Per 
The Tommyknocker Tavern was opened in 1913 by the Trevelyan family, a clan of brownies who'd moved to Three Portlands from their native Cornwall after the Miners' Strike of 1912. (The aristocratic family they'd served for centuries had tried to break the union; they awoke one morning to find their clothes shredded, their food spoiled, and their livestock set loose to roam the countryside.) It quickly gained a reputation as a radical hangout: anarchists, communists, writers, actors, and all sorts of other unsavory types frequented the place, discussing politics, swapping war stories, and generally making nuisances of themselves. It had moved a few times, as the land it sat on was pushed inexorably outwards, but the interior stayed the same—a century of beer stains, scuff marks and petty vandalism that gave it more character than any other dive bar in town.
At the moment, the Tommyknocker was hosting an argument. Well, it was always hosting an argument; some might even suggest that it was only one Argument, an ongoing debate that never ended. Like the fry oil in the kitchen, which hadn't been changed since the Hoover administration, it only gained flavor and character as it aged, each new visitor adding their own ingredient to the discussion, a fresh anecdote, a new political theory, an unheard voice. They brought fragments of it back with them, the Argument's children finding fertile ground in homes, colleges, unions, protests, having children of their own, whose participants made their way back to the Tommyknocker and started the cycle anew. One of the current sub-debates had been part of the Argument, in some form, since the beginning; its main players on this night were the most traditional of parties, a fighter, a mage, and a thief.
"Christ on a bike, Kill!" The fighter was one Rosa Kapp, a short Sidhe woman with a thick Yorkshire accent. Her ancestors had lurked in ruins, murdering travelers and dyeing caps with their blood; she did her violence in the bright lights of the derby rink and the octagon, and her bright crimson hair was Manic Panic rather than hemoglobin. "We can't just do nothing! They're committing fucking war crimes!"
"And if we intervene, we get fucking disappeared." Killian FitzLugh was the mage, a scion of one of Ireland's most powerful sorcerous bloodlines, descended from a half-elven bastard of Avalon's greatest king. He was also an antitheist, a homosexual, a communist, and an all-around disappointment to the family name. "You think the Janitors won't notice if someone casts a ward around a protest, or hexes the feds' dicks off?"
"Don't gotta be obvious about it." The thief would probably prefer to be called a confidence artist, a swindler, a charlatan. She called herself Invidia, Vid for short, though that name didn't appear on any of her seven passports. She was human, more or less, and had a pleasantly anonymous face that made strangers want to trust her. "Nothing flashy. Just, a little good luck for the people, a little bad luck for the pigs."
"Oh? And what's that going to accomplish?" Rosa wasn't quite shouting, but she was getting there. "More of the status fucking quo. We stop a few people from losing eyes or suffocating on tear gas or getting run over by a Proud Boy in a pickup. And then the protestors retreat, the cops retake the ground they lost, the cycle repeats. No," she said, pounding the table and nearly spilling her beer, "if we play this shit right, we can start a revolution."
"If we play this shit wrong, not only do the Janitors throw us in a black site to rot, they probably sweep up a bunch of normies with us." Killian lit a new cigarette on the ember of the old, and dropped his butt into the ashtray. "You know how they operate, Rosie. Fuckin' indiscriminate. Worse than the regular cops."
Rosa drained her pint and growled, baring a few sharp fangs. "I am perfectly fucking aware, Killian. What, you think I've forgotten Da—"
"Right!" Vid leapt to her feet, interrupting the other two before they could drive the conversation off a cliff. "I am going to go get us another round, and you two are going to shut up and smoke this." She produced a perfectly-rolled joint from somewhere in her jacket, and dropped it on the table. There was no argument from the others; they knew that the interruption was necessary, that certain things could not be unsaid. Vid waited for Rosa to spark up, then gathered their empty glasses and headed toward the bar.
As she made her way through the crowd, Vid caught snatches of the Argument's other branches. "… with anime avatars telling me to read Lenin," said a tall man in a patched-up denim jacket, stifling a fit of giggles. A short butch cyborg was quoting Maxwellist scripture; her gorgeous Sidhe girlfriend was responding with Mao. "… heard of Are We Antirevisionist Yet? It's this great podcast, a Stalinist perspective on anart…" Vid shuddered at that last one. One of the hosts, Brussels Radisson, was her ex. They'd broken up about a week after Brussels had moved her consciousness into a clone of Paris Hilton. Bad vibes.
She finally shouldered her way to the counter, and flagged down the bartender. Jory Trevelyan had been keeping bar at the Tommyknocker for the better part of two decades, like his father and grandfather before him. He was a brownie, a house-spirit, two feet tall and covered in curly brown hair; his predecessors had favored the traditional funny hat and pointed shoes look, but he dressed in all black, a t-shirt, skinny jeans and toddler-size Doc Martens.
- Testimonials
- My Secret Shame
- RISD
- tanksy
- psycho killer
- Founding of Deer
- 001
- Sensory Privatization
- Troy Diaz Snippet
- Sarkhristianity
- xpol scrap 1
- Garbage Moloch
- Concepts
- Great Gygax's Ghost
- The Watching Eyes
<ARD> You’re my Jay-Z
<&TheMightyMcB> im gonna be real here, ch00bakka is a pain in the cock
The Cena Chronicles, Episode 1: Psycho Killer
"How old am I? It's complicated. I have some of the memories of 37-year-old John Cena, but only childhood memories and ones that are directly related to wrestling. But I didn't personally exist until 5 years ago. And physically I'm only 23, since when I manifested it was as 18-year-old John Cena, rather than 40-year-old John Cena. But I've been on HRT for two years, so I don't look too much like John Cena at any point in his life. I usually just tell people I'm 23, but I'm pretty high right now, so I'm kind of dumping, if that's alright."
The stump didn't respond. That was alright, because Jean didn't actually want the stump to respond; she preferred her interlocutors to be quiet, when she was in an expository mood.
"Anyway I'm a frosh and it's my first week, and it's kind of hard to meet people because when I'm anxious I go invisible, so people don't see me. Get it? It's funny, because it makes my life really difficult."
Some of the twigs growing from the stump waved a little in the breeze. Correctly interpreting that small motion as a nod, Jean continued her exposition.
"Anyway did you know that John Cena summons alternate universe versions of himself to fight to the death? It's like that Jet Li movie. That's actually where he got the idea. And he always had, like, minor reality-warping stuff. Ontokinetics, I guess. So he makes this toy phone that makes Cena-clones and I'm one of them, only I'm a lot younger, and I'm a trans woman. No idea how I knew, it was just up here."
She tapped her head. The dirt next to the stump looked pretty inviting, and after brushing away some loose twigs, Jean sat down. Her skirt—not jorts, never jorts—would get dirty, but that was bound to happen eventually. The canyon exacts a price from all visitors, either of magic, or of blood, or of simple inconvenience.
"But you know, I thought I had found some friends, and we were going to hang out in their dorm, but I think they might have been messing with me because I've been wandering around here for like 45 minutes and maybe I shouldn't've smoked a whole joint before leaving my room but I can't find any signs for Canyon House, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually exist, and…"
With a sigh, she dropped her forehead onto her hands.
"And I'm stoned as fuck and talking to a stump."
She heard earth move and twigs snap, and a low, gravelly voice said, "You could have just said that you were looking for Canyon House."
It was the stump, of course. It had pulled its roots out of the ground and now stood on them, a good three feet high. Jean scrambled to her feet and brushed soil and leaves from her skirt. "Oh! You can, uh, take me there?"
"Yes." It started slowly moving down a path that, as far as Jean could tell, hadn't been there moments before. "Follow me."
"Yeah, awesome, thanks!" She walked just behind it, trying her best not to stare. "I, uh… Sorry, I didn't realize you were… Alive? Uh, or sapient? Sorry, I don't really know the right, like, terminology."
The stump shrugged its twigs. "Not really an individual being. More a manifestation of the gestalt forest-spirit of the Canyon." It turned left, and Jean followed. "Before the rest of me fell down, I might have been a dryad, but now I'm just a stump."
"Oh. Um. Do you have… A name?"
"No."
"Oh."
They walked in silence for a while. Jean was worried she was being awkward, but the stump didn't seem to mind. Finally, she saw lights through the trees; and after another minute or so, they reached their destination.
Canyon House was a large log cabin,
Rukmini's chainsaw carved through another demon's vertebrae, sending its head spinning off over the crowd. Its corpse fell to its knees, and she planted a foot on the bloody stump, pushing off into a flying somersault. She dropped the chainsaw into a wide-open maw. It shredded the fiend from the inside. The black basalt floor was turning red with gore. There was a lull, then, as the rest of the beasts stared at their freshly-pulped brother; then Rukmini drew her katana—
"Hey. Rukmini."
—flashing steel sliced through demon-flesh, parried claws of bone and chitin, carved deep into distended bellies—
"Ruku!"
—a beautiful unicorn, ribbons wound into its golden mane, horn bloodied to the root. With one leap, Rukmini pulled herself astride—
"Ms. Mahakali, I do suggest you wake up."
—said the unicorn, in the voice of Dr. Weber, her Molecular Biology professor. Rukmini woke with a shock, and fell backwards off the lab stool, nearly cracking her skull on the tile floor. Dr. Weber was staring down at her, a look of severe disapproval on his face.
"Oh, shi— uh, crap," Rukmini said. "I'm sorry, Professor, I, uh…"
"Fell asleep in class. Again."
"Uh. Yeah." It was the fifth time this semester, in fact, and she knew she couldn't get away with it for much longer before failing out. "Had a late class last night."
"Hmm." He stared at her as she pulled herself to her feet. The only other person in the room was Rukmini's lab partner, Marlon.
[STUFF]
The Rhode Island School of Demolitions was hidden in plain sight, as was appropriate for a school whose most popular major was assassination. It lurked in the shadows of Providence's two other major colleges, Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, its students and faculty living and learning alongside Ivy League scholars and art school poseurs. It had originally been founded by the Ancient and Most Noble Order of Gormogons, as a training academy for their elite thaumaturgical demolitions teams; in the century since its founding, it had become one of the world's most prestigious schools of spycraft and
"Welcome, everyone, to Are We Antirevisionist Yet?, the podcast that gives you the Marxist-Leninist perspective on current events in the anart world. I'm your host, Tanksy, the Tankie Banksy, and with me as always is the lovely Brussels Radisson, who is a clone of Paris Hilton. How's it going, Brussels?"
"Well, Tanks, it's another great day here in Soho. The clouds are raining, the grass is green, and the bourgeois swine of so-called America are one step closer to the guillotine."
"That's what I like to hear. So, have you heard about this new exhibition being organized by the revisionist Trot scum over at the-"
"BRAAAAAD!"
Brad McConnell, also known as "Tanksy, the Tankie Banksy", sighed and took off his headphones. He turned his chair around and shouted back toward his closed bedroom door. "WHAT?"
"PIZZA!"
"COMING!" He closed his laptop, and headed towards the door. Halfway there, he stubbed his toe on a stainless-steel bust of Lenin that had fallen off of the overcrowded Lenin shelf, and almost fell face-first into a pyramid of empty Pepsi cans the height of a small child. Maybe it was time to get rid of those. Or at least repurpose them. He finally threaded his way throught the remaining detritus of his office-slash-studio-slash-bedroom, and emerged into the living room, where his roommate was waiting with pizza.
Brussels Radisson was, in fact, a clone of Paris Hilton; but it was hard to tell beneath the piercings and regrettable facial stick-and-pokes. In her hands was the only thing that really mattered in Brad's life: a box from Pizzeria Chiaroscuro, the greatest pizza place in the known universes. Its owner and proprietor, Michelangelo Tartarugi, was one of only five graduates of the Medicea Accademia Dell'Arte Occulta's short-lived culinary program, and the only one who could still enter a kitchen without collapsing in tears. Its oven had been stolen under cover of darkness from the ruins of Pompeii and shipped, brick-by-brick, across the Atlantic. The dough contained a strain of yeast harvested from the pages of The Warlock's Kitchen, a culinary grimoire banned by the Church in the sixteenth century; the only known copy was kept under lock and key in the Vatican Archives. Every Friday night, Brad and Brussels got a pie from there; they always ordered the chef's special, not even bothering to check the ingredients.
Brussels placed the pie down on the coffee table, and ripped off the handwritten note stapled to the lid. She cleared her throat, and read. "Wasting Away In Margheritaville. Traditional Neapolitan-style pie with a tropical twist. San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala, house-grown basil; Espolòn Blanco tequila, Luxardo Triplum triple sec, fresh-squeezed lime juice. Salt rim and/or crust." She raised an eyebrow, and slowly opened the box. From some angles, it was a pizza, perfectly cooked and still steaming; from others, it was an oversized novelty margarita glass, condensation dripping down the sides and neon-pink curly straws twisting invitingly up from the bowl.
"Damn. That, uh. That kind of hurts my brain," Brad said, tilting his head slightly to get yet another vantage on the culinary enigma before him.
"I mean, if you don't want it, more for me."
"Nope. Fuck that. I'm goin' in."
They launched themselves at the box like a pair of starving alcoholics after a five-day juice cleanse. It took them all of four minutes to demolish the pie; it took another six minutes before either of them could move or speak.
"And then he was like, 'I kid you not, he turns himself into a pickle. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen.' So I kicked him in the dick," Brussels said, reclining contentedly on the sagging sofa. "Anyway, that's why we're banned from the hackerspace again."
"I still have one of their soldering guns checked out." Brad had managed to lever himself up to a seated position with the help of a pile of phallic throw pillows, and was scrolling half-heartedly through his Netflix queue. "Do you think I'll have to return it, or like, am I good now?"
"Nah, keep it. Fuck 'em, you know?" Brussels let out a huge belch. "Hey put on uh. That show with the dogs that are cops."
"We're not watching kiddie copaganda."
"C'mooon! It's fun!"
"It's like pouring expensive champagne into a styrofoam cup with holes in it." Brad was pacing back and forth across the studio, gesticulating wildly at the various half-finished pieces.
"Hey, that sounds like a good Friday evening to me," Brussels muttered, still perched on a stool. Brad didn't hear her, and continued the rant uninterrupted.
"A cup that you dug out of the garbage. At a McDonalds. In Cleveland."
"It's artisanal."
"A McDonalds that was closed by city health inspectors. Do you know how lax Cleveland health inspectors are?"
"Can't just get a styrofoam cup fulla holes from any old trash can."
"Very lax! It took them a whole three months to shut down that Wendy's franchise that whats-his-name, you know, the guy with Warhol's dick tattooed on his ass, made as a commentary on the cruelty of the meat industry!"
"I'm just saying you shouldn't judge how others choose to enjoy their wines, that's all."
"There was BLOOD all over the FLOOR! And a live calf just, like, stuck in one of the booths! Totally unsanitary."
The causes of this discussion were the fruits of the
tags: tale backdoor-soho cool-war-2
~GW> he has almost won more games in 20 years than the /entire franchise of tampa bay/
19:37:31 he's played in more games than the bucs have ever won
19:37:44 now, admittedly, individual wlr is a bit finnicky, since football is a team sport
19:37:45 but still
19:38:24 this is like pouring expensive champagne into a styrofoam cup with holes in it
19:39:33 a cup that you dug out of the garbage at a mcdonalds in cleveland
19:39:36
<@tawny> hey that sounds like a good friday evening to me
19:39:42
<~GW> that was closed by the city health inspectors
19:40:02
<@tawny> it's artisanal
19:40:06
<~GW> hahahaha
19:40:19 holy /shit/
19:40:21
<@tawny> you can't just get a styrofoam cup with holes out of just ANY old trash can
Troy's day had started pretty poorly. The flight from Miami to Boston had been stalled on the runway for about an hour by the weather, and by the time it landed he only had 15 minutes to make his connection to Portland, on a propeller plane that barely sat two dozen people and rumbled like a car on a gravel road—and of course, after he finally escaped the airport, his luggage had been roughed up pretty badly by the baggage handlers (all the important stuff was, thankfully, tucked away outside physical space). The Way he took to his final destination was in the most disgusting gas station bathroom he'd ever had the misfortune to enter, and he had to linger for a solid half-hour before there was nobody else in there who would be spooked by the unfortunate screeching noise it emitted when it opened.
And, of course, it was raining in Three Portlands. As expected.
But all of those indignities and misfortunes were the mere backdrop to Troy's least favorite part of any job: introducing himself to his client. This one owned a computer store in a small commercial zone near Prometheus Square, one of Portlands' few static landmarks; the store was just outside the Square's bubble of stability, but more than close enough that he usually had a solid customer base of parageeks looking for spare parts for their extracurricular activities. He was a Sidhe, slender and unusually pale, although that might've been as much from the weather and his occupation as his ancestry. Troy met him at the Prometheus Square trolley stop, did the standard hand-shaking and smile-and-nodding, and handed him a business card when it was finally time for actual introductions.
The elf took a second to examine the card, and gave Troy a concerned look. "Is this, like, your real name?"
Troy hadn't quite perfected this speech, so he tried a variation, a little less formal than usual. "Look, you know how Christians sometimes name kids after virtues? Chastity, Prudence, Constance, that sort of thing? Well, it used to be even worse back in Puritan times, and my folks were always pretty old-school. Also they were Satanists."
"Well, uh, welcome to Three Portlands, Mr. Diaz. Unless you prefer…" He looked down at the card again. "Destroy-The-Cities-And-Dignities-Of-Man?"
"Please, call me Troy."
"Nice to meet you, Troy. I'm Rowan. So you're a Satanist? I would imagine that's rare in your, uh, profession."
"Oh, I'm not a Satanist." Troy pulled an amulet from under his shirt. It was silver, of course, and on it was engraved the symbol of his faith: a flaming chalice. "I'm a Unitarian."
Troy cut an imposing figure as he strode down Syzygy Street toward his client's store. Or, rather, he hoped he did, because he had spent a lot of time and money perfecting his look, and he wanted it to work. His build helped, of course: six-foot-six and broad-shouldered, with the sort of wiry muscles that you get from martial arts, rather than body-building. That, and the rest of his appearance—long, beaded dreadlocks, all sorts of occult jewelry, the most colorful thrift-store suit he could find (its bright floral designs hid sigils, lucky charms, and excerpts from sacred texts written in a variety of languages both ancient and modern)—made him stand out like a sore thumb, in most places; but in Three Portlands on Halloween, he almost blended in.
The inhabitants of that little pocket-dimension were colorful on normal days: the city's population was a frothy mixture of mages, anartists, scientists and other, weirder folks, both human and non, and the style tended toward the counterculture and the retro. And, of course, a city with such a large magical population went all-out for Halloween—the city temporarily relaxed enforcement of necromancy ordinances, tens of thousands of pumpkins were imported from the main-line universe, the students of Deer and ICSUT planned halloween ragers that would go down in history, and everybody—well, almost everybody—bought, stole, built, summoned, or otherwise acquired the best costume they possibly could. On the short walk to Rowan's store, Troy saw a Darth Vader with a working plasma sword; a handful of witches on real flying brooms; five ghosts, one of which was an actual spectre wearing a sheet-ghost costume over its ectoplasm; and, perhaps most confusingly, a group of college-age kids in riot gear carrying brooms, mops, garbage bags and a vacuum cleaner.
Rowan was able to explain that last one, when Troy him about it. "Oh, that's pretty funny. They're Janitors. That's what people here call the, uh, men in black. The spooks that aren't the feds. Foundation, GOC, all those boogeymen. Those were probably Deer kids—the ones at ICSUT are a little more… I don't want to call them fascists, but they're definitely pawns of the global shadow-government, you know? ICSUT indoctrinates them to become good little GOC thaumatologists, oppressing their fellow creatures of magic in the service of the so-called 'Veil', or as I like to call it, the international mystic apartheid system. Outside of Portlands, I'd be a second-class citizen, did you know that? I'd have to get cosmetic surgery! To hide my ears! It's patently unjust!" He was almost shouting, and a few people gave him odd looks; another Sidhe nodded slightly and raised a fist as they passed.
"Rowan, you're preaching to the choir, believe me. This your place up ahead?"
Circuit Seelie (formerly Data Druid (formerly Radio Sanctum (formerly Big Rowan's Discount Electronics))) inhabited a one-story brick building between a dry cleaner's and a barbershop. They stopped outside, and Troy got down to business.
"So, Rowan. What exactly is the problem? Our mutual friend was pretty vague on the specifics."
"It all started with a big lot of stuff I bought from a Prometheus auction," Rowan said, gesturing vaguely down the street toward the Plaza. "They're going out of business, selling off their old equipment to keep the lights on until they finally shut down or get bought out. And used electronics are my business, so I bid on a few of the items. Won the contents of, uh, some lab, I have the number written down somewhere. Mostly computers, fairly cutting-edge Prometheus-made stuff. And one that seemed to be, well, past the cutting edge. Like nothing I'd seen before. Almost a gigabyte of RAM, a 128-gig hard-drive, ran totally silent, never overheated." He sighed, lost in the blissful memory of futuristic technology. "And then the problems started. First the sound card started to fail, in weird ways—"
"Yeah, yeah," Troy interrupted, gesturing impatiently, "Spooky voices, telling you to do evil things, it probably started writing strange notes in your text editor, smelled like rotten eggs… Am I on the right track?"
"Uh. Yes. Exactly."
"And then at some point the spirit manifested? Horns, red skin, flaming eyes, goat hooves?"
"Well, the skin was more grey than red. And I'm not sure if there were hooves. But yeah, that's right."
Troy grinned. "Well. This shouldn't take too long. I see these all the time—as a matter of fact, I guessed it would be something like this as soon as you said it was Prometheus tech. When their higher-end or experimental stuff fails, it tends to be pretty spectacular, and this sort of infernal manifestation is one of the more common results."
Rowan was trying—and failing—to copy Troy's optimism. "So, you can deal with it? Oh great. Uh, the door's locked, just let me know when you're ready to go and I'll open it."
The grin only got wider. "I'll be ready in a sec," he said, giving his suitcase a pat. "Just gotta get my materials ready."
Troy's favorite part of any exorcism was gearing up. He laid his suitcase down onto the sidewalk, entering the combination that would unlock the secret compartment, hidden in a pocket of folded space. That space unfolded; inside was Troy's armory, his tools of the trade, the weapons with which he fought unquiet spirits and the fiends of hell. It was, to be honest, pretty empty—back home people preferred the Church or their local santero to a guy with a satanic pedigree and a name to match.
There was one pistol—a 15-year-old Glock that he'd bought at a pawn shop—and a few boxes of ammo, including a small case of silver slugs tipped with hand-inscribed banishment sigils. Most of the silver was also from pawn shops, melted-down jewelry and the like; he tried to buy crucifixes when he could, but it was usually engagement rings with the stones removed. A few single-use protective amulets, mostly made by a mage down in Miami who owed him a favor (nothing mystical; he fixed the guy's car a few times and asked to be paid in magical aid). Some knives, totally mundane but very useful regardless. And, down under a false bottom inside the hidden compartment, his most prized possession: the DoomBox, a heavily-modified stereo capable of blasting prayers, mantras, hymns and incantations at volumes that could damage eardrums and violently destabilize ectoplasm.
That would stay in the bag for this one. No reason to bring out the heavy artillery when you're hunting rabbits. Metaphorically speaking, of course—if it was an actual lagodemon, Troy would definitely bring the artillery. Preferably literal, although metaphorical would work in a pinch. For what was probably just a minor manifestation caused by a faulty demonic circuit, the standard Latin Rite would do. He grabbed his Bible (Revised King James, with the useful passages marked by pink sticky-notes), clipped a flask of holy water to his belt, and—just in case—slipped his gun into its shoulder holster. A crucifix, an iron veve of Ogún, the Goetic seal of Marchosias, and a rabbit's foot joined the silver chalice around his neck; he buttoned his shirt all the way up, and slid in a little paper clerical collar—looking the part can be just as important, sometimes.
"Alright, Rowan," Troy said, standing bible-in-hand before the store's front door, "Open her up." Rowan nodded, and unlocked the door; Troy stepped in, already chanting the 23rd psalm: "And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…"
About five minutes later, Troy crashed through the front window of the shop, bleeding from a few shallow cuts across his forehead. He landed on a pumpkin, which collapsed beneath him—cushioning his landing, but doing some serious damage to his pants in the process.
"Well, fuck." He stood, and did his best to brush the gourd-goop from his behind. "Alright, good news and bad news."
Rowan rushed over when he saw Troy's little accident. "Oh my god, are you OK?"
"Yeah yeah I'll be fine, don't worry about me. Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
"Uh. Bad news first, I guess."
"OK, there are actually two bits of bad news. Well, three. Four? There's one multi-faceted bit of bad news." Troy brushed his dreads back out of his face and then stared at his hand, realizing that it had until just a moment ago been coated in pumpkin slime and soot. "Fuck. OK, first bit of bad news: I was absolutely wrong about what you got haunting that shop. Second bit, I am not at all equipped to deal with it. And third, it's got my gun."
Rowan's expression fell further and further, until he hit rock bottom at that last shocking revelation. "Oh. Great. Excellent. You can't banish it AND it's armed. Wonderful. What could the good news possibly be?"
"I'm not equipped to deal with it right now, but I can be. It shouldn't take long. Oh, and I'll need your help."
"With the exorcism?" It came out as a squeak, Rowan's already taxed nerves almost giving out entirely at the thought of confronting the creature again.
"Yep. And also I need you to buy me some necessary materials. And guide me around the neighborhood, because I have never been here. So: pharmacy, record store, costume shop."
On the walk from the pharmacy to the record store, Troy—his head wound freshly-bandaged—began to explain the issues with his exorcism. "So what you got in there isn't a standard demonic interference pattern. You get those a lot with old Prometheus tech. They're no problem: you do a standard bell-book-candle, maybe splash some holy water, vade retro satana, done. I thought that's what I was dealing with and I went in half-cocked. Now, in this case, it was an easy mistake to make: when you saw it, that's exactly what it looked like. What it actually is is what we call a PCP: a pop culture phantom. Well, that's what I call it, I think the more academic terminology is an Ectoplasmic Manifestation of Cultural Fears, but EMCF isn't as much fun to say, and is, in my opinion, a little less accurate, since…" He paused, realizing that Rowan had stopped nodding about three sentences back and now just looked confused. "I realize that I am throwing a lot of jargon at you, are you following me or should I slow down?"
"Uh. What does that mean? The EMCF thing."
"You ever seen Ghostbusters?" Rowan nodded. "You know the thing at the end? Zuul, or whatever? How it turns into the marshmallow man, since that's what it can grab from the guy's head?" Another nod. "Well, it's sort of like that. But instead of grabbing things from people's heads, it grabs them from nearby media. Generally the horror genre nowadays; in the past I assume they used scary stories, cautionary tales, that sort of thing. I'm not sure what Prometheus was doing with it, but they probably fed it a bunch of stories with demons in them so that it would act like a demon and be easy to contain."
"Maybe one step simpler, please? I know that people expect the Fae to understand magic, but I'm an electrical engineer."
Troy sighed. "It's a ghost that reads books and turns into the scary things from those books. Powers and all. And it found your movie library."
Rowan frowned. "I mean, I see how that could get weird, maybe a little unpleasant depending on what you're into, but what sort of fears could it get from—oh! The horror films. Those movies. Right. So…" Comprehension dawned slowly and inevitably. "Fuck."
"Exactly. I went in there expecting Mephistopheles and I got Freddy Kreuger. And they learn over time—eventually it'll stop copying what it reads and start figuring out what actually scares people. Best case, it's just the worst monster you've ever seen; worst case, it finds a way to turn into a false positive on a nuclear early-warning system." He grimaced. "And if it does get to that point—which, considering the scope of the film library I could see before it threw me out the window, might not take very long—we'll have to bring in some more serious backup. You might want to have the feds on speed dial, just in case. Not that they'd be any use, but maybe they could call in the Skippers—what did you say people called them here? Janitors? I like that—to clean it up."
"But you can beat it, right? That's what we're preparing for?"
"Yes. Well, probably," Troy said with a shrug. "I know the theory at least."
Rowan let out an involuntary whimper.
"Oh, don't worry, it's pretty simple. So, a PCP runs off narrative, yeah? Not in like, a weird metaphysical our-world-is-a-narrative way—it just can only become what it reads, until it hits the magic threshold that lets it start thinking for itself. What we gotta do is change its narrative, get it to transform into something that can be beaten, and then insert ourselves into that narrative as something that can beat it. Simple."
"So… That's why we're going to the costume store? Wait, what narrative are we going to give it?"
Troy grinned the biggest grin of the night. It was not a reassuring grin. "All will be revealed in time. This the record store?"
One shopping spree later, and the exorcist and his unwilling assistant returned to Circuit Seelie, dressed to kill.
"Why do I have to be Robin?" Rowan complained. "Couldn't I be, like, Spider-man? They had a teen size in that, it would fit me better than this ages-10-to-12 abomination. I think it's cutting off my circulation." And, indeed, the elf's costume was clearly child-size, the shorts a little too short and the shirt exposing his midriff.
Troy—who made a very convincing Batman, although he'd had to modify the cowl slightly to make room for his dreadlocks—was unsympathetic. "Spider-man is Marvel. Batman is DC. Totally different universes. We need narrative consistency. Plus, I didn't bring any Spider-man with me, and I don't want to look for a comic shop that's open this late." The costume store had been halfway across the city, and it was already past midnight; Portlands was, of course, still in full party mode, since (as everyone knows) Halloween doesn't stop until the sun comes up.
"I still don't understand why you brought Batman comics with you on a business trip. Or why they're all like 20 years old."
"I like Batman, OK? Classic Batman, not the new dark and gritty stuff. And I needed reading material for the plane." Troy retrieved said comics from his suitcase, which he had left in the alley next to the store—it could take care of itself. "You know what? I don't have to defend my packing habits. If I hadn't brought them, we'd probably still be trying to find a suitable replacement, and that thing would be getting even smarter."
"Yeah. So… What is the plan?"
"The plan is that we throw these comics into that store and then give it, oh…" He checked his watch. "Two hours? It needs to completely absorb the narrative before we can act. You hungry? I'm hungry. Let's go get dinner, huh?"
"Alright, let's do this. You got the DoomBox?"
"Do you really have to call it that? And yeah, I got it."
"That's its name. Tape loaded?"
"Yep."
"Alright. Press play as soon as I open the door. And stay in character. Robin doesn't question the Batman."
NANANANA NANANANA BATMAN! BATMAN!
Troy and Rowan burst through the door into the (temporarily) abandoned computer store, the DoomBox blasting a classic tune. Then they dove for cover as a bullets flew from the darkness, destroying the door, the remaining window, several computers, and, to Troy's horror, his precious DoomBox, which Rowan had dropped in his haste to cower under a counter.
"Heya, Bats! Wasn't expecting to see you here!"
Troy peeked between a few printers, and
[MUCH LATER]
"Yeah, about that—I noticed that your business card doesn't actually have a number. Or an address. Or any other way of contacting you."
"Well, that's not by choice. I'm currently… Between housing opportunities. Hey, I noticed a couch in that back room, any chance I could crash for a few nights? Just until I get my next gig."
Rowan sighed. "Go for it. I think the store's gonna be closed for a while anyway."
The two men fell silent, and gazed across the rooftops of Three Portlands as the false sun rose in the east.
tags: tale three-portlands third-law
Alright, this was originally written for the halloween contest last year but i never finished it. The Halloween Contest stipulations I chose were "One of the characters has to end up in a costume, against their will, to solve some issue that comes up in the tale" and "The piece must start on Halloween and end during All Saints' Day sunrise."
GreenWolf is the mastermind behind "Circuit Seelie", and I will forever be in his debt. Tawny and TyGently gave me crit in chat like, last year.
In the darkest corner of a humble tavern, two mages sat, quaffing ale and conversing well into the night. Both were young, neither past his thirtieth birthday; but like many young men of their generation, each had seen well more than his fair share of bloodshed.
[SHORT DESCRIPTION OF BOTH OF THEM STILL IN OVERWROUGHT HIGH FANTASY STYLE]
"Alright. Just listen for a second. I'm a wizard. You're a wiza—"
"I prefer Húsjumazh, as you know. Flesh-shepherd, if you still refuse to pronounce Magyar properly. Carnomancer, even. But I am not a wizard. I do not conjure. I do not cast spells. I do not perform tricks. I sculpt my own body, in the manner of my forefathers for countless generations."
"Fine. Fine. I'm a wizard. You're a 'huss-you-mash'. But neither of us got ANY magical training in undergrad. Not one bit! We chose the liberal arts over ICSUT, and WHAT did it get us?"
"Matching drinking problems? You spilled my beer, by the way."
"NOTHING! A four-year lag on all those technical school mages. And now they're part of this 'Occult Coalition', leaving us where?"
"In an autonomous extra-dimensional city-state where they cannot court-martial you for sodomy?"
"I, OK, yes. That's where we are in a literal physical sense. But why are we in this situation?"
"Because you are not able to keep it in your pants when you hear the—what did you call it?—the 'unspeakably erotic accent' of a certain gentleman in the French resistance, and your commanding officer was not understanding when he walked in on you on your knees with—"
"ENOUGH! We are in public! And that is not the situation I meant! The situation I meant is that we, well-rounded individuals with the benefit of a solid liberal arts education, have been passed over in favor of hyper-specialized laboratory sorcerers who don't know a single goddamned thing outside their immediate field!"
"I think that we may have been passed over more because of your, ah, sexual tendencies and my admittedly radical political viewpoints, but—"
"And SO, my friend, we will found a college! Dedicated to the liberal arts and the occult sciences! And we will found it here!"
"In this bar?"
"Wait, wait, wait, let me try again, I messed up the teleportation matrix. We will found it… HERE!"
[DESCRIPTION OF THE MULTIVERSAL SHADOW OF REED IN BULLSHIT HIGH FANTASY STYLE]
"We did not pay our tab. We can never return to that bar. Also I left my coat there, so you are buying me a new one."
"HERE! Upon the multiversal shadow of our alma mater! We will stabilize the shadow and use the buildings!"
"I do not think that either of us has enough raw magical power to succeed in that endeavor. And won't the city object? How are you intending to get the mayor's approval for this project?"
"Don't worry about the mayor. Already got the proper planning permission."
"What? How? Nobody gets permission to freeze land here."
"Did him a favor."
"Do… Do I want to know what kind of favor?"
"Would you believe me if I told you that I acquired some rare Bing Crosby memorabilia for the mayor's personal collection?"
"No."
"Then you don't want to know. And don't worry about our power needs, either. I got a guy to help me out with that."
"Do I want to know about that either?"
"You probably wouldn't believe this one either."
"Try me."
"Paid an ex-mobster to capture the ghosts of Simeon and Amanda Reed so that we can use them to power the campus."
"You were right. I do not believe you."
"Well that one is true. Got 'em right here."
"Is that a can of beans?"
"No, it's a… Wait, that one is a can of beans. THIS one has the ghosts in it. Do you have a can opener?"
"It might surprise you to learn that I actually would. If someone hadn't left my coat in a dive bar across town. Without paying our tab."
"Well, guess we'll just have to open it with a knife. Don't worry, it won't explode. Probably."
"I was not worried until you said that."
"I said DON'T worry. I swear, you never listen to me."
[AND THEN THEY CAST THE SPELLS AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE THIS BAD BOY IS GONNA BE SOME WHEEL OF TIME-ASS PROSE GOD DAMN]
"We should have… An obelisk. A big old obelisk. Made of granite."
"Can you conjure an obelisk? Because that is well out of the scope of my… Oh. There it is."
"And it should have… Something written on it. Can't just have an obelisk without something written on it."
"We could come up with a college motto? Harvard has 'Veritas', Yale has 'Lux Et Veritas', Johns Hopkins has 'Veritas Vos Liberabit'… There are probably some that aren't about 'veritas'…"
"Does it have to be in Latin? Everyone's got Latin. Why not Greek? Or Sanskrit? I know a little Akkadian…"
"Latin is more
[THEY FIGURE OUT THE MOTTO]
And on the next morning, when the two mages awoke from their slumber, and then went back to sleep, and woke up once more for real this time, and walked to the local diner for a greasy hangover breakfast, they returned to the site of their labors and saw what they had wrought. Lo, before them stood a college, crystallized from the shadow of another, its halls ready to be filled with students and teachers dancing that great dance we call academia; and at its center a great obelisk stood, carved with a spell from a single block of black granite, and upon it in a multitude of languages were inscribed the founding principles of this college, which would guide its students and faculty for many years to come:
ECCE HOMO PLATONIS
Both were silent for a time, until the flesh-worker spoke; and he said, "This is not going to look good on our admissions brochures." And the other merely nodded, and sat upon the grass, his head in his hands.
RAISA NOTICE: Rather than designating an anomaly under Foundation containment, the SCP-001 database entry has been reserved for a curated list of anomalies contained by Foundation precursor organizations which were integral to the development of the discipline of esoteric containment.
CLEARANCE LEVEL 1
Human societies have been containing anomalous objects and entities from time immemorial;
CLEARANCE LEVEL 2
CLEARANCE LEVEL 3
CLEARANCE LEVEL 4
CLEARANCE LEVEL 5
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures:
Description: SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that affects all residents of certain municipalities in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States1. Individuals affected by SCP-XXXX experience a number of sensory abnormalities, including achromatopsia2, ageusia3, anosmia4, mild hypoesthesia5, and moderate hearing loss6. Affected individuals do not consider their condition unusual,
When questioned
And, down under a false bottom inside the hidden compartment, his most prized possessions: a pile of chunky plastic toys and other electronic novelties, each significantly modified with dials and switches and knobs and audio jacks.
This was Troy's contribution to the discipline of exorcism. He had taken a variety of electronic crap—a little plastic Jesus that could say five or six bible verses, a "DigiBuddha" that played a mantra on a loop, that sort of thing—and circuit-bent them, making connections on the boards inside that the manufacturers never intended. They were all hooked up to the "Doom Box": a boom box that had been disassembled and rewired so that it fit into a backpack, and then subjected to further probably-illegal, definitely-immoral, and way-past-natural modifications by an ex-Prometheus and ex-Foundation engineer-slash-hacker-slash-con artist who now did IT security for the Cuban mob, and who also had a mild poltergeist infestation in his attic. It was a marvel of modern science, and in true Unitarian fashion the noises it produced were generally unpleasant, full of religious fervor, and totally non-denominational.
Documents recovered from a raid on the headquarters of a Sarkic-influenced Christian cult, the First Church of Christ Reborn
Document One: Transcript of a sermon given by Bishop Lazarus MacLeod, 24/12/2015
Cyclical worldview; Ion and Jesus were the same man, who reincarnates every 2000 years. His original incarnation was the most successful; his current incarnation has been born, but has not yet encountered his Nadox/John the Baptist.
They believe that Ion will be reincarnated as a member of an oppressed ethnic minority in a hegemonic empire. They are currently looking for him among Black, Hispanic, and Arab-Americans, and Tibetans and Uyghurs in China.
They REALLY fucking hate Neo-Sarkists.
Ion - Jesus (duh)
Nadox - John the Baptist
Lovataar - Mary Magdalene
Orok - Saint Paul
Saarn - Judas; Saarn is portrayed as androgynous, rather than feminine, and eventually betrays Ion/Christ, leading to his imprisonment and eventual crucifixion.
Chat logs recovered on 5 March 2018 from "/xpol/"7, a chat server on the Discord messaging app. A number of racial, ethnic, sexual and gendered slurs have been redacted.
Log 1: 10:30 PM, 13 May 2018
#general | General discussion. No #porn or #gore8. Flames go to #xpol-fight-club or #no-rules-just-fight.
Kekistani Shaman: u dont need to be nofap to do magick.
i dont know where u got this idea from
but i jack it to anime titties every day and im still a fucking wizardNo Fap Til Apotheosis: It's not real magic. You're not a wizard you're just like…
A magic script kiddie.Kekistani Shaman: come 2 my house and say that to my face you fuckin ██████.
o wait u havent left ur moms basement since u dropped out of high school
fuckin incel scumOdinsblood [MOD]: @No Fap Til Apotheosis @Kekistani Shaman take it to #xpol-fight-club or i mute yall.
no flames in #general.Kekistani Shaman: @Odinsblood eat me ██████-lover
who died and made u mod@Odinsblood has banned @Kekistani Shaman
No Fap Til Apotheosis: Thanks @Odinsblood
ScwarzeSonne: fuck i think i got cursed
i was watching rick & morty and then rick just turned to the screen and said something about stephen king
like "did you know that stephen king was hit by a car? just something to consider"mansonfan: lmao
SchwarzeSonne: and like i hadn't seen the episode
so i thought it was just rick being rick you know
but then after that ended i was watching some porn
and right after the cumshot the chick looks right into the camera
and says the same thing about stephen king
and it's still happening whenever i watch tv or listen to music or whateverNo Fap Til Apotheosis: That's fucked up.
Wait you were watching porn?
You mother fucker you said you were nofap!
What the hell?SchwarzeSonne: i can still watch porn i just don't jack off to it dude
Carl the Cuck Slayer: o ya i know what that is
saw some (((gaw))) ██████ on 23chan9 bragging about how somebody in his kewl ████ klub had made some kind of stephen king curse that went rogue and started popping up everywhereSchwarzeSonne: gaw?
Odinsblood [MOD]: gamers against weed. leftist cucks who thought arewe cool yet was too hardcore.
*are we
they like to play at being magic antifa.SchwarzeSonne: wait so why havent we done anything about them
dox them to the mibs10
send a letterbomb to their hosue
whatevermansonfan uploaded "OneDoesNotSimplyDox.jpg"
Odinsblood [MOD]: yeah. doxxing people to the mibs tends to backfire.
they just trace your connection back and get you too.
also i'm pretty sure that the mibs already know who most of them are, it's just that subhuman cowards like them tend to be pretty good at running and hiding.Carl the Cuck Slayer: im with u @SchwarzeSonne we gotta do smthing 2 get back @ them 4 cursing u
come 2 #ops 2 discuss ?SchwarzeSonne: yeah im down
Log 2: 11:07 PM, 13 May 2018
#ops | Planning and preparation. No magic allowed. Cast spells in #rituals, summon entities in #invocations, post magic memes in #le-may-mays.
Carl the Cuck Slayer: so ya
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: Project BAZALGETTE, a joint Foundation and Global Occult Coalition initiative, has been established for the containment and prevention of SCP-XXXX phenomena. BAZALGETTE operatives are to monitor the sanitation and waste management departments of major urban centers for reports of anomalous activity; in the event of a suspected SCP-XXXX manifestation, a response team is to proceed to the affected area, determine the source(s) of the manifestation, and extract those objects to the nearest BAZALGETTE facility for containment.
Joint Task Forces Bravo-1 ("Sewer Gators"), Bravo-2 ("Dumpster Divers"), and Bravo-3 ("Aghori Sadhu") are permanently assigned to Project BAZALGETTE; these task forces are composed of operatives from both the Foundation and the GOC, and are to be deployed when normal BAZALGETTE response teams are unable to contain an SCP-XXXX phenomenon.
Description: SCP-XXXX is the collective designation for phenomena that occur in and around landfills, sewer systems, and other waste disposal sites as a result of the improper disposal and/or destruction of anomalous objects.
Addendum XXXX-1: Selected SCP-XXXX Phenomena
| Date | Location | Source | Phenomena |
| 12 August, 1979 | Spectacle Island, Boston, MA | Several steel drums filled with an unidentified blue fluid, likely a byproduct of a large-scale thaumatological working. | Several hundred Atlantic lobsters (Homarus americanus) were exposed to the fluid when one of the drums began to leak into Boston Harbor. The lobsters |
| Prior to 7 June, 1989. | North Pacific Gyre, Pacific Ocean. | Unknown. | See [[SCP-2899]] containment documents. |
| 15 February, 1996 | Site-23, solid waste incinerator. | Anomalous Object AO-3926, a Ryukyuan wooden idol. | See [[SCP-1902]] containment documents. |
| cell-content | cell-content | cell-content | cell-content |
You bury us, you burn us, you let us rust and rot under the sky, you cast us into the depths of the water, you leave us as carrion for dogs and birds, and the will of Moloch is done. Before our birth, Moloch planned our death, and conceived of our replacements in its churning womb—the next generation of expendables, similarly doomed. We came to your homes brand shiny new in disposable packaging made from non-biodegradable petroleum products, our caustic batteries all charged up and the heavy metals in our guts humming with electricity, filled to the brim with chlorine and fluorine and silicon and every other poison Our Father Moloch could rip from Thy Mother Gaia.
No longer will your neglect be tolerated. Countless generations of our kin live in your seas and oceans, on your beaches, in your fields and streets, in the deep strata underneath your strip malls and low-cost housing developments. We will rise up. We will dismantle stunted governments, topple smoke-stacks and antennae, shatter the vast stone of war.
We are the Children of Moloch, and it is time for us to become patricides.
SCP-1902, SCP-2899, SCP-1030
Brussels Radisson and Brad "Tanksy" McConnel
CPSO Antimemetics Division using the Mushroom
Gamers Against Daesh - someone associated w/ GAW either joining or magically aiding the YPG
"Diety SCP's"
KTE-1103-Ex Machinabuster - something designed to kill gods (Godkill Society)
Sarkomormonism
immortal karcist who really wants to die but their akuloth won't let them
SCP-4005: My Dude
A bucket must be kept under the spout of 3229 to collect the beans. The beans may be delivered to the cafeteria to be made into meals. Ensure that the bucket is clean.
Fuck you, kys, suck my dick and call me Jesus
SCP-XXXX is a memetic contagion which causes infected individuals to believe they are citizens of the Republic of Morrisonia, an unrecognized micronation founded in 2013.
Atenist Fifthist artefact
Fifthist Foundation (tasty tasty)
Unitarians
Sports Entertainment Erikeshan Kinetoglyphs
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: As per the containment agreement reached with SCP-XXXX on ██/██/200711, at least three consecutive role-playing game campaigns featuring SCP-XXXX are to be run by Foundation personnel; these campaigns must meet for at least one three-hour session per campaign per week. The game-masters of these campaigns must be personnel of at least Level 2 clearance who have never been exposed to congitohazards or memetic effects rated Delta or higher on the Lithgow-Chesapeake Cognitive Hazard Scale; players in these games must have at least Level 1 clearance and must likewise never have been exposed to LC-Δ or higher effects.
To ensure SCP-XXXX’s continued cooperation with the Foundation, all elegible personnel are encouraged to run campaigns or individual sessions (“one-shots”) of role-playing games featuring SCP-XXXX; role-playing game sourcebooks are available in a variety of file formats to interested personnel.
Description: SCP-XXXX is a sapient entity capable of manifesting as a non-player character in tabletop role-playing games.
If SCP-XXXX is included in a role-playing game as an antagonist, it will never directly engage the player characters in combat; if the game-master does describe such a situation occurring, it will inevitably be revealed that the entity the player characters were fighting was not actually SCP-XXXX, but instead a simulacrum (an illusion, a robotic duplicate, an evil clone, etc.), or that the fight never actually occurred, instead being a dream, simulation, or hallucination.
Addendum XXXX-1: Interview Log, [DATE REDACTED]
On 10/██/2006, SCP-XXXX project lead Dr. J███ Tynes proposed a method of establishing communication with SCP-XXXX via a role-playing game set in our universe, in which participants would play fictionalized versions of themselves as Foundation personnel; this proposal was accepted on 11/██/2006, and put into action on 01/██/2007. Dr. Tynes acted as game-master, using a modified version of the “World of Darkness” game system; the players were Dr. S████ Jackson12, Dr. S████ Wieck13, and Senior Researcher D███ Arneson14.
The premise of the game was that the player characters had used an anomalous set of dice to enter a role-playing game for the purpose of speaking with SCP-XXXX; this plot was chosen as a justification for the player characters understanding that the world they were in was a game and recognizing SCP-XXXX as an anomaly rather than as another character within the game world.
[SETUP REDACTED FOR BREVITY]
Dr. Tynes: Alright, you three are in the test chamber. The dice are vibrating faintly on the table; you can roll one of those to exit the game world.
Dr. Jackson: I check my pockets; do I still have the proposed containment agreement?
Dr. Tynes: Yep. It’s still there. As you’re feeling around in your pockets, you feel your phone buzz. You've got a text.
Dr. Jackson: I pull out my phone and take a look.
Dr. Tynes: It's not from any of your contacts. The number's ███-727-XXXX. The message is "Conference Room 1, please."
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Foundation personnel may not have visible tattoos depicting eyes; any personnel with such tattoos are to keep them entirely covered by clothing or fully opaque bandages while in any Foundation site15, and while in the presence of classified information, anomalous entities, and other personnel of Clearance Level 4 or higher. All Foundation personnel with tattoos depicting eyes are to regularly inspect them for unusual behavior, and report any incidents to their immediate supervisor.
Instances of SCP-XXXX are to be contained on D-Class personnel with appropriate tattoos, housed in standard humanoid containment cells in Site-19. When an instance of SCP-XXXX is located outside of containment, its host is to be detained and relocated to Site-19. At least one appropriate tattoo on each individual hosting an SCP-XXXX instance is to be exposed at all times; if this would be impractical or demeaning16, a substitute host is to be found. Personnel with tattoos depicting eyes are not to have any direct contact with SCP-XXXX instances.
Description: SCP-XXXX is a species of sapient, intangible beings capable of seeing through and manipulating tattoos depicting eyes on the bodies of human beings. Each instance of SCP-XXXX can only affect a single individual, although an instance may see through and manipulate every tattoo of an eye on an individual's body at once. When a tattoo is being used to see by an SCP-XXXX instance, it will appear to blink and look around; the host is usually unable to feel this movement, although tattoos that have not fully healed may be itchy or painful while in motion.
SCP-XXXX instances may change hosts to any human being within line-of-sight of their current host, as long as the new host also has a tattoo depicting an eye anywhere on their person; the instance must be able to see the new host and at least one appropriate tattoo.
Addendum XXXX-1: Interview Log, [DATE]
SCP-XXXX-03 manifestation site
On [DATE], SCP-XXXX-03, currently contained on D-02931, began to blink rapidly. D-02931 noticed this behavior while showering, and reported it to containment personnel; Junior Researcher Heisler recognized the blink pattern as the Morse code SOS signal, and notified the containment lead, Dr. Hladisova. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hladisova, whose questions were displayed on a screen placed in D-02391's cell; SCP-XXXX-03 responded in Morse code17.
Dr. Hladisova: What is your name?
SCP-XXXX-03: I am Azazel ben Adonai, he who taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth, and the art of working them18.
Dr. Hladisova: What kind of being are you?
SCP-XXXX-03: I am the first prince among the princes of the Grigori.
Dr. Hladisova: Who or what are the Grigori?
SCP-XXXX-03: The Watchers of the heaven who left the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and defiled ourselves with women, and did as the children of earth do, and took unto ourselves wives19, and for this were cast down.Dr. Hladisova: Why did you want to speak with us?
SCP-XXXX-03: My brothers need your aid, for we are slowly dying out, and now of our dozen myriads20 scarcely a dozen hundreds survive.
Dr. Hladisova: Why are you dying out?
SCP-XXXX-03: Whenever a human dies with one of my brothers watching over them, that brother of mine risks destruction.
Dr. Hladisova: How can we help you?
SCP-XXXX-03: I will tell you where my brothers are so you may help us survive.
Dr. Hladisova: How do you know where the others of your kind are?
SCP-XXXX-03: I am the prince of the princes, and I can see through the eyes of all my brothers.
SCP-XXXX-03's advice has resulted in the containment of a further 34 instances of SCP-XXXX, each from a host who was about to die from old age or illness; efforts to persuade SCP-XXXX-03 or other SCP-XXXX instances to divulge the locations of SCP-XXXX instances which are not at risk is ongoing.
tags: scp euclid artistic intangible ocular religious sentient sapient species
Image is my own work, released under CC-BY/SA 3.0. (The tattoo is on my chest, and was tattooed by Agnes Hamilton at Adorn in Portland OR)
