Cripple

This article contains major spoilers. Reader discretion is advised.

The Cripple is a major character in Darkwood. He can be found in the Village, safely blockaded in a room behind multiple Metal Doors. A nearby firepit will mark his location.

He's an older gentleman with hazy eyes, who sits dormant in his broken wheelchair. He lost his legs from the knee down during World War 2. Prior to the plague becoming out of control, he was a pig farmer. When the plague grew out of control, soldiers were sent to destroy his livestock in hopes of containing it, they also burnt his house and those of many others. He lived with either his wife (or potentially daughter Zocka) she succumbed to the plague several years prior. It's implied that Zocka was still alive at the time the Thief attempted to raid the bunker, as the Cripple mentions the Talking Tree contains a likeness of her.

He is the last villager left; the rest have either starved, succumbed to the plague, or followed call of the Woods, heading for the Road Home to join the Being. The Cripple, as the result of a combination of his lack of mobility and his knowledge that the call of the Being was a trick, stayed behind. When the Talking Tree eventually grew, he was unable to head for the Road Home even if he had wanted to. In the past, he says, many people used to pass through. Those people stopped coming once the tree grew. This can be found out by handing the cripple the Food Inventory found nearby, containing a list of survival ingredients. If the Talking Tree is burnt down it appears that even his mental resolve to stay away had failed, and he attempts to crawl towards the Being.

The Cripple is rather pushy for the player to complete certain tasks that he himself can't do (in his current state). He is one of the NPCs with the most dialogue after the Wolf. He appears to be surviving by catching fish from the swamp.

Quests

Kill The Tree

The Cripple tasks the player with destroying the Talking Tree. He claims that the cries of those trapped inside won't let him rest.

To do this the player will need to enter the Cellar beneath the Village, with an Oxygen Tank, and go through a nightmare sequence reminiscent of the levelling up nightmares. After that, the tree can be burned by opening an Oil Tanker, and using a nearby Torch to set the oil (and the tree) alight.

In doing this, and returning to The Cripple, he'll be found staring into the fire. The next day, he will have left.

The Cripple is then found crawling down the Road to Home, which is accessed after burning the Talking Tree. He will eventually stop moving, though he isn't dead, only tired out from pulling himself along the ground. The player can put him out of his misery, with no reward for doing this.

Epilogue

If the player has burnt down the Talking Tree, and has spared the Cripple on the Road to Home, he will perish in the flames, having been described as being so close to freedom. Alternatively, if the player has spared the Talking Tree, he will still perish in the flames, but not before the Talking Tree dies, and it is said that he expresses great joy in its demise. The Three also perish.

See Transcript

Dialogue

Greeting

• First Encounter

"Wait... Bloody hell! You're alive!"

The old man extends his hand, blindly trying to reach me.

"You're not from around here, eh? You cannot be, hm?
All them lads are dead. It's only me... me and..."

He finally finds my arm and grabs it.
For a moment he clutches my hand in silence. Then I hear him mumbling under his breath.

"I don't have anythin', mate. Only this... this chair, bloody hell."

His gaze stops somewhere under the leaky barn ceiling.

"Wha?!"

The old man suddenly jumps up.

"What are you sayin'?"

I feel his long fingernails digging into my hand.

"The tree?!

Ain't no fuckin' tree, that!
It looks like a tree, but those faces...
I know 'em, buggers. Every single one of 'em. So close, and so fake!

They're not real, they're not.
From time to time I thank God I went blind... I don't have to look at them."

The old man lets go of my hand to lean against the broken back of the chair. He sighs with relief.

"It disgusts me... It fuckin' disgusts me, this buggery. This fuckin' scum. All the time, I have to listen to its pathetic blabber. Complaining all the time. As if I were supposed to believe it's human... That it's me Zocha. Yeah, right!"

He suddenly reaches towards me with both hands, almost falling out from the chair. He grabs onto my sleeve. I feel all his weight on me.

"You, lad. You've got your hands and legs. Strong arms. I beg you! Get rid of that filth from my village... I can't bear another day of that abomination wailing and sobbing. I want to die in peace, fuckin' hell! I want to die in peace...

Listen to me. I thought about it for a long time. I've had a lot of time to think, for fuck's sake..."

His eyes widen. His pupils are milky white. I can feel him climbing my coat.

"You need to find the basement! Jasiek's basement... I remember it, it's right next to the tree!

The tree is too large, so if you can't reach it from the top, you've got to try from the bottom! Find the basement!
And there, surely, you'll find the tree's roots. The bloody thing must have roots! That's where they are!

Destroy them! Pull them, drag them, twist the fuck out of them! You'll find a way, eh? I know you will..."

The old man slides down my coat, straight into his destroyed wheelchair. For a moment, he searches for his stone, which he uses to prop himself up against the muddy floor of the barn.

"Thank you, thank you!"

• After visiting the Swamp Village Cellar

"The basement is flooded, eh? Am I right? Dog's bollocks, everything is fuckin' flooded!"

He turns around, as if looking for something.

"Eh? Wha?!
Ah, yes, yes.

Elephants, fucking plonkers!
Ever seen elephants, matey?
Yeah, we have these elephants here, you see. They live here, in the (...) part of the Swamp. Their hut is in the thicket, in the flooded forest.

Since the woods trapped us here, they keep to themselves. They don't fancy us... bloody elephants. They have these oxygen tanks! Lots of 'em tanks.
And if the basement is flooded, you could use an oxygen tank, eh?"

• After burning the Talking Tree

The Cripple's blind eyes stare hypnotized at the huge flame consuming the tree. It's as if the old man could see everything clearly now. The orange fire illuminates his pale, motionless face.

• Random

"Wha!? What are you sayin' there?!"

---

Showing Items

• Photo of a Road

The old man grabs the photograph, feels it, then takes out a small glass object from his pocket and puts it to his eye.

""The road... the road home". What a load of bollocks!
The road to madness is what it is..."

• A Photo of Three Boys

Upon seeing the photo, the Cripple cringes with disgust.

"These ruffians, eh? Sons of a thief.
There were seven of them. The mother took the four youngest ones, when the hunger struck. The other three stayed with the father. They were weak and sickly.

One day the father got into his head that they are getting smaller rations because we've written them off."

His hands start to tremble.

"So he went with a group of people to rob us of our food in the night. They broke into the basement. It didn't end well..."

The Cripple goes silent.

"The lads threw them out of the village.
I don't know what happened to them after that. People used to say they wander the woods with the savages, looking for their place."

He gives me back the photo.

"I can still hear the cries of that thief. All the bloody time..."

• Food Inventory

"All sorts of things used to happen in our village. Sometimes a mug got punched for some silly thing."

A faint smile appears on the man's face.

"But we always sticked together, when the time came. We had to.
Until the hunger came. The hunger divided us.

I sometimes hear the echoes of those times... in the tree's moans.
That fuckin' monstrosity won't let me forget..."

• Photo of a Family

The Cripple pulls the photo close to his face.

"Poor woman..."

He points to the old woman in the photograph.

"She was left alone when her daughter lost it entirely and ran off into the woods with her kids. The old lady was devastated.

I don't know what became of her. The lads would say that even with her legs not working properly, she crawled into the woods, looking for her daughter.
That was around the time when our fields were getting flooded. Even a healthy, strong lad would have a hell of a task getting through all the water, not to mention an old woman, who could barely move."

---

Gossip

• The war

"What are you going on about again?"

The old man leans towards me, scowling.

"The wheelchair?

The war took me legs. Then those wankers burned my house and me pigs. But it was years after the war. They said it was to fight the disease. So they said. And my Zocha... the disease took her from me... All I have is this wheelchair... and this land."

• The hunger

"It used to be different here. First, the woods changed... The trees started sprouting up everywhere.
We were cut off. Then the water flooded our fields. People went crazy out of hunger. They fought over food."

• Wheelchair

"If you come across some wheels.... Two little wheels, so that I could fix me chair. Maybe you would benefit from it as well..."

• The Tree

"Years ago, when me eyes were good, people used to pass through here. They would leave their huts and go... there, where that damned tree grows.
They would often leave at night, so that no one could see them. They went into the deep dark woods... and never came back.

Some of them would say they're going home, but most of them were silent.
I don't know. The land has changed. The trees have cut us off from the rest of the world. But home, for me, has always been here.

Then that monstrous, moaning abomination grew out of the ground... It blocked the passage and that's that. No one has managed to pass through since then. Maybe people found some other place? Maybe they died at the swamps just like us..."

• Footsteps

"No one lives around here anymore. Everyone is dead. Only sometimes..."

The man lowers his voice.

"Sometimes I hear footsteps. They wake me up at night.

The sound of bare feet against the floor. And bells, sort of. They come out of nowhere. They move towards the trees, then come back. They pass me and fall silent.
They're like a nightmare, a bloody nightmare!"

Trivia

• The cripple used to also request that the Protagonist found and brought him some wheels for his chair, in exchange for a supposed reward. This text is still present as of current version although it is not possible to fulfill his request.
• The tree has demonstrated its ability to connect to and entangle dead such as in the man in the Cottage near the Junkyard, where small roots have grown from a radio to attach to a man, lying in bed. Its possible that this may be begining to spread to The Cripple too due to his prolonged immobility.

Bugs

• If the player kills the Cripple and chooses to burn the Talking Tree, he will be found alive on the Road to Home.