Do not edit other writers' sandboxes without permission.
- Intro Page
- Library Quest
- St. Hubert's Key - V5
- Subdivisions
- WATCHGOD
- A Misguided Audio Tour of the Demise of the Foundation
- St. Hubert's Key - V4
- Saint Hubert's Key — V3
- Saint Hubert's Key – V2
- Saint Hubert's Key
This pages houses all of my drafts which are currently being worked on, but which are not yet ready for general review and feedback. Once a draft on this page reaches a point where it is ready to be put up for critique, it gets moved to the Showroom.
DRAFTS ON THIS PAGE
| Name | Article Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Library Quest | Tale | Through a series of Weird Space Anomalies, the Damocles Initiative Starship Curtana is shrunk to the size of a fly and forced to navigate the Wanderer's Library, where they find themselves in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a flyswatter-wielding Librarian who is displeased with their gamma ray emissions. |
| Subdivisions | Tale | Launch tale for Dividends. |
| WATCHGOD | 001 | The Bard of Apotheosis. |
| A Misguided Audio Tour of the Demise of the Foundation | SCP | A sinister audio guide for different museums. |
| Saint Hubert's Key | Tale | Prometheus Labs develops a vaccine for lycanthropy. |
Curtana
Wanderer's Library
743 Days After Ignition
409 Days After Miniaturization
Project Memo
| Project ID: PLMed-74SHK (Saint Hubert's Key) Date: 1974-XX-XX Author: Rodger Cooper, M.D. Subject: Admission and Initial Examination of Patient; Thoughts and Observations |
 |
Patient is Morgan Wright, a 32-year-old female of Caucasian descent, height 173 cm, weight 64 kg, blood type A-. Medical record lists no known allergies. Patient has been dosed with targeted chemical amnestics at least three times, reasons unspecified. Patient has been bound with a Berryman-Langford geas agent, parameters unknown (likely a standard loyalty and confidentiality geas). Patient bears a tattoo containing silver nanoparticles on the right shoulder blade, of a design consistent with anti-thaumatic sigils utilized by the GOC to disrupt contagion links.
Patient has not been vaccinated against Slow Transformative Lycanthropy. Medical record indicates that she received only the first dose, does not explain the lack of subsequent vaccinations. Possible complications? (Ask GOC liaison for more info — if there are serious complications with the current vaccine, we need to fix them ASAP before mass rollout.)
Patient was transferred to Douglas Grayson Institute from a GOC trauma center (location unknown), following a lycanthrope attack. Initial examination by trauma center reported multiple compound fractures in the left radius and ulna, five broken ribs resulting in puncturing of the right lung, puncture marks on the left forearm and left shoulder consistent with bite wounds from a large canid, and numerous minor cuts and bruises. Patient was stabilized at trauma center before transfer to Douglas Grayson for potential treatment of Slow Transformative Lycanthropy. GOC operators instructed that the patient should be euthanized if treatment proves impossible or unsuccessful.
Our objectives are two-fold:
- To treat a post-exposure case of STL, by preventing or reversing the onset of symptoms. A complete cure would be ideal, but even forcing the disease into remission would be acceptable.
- To isolate the pathogen responsible for STL, in order to develop an improved version of the vaccine that does not use infected neural tissue as a component.
Based on past tissue analysis of deceased lycanthropes, I have prescribed a regime of broad spectrum anti-retroviral drugs in an attempt to slow the progression of the disease. Until and unless antibodies begin to form, our primary objective is to delay the progression of the disease while we work to identify and isolate the pathogen. A biothaumatology specialist is flying in tomorrow from Zurich to perform an assessment of potential occult transmission vectors, although I suspect that she will find little. The underlying cause of the disease is obviously retroviral in nature (although occult mechanisms may be responsible for tissue transformation), but we have never been able to isolate the infectious agent. Hopefully a live patient will produce better results.
Project Memo
| Project ID: PLMed-74SHK (Saint Hubert's Key) Date: 1974-XX-XX Author: Rodger Cooper, M.D. Subject: |
|
[Section 1. Sometime in 2024, immediately after Comedown Machine. From the POV of O5-1.]
[Meeting of the O5 council. O5-3 presents evidence of the conspiracy against Three Portlands and the assassination of Edgar Holman. Maybe also the seance dust conspiracy from Portlands Vice?]
[The O5s involved in the conspiracy admit their complicity and state their reasons. They try to persuade the rest of the council to join them. When it becomes clear that this is unlikely, they reveal that they have coopted Alpha-1 and are sending them to arrest the other overseers.]
[O5-1 receives a direct message from O5-3 asking for authorization to activate Protocol Custodes.]
[Section 2. A message from O5-3 to all Foundation personnel. Briefly explains the circumstances, the conspiracy, and what Protocol Custodes is.]
I am O5-3, and this is the last and most urgent message I will ever send under that designation.
The Foundation is under attack from within. A minority faction of the Overseer Council, led by [list of known Purist O5s], is attempting a coup against this Council. They have co-opted the Intelligence Directorate and MTF Alpha-1, and likely have allies within the Ethics Committees and Site Directors. They are responsible for the attempted destruction of Three Portlands, the assassination of Director Edgar Holman, and possibly other rogue operations previously attributed to the Chaos Insurgency. At least some segments of the Insurgency appear to answer directly to [one of the Purist O5s]. As I speak, members of Alpha-1 are en route to detain myself and the rest of the Council.
As a result, we have voted to enact Contingency Protocol Custodes. As of this moment, the position of Administrator has been revived with the appointment of Simon Pietrykau, previously the Director of the Department of Analytics. Administrator Pietrykau now has the full authority and all the clearances held by this Council. We ask and expect him to take any and all measures he deems necessary to resolve this crisis and uphold the essential mission of the Foundation. All other elements of Overwatch Command, including this Overseer Council, will be dissolved at the conclusion of this transmission. Further messages from any former Overseer after this point must be assumed to be falsified or coerced.
This is [Real Full Name]. It has been an honor serving this organization, and with all of you.
Secure. Contain. Protect.
[Section 3. A message from the Purist O5s to all Foundation personnel. Claims that O5-3 and the Department of Analytics are attempting a coup of the Foundation, and that they deployed Alpha-1 to arrest them.]
[Section 4. A message from Administrator Simon Pietrykau.]
Item #: SCP-001
Object Class: Thaumiel
Special Containment Procedures:
Description
Section 1: Solomon, the Demiurge, and the Sixth Occult War
[Explains the history of Solomon's Rite and the original demiurge, as the DoA knows it. Discusses the Sixth Occult War, the Godless, and the destruction of the original demiurge.]
Section 2: The Seventh Occult War and Its Aftermath
[Goes over the Obskuracorps, their plot for the Rite and efforts to execute, the efforts to combat them during the Seventh Occult War, and Operation Aeon Dawn. Explain the safeguards implemented for the Rite post-war.]
Section 3: Eigenweapons and Artificial Intelligence
[Overview of Eigenweapons, the Cold War Eigenweapon arms race, theories of machine thaumaturgy, and the dangers presented by AI in the form of mass-manufacturable eigenweapons.]
Section 4: The Department of Analytics
[History of the Department of Analytics, its purpose, and its goals.]
Section 5: Prometheus Labs, Bardeen, and SCP-2897
[Brief summary of PLabs, the creation of Bardeen, and its retrieval and retraining by the Department of Analytics.]
Section 6: The Crises of the New Millennium
[Eigenweapon Crises, the Anderson Fiasco, Portlands Conspiracy, Foundation Civil War.]
Section 7: WATCHGOD
[Overview of the WATCHGOD system.]
Item #: SCP-TOUR
Object Class: Thaumiel1
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-TOUR is in Low-Security Storage at Site-246. All activities involving SCP-TOUR are currently and indefinitely suspended by order of Director Simon Pietrykau (L5/Analytics).
Handling of SCP-TOUR is restricted to Class D and C personnel diagnosed with total deafness. The uppermost level of the C-Wing Expansion Block of Site-2462 qualifies as a museum sufficient for activating the anomalous properties of SCP-TOUR, and may be used for routine experimentation and exploitation. Audio produced by SCP-TOUR must be recorded and stored in a manner compliant with RAISA RP 1020 ("Recording, Handling, and Storage of Potentially Cognitohazardous Audio"), then sanitized and transcribed by personnel in accordance with RAISA RP 1030 ("Sanitization of Unknown Cognitohazardous Audio"). At the discretion of the Containment Supervisor3, software sub-agents of SCP-2897 may be used to assist human researchers in processing and analyzing audio from SCP-TOUR. All transcripts produced from use of SCP-TOUR are to be delivered to the Containment Supervisor and a designated representative of AWG Bravo-3 ("Dog Watchers")4 for information intake by the WATCHDOG global anomaly monitoring network.
Due to its use in WATCHDOG, novel experimentation with SCP-TOUR requires explicit written authorization from Director Simon Pietrykau.
Description: SCP-TOUR has the appearance of an AT-100 handheld audio guide produced by Okayo Electronics and used in museums worldwide. Disassembly of SCP-TOUR has revealed no differences between its internal mechanisms and those of non-anomalous audio guides. All attempts to alter the commentary provided by SCP-TOUR using both Okayo's software package and custom Foundation software have failed.
SCP-TOUR's anomalous properties manifest when a living human listens5 to it while inside a museum6. As the listener moves through the museum, SCP-TOUR will automatically provide commentary similar to that produced by non-anomalous audio guides. Regardless of the listener's native language, this commentary is always7 provided in English by an unidentified male voice speaking in Received Pronunciation. However, this commentary is not affected by listener input, and is unrelated to the museum the listener is in. Instead, SCP-TOUR describes another museum in a different spatial, temporal, and/or ontological location. It is believed that a different and unique museum is described each time SCP-TOUR is used.
On at least ██ occasions, commentary provided by SCP-TOUR has included information with cognitohazardous properties, information about other anomalous objects (both known and unknown), information about Groups of Interest, information about the Foundation, and information about the future.
[Used by Analytics to gather data.]
Addendum — Collected Evidence of VORPAL PHARAOH
[After using SCP-TOUR for some time, researchers involved in the project begin to suspect that there is an intelligence behind SCP-TOUR, and that it may not be friendly to the Foundation. A collection of transcripts supporting this hypothesis is produced. As time goes on, SCP-TOUR becomes increasingly and overtly hostile to the Foundation, culminating in VORPAL PHARAOH CURSE.]
[Describing the Museum of Impossible Art. Refers to Sierra Dustin as a "creative visionary and artistic freedom fighter".]
[Describing the Occult War Museum at ICSUT Portlands. Refers to ICSUT as an "enshrouded beacon of a bright future", calls Three Portlands a "predecessor of the world that is, forced to hide from the world that was".]
[Describing the Smithsonian Museum of Containment, from a future where the Foundation has been destroyed. Dismisses the Foundation as a "fascist bureaucracy and paramilitary". First mention of 'the New Science'.]
[Describing a private museum maintained by MC&D, which results in a successful Foundation raid.]
[Describing the Imperial Collection of Unevolved Artifacts, another future where the Foundation has lost to 'the New Science'. Includes a display of the bones of the Containment Supervisor, and a graphic description of his death caused by SCP-TOUR. Containment Supervisor requests a transfer to a different project, only to die in an unrelated freak accident.]
[Describing a possible SCP-5525 artifact in a museum in London. A task force is sent to investigate, and suffers significant losses when the information provided by SCP-TOUR is significantly different from reality.]
[The Museum of the Dead Supervisors, listing the names of future Containment Supervisors and how they all died in various gruesome manners.]
[The Museum of Failed Task Forces. Describes a series of Foundation task forces and how they each meet their demise over the coming month. The first two teams are destroyed as described, leading to the cancellation of the remaining missions. This makes things worse.]
[The Museum of the Inevitable Future. Dedicated to the New Science.]
[VORPAL PHARAOH CURSE. THE NAME.]
Project Memo
Project ID: PLMed-67 (Saint Hubert's Key)
Date:19XX-XX-XX
Author: Rodger Cooper, M.D.
Subject: Admission and Initial Examination of Patient; Thoughts and Observations
Patient is Morgan Wright, a 32-year-old female of Caucasian descent, height 173 cm, weight 64 kg, blood type A-. Medical record lists no known allergies. Patient has been dosed with targeted chemical amnestics at least three times, reasons unspecified. Patient has been bound with a Berryman-Langford geas agent, parameters unknown (likely a standard loyalty and confidentiality geas). Patient bears a tattoo containing silver nanoparticles on the right shoulder blade, of a design consistent with anti-thaumatic sigils utilized by the GOC.
Patient was transferred to Douglas Grayson Institute from a GOC trauma center (name and location unknown), following a lycanthrope attack. Initial examination by trauma center reported multiple compound fractures in the left radius and ulna, five broken ribs resulting in puncturing of the right lung, puncture marks on the left forearm and left shoulder consistent with bite wounds from a large canid, and numerous minor cuts and bruises. Patient was stabilized at trauma center before transfer to Douglas Grayson Institute for potential treatment of lycanthropic infection. GOC operators instructed that the patient should be euthanized if treatment proves impossible or unsuccessful.
Based on past tissue analysis of deceased lycanthropes, I have prescribed a regime of broad spectrum anti-retroviral drugs in an attempt to slow the progression of the disease. Until and unless antibodies begin to form, our primary objective is to isolate the pathogen within Morgan. A biothaumatology specialist is flying in tomorrow from Zurich to assist in identifying any potential occult transmission vectors, although I suspect that she will find very little. The underlying cause of the disease is obviously retroviral in nature (although occult mechanisms may be responsible for tissue transformation), but we have never been able to isolate the infectious agent. Hopefully a live patient will produce better results.
She woke up in a hospital.
This was not, in and of itself, unusual for her. What was surprising was that she was still alive.
"Ah, you're awake. Good."
She turned her head — as much as the casts would allow — to locate the source of the voice. A doctor — she assumed he was a doctor — stood a few feet away from her bed, taking notes on a clipboard. She couldn't read the ID badge clipped to his scrubs, but she did recognize the Prometheus Labs logo on it.
"Wh—" She coughed, then tried again. "Why am I still alive?"
The doctor did not seem surprised by this question. "And you're coherent. That's very good." He wrote something else down on his clipboard, then turned to look directly at her. "To answer your question: because you are now the index case for what will — if we're lucky — become the first successful treatment of lycanthropy."
Ah, so they had given her to Prometheus Labs as a guinea pig. That made sense. PL had some of the best paramedical facilities on the planet, and it didn't cost the Coalition anything to let them examine her. Actually, knowing Prometheus, they had probably paid for the privilege.
The cell door slid open at precisely seven o'clock, ushering in both her one hundred seventy-sixth day of captivity and the phlebotomist, who was followed closely by an automedic.
"Good morning, Morgan," the man said, in a tone of practiced cordiality.
Wordlessly, she swung herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and presented her arm for that week's battery of blood draws. The automedic, seeing a chance to make itself useful, trundled forward to offer its flat upper surface as an armrest.
Taking her silence as a request for more of it, the phlebotomist worked quickly and quietly. First, the cold of the alcohol swab. Next, the tiny prick of a hypodermic needle, followed by half a minute of strange, ticklish pressure. Then, it was over, and he was wrapping a bandage around her upper arm. The vials of blood disappeared into some internal compartment of the automedic, and the phlebotomist took his leave. She was alone once more.
Once upon a time, Morgan Wright had beeen a GOC agent in the prime of her career.
Now, she was just a lab rat.
[Assessment Team leader visits.]
At ten o'clock her solitude was broken once more, this time by the intercom clicking to life.
"You have a visitor."
Morgan stopped her aimless pacing in mid-step, almost tripping as her brain fumbled to make sense of this simple but strange statement. Other than the doctors, she hadn't had a visitor in… ever.
She reached over and thumbed the talk button on her end of the intercom. "Come in."
The cell door slid open to reveal one of the security personnel — she was pretty sure his name was Andre — escorting a familiar but unexpected guest.
[Discussion with Dr. Cooper.]
Rodger Cooper looked at the charts and sighed.
He had had high hopes for this treatment. The idea had been to use another, modified retrovirus to insert junk DNA into the genomes of infected cells, disrupting the viral DNA sequences that the lycanthropy retrovirus had inserted. And it had worked – at least until the virus had reinfected the cells. In the end, they had only managed to add some length to Morgan's genome.
Still, it had successfully slowed the spread of the disease while they updated the fusion inhibitors to counter the most recent adaptation of the virus. That was something, at least.
Putting the charts down, he went to go check on his patient.
[Words]
Morgan Wright lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Outwardly, the former GOC agent showed no signs of lycanthropic infection – the sickly pallor of her skin was a result of the anti-retroviral drugs they were giving her – but Cooper knew that the disease was taking its toll on her.
"Doctor Cooper," she said by way of greeting, still looking up at the ceiling.
"Good morning, Morgan." He pulled a chair out from the desk and sat down near the bed. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired. Nauseous. My arm aches." She gestured towards her right arm.
He jotted this down on his clipboard. "We're putting you back on the fusion inhibitors."
She turned her head to look at him. "Retrovirals not working?"
"Not as well as we'd hoped."
"How long before it adapts to the inhibitors again?"
He shrugged. "Hard to say. It might not."
"And if it does?"
"We'll do another round of retrovirals until we've adjusted the inhibitors."
She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "And then repeat as necessary, right?" She didn't wait for him to respond before saying, "I wonder how many times can you add more junk DNA into my genome before it ends up giving me cancer."
He sighed. There were times when he enjoyed having a patient as knowledgable and informed about their condition as he was. This was not one of them.
"I don't know, Morgan. But right now it's the only thing we know that works."
She fell silent for a moment, considering. Then she said, "What about thaumaturgy?"
"What about it?"
She pulled herself into a sitting position and turned to face him. "You can change a person's eye or hair color with magic. Why not their genes?"
Morgan Wright paced her cell.
This was not because of a lack of stimuli – she had been provided with books and movies in abundance, and any requests for more were met swiftly – before she had stopped making them, at least. If she wished, she could have talked with any of the scientists working on the project – and she had at first. Members of her former assessment team had even come to visit her – until she had asked them to stop.
As the months had drawn on, she had found herself less and less interested in these things. She wasn't sure if it was from the disease gradually eroding her mind – despite the treatments they were giving her – or if it was just a natural result of long-term captivity. She didn't care to speculate.
"Morgan, you really should relax."
The voice from the intercom was mildly Canadian – the man it belonged to, even more so.
"I find walking relaxing, Doctor Cooper."
The intercom sighed. "You've worn the carpet down."
She continued pacing.
Another sigh. "How about a change of scenery?"
"I don't care what color you set the walls, Doctor." At the moment, they were a light, creamy blue. In the early days of her residence in the cell, one of the lab geeks had told her that the walls were covered with smart paint, which could be made to change color on demand. She'd spent the rest of that day amusing herself by experimenting with the available color combinations, before growing bored of that too.
"That's not what I meant." The door to the cell slid open, revealing Rodger Cooper standing in the corridor. "Come on. Let's go outside."
Morgan Wright peered down the scope of her rifle.
It was a routine mission – in so far as anything the GOC did could be called a routine mission. A lycanthrope had been sighted in Yukon Territory, and Assessment Team 771 "Snipe Hunt" had been deployed to terminate it. Pretty standard Response Level 3.
They had tracked the creature from the point of the initial sightings near Dawson to its lair further down the Yukon River, where it had taken shelter inside a cave network near the bank. They had setup an ambush outside, waiting for it to expose itself.
Something moved in her scope.
She pulled the trigger.
Two-hundred-fifty meters away, the creature's chest exploded across the nearby rocks as a .50 caliber anti-materiel round slammed into it.
Which was when the second one attacked.
Morgan Wright stepped outside for the first time in months.
[Description of grounds + facility]
She turned to face Cooper. "So, Doctor, what's the real reason for this little field trip?"
[Dialogue]
"We're losing ground," he said softly. "[words]"
"Are you at least making progress on the vaccine?"
He laughed bitterly. "
[Outside, talk about lycanthropy treatments, progress on vaccine, potential of T-GAP as a cure.]
