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SCP Sandbox
You Are Here
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Tales Sandbox
Series Sandbox
Fancy Sandbox
Overflow Sandbox
Third Law sandbox

Trial of the Dragon

Rukmini Mahakali was supposed to have melted the cursed panty sword down weeks ago, but hadn't. Definitely not because she'd taken a liking to the blade's resident yokai. No, it was because it made autotuned cat sounds when someone else touched it. Made for a useful alarm.

The Shimapan Masamune's sudden chiptune hiss, for example, was its petulant response to Octavia budging it in her sleep. Rukmini brushed her hand down the buzzing yokai's sheath and tightened an arm around her girlfriend.

She wasn't there.

"Hey!"

The voice was Octavia's, accompanied by the sounds of a fight. Rukmini's eyes shot open.

"Get-off-"

Rukmini flopped off the couch onto a pile of pale ale cans. The Masamune responded to being squished with a Merzbow "N͡Y̫̖̙̤͝A̟̪̭̬͉̰͝N̠̘" that rattled her into action.

"Excuse me, I'm being kidnapped!" Octavia called testily, over the sounds of grappling and battering.

Rukmini scrambled to her feet, bashed her head against the coffee table (briefly arousing the drunk guitarist on top of it), and swiped for her party satchel. Rows of radular teeth brushed against her fingers and receded as the satchel recognized her sweat and blood. A cheap gift from a fling in Hy-Brasil. Maybe she'd hit him up later?

"RUKMINI!"

Once she got her girlfriend back. Rukmini reached into the satchel for a thin green vial of toxic lime fluid, then popped the stopper off with her thumb and threw back the heady concoction. Her hangover died in her hypothalamus as the world sharpened and the apartment came into focus. Crystal clear clarity came to Rukmini about her surroundings.

The band: Futanari Titwhore Fiasco Two: Electric Boogaloo, its members resurrected after a tragic Marshall amplifier accident. The album: Can't Bury These Gays. The apartment: a ground-floor brownstone buried in bodies, bottles, and blood. The cultist: keeping it klassy in black-colored Klan robes.

There was Octavia: hog-tied and hanging from the cultist's shoulder, looking sleepy and exasperated in last night's casual pastel.

Rukmini's hand went to her blade; the cultist squeezed the throat of the hogtied half-fae thrown over their shoulder.

Rukmini smashed through the window, hands crossed against her face. Hopefully the band would blame the damage on the other bitch. She rolled on the sidewalk, trusting the demon blood in her stomach to keep the glass out, and came up scanning for prey. There! Underneath the elevated rails, right down the street, racing away from her on a yellow moped.

Her yellow moped.

Goddamnit.

The cultist glanced back at her and accelerated. Rukmini looked frantically for another one to boost. Figured this part of Backdoor Soho was full of cultists — it was full of ghosts. Brownstones raised from the dead crashed against chthonic Dutch rowhouses rubbed shoulders with railroad townhouses along wide brick streets — victims of gentrification, entire neighborhoods and railways condemned to the lost and the damned at the stroke of a pen. As new residents joined, the place kept expanding. You could lose an entire police force in the Ghost Quarter; rumor had it there were actual WWII Nazis trapped somewhere in downtown limbo.

Which made it ideal for street racing. Phone check! Time: four PM. Street: one of the old Radio Rows. Then the race would be happening right about —

Hot air blasted Rukmini in the face as gutted bike frames, taped onto barely shielded fission engines and held aloft by magic, rocketed past her. Everyone knew to stay off the Radio Rows in the afternoon. Three to five PM every day, bunches of motley artificers raced down the long occult streets in mini-suns held together by duct tape and literal magic. Most folks trying to steal them died of radiation poisoning or heatstroke. The unlucky ones turned into skids at the speed of sound.

Rukmini was feeling lucky. She rummaged around her satchel and found two more vials. There were enough alcoholic firemages in Soho to need to be fireproof and enough of those guys were atomic physicists that she needed to be radproof too. She popped the stoppers and threw back her unholy shots, then dashed for the nearest stoplight.

The streetlight burned cold against her hands. Puffs of thermally muted air buffeted Rukmini's sweater as she scaled it. Right as her hand gripped the plastic of the bulb cover, her nail chipped. Another thing to kill the cultist for.

There! A motorsun trailing the pack, right below her. Kid looked a bit short — probably a newbie, scared of putting his new star to the test. Going slow. That meant he'd survive the skid.

Rukmini raised herself onto the streetlight, crouching in preparation. All she'd have to do is drop — and then the kid switched lanes. She'd have to leap for it right now —

and nearly hit the pavement. Her hands scrabbled against the vehicle's sleek metal frame, finding purchase in the holes bored in a honeycomb structure around the star underneath. With one leg dangling over the street and the other barely hooked into the bike, she locked eyes with its owner — a stout, short sociopath wearing snowboard goggles who stared at her in disbelief. The motorsun dipped and skipped against the pavement, boiling brick with each bounce as its passengers fought to hold on.

Buildings blurred by and wind ripped water from her eyes. Rukmini reached up and swiped for the throttle. Miss.

They bounced onto the pavement, torpedoed for the wall of buildings.

She took a deep breath and kicked up, letting her hands go to find better grip. One found the fat man's face; the other took the throttle. Both were yanked in opposite directions, pulling the bike away from the building and letting her kick a leg up over the motorsun seat and then into the bloke's stomach. He let go and went skidding.

Lucky him, she'd also pulled the brake so the sun had slowed down to just skin off the meat speed rather than splitting his skull open speed. She cursed, knowing she'd have to cast an anti-contagion spell to avoid being traced down later, and properly pulled herself onto the motorsun. This was an awful start to a day.

Octavia was going to owe her so many favors after this, she thought as she pulled the burning bike into the middle of the street and gunned the throttle. The gap between her and her quarry narrowed rapidly. Closer and closer she got; her pet panty sword responded to being pulled from its sheath with excited horrorcore chattering.

Under the bridge — the cultist looked to her right, saw Rukmini keep pace on the street at unnatural velocities, and muttered a mnemonic under her breath. A third arm rooted out from the hem of her robe, holding what looked like a tiny chia deer. The cultist stood up; the hand smashed the chia on the seat. Before the clay remains could hit the street, a grotesque mass of stag heads sprouted from the dirt. A parasitic stag-headed hydra lashed out at Rukmini. The Masamune snarled, catching one head and bisecting it down the middle.

brainstorming

ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:16 PM
god i forgot how fucking excellent this one was
what a good opener
ok hear me out
ARDYesterday at 6:17 PM
yeah
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:17 PM
the cult leader is Naomi "CAPSLOCK" Hancock, pissed off at Rukmini for killing her nerd-boy punching bag
ARDYesterday at 6:17 PM
LMAOOOOO
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:18 PM
"if anyone was going to kill him it was going to be me!"
it's not actually a cult, it's her roller derby team
the Three Portlands Community College Lighthice
ARDYesterday at 6:19 PM
So she steals the sword as vengeance?
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:19 PM
shhe steals the sword to lure in Rukmini so she can kick the shit out of her as vengeance
ARDYesterday at 6:20 PM
oh ok, so she lures rukmini to her roller rink from where her infernal powers flow
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:20 PM
exactly
actually ok it's not the lighthice, she graduated and is now a semi-pro (as pro as you can get)
the Ghost Quarter Revenants
ARDYesterday at 6:22 PM
hmm, i'm having trouble envisioning a cool final battle
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:22 PM
the Ghost Quarter Banshees
ARDYesterday at 6:22 PM
a roller derby off isn't quite as cool as i want it to be
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:22 PM
well, that is the critical component, isn't it
yeah
hmmmmmmmm
scrap Naomi then
ARDYesterday at 6:22 PM
yeah we could probably tweak this a bit
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:22 PM
ok
ARDYesterday at 6:23 PM
here's an idea
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:23 PM
Octavia gets kidnapped and it turns out she's like. the fuckin chosen sacrifice of the cult
ARDYesterday at 6:23 PM
oh yeah, re octavia
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:23 PM
like in Big Trouble in Little China where Cool Trucker Man's gf gets kidnapped because she has green eyes
ARDYesterday at 6:23 PM
yeah perfect, i was thinking she and rukmini were like, anime fuckbuddies
or GFs, that's fine too
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:24 PM
"I mean, we're not like, dating dating"
ARDYesterday at 6:24 PM
yeah the rookie is in it for the pussy
but she's also too nice to just not be octavia's gf
or hmm, that doesn't quite sound the way i want it
the rookie thinks of it as a more casual relationship, octavia wants something more serious
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:25 PM
"look, ok, Octavia, babe, you're great, but I personally caused the death of three of my ex-girlfriends"
god ok
theyre having the fuckign relationship talk
in the cult sanctum
ARDYesterday at 6:26 PM
LOOOOOOOOL
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:26 PM
while the cult is like
looking on
ARDYesterday at 6:27 PM
the dragon wisely refrains from interrupting the convo and just quietly comments on the back and forth
"really i think you're quite nice, and lovely in the sack, but I'm just not good at opening up to people" "you emptied my wine cooler and sobbed for three hours about how you're a failure as a human being" "yes, i opened up way too much. see? not good at this"
ch00bakkaYesterday at 6:29 PM
"Um. Oh most potent lord and master of the seven flames, should we… Do something?" "No, no, I want to see where this is going."

Gods II

██████████

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Blood Type: Lapis

Handling Procedures: Before handling SCP-XXXX, remember the following:

• SCP-XXXX’s blood is unsanitized and may contain mild postmortem religious syndrome. This is considered beneficial as it contributes to pacifying any occupying sapients, accelerating the process of total conversion. However, improper handling may lead to religious contamination, which will result in a station-wide purge.
• If at any time you feel the urge to seek religious or spiritual redemption, hand off your assignment to another member of your shift and report for immediate eschatological detoxification. Remember that whether through ignorance or impotence, gods coexist and are complicit with evil, disease, and hunger. They are redeemed through their use by the Foundation, as are you.
• SCP-XXXX’s use will only ever be mandated by the Ethics Committee after intense deliberation. A civilization pacified by SCP-XXXX has squandered more of our resources than their planet could recoup. Worse, they have demonstrated hostile opposition to our ideals. Unless sterilized, they would eventually achieve immanence and deificulture, then challenge us in our mission and imperil us — your friends and loved ones.
• You may be morally opposed to the slow burial of an entire world underneath a bloody sky. Understand that this is their choice, and you are merciful to give them that choice.

Description: SCP-5640 is the embodiment of life and survival across all of Earth and the beyond worlds. While its body can be rendered down to the flesh, its might looms far above our minds, and as such cannot be dissected into the language of our understanding. Its head is a mass of tusks and horns, keratin-based, that extend through the upper stratosphere and scrape the base of Heaven, flanked by rows of antlers that drag holy fire through the clouds. These fires, while symbolic in nature, are easily extinguished, and can be eliminated outright by breaking any given antler branching point.

From the head downwards are robes of ecosystem: forests and deserts and ice caps, anywhere life can persist, wrapped around its body tight to the hide.¹ This hide is the conglomerated biomass of an entire planet — it coexists both here and everywhere it lives. Beneath that is the musculature, which abides by standard physical mechanics, and the organs, which are normative to the organs of native wildlife. Dismantlement requires no special materials outside of basic theosurgical machinery. While the antlers continually emit the ash of rebirth, even once the fires are quenched, this is easily cleaned. Limbs, despite their blinding nature, can similarly be managed by the scrubbing of key joints in acidic substrates.

SCP-5640 is vulnerable to physical modes of dissection. Once Type-II Antieuclid Hooks are applied to the dorsal and ventral skeletal struts, the main biological support of the entity's mass can be extricated, causing its collapse into an immobile form. From there mechanical operations can be performed to remove the remainder matter. Of primary importance is the blood: this blood, which spills with the torrent of a million world lifebloods, is consistent to normal superfluid behaviors,² and can be siphoned through vacuum transport sluices to storage tanks. The primary importance of its harvesting is its regenerative nature: as it carries the metaphysical associations of survival, rebirth, and vitality, further copies of SCP-5640 can be grown from its material. Following Ritual Protocol Indigo-UNDO-Ameliorate, a new bud of existence can burn bright from the guts. This can then be subject to the dissection protocols as outlined prior.

Blood from the entity also poses an extreme deific hazard. Aside from postmortem religious syndromes, the contact of ideal fluid to physical reality — particularly the gasses breathed by native organisms — results in its rapid crystallization, rejecting the rawness of the world for a more stable form, a substitute for standard conditions within the divine body. If in close proximity to any sapient life, it will liquefy again and attempt to bond with them. This can create an avatar of SCP-5640.

These avatars, however, cannot break previously crystallized blood — breaking the crystals would pose an act of defiance to their own metaphysical mantle. Any encasement of their surroundings in this material prevents them from taking further action. As the Foundation lacks obedience to this mantle, no boundaries on our excavation of the material exist. Liquefaction can be artificially instigated through plasma heating.

Materials of secondary importance from SCP-5640 are its flesh and organs. Meat can be used as a reinforcement structure in armor and construction, serving as a shock-absorbent mass with a degree of ablative defense against magical attacks. Various organs, particularly the intestines and esophagus, can be repurposed into ducts for containment craft. The liver, known for its cleansing properties, can serve as a medical aid or fertilizer. Stomach linings can be severed and combined with explosive technology for weapons-grade acidic impactors.³ Inessential materials are osseous tissues, whose structural qualities have been deprecated, and the mind and soul.

Conquest Procedure:

1. The Station will remain on standby until a rogue planet is identified.
2. Canisters of SCP-XXXX's blood are to be loaded into the Firing Station's Central Distribution Node for processing and loading into GODHEAD-class missiles.
3. To launch a GODHEAD missile, the nearest star will be exploited twice; first to generate a wormhole targeted at the sentenced planet, then to activate the warhead and fire.
4. Wait for SCP-XXXX to completely engulf the planetary atmosphere.
5. Calibrate a von Neumann package to reconstruct a new Station. Then exploit the nearest star again to launch it at the planet in the same manner as a GODHEAD missile.
6. Celebrate your role in containment and return to Step 1.

white div

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: Satellite footage of SCP-XXXX's present location is to be doctored such that its mountain cannot be seen. A five kilometer exclusion zone has been established around SCP-XXXX's location.

All attempts must be made to prevent organisms from expiring within the exclusion zone.

Description: SCP-XXXX is a hominid skull missing its lower jaw. Several features of the skull, such as the shape and size of the ocular and nasal cavities, are indicative of Homo neanderthalensis; however, the skull possesses a large ridge running along its top similar to those found in many extinct herbivorous hominids. The forehead of the skull has been etched with a pentagram inscribed within a circle.

SCP-XXXX was initially discovered by Foundation operatives on the eastern face of K2⁴, held in a copper-iron cage via iron chain. The chain was tethered to an overhang by an iron spike engraved with the letters "D O A". At the time of discovery, it was decided to leave the anomaly for retrieval at a later date; however, an ice fall collapsed the overhang and caused the cage to fall down the mountain.

SCP-XXXX was subsequently located in Canada's Yukon Territory, in the now-destroyed town of Caribou Crossing, when the town's entire population went missing. A deployment of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group sent to investigate the disappearance discovered tracks in the snow that could not be identified. The tracks, consisting of a smooth tread accompanied by consistently spaced holes, led to the town's church. SCP-XXXX was discovered inside, still present in its cage, and hanging from its spike above the pulpit.

An attempt was made to retrieve SCP-XXXX from above the pulpit. Upon approach, a minor earthquake occurred, dislodging the spike and causing the combined objects to fall and break through the church floor into a previously unidentified sinkhole. A search of the sinkhole found no trace of SCP-XXXX.

Over the next ten years, numerous other communities in the northern Canadian territories would be subject to similar mass disappearances. The rate at which this occurred was noted to be increasing, though all attempts to recapture the anomaly failed. Following the mass disappearance event on ██/██/██, SCP-XXXX ceased all known activity.

Addendum:

On ██/██/██, SCP-XXXX was located at its current point of containment in Persia: an artificial peak, approximately 206 meters tall, comprised entirely of fused human remains that were identifiable as the missing victims of the aforementioned disappearances. SCP-XXXX was located near the peak in its cage, suspended by the chain, and tethered to the mountain by its spike, leading to the current set of containment procedures.

Initial reconnaissance teams noted that SCP-XXXX was found hanging from within a hollow cavity on the outside face of the mound of human remains. The cavity formed a 1 meter radius surrounding SCP-XXXX wherein no human remains were found. The significance of this is unknown.

SCP-XXXX Excerpt: Between 1855 and 1860, British explorer John Godalming made a series of voyages along the Great Dividing Range during initial British colonization of the Australian continent, before disappearing in May of 1860. During one of these voyages, it is believed that Godalming made first contact with what would later be recognized as SCP-XXXX. An excerpt from his journal, dated to June 3rd, 1858, is included below.

The Gurdjar people of the northern territories speak of a people beyond the trees, in the deepest reaches of the jungle where others fear to tread. When I asked a tribal elder of their name, I was told that these people have no name, and were only ever referred to as "those who dwell beyond." Two days journey brought me to the outskirts of their territory, where I was accosted by a group of natives with spears and atlatls. In their eyes, I bespied a certain hardness borne of their savage life and an unwillingness to treat with outsiders. It would take me the better part of a week before I gained their trust such that I could make inroads into their culture.

On the surface, the natives of this tribe seem much alike other tribes in their simplicity and purity of life. However, there were some differences from the start that I noticed as particularly queer. For one, the people of the tribe seem to avoid treading on the earth whenever possible, often seeking to swing from the trees like great apes. This even extends to their homes, which are raised from the ground on stilts. When asked, the people seem to avoid answering why this is their way beyond that it is simply how things have always been. Secondly, I noticed that they hardly ate any vegetables or crops like their Gurdjar cousins, though I simply accounted this as a difference in diet.

Most curious of all however, was their devotion to a singular figure, whom they called the White Demon. I was not privy to much of the details of the faith, though I was under the impression that this figure possessed some terrible might that the people both feared and respected. I was brought to a curious sight however, when an elder brought me on a journey deeper into the jungle. After wandering for what seemed to be aeons, I was confronted with the sight of a ghastly white skull that was suspended in the air with a series of ropes fashioned from vines that were anchored between two trees, giving the effect of some creature trapped in a spider's web. The skull seemed to be looking into me, its misshapen form suggesting some horrid monstrosity that had once inhabited its confines, and the ropes that held it in place reminding me of some kind of chain that held the malevolent visage back. I did not understand what I was looking at, though the feeling of deep unease it gave me was not something I shall soon forget.

On the 9th day of my stay, it came to pass that an elder of the village who had been on his deathbed for some time realized that he was close to the end. I was permitted to watch as he called a great number of men and boys to his bedside, though I was somewhat alarmed to see that they had brought axes, hatchets, and other savage cutting tools. When the elder finally expired, I witnessed, to my horror, the men of the village immediately began hacking off the head of the revered shaman, before beginning the task of flaying the skin from his still warm corpse. They proceeded with brute, mechanical efficiency, in the same dispassionate manner that a hunter would skin and gut a rabbit before his Sunday roast. Following this, they hacked his body into smaller pieces, and continued with their macabre endeavour by reducing the flesh to chunks of meat.

The women of the village then came and took away the scattered remnants of the corpse. The flayed skin was cut into strips, and arranged into some kind of shamanistic circle with the severed head forming the centre of this pattern. This took place, curiously, on the earth itself, and was one of the few times that I saw the members of the tribe gathering on the ground en masse. Next, to my utter shock and disgust, I saw the women then bring the various dismembered parts of the elder's body to another hut, where they scraped the flesh into long troughs, where I saw a few of the erstwhile scarce crops growing from the remnants of things that I dare not imagine.

I wanted to take my leave from the village immediately, too disgusted to stay any longer, but I was barred from exiting my hut by a pair of armed guards with spears. When asked why I was not permitted to leave, they replied that none were permitted to leave their homes before the next dawn; this was an ironclad law of their tribe. Accordingly, I waited until the dawn, when I packed up my belongings and fled the tribe with no further trouble. I scarcely took notice of my surroundings when I slipped away, but I did note that the grotesque circle of skin and the head of the poor man had disappeared by the time I left. To what end, I cannot imagine.

town hall

The Problem: A lot of the discontent amongst the userbase in terms of staff and how staff functions is due to a fundamental lack of understanding, even with the transparency of O5, as we are inherently separated from the general user in our community just by being staff. At the end of the day, we work for the users and want to make sure that our users and contributors feel we aren't doing things or enacting policies without taking their site experience into consideration.

The Proposal: IRC-based Town Hall meetings, similar to the Orientation seminars. These would act as a place for Senior Staff men ears to discuss and explain recent policies, field questions, and take suggestions from the general user base. The current projection for how often these are held is quarterly, though this point is not solid and definitely open to discussion.

The Goals: Providing a more frequent, interactive platform for the community to both hear directly from staff and be heard will benefit both sides. Staff will have a better idea of what the site and fandom communities are expecting from us, letting us get a feel for the community's pulse so that we can implement community-wide policies, like redesigning site navigation, with an actual understanding of how it can best benefit the site community. The community will get a better understanding of how staff operates and why we make the calls we do, making them more receptive to our operations and soothing the implementation of unpopular yet eminently necessary policies.

The Implementation:

• At a high level, we'd have a structured agenda. We'd begin by presenting impending changes and policies, allow time for questions on those policies in between each presentation, and then end the session with time for general Q&A.
• For the Q&A sessions, we'd need to prevent staff dogpiles or people tripping over themselves to answer questions. We would organize ahead of time to pick specific spokespeople to answer questions on each policy, and then designate spokespeople for each branch of staff operation to handle Q&A pertaining to their area of expertise.
• Bad-faith actors might try to use these Q&A sessions to propagate some fake narrative of how staff has operated or abused their power. This is easy to handle — we correct them, explain what happened, and give them the boot if they keep acting out.
• What platform do we use? This is a tricky one. It might be valuable to use a combination of Twitch and IRC: host the seminar on IRC, stream the event to Twitch for broader audience viewing, and have high-level staff on voice-chat to elaborate on different items during the town hall.

parawatch

Themes: symbiosis, room 1407, ghosts are prey animals, rats are scary

post 1: japan has a metric fuckton of ghosts, but barely any ghost hunters. why? what's the deal? hyakumonogatari kaidankai exists and people love telling ghost stories. where are all the ghost hunters?

post 2: there's a haunted asylum out in japan. the locals stay well clear of it and talk about how it's full of ghosts and how every few years some ghost hunters stop by and then are never seen again. rumor has it that unit 731 worked there experimenting on rats, but now it's filled with only two things — ghosts, and rats. a psychic went there once during the day. he said he sensed a bunch of ghosts, but also another presence. not a ghost, but decidedly hostile.

post 3: rats are scary. they're piranhas with tails. rat kings are scarier. they're conjoined piranhas. rat kings are rare but not as rare as people think. they form when rat's tails get tied or stuck together. how can tails get stuck together? during a feeding frenzy, when the rats are jockeying for the tastiest meat — or glued together by blood.

post 4: symbiosis. two animals interacting with each other where both sides benefit (keep the scientific inaccuracy, it lends itself to the piece). domestication is a type of symbiosis. humans aren't the only animals that domesticate other animals. sharks have remoras — little fish that literally stick to the shark and feed on parasites trying to feed on the sharks. tarantulas keep frogs as pets — the frogs eat ants that would otherwise eat the spider's eggs.

post 5: an occultist weighs in. he's conducted tons of seances and been to tons of haunted houses. his theory? ghosts are like plants. they feed on negative energy and tend to cluster in packs. so if ghosts are plants… what's domesticating them?

Americanazi Zombies (with vezaz)

•ARD> PART ONE: the US sees the losses that the USSR is suffering on the eastern front and gets scared, thinking that they can't field nearly as much manpower as the soviets and conveniently ignoring the fact that the USSR's manpower will be utterly wiped out by the time WWII ends. so the pentagram researches ways to make More Soldiers, which culminates in the zombie virus. they inject black soldiers and send them out to die in the pacific
•ARD> PART TWO: after a few quarantined islands in the pacific, the US refines the formula but the atomic bomb is completed first. so they hold onto the formula until it's needed later. the zombie virus doesn't see use in Korea or Vietnam because one thing they learned is that their zombies melt fucking FAST in tropical climates
•ARD> PART THREE: the USSR invades afghanistan. the US sees this as the perfect opportunity to test their zombies out because afghanistan is hot and dry. they deploy the zombies into the middle east on the side of the mujahideen with predictable results. later we learn that the soviets started fielding zombies of their own, and then iran and pakistan and china
12:59 AM <•ARD> PART FOUR: there is a crisis of zombies between india and pakistan in the 1980s
1:00 AM <•ARD> the Foundation is forced to step in and play global mediator
1:01 AM <•ARD> PART FIVE: japan reports mutated fish being caught in the pacific, near the islands that were quarantined in the fifties…
1:01 AM <•ARD> end

12:45 AM <•vezaz> i dunno if i'd fuck with race-based zombie testing. idk. you'd have to handle it properly
12:45 AM <•vezaz> but idk
12:46 AM <•ARD> yeah, i'm unsure how much to delve into that. i feel like, historically speaking, that's what the US would do
12:46 AM <•vezaz> i've been thinking about how racist the army was before Truman
12:46 AM <•ARD> and i want to at least castigate them for it
12:46 AM <•vezaz> i mean it is what they would have done. Though it's worth noting that they tested the atomic bombs on white troops too
12:47 AM <•vezaz> but i mean it's the kind of horrible shit 40s America would do I just worry about portraying it in a respectful manner instead of an exploitative one
12:47 AM <•ARD> yeah, i know what you mean
12:47 AM <•vezaz> anyway i know you would handle with care.
12:47 AM <•ARD> i suppose i'm not sure how i would exploit it, you know
12:49 AM <•ARD> I suppose what I would need to do is comment on the situation? maybe have a foundation archivist take note of the race-based testing and use it as a case study for why the ethics committee exists — specifically because it's real easy to violate people's rights and justify it to oneself

•ARD> vezaz: i actually thought that just like, glancing past it would be more exploitative
12:51 AM <•ARD> solely because it's a mere footnote rather than something of note
12:51 AM <•vezaz> i just dunno man
12:51 AM <•ARD> hmm, maybe there can be a nice compromise
12:51 AM <•vezaz> i don't feel confident in my own judgment
12:52 AM <•vezaz> like, i don't strongly know which way is better
12:52 AM <•ARD> perhaps a note on the race-based testing with a footnote labeled "see Ethics Committee Ruling: On the Importance of Human Rights and Dignity of Test Subjects"

The Bastard Buddha (with kinchtheknifeblade)

ARD> i could do everything except the interview log because i'm terrible at those and you're good at the Characterization Thing
10:39 PM <ARD> so basically, i was thinking about that weaponized enlightenment
10:40 PM <ARD> and basically here's how the bastard buddha works
10:40 PM <kinch> thats so funny
10:40 PM <kinch> as a name also
10:40 PM <ARD> ikr
10:40 PM <ARD> he's a dude who got so fed up with reality that he achieved enlightenment spontaneously out of frustration with the world
10:40 PM <ARD> he has ultimate universal knowledge but also hates everyone
10:41 PM <kinch> imo i dont even know like what youre going for besides it should end with him reacting to something like "what the fuck" and then he just spontaneously disappears in a puff of light. like theres a final mad that puts him beynd corporeal form.
10:41 PM <kinch> i dont know if that works
10:41 PM <kinch> but its my first image
10:41 PM <ARD> so he spends half his time meditating on the true nature of the universe and the other half randomly zapping people with the knowledge of their utter infinitesimal worthlessness in a vast, uncaring universe
10:41 PM <ARD> like diogenes with a ray gun
10:41 PM <kinch> thats fantastic
10:43 PM <ARD> dude's just chilling on like, a mountaintop on asia
10:43 PM <ARD> zapping people who come to him for enlightenment
10:43 PM <ARD> and then zapping everyone who tries to contain him
10:43 PM <kinch> hes won
10:43 PM <kinch> hes the best
10:43 PM <ARD> so eventually the foundation gives up and sends someone to ask "why are you just sitting here zapping everyone with ultimate knowledge of their infinitesimally vast nothingness"
10:43 PM <ARD> and he's like "because i hate all of you"
10:44 PM <kinch> it just makes him madder
10:44 PM <kinch> i like the idea that enlightenment doesnt actually lead to him feeling compassion
10:44 PM <kinch> that went out of order
10:44 PM <ARD> for me personally it stems from this idea of rage quitting
10:44 PM <ARD> that this dude's impotent rage leads to him going full Tetsuo
10:45 PM <ARD> he just gets fed up one day and decides to become a prick because he can
10:45 PM <kinch> i love it
10:46 PM <ARD> grand
10:46 PM <ARD> i have a sandbox we can use

Kids from Kommand

Alita Sutherford had only been an analyst at Overwatch Command for three days. So she was wholly unprepared to deal with the mothballed terminal in the corner of the room that turned itself on and announced, in gravelly tones, an emergency code that was obsolete before she was even born.

First she struggled to match the code to one of the several thousand that she'd had to memorize before starting the position. Then she tried searching for the code on the Overwatch Command database. Only then did she recall the two-thousand-page manual that she had received three days prior — the one containing every code the Foundation had ever used.

As the ancient machine repeated its code in a low drone, she opened the lowest drawer of her desk and struggled to lift the enormous tome out of it. The book was organized in alphanumeric order — the code itself was some seven hundred pages in, and dated to the year 1975. As Alita read the entry, she felt her stomach drop away from her. With trembling fingers, she reached for the office phone and dialed a secure line to the office of O5-8.

The phone rang twice. Then a voice came from the other end. "Hello?"

“Er, um, O5-8, sir?” Alita said in a quavering tone.

“This is O5-8. Who are you?”

“My-my name is Alita Sutherford. I’m one of the Overwatch Command analysts. Uh, I just received a warning code for you.”

“Well? What’s the warning?”

Alita read the readout from the terminal. “Um… the warning code is Eight-Nine-Bravo-Alpha-One-Zulu-Golf-India-Niner-Zulu-Zulu-Zulu-Zero-Zero-Eight.”

She waited for an order. A command. An assurance that things would be alright.

There was a pause. Then, from the mouth of the Overseer: “What the hell?”

---

Murder Monster Essay

Many popular SCP articles fall into the category of "murder monster": a creature that only exists to kill (and eat) people in varied and gruesome ways. Murder monsters include SCP-096, SCP-939, and SCP-3199, and are extremely popular to read and write about.

However, murder monsters are also some of the most commonly downvoted articles on the site: for every four such articles that are posted in the morning, three will be deleted by the evening. This is precisely because they are so common and seemingly easy to write about. The Wiki's audience has read so many of these articles that they've become jaded.

But good murder monsters are straightforward and easy to understand. Their simplicity belies the ease with which they can terrify and horrify readers. They're a good way to acclimate new authors to the idiosyncrasies and expectations of SCP writing and culture. When written well, murder monsters form the backbone of the Wiki's content.

So how do you write a good murder monster?

This essay seeks to answer that topic. It examines common problems with so-called murder monsters; discusses different ways of organizing the plot to improve flow, tension, or create twist endings; suggests storytelling techniques to enhance the basic concept such as compulsions and incorporating elements of the natural world; and shows how successful murder monster SCPs actually use the techniques illustrated in the essay.

A concept which begins and ends with "it kills people in gruesome ways" is fundamentally disinteresting, and in order to make it work you have to expound upon and build up the mechanisms or plot that leads to the SCP killing people in gruesome ways. That is fundamentally how death works in horror fiction: there is a buildup to the death, and a buildup of audience tension. Death releases that tension and entertains through its violent catharsis, but it doesn't work unless that tension is built up first. A slasher film — whose entire premise is people being killed horribly — isn't interesting because people die, it's interesting because they keep dying in creative, hilarious, and over-the-top ways that are as funny as they are violent. Simply dying isn't good enough.

The key here is realizing that death should never form the bulk of the story. It works as a punchline or as a starting point from which you can expound upon a character or a monster, but reading about someone's horrible death does not, in and of itself, a satisfying reading experience make.

•ARD> hey fellas, i'm contemplating an essay on how to write a spooky monster (that sometimes kills you). i feel that their simplicity belies the effectiveness with which a murder monster can actually spook or gross someone out, and I think that there are a lot of tricks that one can apply to take their monster to the next level -
10:03 AM <•ARD> stuff like veering away from long-winded descriptions of the monster, incorporating elements of the natural world, including elements like compulsions, and burying the lede/stinger so that even though most readers will subconsciously know how the story ends, they'll consciously be wondering "where is this going" so that you can properly build tension.
10:03 AM <•ARD> i think this essay is useful because of how straight-up common it is for new users to try and write spooky murder monsters, and i think that they're a good way to get one's feet wet while also helping to introduce oneself to the idiosyncrasies and expectations of SCP writing and culture
10:04 AM <•ARD> Plus, it’d probably help the forum crit team if the basics of the murder monsters they see are solid
10:08 AM <•Modern_Erasmus> Sounds good to me
10:10 AM <Leveritas> I can help you with it if you want. Apart from Zyn, I probably encounter most of said cliches
10:12 AM <Lazar> ARD: wait, we're going to encourage compulsion?
10:14 AM <•ARD> Lazar: compulsion effects get a bad rap because they’re hamfisted as fuck, but it’s a personal conviction of mine that taking cues from the natural world is the best way to do compulsions. They already exist in nature - look at the cordyceps fungus or even just being horny. When used in conjunction with, say, an otherwise normal fungus, compulsions add to the horror that this thing could exist in the world
10:15 AM <•ARD> Moreover, compulsion effects don’t necessarily need to be as blunt as “your free will is stripped away” - I very much believe that, say, a pitcher plant which grows delicious apple pies at its maw would compel kids to wander into it
10:16 AM <Lazar> ARD: I'd say that's not compulsion, because those affected have an actual motivation
10:16 AM <•ARD> Compulsions are generally ill-suited to non-monsters because they hamper development of the story or characters, but being inexorably drawn to your doom by something which exists solely to eat you is fuckin terrifying
10:16 AM <Lazar> Compulsion is "the writer says so"
10:17 AM <•Quikngruvn> Compulsion =/= persuasion or suggestion.
10:18 AM <Lazar> All that's required to make motivations into actual frightening mechanics is to give the victims a good reason to take their course of action
10:18 AM <Lazar> Whether it be clouded judgement or simple naivete.
10:19 AM <Leveritas> Do you think the average newbie would get that, though?
10:19 AM <•ARD> The pitcher plant analogy might not be a good one - but there very much is horror in having your free will stripped away. I believe that that horror comes most effectively not from anomalous sources but from natural sources - again, looking at, say, the cordyceps fungus or being unbearably horny
10:19 AM <Lazar> Leveritas: that depends what we consider average newbie
10:20 AM <Lazar> Are we saying "the average person that joins the site and looks to contribute articles" or "person with 50% chance of writing a successful article"
10:20 AM <•ARD> When I think “average newbie”, I think “someone who wants to write but isn’t sure where to start”
10:20 AM <•ARD> So they gravitate towards something simple that sounds spooky - a monster that wants to kill or eat you
10:21 AM <Leveritas> Right, it's just the worry that the nuanced ''how to do compulsion effectively'' message will be interpreted as ''okay, compulsion's fine''.
10:21 AM <Lazar> ARD: I'd still contend that 'unbearably horny' isn't "writer says so" but has other reasons why it happens the way it does.
10:21 AM <•ARD> As I said in my initial pitch, I don’t see anything wrong with that - it’s a great way to get your feet wet and help acclimate you to SCP culture and writing expectations
10:21 AM <Lazar> Such as biological imperatives etc.
10:21 AM <Lazar> I'm not familiar with cordyceps
10:22 AM <Leveritas> Fungus that takes over the brain of ants, makes them die in a high place so the spores spread effectively.
10:22 AM <Leveritas> Destroys entire colonies.
10:22 AM <Lazar> I see.
10:22 AM <Leveritas> Used in human form in ''The Last of Us''
10:22 AM <•ARD> Lazar: my biggest problem with your interpretation of “the writer says so” is that it completely ignores how you can use a compulsion effect for its own sake. In your interpretation, compulsion is being used as a plot device to get a character from point A to point D(eath). I don’t agree with that
10:22 AM <Leveritas> Tried about 11 billion times by newbies too.
10:23 AM <Lazar> ARD: then it shifts to the Leveritas problem
10:23 AM <Lazar> It's the same reason I don't recommend short Series 1 style articles
10:23 AM <Lazar> because they're very hard to pull off effectively, and even harder when you're first starting out.
10:24 AM <•ARD> Sure, that’s compulsion’s primary purpose. But it has the potential for horror as well, you just have to know how to draw it out. And because newbies are never going to stop TRYING to draw it out - to use an analogy, i would much rather promote good compulsions than abstinence
10:24 AM <Lazar> That's a really false analogy
10:25 AM <•ARD> We can say “don’t use compulsions” as much as we want, but they’re still a tool for plot that I believe meshes very well with the simple murder monster
10:25 AM <Lazar> an equally bad analogy is telling people using certain kinds of cocaine are beneficial to use in some cases.
10:26 AM <Leveritas> Everything has potential for good horror, and I agree that compulsion can too, but the potential issue I'd see is the newbie not being able to wrap their head around it. Bit like developers using Lovecraft monsters because cool monsters, not because of the nuances confrontation with something incomprehensible and unknowable.
10:26 AM <Lazar> I would present it as an exception rather than a rule
10:26 AM <Leveritas> nuances of*
10:29 AM <•ARD> I mean that’s a bad analogy straight up, lazar. Leveritas, with regards to the nuances of compulsion - I think that at the very least it’s worthwhile to explain why compulsions are usually bad crutches, but how they can be used as springboards with the right backing
10:30 AM <Leveritas> Right. I guess in the end, the potential for newbies not getting it is unavoidable with things like this. You could do the essay as a sort of expansion to the list of overdone cliche's, I guess.
10:31 AM <•ARD> Which comes back to my belief that murder monsters work as a great backing to compulsion. Part of the essential challenge of a murder monster is building tension despite inevitably leading to a Dark Souls “YOU DIED” - and the compulsion stripping away ones free will, so that they’re inexorably drawn to their demise, builds tension easily
10:31 AM <•ARD> The key is for the compulsion to not exist in a vacuum, like it often does unrelated to the other essential components of the anomaly
10:33 AM <•ARD> That’s why most compulsions fail - the reader can SEE that it was used strictly as a plot device. Incorporating backing and elements of nature to the compulsion changes it from a plain old plot macguffin to an element of the anomaly which increases its verisimilitude
10:33 AM <•ARD> Pheromones, brain hijacking, etc

Maheshwarastra

██████████

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-XXXX is currently uncontained under the terms of the [treaty name] of [year]. Certain operatives in the Global Occult Coalition have been mandated with locating SCP-XXXX and, if they deem such an act possible, convincing it to defect to the Foundation.

Description: SCP-XXXX is a radioactive eigenweapon, codenamed "Mahadeva", that was developed jointly by the Global Occult Coalition and the Department of Parapsychology of Andra Pradesh University in 1989 as part of the RAINBOW ASTRA program, most likely as a response to the death of Arjun Ramakrishna Rao. SCP-XXXX was designed to be able to carry out precision assassinations by simply visualizing a target and then incinerating them, regardless of their location or distance from SCP-XXXX.

Physically, SCP-XXXX is a human male of Indian descent and was 35 years old at the time of its development. It is unclear if SCP-XXXX was anomalous prior to its activation during RAINBOW ASTRA.

SCP-XXXX is capable of generating and emitting high-powered lasers from a point just above and between its eyebrows. It is capable of sustaining a 1-Terawatt laser for a full second⁵ and has been able to emit a 1-Petawatt laser for a full millisecond⁶.

minmin note: I would go with concrete descriptor -> jargon — "SCP-XXXX is a [human description] [third eye, laser beam]" for the first paragraph, then "SCP-XXXX was [created] in [year] by [ominous GOC Project Name]. [add ominous methodology/creation circumstances]. [add her job scope]."

Addendum: [Optional additional paragraphs]

+ Brainstorming

minmin - Today at 12:55 AM
ok we just need something unexpected to do with it
then you have an easy third
im impartial to a mind-weapon though
specifically if the article can play around with the concept of Dharma
in the same way that the other two astras do
vaishnavastra cant be controlled, it just does what its right automatically; brahmastra seems to be controlled by an external force as well to level the site according to dharma
truffles - Today at 12:57 AM
hm
minmin - Today at 12:57 AM
wait
has there been anything on the site thats like
infinite power as long as its nonviolent
truffles - Today at 12:57 AM
the cold fusion paper towel dispenser?
minmin - Today at 12:57 AM
its a pretty established trope after all
oh no like
reality bender that can do wack shit but contained by his own pacifism
NOT cain pls
truffles - Today at 12:59 AM
hm
dmatix wrote one like that
truffles - Today at 1:00 AM
i like the maheshwarastra actually
minmin - Today at 1:00 AM
what was the dmatix one
truffles - Today at 1:00 AM
that's shiva's third eye unleashing its power as a laser beam
@minmin http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1915
minmin - Today at 1:02 AM
no thats normal man
truffles - Today at 1:02 AM
oh i thought that's what you meant
minmin - Today at 1:03 AM
hm kinda?
im thinking really rigid justifications for nonviolence
like ultra-Jain levels
truffles - Today at 1:03 AM
i mean
jainism is the nonviolent religion
minmin - Today at 1:03 AM
so you need to super-lawyer your way through the rules before activating it
truffles - Today at 1:03 AM
hinduism is bloody as all hell
minmin - Today at 1:03 AM
otherwise the astra will fuck you up
yeah igetcha
truffles - Today at 1:04 AM
that's one of the key aspects of dharma in hinduism - sometimes you gotta spill blood to preserve righteousness
minmin - Today at 1:04 AM
ooh
right i forgot about the Gita
truffles - Today at 1:04 AM
that's part of 2820's character arc as well - he doesn't LIKE obliterating people but does it because that's his duty
although I think I can see something
the maheshwarastra being granted to a pacifist
minmin - Today at 1:05 AM
it wouldnt make sense to theme it around dharma 100% i suppose
truffles - Today at 1:05 AM
It's not necessarily theming it around dharma but making the weapon pacifistic goes against its whole purpose
it's not meant to be pacifistic. it's meant to burn and destroy
minmin - Today at 1:06 AM
that would up the stakes a lot i think
like they could use it to intercept missiles or something but be willing to face the negative karma from killing air pathogens and random pigeons
truffles - Today at 1:08 AM
to clarify, which would up the stakes? @minmin(edited)
minmin - Today at 1:09 AM
the fact that the astra is limited to lasering
im picturing it to have some noodle incident origin story and ending up in the hands of one of the big good guys, either SCP or GOC
maybe GOC would be interesting, because the SCP knows it exists but allows the GOC to keep it because they need to help each other tank the negative karma from each use
and the SCP would rather not have to deal with the karmic fallout personally, but is happy to cooperate
truffles - Today at 1:10 AM
ah yeah
i've got a draft actually with a GOC killsat called TRISHULA
minmin - Today at 1:11 AM
entertaining noodle incident is having a pacifist GOC operator somehow obtain the astra, imbuing it with its preconditions
and thats just
truffles - Today at 1:11 AM
actually i could fuck with that
minmin - Today at 1:11 AM
alluded to and never mentioned again
truffles - Today at 1:11 AM
scp-3570 is a goc operator with a third eye
uncontained because he is a goc operator working under the UN
perhaps from the same program that birthed 2498?
minmin - Today at 1:12 AM
3570 doesnt exist
mmmm
oh thats fuckin dope

Sarkicism

+ Critique

•AidenEldritch> i read it
7:36 PM <•AidenEldritch> i'm worried it'll veer close to The More You Know

djkaktus> My biggest issue is that's it's a little too on the nose right now. Straight up saying "this is sarkicism and its also a meme" feels a little too straightforward to me.
7:38 PM <djkaktus> Were it me
7:38 PM <djkaktus> I would say
7:39 PM <djkaktus> that the actual scp is some sort of "anomalously transmitted communal behaviour" which acts like a religion. Then start to tie in Sarkcism, without straight up saying "this is sarkicism"
7:39 PM <djkaktus> The less you can use the word "sarkicism" the better.

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: [Paragraphs explaining the procedures]

Description:

On 8 November 2026, Event Alpha occurred: the Yama Biotechnology production facility in Odisha, India, underwent a catastrophic nuclear accident⁷, coinciding with the abnormally rapid growth of a 6-kilometer tall tower made of various human body tissues at the epicentre of the event. Although a steam explosion and graphite fire occurred, and the initial explosion of the facility ranked as a Level 7 event on the INES, no radiation was detected more than 3 kilometers around the facility and no symptoms of nuclear fallout were detected in any nearby communities. It is theorized that the tower was responsible for containing the nuclear fallout and utilizing the radiation to fuel its growth.

In addition to the formation of the tower, the ground in a 3 kilometer radius around the facility (henceforth known as the kill zone) was transmuted into human skin. The soil was replaced with human epidermal tissue; attempts to dig into the ground showed that the layers underneath had been replaced with dermal and hypodermal tissue and all other supporting tissue necessary for a fully functioning human integumentary system. Much of the flora and fauna living in the environment were displaced; all plant life around the facility quickly died off and was replaced with hairs of varying sizes and thickness, resulting in the migration of all animal life from the area. Additionally, various human body parts appeared throughout the landscape, such as hands, arms, and mouths.

Initial reconnaissance attempts using drones failed due to heavy radio jamming apparently originating from the facility; D-Class subjects who attempted to cross the kill zone were rapidly subsumed into the kill zone's terrain in a process similar to that of SCP-1227. Satellite observation indicated that the kill zone was expanding at a rate of approximately 1.5 meters per day; thus, Tau-5 were dispatched to investigate and neutralize the anomaly. To facilitate investigation and neutralization, Tau-5 were uploaded into Anderson Robotics PSHUDs and equipped with prototype cauterization weaponry intended for exterminating SCP-610 outbreaks.

Exploration Video Log Transcript
Date: ██/██/████
Exploration Team: Mobile Task Force Tau-5 “Samsara”
Subject: SCP-XXXX
Team Lead: T-5 Irantu
Team Members: T-5 Munru, T-5 Onru, T-5 Nanku
POV: T-5 Onru

[BEGIN LOG]

The team stands at the edge of the Event Alpha radius, performing self-checks.

Irantu: Mission parameters are as follows: investigate Yama Biotechnology, identify source of anomaly, neutralize if the anomaly's growth cannot be restricted.

Onru, Munru, Nanku: Understood.

Irantu: Check status?

Munru: Green.

Onru: Ready.

Nanku: Green across the board.

Irantu: Right. Engage feet heating coils; let's proceed.

The team enters the kill zone; although the ground attempts to interface with their feet, their heating coils cauterize it and prevent their movement from being hindered.

Onru: Ground is soft. I don't like it.

Munru: It is human flesh.

Nanku: I wonder how it tastes?

Irantu: Thank goodness you can't eat it.

As Onru moves forward, a hand protruding from the ground approximately a meter away suddenly extends and grabs her foot, attracting her attention. She attempts to shake it off unsuccessfully.

Onru: Nasty thing.

As the team looks on, Onru engages the utility blade in her left arm and slices the hand off at the wrist. The rest of the arm begins to bleed heavily and rapidly retracts into the ground. Onru picks up the severed arm and motions for the team to continue moving while examining it.

Onru: I hope this hurts.

Onru drives her utility blade into the ground and resumes walking, thus creating a deep incision from which blood begins to ooze. The remainder of the journey through the kill zone is uneventful, though the team reports that human limbs and male genitalia are appearing with increasing size and frequency as they approach the facility. Additionally, Irantu and Onru observe the formation of slits in the ground, which rapidly develop into large blinking eyes that follow the team as they progress. The team stops outside the main entrance to the facility, which, apart from the central tower, is mostly untouched.

Irantu: Is there any other point of… entry into the structure?

Munru: There were. Hatches to access the sewer and power systems. We would have to cut into the… ground to find them.

Irantu: Ah. And you think there would be resistance.

Nanku deploys her own left utility blade and activates its heating coil.

Nanku: We can handle it.

Onru: Where should I cut?

With a nod from Irantu, Munru directs Onru to a spot directly above the closest hatch; she starts to cut a square around it, keeping the blade in the ground.

Nanku: Maybe we should split up? Two of us through the main entrance, two through the sewers?

Irantu: Maybe.

Onru: I think I've hit the -

At that moment, a large orifice opens up underneath Onru, and she falls in. The hole rapidly seals above her; her headlamps activate in response to the subsequent loss of light, revealing that she has fallen into a large mouth. The mouth is pink and humid; there is a full set of teeth above her, each tooth about as large as a man. Onru turns around to find that she has landed on the frenulum of the tongue.

Onru: Open up.

Behind her, the tongue begins ambulating, seemingly trying to push her upwards to the teeth.

Onru: Open. Up.

The tongue continues to ambulate. Onru retracts her utility blade partially and detaches the outermost segment, extending the blade on her right arm and repeating the process. She adjusts her grip on the segments so that she is holding them like pitons. As Onru attempts to stand, a bubbling, clear liquid starts filling the cavern and the tongue's movements become more forceful, forcing her out from under the frenulum. At the same time, the water filling the cavern begins to drain into another chamber, catching Onru and carrying her out of the cavern.

Onru's camera lens becomes obscured by bubbles for the next several seconds; when the water recedes and the feed becomes visible, she is lying on the ground of a sewer main with her pitons dug into the wall. She stands up and looks around; there is a wall behind her and a large sewage port above, suggesting that she fell through it. There are cracks in the walls, through which a pinkish organic matter can be seen pulsing.

Onru: Come in, Tau-5. Come in, Munru. Come in, Irantu. Come in, Nanku.

There is no response.

Onru: Open up!

Onru pulls her pitons from the wall and uses them to break it open, exposing more of the organic matter, which strongly resembles smooth muscle. She then engages both of her utility blades and drives them into the organic matter. Onru cuts several X-shaped incisions into the matter before inserting white phosphorus grenades into them. She dives away from the resulting explosion, which quickly begins eating into the walls.

As Onru gets to her feet, there is a short earthquake. She examines the newly-made hole in the wall; it is a tunnel approximately five meters long and one meter in diameter. On the other side, another sewer main can be seen, which quickly terminates in a hatch. Onru pokes at the matter around the tunnel with her pitons to no response, then stops and stares at the hole for several seconds before moving away from the tunnel and proceeding down the main corridor.

Onru: I know there's a way out.

She repeats this. The corridor begins to decrease in size until she is forced to stoop. She continues down the tunnel partway before driving both of her hands into the ceiling, breaking through and coming into contact with organic matter, and then extending her utility blades into the matter to gouge out headroom.

Onru: Give me space.

Onru climbs into the tunnel, but halfway through, the ends of the tunnel seal around her.

Onru: Let me out.

Pressure sensors on her shell indicate a shrinking of the tunnel.

Onru: Let. Me. Out!

The tunnel shrinks again.

Onru: Let! Me! Out! Now!

The tunnel shrinks again. The camera lens in Onru's left eye cracks slightly.

Onru: Let me out! Let me out! Let me out let me out let me out!

The tunnel continues shrinking while Onru repeats the phrase "Let me out." It is unclear why she does not use her utility blades to carve out space to crawl. As the pressure in the tunnel increases, the lenses in Onru's implants crack. The tunnel then collapses entirely and the video feed ends.

The video feed reactivates an indefinite time later

+ Open Exploration Log File 4

Exploration Video Log Transcript
Date: ██/██/████
Exploration Team: Mobile Task Force Tau-5 “Samsara”
Subject: SCP-XXXX
Team Lead: T-5 Irantu
Team Members: T-5 Munru, T-5 Onru, T-5 Nanku

[BEGIN LOG]

Nanku enters the atrium alone. The room is dark, with the exception of the central ring, which is illuminated by the floor lights. The central organic tower extends up through this ring and out of the central skylight. As Nanku approaches the tower, it quivers and then rapidly descends. Nanku prepares her napalm launcher, but the top of the tower descends to her eye level and then ceases to descend. The CEO of Yama Biotechnology, Omoye Odiase, is sitting on the top of the tower, gouging chunks of flesh from the top and eating them.

Odiase: Oh, hello. You're one of the machines, right?

Nanku: … I am a human being who is simply currently in a machine body. You are eating chunks of human flesh. Are you human?

Odiase: [raising her hands in a placating gesture] Alright, alright. Point taken. Humanity comes in many forms - I should have been the first to acknowledge you, I apologize. Why don't we start again? My name is Omoye Odiase. Might I have the pleasure of yours?

Nanku: My desig - name, my name is Nanku.

Odiase: It's a pleasure to meet you, Nanku. I would ask you what brings you here, but… [Odiase looks at the tower and bites into a strip of flesh.] I think that much is obvious. How can I help you?

Nanku: Where did this tower come from?

Odiase: I made it. You must have met the others. They looked inwards, but my own apotheosis came from the outside.

Odiase takes the strip of flesh she is holding and tears it in half. She then proceeds to eat half of the strip, furrowing her face in response and shaking her head rapidly.

Odiase: [makes a sound of disgust] Nanku, do you know what a dislocated knee feels like?

Nanku: Painful?

Odiase: It's like you're paralyzed on half of your body. If you so much as twitch your injured leg it feels like a bomb has gone off. Forget limping, forget walking, forget crawling. You can't do anything but lie there and cry.

Nanku: It sounds, ah… excruciating. When did you dislocate your knee?

Odiase: Never.

Nanku: Then how do you know what it feels like?

Odiase: Because Terrence Richards dislocated his knee on a skiing trip in the seventh grade.

Odiase holds up the other half of the strip.

Odiase: This used to be a part of Terrence Richards, one of the branch's junior accountants. Now it's a part of everyone. By eating it, I imbibed the memory of that skiing trip. I also imbibed the memory of the first time he fell in love with a girl in eighth grade, the taste of the slice of pizza they shared on their first date in the ninth grade, and how she smelled like lavender when they first kissed.

Odiase eats the strip and shakes her head rapidly.

Odiase: They broke up in the tenth grade. She screamed at him so loudly. He wanted to shrink into the floor. You see, Terrence is a part of me now. Everyone in Yama is a part of me now - and now they are all a part of each other. They are humanity - and by consuming them, by sharing their experiences and their memories and their being, I become human.

Odiase digs another chunk from the tower and starts eating it. Blood begins to drip from the gash she has made in the tower.

Odiase: I know what it's like to go skydiving in Brazil. I've seen the majesty of Angel Falls for the very first time. I've spent my adolescence in London and then been uprooted to Gambia. I watched my best friend lose both her arms to a grenade in Pakistan. I watched my father throw boiling water on my mother. I watched my cousins from India experience snow for the very first time in Canada.

Nanku: That's… very… nice… I think. Could I try some?

Odiase: Oh, absolutely! Here. Catch!

Odiase rips a strip of flesh from the tower and throws it to Nanku, who catches it with her free hand. Nanku examines the strip for several seconds before opening the hatch to her organic fuel cell and dropping it in.

Odiase: Is that how you eat? I'm not sure it works if you don't, well, chew.

Nanku: That is… disappointing to hear. Um, I need to ask you some more questions.

Odiase: Ask away! Would you care for some more flesh?

Nanku considers the question for several seconds before nodding. Odiase tears off more strips of flesh and tosses them to her.

Nanku: How did you do all this?

Odiase: Mmmm… I'd say it started five, six years ago? My father, he died of Alzheimer's.

Nanku: Oh. I'm happy for - sorry, I'm sorry for your loss.

Odiase: Don't be. It runs in the family. I was terrified of it, you know. Not the dying, but the rest. The stupidity. The incontinence. He needed a caretaker for two years before he died, just to keep him clean.

Nanku: Oh. Um… how did you do all this?

Odiase: [exhales emphatically] I'm getting to that.

Nanku: Oh, I already tried that. I much prefer being human.

Odiase takes several deep breaths.

Odiase: You know what? I like you. I really do. I think we could be good friends.

Nanku: Well, thank you! I like you too. I'm really sorry but I have to kill you now!

Odiase: Wait -

Nanku engages her napalm launcher and fires a round at Odiase, hitting her in the stomach and detonating.

[END LOG]

Sarkicism Book ExcerptsAddendum:

+ Excerpts from "Sarkicism: The Divine Potential"

Chapter 4: The Soul

The soul is perhaps the most important element of Sarkicism. It is the seat of consciousness, the root of our passions and emotions, and the basis of our drive to become better. The soul is what makes you human, and what contains your potential for divinity. Every person has their own soul, and is their own God. It is crucial that you understand your soul inside and out - if you do not know who you are now, then how could you even imagine what you could become? The conception of the soul is at the heart of Sarkic ethics…

…The soul is at once genderless and all genders, but the mind often feels compelled to determine its own gender. Gender, sex, and sexuality are fluid components of our being. Never let society restrict you to the masculine-feminine dichotomy; the lowly mushroom has thousands of so-called biological sexes. The author herself was formerly considered a male by society. Your gender is merely part of the identity your soul, and just as the entirety of the soul longs for freedom, so too do its parts…

…All human beings have the potential for divinity; we are all gods. Race, ethnicity, sexuality, and every other physical distinction you could make between one human and another have no bearing on that divinity. Let your mind be cleared of prejudice and bigotry, for to hate another is to hate God. Be generous to others and help those people around you. Open your mind to new ideas, cultures, and behaviors; understand the beauty of the divine experience from all perspectives…

Chapter 8: Preparing the Divine Body

The spark of divinity is within you, as it is within every single one of us. But it is still just a spark that must be fanned, and fed, and tendered to grow into the fire of apotheosis. A poor diet and lack of exercise makes you fat, lethargic, and irresolute. You must feed and train your body and mind. Remember, your mind and soul are what make you God - but your body is your Temple. It is your home, your castle,your throne, and your connection to the world. Exercise, a good diet, and a good mind are crucial to cleaning and renovating that house so that it can become a palace fit for a god.

In this chapter, you will learn about the importance of staying healthy and cultivating a mindset for continual self-improvement. In Chapter 8, we will cover nutrition, various types of diets, what separates a good diet from a fad diet, and how to determine the best diet for your needs. In Chapter 9, we will cover human physiology. various types of exercise routines, how different exercises affect different parts of your body, how to synergize your diet and exercise, how to stick with your exercise routines and fun ways to exercise and stay healthy. Chapter 10 is dedicated to keeping the mind sharp; we will learn about meditation, the importance of being well-read, the benefits of pursuing artistic hobbies, and ways to keep learning new things using tools like OpenCourseWare and even the public library…

Chapter 13: Bioreactors

A bioreactor is a machine that influences biological processes for some end goal. Bioreactors are incredibly useful tools for biotechnology and biomedical engineering; they allow us to produce various organic substances with relative ease and study biological processes under controlled conditions.We will be using them to study various types of biological and cellular phenomena, and in later chapters, produce substances like collagen and phospholipids and work our way up to stem cells, immortal cells, and entire organ tissues. Unfortunately, bioreactors can also be quite expensive to produce and maintain - but they don't have to be! In this chapter, we will learn how to produce laboratory and industrial-grade bioreactors using common off-the-shelf parts and household supplies.

Chapter 16: Psionics

… Every individual has some mild psionic capabilities - our minds are manifestations of the electromagnetic force and psionics is simply applying that force in various ways. With practice and training, you can strengthen your psionic abilities like you would any muscle. Unfortunately, most individuals do not have the knowledge to train their capabilities and strengthen them. But you are not most individuals. In this chapter, we will discuss psionics as an extension of the electromagnetic force and how it applies to different physical processes, and build a device to amplify our own psionic capabilities…

…Apply the strips of neurons to the underside of the orichalcum lining, with the agar-epoxy side facing the lining. Each strip should be inbetween two pithing needles. Solder jumper wires between the corresponding pairs of strips at their north and south terminals: the outmost strips, at the left and right ears should be connected at the north terminals and south terminals; the two inmost strips, at the center of the helmet and next to each other, should be connected at the north terminals and south terminals; and so on. Consider wrapping excess wire around the base of the needles…

Chapter 20: Protein Manipulation

The Sonic hedgehog protein - yes, it's actually called that. Even science has a sense of humor! - is a protein that plays a crucial rule in vertebrates, and will play a crucial role in your apotheosis. In developing vertebrates, SHH controls organogenesis: this means that it directs how the cells eventually grow and differentiate into different organs, such as digit formation and the organization of your nervous system and spinal cord. Even in adults, SHH plays a key role in controlling the division of stem cells, which you will remember from Chapter 19.

Chapter 20 is all about manipulating proteins such as SHH to your will. Using the psionic amplification headset we constructed in Chapter 16, we will influence the secretion of this and other proteins so that we can consciously control when and where it is secreted. By the end of this chapter, we will be able to control what cells produce SHH and when. In Chapters 21, 22, and 23, we will be learning about the other types of organic molecules that influence human organ development and how to manipulate them. The goal by the end of Part 4 is for us to be able to manipulate the development of a crude nervous system using the stem cells that we produced in Chapter 19.

Chapter 28: Self-Actualization

Congratulations. You have learned how to become god.

Take a moment to reflect back on what you have done, and reflect on this book. How did you read about it? Was it via audiobook? Podcast? Book? YouTube? Humans created those technologies, even when we weren't gods. We used our creativity, ingenuity, drive, and tenacity to provide others with the means of disseminating and sharing knowledge for self-improvement. The fact that you are reading this is a testament to the willpower, creativity, tenacity, and potential of the human mind. As you stand on the threshold of a new mode of existence, remember that, and never let it go. These qualities are what made you human, and they are what made you divine.

Look within yourself and cease to see yourself as the human you are. Imagine yourself as the divinity you wish to be. Your body will reflect the power, creativity, passion, and love that makes you a human being. Shape your atoms, your cells, your tissues, your organs, and your body to reflect who you truly are.

Now you are truly divine.

Sarkicism Ideas

Key ideas: Onru faces off against the entity that wants to simply control the world. Irantu and Munru face off against the entity that wants to shoot its creations into space and populate the universe. Nanku faces off against Omoye Odiase, who wishes to achieve enlightenment by absorbing the rest of humanity.

ARD> djkaktus: it's an idea. it's not yet been written up but here's how it goes
1:48 PM <djkaktus> ok I will judge
1:48 PM <vezaz> djkaktus okay i cracked the heck up
1:48 PM <ARD> sarkicism isn't a religion dedicated to ion or yaldabaoth or any of those stupid gods
1:48 PM <ARD> sarkicism is a meme that instructs human beings on self-improvement : apotheosis through improvement of the human form
1:49 PM <ARD> the ultimate goal isn't to summon a world eater
1:49 PM <ARD> it's to help every human being achieve their true inner potential through biopunk
1:49 PM <Tuomey> sarkicism is a word I can't help but read as "sarcasm"
1:49 PM <ARD> Stem cell research, bioreactors, gene therapy, nanobots
1:49 PM <ARD> eugenics
1:50 PM <ARD> the idea is an SCP - the anomaly is the meme, sarkicism itself
1:50 PM <•EldritchCadence> excuse you those are my bros you are dissing
1:50 PM <ARD> every human being is a temple
1:51 PM <ARD> they worship themselves and seek to help other individuals perfect themselves
1:51 PM <ARD> stage 1) exercise and eating right
1:51 PM <djkaktus> ok so wait
1:51 PM <djkaktus> this is pretty cool
1:51 PM <djkaktus> but
1:51 PM <djkaktus> what about their fixation on 610 et all.
1:51 PM <djkaktus> Because they are definitely all about that jazz.
1:51 PM <ARD> 610 is a failure
1:51 PM <Silber> djkaktus: he's getting to the rest of the steps
1:52 PM <ARD> 610 is what happened when they tried to achieve apotheosis through black magic and witchcraft
1:52 PM <ARD> No no no no no
1:52 PM <ARD> Apotheosis through science. self-improvement. mastery of the universe through the body and the mind
1:52 PM <ARD> Human beings used their minds to figure out science and make it wokr
1:52 PM <ARD> *work
1:52 PM <ARD> Stage 1) exercise and eating right
1:53 PM <ARD> Stage 2) bio modifications. You are God and your body is your temple. How do you want to make it better
1:53 PM → AbsentmindedNihilist joined (soggod.regnuh|naibsel#soggod.regnuh|naibsel)
1:53 PM <ARD> Stage 3) how do you help other people realize their potential to become God
1:53 PM <ARD> Stage 4) how do you help the people who don't want to be helped
1:54 PM <ARD> The idea right now is in one of these places, they reached Stage 4. Every individual achieved apotheosis and realized their true self-images - but these are horrible and grotesque to ordinary humans
1:54 PM <ARD> A massive web of brain tissue, spread out and able to hear the thoughts of every living thing around it
1:54 PM <ARD> A pillar coiled around a nuclear reactor, feeding off of it and subsisting on the energy of the universe directly
1:55 PM <ARD> Millions of microscopic cells, all at once a single brain and an individual brain that can communicate with each other and yet be their own self-realized individual - thinking dust
1:55 PM <ARD> They have reached their own apotheosis and nirvana
1:55 PM <ARD> And they are horrible abominations of the human form and so they must be destroyed
1:56 PM <ARD> This is where the Foundation comes in. Enter an MTF of all-robots
1:56 PM <ARD> which is sent in to sterilize the area
1:56 PM <djkaktus> oh boy.
1:57 PM <ARD> The reason they have to use robots is Stage 3 and 4. Humans are susceptible to the meme because they want to improve - their brains are hardwired to learn and grow and the meme is literally just an amplification of this
1:57 PM <ARD> But computers aren't
1:57 PM <ARD> Thoughts
1:59 PM <djkaktus> I think that's strong, and I want just as much as anyone to see metaphysician's ideas laid low and built up better than he did
1:59 PM <ARD> I sense a but
1:59 PM <djkaktus> but I think a lot of the current popular aspects of sarkicism come from its emphasis on body horror
2:00 PM <djkaktus> which cannot just be replaced with like, existentialist drama
2:00 PM <ARD> Mhm.
2:00 PM <djkaktus> the body horror has to remain
2:00 PM <ARD> I don't want to remove the body horror
2:00 PM <ARD> That's where the new forms come in
2:00 PM <ARD> These are horrible - to regular people. But to the people who achieved those forms, all is right with the world

american bureaus of patriotic goodness

•ARD> Cursed character concept: Dollar$ign Algebraic, agent of the Bureau of Wasteful Expenditure — one of the many esoteric American bureaus of normalcy that were inadvertently conjured to life by the riders on the original bill that established the Pentagram
11:50 PM <•ARD> Kroner$ign topoligic, agent of the Bureau of International Enmity
11:50 PM <•TyGently> when will you be stoppee
11:50 PM <•TyGently> stopped
11:51 PM <•ARD> I love the idea that there are tiny secret autonomous cells within the US government apparatus itself which exist only to make the pentagram necessary
11:51 PM <•ARD> They aren’t even technically overseen by anyone and nobody knows they exist because nobody has ever bothered to hunt though the accounting bills that indicate their presence
11:54 PM <•ARD> These are the agents of the American Bureaus of Patriotic Goodness
11:54 PM <tawny> everyone who finds out about them is just automatically drafted into them
11:56 PM <•ARD> I like hat
11:56 PM <•ARD> American antimemetics
11:56 PM <•ARD> Nobody knows about them because the only people who know about them are their agents, who are bound by law to remain secret about their activities
11:57 PM <•ARD> Ruble$ign Homologic, Agent of the Bureau of National Insecurity
11:58 PM <•ARD> Ruble$ign is responsible for recruiting new agents into the American Bureaus of Patriotic Goodness by leaking information about them
11:58 PM <•ARD> Since, as we’ve already established, the only people who know about the Bureaus are their agents
Thursday, December 5th, 2019
12:04 AM ⇐ Dashington quit (moc.duolccri.egasrehtah.BFEE4527-CRInys|362453diu#moc.duolccri.egasrehtah.BFEE4527-CRInys|362453diu) Quit: Connection closed for inactivity
12:13 AM <tawny> why are their names like that
12:14 AM <•ARD> tawny: because civilized names are for pussies and fascists
12:15 AM <•ARD> In the dank sub-basements of the American government, that last bastion of democratic Socratic machismo, there is only The American Bureau of Patriotic Goodness
12:23 AM <tawny> okay but I mean like
12:23 AM <tawny> they don't *have* these names before they go to work there, surely?
12:24 AM <•ARD> Oh definitely not
12:25 AM <•ARD> But it doesn’t really matter who they were before joining the Bureaus
12:26 AM <•ARD> They answer to the Bureaus’ Madame Director: Stanley Kubrick, who faked his life in 1969
12:28 AM <•ARD> Now he perpetually oversees the bureau, filming the greatest story that will never be told
12:47 AM <ch00bakka> i
12:47 AM <ch00bakka> madame director stanley kubrick
12:47 AM <ch00bakka> faked his life
12:47 AM <ch00bakka> wh
12:47 AM <ch00bakka> jesus christ ard this is truly writing like a chad
12:48 AM <•ARD> Doom Patrol is something else entirely
12:48 AM <•ARD> There’s a whole character that’s literally a sentient genderqueer street named Danny
12:48 AM <ch00bakka> yeah
12:48 AM <ch00bakka> doom patrol is so good
12:49 AM <•ARD> The American Bureaus of Patriotic Goodness were inspired by the bureau of nowhere
12:55 AM <•ARD> Pound$ign Homomorphic, Agent of the Bureau of Cultural Subversion

Footnotes

1. these can be easily removed via incendiary equipment

2. fluids possessing zero viscosity which, as a result of this property, can flow and expand without loss of kinetic energy

3. tests on the recent Mark 11 GODHEAD-class missiles found that entire continents could be dissolved into their primordial fluids on detonation, given proper digestive calibration

4. the second-highest mountain in the world

5. both continuous and pulsed

6. For comparison, modern scientific laboratories have only been able to sustain 1-Petawatt outputs for a few picoseconds

7. It is still unclear why Yama built a nuclear facility in their biotechnology labs or how it was constructed in secret