You are Cycle 106, a disposable supersoldier clone created by the Syndicate currently imprisoned by the Horizon Corporation. Your original purpose was to destroy the Horizon Corporation, their experiments into anomalies as well as aid the Syndicate (aka Task Force 27) in destroying rogue Cycles such as yourself.

After having your memories transplanted by the Horizon corporation, since you are mute and impossible to interrogate, a mysterious Cycle clone frees you from your hypnotic sleep by shooting the TV in front of you and kills himself, since his cycle is complete. Since your memories are removed and stored in drones, you do not remember anything. You proceed to kill everybody, including a High Value Target, and find yourself back in the hands of the Syndicate.

You raid a place known as the Pandora Institute which "cares" for dying patients who volunteer their bodies to research. Might as well, right? They aren't gonna use them! (Oops! They were STILL ALIVE MOST OF THE TIME.)
After trying to find an undercover agent, you realize that Horizon is experimenting with a new type of biological material named Pandorium that can convert a "wide array of biological matter into a stable and highly efficient source of energy". It can also consume hazardous materials and potentially heal patients. So that sounds fine, right? If they manage to fix people NOPE THE SOURCE IS THE FREAKING MOTHMAN! Yeah, Horizon killed a barn of Syndicate people and retrieved a medical crate with THE MOTHMAN and they sent it to the PANDORA INSTITUTE to make THE F%&KING MOTHMAN'S STEM CELLS INTO A WONDERDRUG AND ENERGY SOURCE! They were using these patients for their experiments! And The Mothman began to infect the surroundings as well as the Pandora Institute staff. You blow the entire place up by going into his hive and destroying the Bio-Reactors by chucking mutants into it and kill the G#DD@MN Mothman after an ambush.

edit: AFTER SOME HELP FROM THE COMMENTS IT TURNS OUT THAT THE SYNDICATE MADE THE MOTHMAN!! IT'S CYCLE 97! WTF SYNDICATE DID YOU MAKE ALL THE STUFF THAT HORIZON CORP MESSES WITH?! (The doctor you tried to save is also a cycle, cycle 95)

After insertion, you find a strange house in the middle of nowhere that happens to store a supercomputer using similar technology to your memory transplant, as well as the drones that store your memories when you find them around the levels. Somehow, they realized that flesh and brains are more efficient than regular computers. The computer has corrupted and is now projecting psychic anomalies around you with a red glow. You shut down all the computers and kill a HVT and his team and leave.

You drop on an oil rig and begin retrieving data when a massive UFO of alien origin appears. You activate the Oil Rig's defenses and blow it up and kill everyone on the oil rig.

A rather uneventful mission where you hack servers and steal data all the while fighting a humorous vip and his goons. But you pick up a magazine with an interview of the leader of Horizon, the world's first Trillionaire. Perhaps he's "super smart". You learn later that he's another Cycle Clone.

The same as your last mission- this time with a scarier sounding vip.

You go to a crashed aircraft and fight off waves of goons trying to recover the cargo. You kill them, the Syndicate drops in and you GTFO.

Jorvik Castle houses a cult led by The Patriarch, a rogue cycle similar to yourself. His castle lies on ancient secrets that the Horizon corporation was interested in (i.e. ancient viking-studied mystery-biomass). In trying to get the doctor out, a team of Syndicate agents is ambushed by The Patriarch and one of them is turned into a "flesh golem", a mutant supersoldier and possible answer to the cult's supersoldier foes like you. Somehow they believe this is a means of "ascension" or gaining eternal life, just like their Patriarch- the result of their "mystery meat" research. You dispatch the flesh golem and take out the Horizon security trying to cover up their involvement and finally fight The Patriarch, who isn't fond of killing his fellow clone brothers, since he's Cycle 91. Upon killing The Patriarch, he tells you to "break the cycle" or something like that, but you don't know what a cycle is at this point and you just ignore it. (He's telling you to stop the cloning and dispatching of said clones)

You kill a bunch of remnant cultists in a mine. 'Nuff said.

At some point in your adventures you find that the Syndicate base, your safe house, has a nuke "in case of emergencies" or something. One of your memory-drones tells you that this lady isn't telling you everything.

You and the Syndicate forces raid an abandoned Soviet Bunker that has been recently been explored by Horizon forces. It has a big crystal that sends people to The Backrooms (yes, THOSE Backrooms) and summons psychic ghosts. Your entire team gets blown up Alma Wade style and you are left to blow up the crystal. Some helpful voice teleports you outside the crater so you can be rescued, but the identity of said influence isn't really that important.

You finally raid Horizon HQ. While your buddies are secretly killing civilians, you are sent to the Horizon HQ's underground complex so you don't catch on that they're secretly bad guys and go rogue (something about a "cognitive dissonance risk"). You plant bombs and blow it up. You then group up with your "buddies" and raid the Horizon tower. You find tons of scientists and learn that while Horizon is certainly down to some effed up stuff, they have the best of intentions and truly want to help people and make the world a better place. The CEO of Horizon tries to tell you that he is a cycle like you while he tries to transfer his consciousness- the same way he transplanted your memories- but you don't know what any of that means yet so you kill both him Anton Lazar, cycle 78, his spare brains and his brain-carrying helicopter.

When you return from destroying Horizon, you are gassed and sent to be incinerated because your cycle is over. You manage to escape and take revenge on your Syndicate "buddies" and kill all of them and also kill your successor, 107. In the bad ending, you detonate the nuke and your brain-backup sends the truth to everyone in the world, telling them what really happened. But, sorry! You haven't found all your memories so they cannot complete the conscioussness-transfer like that Horizon CEO tried to do.

IF you get all 7 Drones to regain your memories, you can transfer your consciousness to a new clone body. Hooray! You are reborn in a tube, with a man saying "welcome back, 106. We aren't done with you yet" or something like that (sequelbait??)

You are (or were, depending on your ending) 106, a clone supersoldier who killed other rogue clones and destroyed Horizon corp, which albeit having good intentions messed with some seriously effed up eldritch-abomination technology. Serious SCP foundation sh!#. And when you fulfilled your purpose, your supposed comrades tried to kill you, so you nuked their base- and all the other clones with you. Except one- your new body, in the true ending.

They don't know any better if they're clones, so if the Syndicate kills them, their involvement can't be traced- even if they have a scientist as a spy.

This dlc is all about embracing your inner monster. It's about living in absurdist philosophical freedom. After learning your fate is sealed, your only choice is to embrace the nonsense and live life your way- the ultraviolent way. You must become the bladekisser.

So, understandably, the dlc missions take place BEFORE the ending/good ending. That's the point. It's a cathartic, absurdist slaughterfest. But there's still a lot to talk about. There are two missions- the part you're reading about now, and the second part.

Basically, this part of the DLC has you try and rescue Task Force 63, another task force within the syndicate. They're mostly noncombatants that log the data the Syndicate gets from their missions. You are brought in to try and save as many people as you can, but if you've made it this far, you realize that that isn't going to happen.

You make your way through the compound and wreck the invading Horizon Black Ops squad. You pick up their plans to invade, you grab a cool sword, revolver and rifle, and you get ready to extract- but it turns out that the landing zones have anti-air, so everyone but you and another guy dies. You pass out for a while. When you wake up, you learn that the guy that was with you used all your ammo, and is bleeding out.

You leave him and push forward to find a lot of TF63 personnel, wounded and trapped in shipping containers. But your only means of escape is blown up, and you are ordered to execute the wounded to cover our tracks. This really sucks, and goes to show that 106 is being treated like a monster.

But you have no choice- this part of the game really forces you to embrace the philosophy of the whole dlc. If the universe is meaningless, if we lack free will or even if we don't, and our fates are sealed, the only way out of this nihlist hellhole is by embracing the absurdity of it all and living life to the fullest. It embraces the combat. It embraces the crazy nature of itself. You might be good, or bad, but at the end of the day, one day you're gonna die, and you gotta embrace the fun while it lasts. You must embrace the kiss of your blade. But Task Force 27... if they did this to their own, imagine what they'd do to you... except we already know that from the base game!

You get sent to blow up Task Force 63's data. You find a couple notes on anomalies Task Force 63 took out, including one that was taken out ahead of them, by an unknown enemy military group. This mysterious force could be the people that resurrect you, or maybe something else.

Well, Task Force 63 become turncoats and decide to go to Horizon. This task group is mostly noncombatants after all; their best chance of survival and making it out alive is through the enemy by surrendering. So you are given the order to execute the survivors. You kill the commander, and the noncombatants who have decided to pick up guns and go after you. You then manage to escape by the skin of your teeth- jumping out a hole to the beach as the facility blows up. What did you learn? That there's another group out there... and neither Horizon and the Syndicate know who it is...

But all is not lost. The helicopter lady that got hit by the anti air- she's still alive.

You land on an ocean platform/research facility similar to the complex from Metal Gear V, made up of scientists who escaped from the Pandora Institute. They have the corpse of Cycle 95, the doctor/infiltrator, and they decide to use both Pandorium, the Mothman mutagen, and an unknown "miracle water" to try to bring him back to life over and over again using his Clone DNA to easily reverse engineer a way to make a new perfected compound- but once you blow up a few of the platforms, it becomes clear in a data log that the clone Cycle S44-095-1 (i.e. a clone of a dead clone) number 62 has become resistant to both Pandorium and Miracle Water and will no longer regenerate. The regeneration, too, is basically worthless- sure, the full body regenerates, but falls apart later. And they only had that one clone... SO HOW THE ♥♥♥♥ HAVE THEY BEEN GETTING MORE CLONES??? Well, remember how you had memories and stuff taken from you before? Yeah... keep reading...

There's more- in a scroll, you learn that a ship was called the CSS Icarus sank after blowing up and being lit on fire, and an evil research project this ocean platform is working on was called Project Icarus... hmmm. Perhaps they got ahold of this artifact and are trying to reverse engineer it. Anyway, the source of the Miracle Water is unknown. Since it mentioned a sinking ship, perhaps it's deeper down on the ocean floor.

You piece together that somehow they are trying to use both the Miracle Water and Pandorium to make an ultimate regeneration formula.

You blow up a submarine that launches quick-deploy rockets with soldiers inside and go underwater to find something crazy- there's an entire reverse-engineered cycle cloning and brainwashing facility there! Task Force 27 signatures are everywhere around the underwater facility, and somewhere at the very core is another Cycle, a Horizon-made clone of Cycle 95, the guy you find dead in the Pandora Institute. He's barely a torso and clinging on for dear life, kept alive by a life support system that pumps him full of pandorium and miracle water. But they don't know how to clone them since they don't have his data... so they kill him, regenerate him with a new test injection, he explodes after being regenerated for 15, maybe 16 minutes tops- then they try it again with a new batch. As you learned before, he eventually became immune and was kept there in the life support system he was hooked up into. And all around you are mysterious clone vats.

You patch in the commander to try and shut down 95-I's life support system since he really really wants a good death, especially after his cycle has been kept on life support for so long. For loyal cycles, unlike you, who has amnesia a good death is the entire point of the struggle. You get attacked by a bunch of incomplete clones.

Unfortunately, these clones don't have your complete memories, and fortunately for you, they can't regenerate. Since, you know, they didn't perfect the formula. You kill your duplicates, and then go through the "indoctrination" rooms, similar to the videos they were making you watch before 105 rescued you from Horizon. The words "break the cycle" and others along with nukes... Horizon WANTED you to rebel, to nuke the Task Force 27 Syndicate Headquarters! Did you even have a choice at this point? What's the point?

The point is no different- you are a trepang, a creature that eviscerates itself to destroy its enemy- you are a sword, and whether you aim it at your enemy or your master- your fate remains the same no matter what. So instead of being a nihlist, you must be an absurdist. Who cares if your fate is sealed? If there's no meaning, then make meaning for yourself! You must kiss the blade and embrace the combat! Be a bladekisser. Bladekisser... Bladekisser DLC!!! Get it?

You blow up the heatsinks of the 95-1 number 62's resurrected torso and he finally dies, and you escape while the underwater complex is melting down. Oh yeah, there were some new mercs on the job- but after this, they quit. Not a big deal- just decided to mention it after all the important stuff... OR WAS IT?? Sadly, there's no way for us to know.

Well first and foremost we got one of the best weapons in the game- the sword. It has a simple slash and hold-and-release-to-impale function similar to the hold-to-fan-the-hammer function on the single wielded revolver, but it's an amazing piece of kit that you absolutely need to get. I recommend not doing your first playthrough with the dlc weapons, though, since the sword doesn't use ammo- however, it does NOT break or pierce armor. So keep a shotgun or penetrator handy...

Furthermore, there is perhaps another mysterious organization here, or maybe there isn't. We don't know for sure, but you, the player, a stand in for 106, start seriously questioning the validity of Task Force 27, when even Task Force 63 is willing to GTFO. Surely there has to be some sort of good guy in this world... right?

There's also the number 63. Task Force 63, Cycle 95-I stopped before getting to his 63rd regeneration... what gives? Omega Station isn't even on Horizon's books for that long! There's one thing you do know, however, and that you weren't as free-will-having as you thought, rebelling against Task Force 27 and the Syndicate. After all, the idea to nuke them was planted in your head at the very beginning- but you couldn't get a good look at the material before going to the more fleshed out brainwashing rooms in the DLC levels. So where does that take us?

Well first off, the following is all speculation. And while I certainly feel like I have a good enough grasp on the story, I still don't know all the answers, and what I can say is that I honestly think this mysterious military force referred to in the log gives us perhaps a hint as to who manages to resurrect you in the good ending. And even more than that- we see that there are pods that can transfer your neural data to a new clone in real time. Sure, they can store that code for later, but perhaps this mysterious organization is made from other rebels; or perhaps they, too, are evil. One thing's for sure, though, and it's that as questions keep getting answered, more and more questions surface.

What was 105's involvement on the CSS Icarus? What is the "miracle water"? What will your comrades think after they saw the commander sacrifice their own and almost died themselves? Who is this mysterious organization? Is it a red herring? Did we all just misread it, or is there something else out there? What happens after the good ending? One's thing for sure, the only way for our questions to be answered is yet another dlc, or perhaps, a sequel...

At the end of it all, Trepang2 is a journey that brings you into a world where YOU play as one of the clone troopers from F.E.A.R., albeit in a slightly different world; where an SCP-style foundation and an Illuminati-style organization battle over both artifacts, anomalies and bioweapon clones known as cycles. One organization seeks to reverse engineer these bioweapons and mysterious anomalies to bring a stop to the Syndicate, using their technology to bring a bright future to mankind at the cost of human lives and horrible, horrible experimentation that makes you doubt if it's worth it to begin with.

On the other side is the Syndicate, who see the Horizon group as dangerous and perhaps immoral. An organization that seems to already know all the answers, and who uses their superior grasps on the technology Horizon seeks to steal to create almighty bioweapon soldiers that cannot be traced and are eviscerated at the end of their usefulness, severing all connection to their involvement, thus keeping themselves and their organization a mystery, drowned in the facade of the various Task Forces.

And at the very center of it all is you, 106: the cycle that, whether he was acting with free will or not, eviscerated himself his own way, in a nuclear explosion, killing himself and his enemies in order to destroy his enemies for good. A Trepang. But what is a Trepang?

Trepangs are a kind of sea cucumber. A soft, cute, unassuming, fleshy, wiggly creature that loves to live on ocean floors and hunts in ways so terrifying you wouldn't expect it from such a cute, stealthy and unassuming creature. When they hunt it comes completely out of left field, and is immediately forgotten by the ocean floor afterwards. They snatch their foes without a trace, and disappear without a trace.

Trepangs have special organs and abilities. Trepangs have their organs harvested for their quote-unquote "mysterious healing abilities". Trepangs eviscerate themselves, i.e. rip open their stomach and spray their organs everywhere in order to destroy their enemy by ensnaring them with their internal organs like a net and sealing them off inside their stomach as it heals around them, trapping their prey INSIDE THEIR BODY and digesting them alive.

Cycle 105 literally does this in the first level, eviscerating himself stomach-up in the ancient practice of seppuku- although the "destruction of his enemies" part is symbolic. He indeed had special abilities that required the certainty of his death in order to wield.

Trepangs harm themselves to harm others worse. They are a metaphor for the Cycles in this game. The DLC wishes you to take the blade that kills both yourself and your enemy and kiss it, simp for it, even; embracing the full chaos and pain and bloodshed the game has to offer. In one moment, you see an unassuming fleshy thing. In another- OH MY GOD WHAT IS IT DOING IT'S KILLING US AAAAGHH!!!!! and then you disappear, and it disappears, slithering away to kill another morsel, cycles cloned over and over again, dying each time they outlive their usefulness. An endless cycle of unseen bloodshed, hiding just beneath the surface of an otherwise normal world...

[tl;dr]

Cycles are willing to kill themselves in order to completely destroy their enemies: by destroying all traces of the Syndicate's involvement after they're done freakishly destroying their enemies and themselves in horrifying and supernatural ways. They're the clone soldiers you were so afraid of in F.E.A.R., but a thousand times worse. And you play as one of them. Kill. Die. Repeat. A continuous cycle stopped by one man- the cycle known as 106.

It is VERY IMPORTANT a cycle dies and doesn't let himself fall into the wrong hands. Throughout the course of the game, you find the consequences of cycles failing to end. At one point, they can become the f$#king mothman and create all kinds of bioorganic horrors. At another, a seed can be planted in their head that your benefactors cannot be trusted... and it's better to just nuke them all, themselves with them, then let them have the satisfaction of a job well done.

The only reason they are allowed to have their abilities is that they have a set expiration date- after which, all traces of them disappear. When they escape or go rougue they are EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. Trepang organs and the bodies of cycles are believed to have healing properties and are often harvested and experimented on if one is found. Many cycles create substances like Pandorium. The two are synonymous. Cycles are like trepangs. Once you start to learn about these fascinating and unassuming creatures, it makes perfect sense. The perfect monster-soldier you pilot in this game becomes completely understood from start to finish by the definition you see at the start of the game, but you don't fully understand it until you beat it... or until you read this guide.

And then you get this dlc, that tells you that despite everything, at the end of your rope, you kissed the blade. You embraced the carnage. And you did it your way. The message of Trepang is to embrace your fate and live life in the moment, embracing all the absurdity that comes along with it, and mock fate's very existance by creating your own meaning, for yourself, even though your fate is sealed, even though you die one day- you did it your way. Nobody ♥♥♥♥♥ with you. Nobody double-crosses you. You're 106. You're the g#dd#mn trepang2.

The real Trepang was 106 all along. A Trepang2... Trepang evolved.

DISCLAIMER

This is the part of the guide where we all put on our literature hats and kiss our own butts and really try to find out what the heck it all meant. Sure, it's not the part of the plot, and it's only my own analysis, but NO plot analysis is complete without a discussion of the core message. Art should ultimately inspire and enable us. And I think I have come to a conclusion. This, dear reader, is what I believe to be the core message of Trepang2, according to my own literary analysis. Please know that your own, or even the developer's, may differ. And before you say, "It's not that deep, bro", ask yourself, wouldn't it be more fun if it was?

ESSAY PORTION

Trepang2 is a very simple game with a simple message at its core- but to contextualize this message is something most would consider bizarre and unnerving. It is the core of its horror. And it's this:

We must embrace our deaths by embracing our life.

Trepang2 is about kissing your blade. And while the context of the game is about violence, the core of the game is about free will, or lack thereof, and the nature of life itself. To conquer death, we must embrace life- and live it our way, fight our own battle, all the way to the very end.

It's absurd. It makes no sense. Life is filled with so many anomalies, so many unanswered questions- and day to day, it seems like we are a lone soldier on a struggle to find out the meaning of life- a clone of two people, destined to make a clone of ourselves with another, or perhaps not.

But that's where this game comes in. In this game we go on a path where we have little control or power over the outcome- but our power comes from embracing the absurdity and living in the moment-to-moment gameplay. Eviscerating our foes. Killing our enemies. Eviscerating our fate by embracing life in a unique way. Loving it when our death comes and we break the cycle by forging our own path through the options we are fated to meet- knowing at the very end that the world of the game has been forever changed by it.

If only a little. We watched our enemies fall by our own hands, we made made the ultimate sacrifice by selfishly embracing the badass death that was given to us. And while this death was predetermined, it was OUR death. Not the game's. We were 106. 106's fate belonged to HIM. HE dictated what his death meant, what his life meant; he lived his life fearlessly being the monster he was born to be, and through all the madness, at the very end, the world was better off for it. He wasn't meant to do the right thing- he was meant to do the Syndicate's thing. Fate's thing. But he showed them. He wasn't a pawn- he was himself. Confident, silent, surgical. He knew exactly what he wanted to do and spent no time waiting to do it. He was someone the player is supposed to want to be: someone who conquers his own fate. And while we aren't 106, and we aren't superhuman, the way he conquers his own fate is actually quite doable. It's basic absurdist philosophy 101. It's actually quite an old idea.

Ever hear the phrase, "My drill is the one that shall pierce the heavens? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?" Absurdism is used in a lot of media. You may be destined to pierce the heavens- but how you go about it is your business, not fate's. If life has no meaning, we are free do do whatever the heck we want and create meaning as we see fit. Who cares if it's predetermined or if we have free will- it doesn't make much difference to us humans.

That's why superhumans like 106 are so inspiring, and trepang2 does a phenomenal job at. Basic nietzschean philosophy. You don't even gotta know who Neitzche is or how to say his name. A superhuman's humanity is ironically what makes them capable of wielding such incredible power effectively. While we don't have superpowers- watching a human who has superpowers is a good way of learning how to be better at, well, being human.

It's always the gods or bad guys or some others that are bored, and sad, and think they have no power even though they literally created the universe. Poor CEO guy. Poor syndicate. And what happens? They see the superhuman and gain a little bit of humanity. Then they're stronger somehow, even though they really aren't. 106's comrades always cheer him on and are genuinely impressed by him and show respect to him, despite the fact that he's gonna be killed like the rest of the cycles, as far as they know. He's not supposed to be likable. He's a monster, a killing machine- but as a famous sun-powered anime character said once, "Who decided that?"

That's our unique powers as human beings. It's always been ours. We aren't trepangs, but we have this little thing called hope, and imagination, and while we're usually full of ourselves, simply hairless apes that think we're hot stuff and tend to get into the usual apelike shenanigans like war and egotism, you cannot argue that the human spirit is something that is a clear evolutionary advantage. This is why Superhero media exists. It is this ability we have to conquer our own fates that make us our own versions of 106. 106, basically, is the Ubermensch. But that's going a little too technical.

The death of 106 is the ultimate embrace of his life and journey throughout the game. Without his death, without the big nuclear explosion, his cycle wouldn't be complete. And it's this point that I believe Trepang2 makes very clear its ultimate message:

Whether or not our will is truly free, our will is our sword, and this sword is OURS to wield. And we can only wield our will freely by embracing the absurdities of life and living in the moment, creating meaning for ourselves by recontextualizing it through our unique lenses and creating meaning from nothing. Like anomalies sprouted out of nowhere, like a crystal that sends us to the backrooms, like awesome gameplay and a killer soundtrack.

The process of living life is what gives life its meaning. And that meaning is ours to create- and ours to make eternal through our deaths, weaving our story forever within the sands of time. Will your death be a tragedy? Or will it be a TRIUMPH?

tl;dr

Kiss your weapon, point your blade, and live this absurd life your way- all the way to the very end. Rewrite your story as you go to make your fated end the ultimate victory. For embracing the absurdities of life is the only way to truly conquer death. Whether we become resurrected as another clone, or go to an afterlife, simply fade away, or even merge with the dark matter of the universe; our fates may be sealed, but they are eternal in the fabric of spacetime. The universe may end, but time does not forget. Every playthrough of Trepang2 may follow the same structure- but every battle is different. So, too, must our lives make a mark on the fabric of history, and even one single blade can create a permanent scratch on the wall of time.

So embrace your death. Embrace that fact that one day, your light will be erased. Let your soul take flight. Go to a place where you will be remembered. Go to a place where you will be loved. A place where we can die happy, knowing that at the end of it all, we did it our way. Or, as the opening theme's lyrics state:

ERASE YOUR LIGHT. TAKE YOUR FLIGHT. TO A PLACE WHERE YOU WILL BE REMEMBERED. TO A PLACE WHERE YOU WILL BE LOVED.

CONCLUSION

Although all true works of art are up to personal interpretation, that's the beauty of Trepang2- it wears its heart on its sleeve, and while it is mysterious, and many questions are left unanswered, it asks you one question, and one question only:

ARE YOU READY TO EVISCERATE?

And with that, dear reader, my synopsis is complete... until the next dlc drops. This guide has been a big journey for me, and I'm glad to see it come to a close after all this time. Until the next time, gamers.