Woodsman

The Woodsman is a hostile foe found wandering the Maiden Forest nearby or within his house in Fear and Hunger: Termina.

The woodsman will be the first person you'll bump into as soon as you head towards the town. He'll be hacking up a fellow villager or someone who left the train to go to town. It is a bit unclear. After that he'll shout about the Festival of Termina being upon Prehevil and leaves.

Lore
A woodsman from Prehevil within the Eastern Union. From the little bits of information from the basement in the Woodsman's house and from his letter, it seems he wasn't in a cordial relationship with his wife, to the point that she cheated on him with a goat. He would have committed suicide right there and then if it weren't for the Moon God Rher committing his plan of the Festival at such an inconvenient moment.

Talking to him while in a fight will reveal that the Woodsman is not as crazy as the rest of the villagers but is still hostile.

If you find the letter in the second floor of his house you'll learn about his encounter with a beast and how he locked it in his basement. It is unclear if the Woodsman appearance was changed by the Moonlight of Rher or the beast he mentions in his letter. The timeline of events, albeit unclear, still points towards the Moon god Rher.

Encounters
The first time you encounter him will be on your way to the town, he can also be found by the hatch to the left of his house. If for whatever reason you sleep on his bed he'll come back to ambush you.

Once defeated he can be searched for the basement key to his house and hatchet.

Strategy
While deadly with the hatchet, one must watch out for the parasitic penile appendage found on his crotch. It will fly off from his crotch and place themselves on the player character's face if they fail the coin toss that comes after. They will then be immobilized the creature, as they struggle to get it off their faces. It forces tentacles from within itself down their throats and releasing juices and liquids from itself and inside the player, leaving themselves vulnerable to the Woodsman's attacks.

Parasite after the Woodsman's death
If the player manages to defeat the Woodsman with the parasitic creature on their faces (either via poisoning him or killing him with another party member), they will have that on their faces going in and out of battles as shown in the portrait screen. So far the debuffs of having the creature on the player's face is unknown, but it is known that it disables the player's skills and menu as the player's character is too busy trying to get it off their faces. This happens in both inside and outside of battle.

It doesn't have a sprite ingame just yet, making the player character seen without it on their faces. The NPCs don't make a comment on it.

Oddly, one can still consume food and the like while the creature is stuck on their faces and one can still talk to others despite it clearly plugging the player character's mouth with its tentacles.

There's no known way on how to remove it yet. As it is an early demo... we must wait and see.

Trivia

 * The phallic shaped parasite and the way it functions via forcing tentacles down the player character's throats are reminiscent of those facehugger aliens from the Alien series.
 * In the data files, the parasite is labelled as a crab, and Miro Haverinen states that it is named after the headcrabs from the Half-Life series.


 * The unusual skin color of the Woodsman must be due to the Moon burn, the color being a similar hue as seen in Per'kele's face paint and in the book of Rher.