big as he mutated, and that his parents become Red Chompers at the end.
- Children Are Innocent: The Musician never displays any sort of hostility towards the Stranger, even hoping that he would return soon. Even when you kill his parents, he never does anything rather than refusing to talk to you.
- Meaningful Name: He's called the Musician because he plays a violin.
- Replacement Goldfish: If you kill the Pretty Lady and the Musician's parents, but spare the Sow, the Musician becomes this to the Chicken Lady, who adopts him to fill the void in her life.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: He is an unambiguously good-hearted kid who never wish any ill will towards anyone, even the Stranger. He just wanted his parents' approval and wanted to rescue the Pretty Lady. As expected, fate fucks him up in three ways: One, if you didn't kill his parents, he will happily return to the Creepy House, only to get disciplined by his mom and dad via their new set of teeth. Two, if you kill the Chicken Lady, the False Ending shows that he freed the Pretty Lady, and become her meal. Three, he's still infected by the Plague, with Chapter 2 showing that it has progressed a lot worse, so eventually, he will turn into a Red Chomper.
- The Woobie: This kid had it rough. Getting afflicted by a disease that turns you into a grotesque humanoid is already too much, yet everything still finds a way to screw him over.
Piotrek
If only I had more tractors... I would definitely go to space.
An eccentric vendor and mechanic who is obsessed with space travel. He tinkers his days away with a pile of junk, hoping to turn it into a spaceship.- Cloudcuckoolander: He's...quite a weird person. His non-stop ramblings of going to space is one thing, wearing a bizarre metal hat and holding a doll is another, and then there is the fact that he is building a spaceship out of random pieces of metal and thinking it would work.
- The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: It's revealed right at the very end of the game (if you decide to help him, and provided you don't visit Chapter 2's junkyard) that his rocket made out of scrap and random junk ACTUALLY WORKS! He successfully escapes as the forest burns down in his rocket, whether he actually gets to space or not is never revealed.
- Killed Offscreen: If you help him complete his rocket and visit the junkyard in the following chapter, you find his corpse among its wreckage.
Talking Tree
A massive, sentient tree formed out of hundreds of people being fused into its trunk.
- Botanical Abomination: A tree-like entity with humanoid figures growing out from it, both female and male, old and young.
The Being (UNMARKED SPOILERS)
The Greater-Scope Villain of the entire game, The Being is a gigantic Lotus-Eater Machine located in the heart of a canyon overgrown with tree roots that is responsible for causing the Plague and blocking people off from escaping Darkwood with its roots (which is revealed to be the trees).
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the Bliss Ending, where the Stranger peacefully drifts off in his false home, unknowingly subsumed by the Being's will. This can happen in the True Ending as well, if the Stranger failed to resist the Being's allures to put him back to sleep upon interaction.
- Big Bad: It is somewhere between this and the aforementioned Greater-Scope Villain. While it outwardly never confronts the Stranger in the game proper, it is responsible for many mutated beings hindering his goal and is ultimately the one to trap the Stranger within it through subtle manipulation throughout the whole game.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: It likes to emancipate people to further its unknown agenda, and can not be communicated nor reasoned with.
- Eldritch Abomination: As the one who has caused all of this fiasco, it should be one. There doesn't seem to be a word to describe what it is, as it appears to be a formless mass when viewed by the Stranger.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Its apparent specialty. It lures victims into an inescapable valley/fortress (for some reason stripping them naked as well), then creates false euphoric realities designed to accommodate said victims. It proceeds to slowly drain them of their life force until they die of malnutrition or starvation, all while still being happily trapped in those little illusions.
- True Final Boss: It is only encountered in the True Ending, and, along with its followers, is the final obstacle to finishing the game. This, though, also doubles as a Zero-Effort Boss - the Stranger would only need to burn down everything with the appropriately overpowered Flamethrower to defeat it.
- The Voiceless: When directly confronted, it is not capable of direct speech, instead attempting to communicate with a surge of memories and emotions.
Minor Characters
Trader
As I approach him, the man drops a sack from his back to the floor with a visible relief. I notice a smile on his face, through the matte visor of his helmet.
The person who saved the Stranger from the Doctor, after the Prologue. He appears at the Hideout every morning, and the Stranger can trade and buy things from him.- Body Horror: He's afflicted with the same condition as the Mushroom Granny; with mushrooms growing all over his torso, some of it even reaching his helmet.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: After you survived the first night at the Swamp, the Trader's body can be seen outside your hideout.
- Off with His Head!: How he sadly met his fate in Chapter 2. The visor of his helmet is even carved with the word "Liar".
- Old Friend: He and the Stranger behaves like this towards each other. The latter seems to know his face, while the former treats him well and is very friendly towards him.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Out of all the cast in Darkwood, the Trader appears to be the only one who is legitimately on your side and actively tries to help you, even saving you from the Doctor's house. Of course, to keep the despair going on, the game abruptly offs him as you get to the Swamp, and unceremoniously drops his decapitated body outside your hideout.
- The Unintelligible: His sealed helmet muffles all of his speech, so he communicates by writing on his hand and forearm.
Bikeman
An alcoholic delivery man who the player can summon using the Bike Bell. He will deliver all the items from another hideout to the player's current one, with payment being bottles of alcohol.
- The Alcoholic: He takes alcohol as payment, what do you think? Even more, if you have bottles of alcohol in another hideout and you ask him to deliver it to you, he'll just bring empty bottles instead.
The Three
A trio of figures who takes the place of the Trader in the Swamp. They function identically to the Trader.
- The Dividual: The Three acts and behaves all the same as each other, and they are never seen apart from one another.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: They are essentially the Trader of Chapter 2, functions the same, only that they don't talk to the Stranger at all and they sell more firearms and ammunition.
Cripple
A decrepit, blind, and as his name suggests, disabled old man who is the sole survivor of the Swamp village, safely residing in his home, bound to a wheelchair. He begs the Stranger to get rid of the Talking Tree.
- An Arm and a Leg: He lost everything below the knees, rendering him paraplegic. It doesn't stop him from trying to crawl away from the Swamp when the Talking Tree is burning though.
- Grumpy Old Man: Rather understandable, given the hellhole that he's in, the Plague petrifying his body, and the Talking Tree's constant whining and screaming never letting him rest, so it's justified that he would be a little surly and pushy.
- Prophet Eyes: His left eye is completely white, while his remaining one is hazy. He even remarks that his eyesight isn't good at all.
- Sole Survivor: He seems to be the only person left in the village. It's implied that the others merged into the tree. Other hints in the village implies that the Three were also members of the village.
Maciek
A man who only appeared at the True Ending. He was a member of the Outsiders, only to went insane, stole a flamethrower and disappeared into the Woods. He appears besides the Being as a Sleeper, clutching the weapon needed for the Stranger to finish the job.
- Companion Cube: The man has become weirdly attached to his flamethrower.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: It's implied he's in a similar dream as the protagonist in the Bliss ending. Taking his flamethrower will wake him up from it.
- Kill It with Fire: This is why he nabbed the flamethrower on his escape, thinking it would do some good against the woods and it's denizens. Averted once you find him, burning down the tree is the last thing he wants to do.
Snail
A huge, snail-like mollusk with difficulty talking, who is trapped in the roof on a building, within a shell. You can either follow its quest to destroy a cocoon-like thing to freed the Snail, or carve their way through the Snail's stomach to enter the house.
Man
A man entangled in roots, who can be found beyond the Bunker Entrance.
Miscellaneous Characters and Creatures
Centipede
Twisted, humanoid creatures with large centipede or earwig-like bug creature burrowing inside a human body. The parasite replaces its head, and its tail protrudes from the body's left shoulder. This "arm" has a pincer at the end that the creature attacks with.
Huge Dog
Common enemies from in the Silent Forest and the Old Woods. They are aggressive, mutated dogs that will attack the player on sight. They can be baited with Odd Meat.
Outsiders
A group of government officials and soldiers operating inside the forest that Darkwood is set in. By the time the Stranger wakes up, most of them is either dead or have been evacuated.
- Anti-Villain: This is 1980s Poland, so these are Soviet soldiers. It's unclear what their agenda in the area is and many of their number are either jerk asses, insane, or mutated. They have plenty of climbing gear and secret tunnels to get around the huge forests that have grown, but they mostly just watch the villagers and other survivors rather than trying to get them out. Because of all of this, the villagers have a deep-seated mistrust of all of the Outsiders, though that may partially be due to memory loss and forgetting who and what the military represents (or maybe they remember the Soviets perfectly well).
- The Cavalry: In the true ending the military is heavily implied to evacuate the surviving villagers.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Averted. The Outsiders attempts to evacuate compromised bases, and eventually the entire area, resulted in multiple individuals either dying or being left behind including the Doctor, Maciek and the Stranger.
Red Chomper
Extremely aggressive, highly mutated humans who has reached the final stages of the Plague. They attack and move around quickly, so melee combat is generally ill-advised. They can also appear as dormant corpses, which you can dispose of before they fully mutate.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: When "killed", they'll rip their lower body off and continue pursing the player. They're much slower in this state and can be killed in one hit. In water, they'll just drown.
- Meaningful Name: They have a red pigmentation, and they chomp real good.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Their entire upper torso has been torn in half and reused as a huge maw with lots of teeth.
Savage
Common enemies throughout all biomes. They are humanoid creatures who were once normal humans before losing their minds to an unknown illness, which also caused them to be severely speech-impaired.
- Barbarian Tribe: They're humans who’ve degraded into more primitive mindsets due to the Plague, becoming territorial warriors who fight with large tree branches and thrown rocks. At nighttime this gets worse, for they shed the “territorial” part and will invade your hideout.
- Carry a Big Stick: One version wields a large stick with better reach than most melee weapons.
Shadow
They are a swarm of dark ghostly apparitions swirling around The Stranger, signalled by a whispering sound that gradually becomes louder until they appear in the vicinity. They only appear in the Shadows night events, which can happen once the negative trait Shadows is gained, or in the late game - even if a player did not choose the trait.
- Weakened by the Light: Light protects the player from them and banishes them if they approach. However, they'll knock out most generator-powered lights when they appear, so the Protagonist may need a flare or other light source to keep them at bay.
