Per 
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: The building has been boarded up by a containment crew. The windows are covered by exterior half-inch particle board. The main level doors have wood framed barriers assembled to block entry. The boarding on second story windows discolors over time, going toward a cinder black. When structural integrity is compromised, the boards are replaced.
Description: SCP-XXXX-1 is a four story brick building in [REDACTED], in the Keewenaw Peninsula of Michigan. This is a standard 19th century printing plant. The first floor has a front office, and then a press room and type foundry. The second floor is a composing room and storage space. The third floor is a bindery and warehouse. The top floor is offices, and a library.
The plant is powered by a single large engine on the pressroom floor, which through steam power drives a series of overhead shafts, that subsequently drive belts connected to the different presses and machines in the shop.
The shop is now staffed by SCP-XXXX-2, called by locals who encountered them before containment procedures were initiated: "the paper men". On the first floor are SCP-XXXX-2A: "the Pica Men". These beings go through the procedures of operating the presses, running the type casters, and maintaining the engine and its gas line. Each instance of SCP-XXXX-2 is made of a fine cotton paper inscribed with undulating black marks like a text that is constantly changing.
The second floor is staffed by SCP-XXXX-2B: "the Pied Men". These are like the SCP-XXXX-2A below, but the letter forms across their papery skin are jumbled, and always slowly falling upward toward their head. The "younger" SCP-XXXX-2B set type at the case, and the black letters mark their scalps in a way suggestive of hair. The "older" SCP-XXXX-2B stand at the stones assembling massive formes of the type for the presses, the oldest with faces and shoulders almost black with inky type.
All characterizations of the beings come from interviews with local residents.
On the third floor are SCP-XXXX-2C "the Foolscaps", blank white, pristine, paper men. They trim down the book blocks, folding up the signatures, stitching the books together, glueing the binding. Some seem older, their paper yellowing, and these beings assess the inventory of paper and thread and ink, ticking off the stock counts with quill pens cutting into their forearms.
On the top floor sits SCP-XXXX-2D who claims to be "Dr. Shakespeare", alone in his office. His skin so black and dense with inky letters, his papery belly round and full. Some residents cahacterized him as a shadow, or as a burnt piece of paper. Others described him as a paper stamped so many times with inky letters that he was soft, with a loss of structural integrity.
A very old local resident wrote in a description: "When he stalks his library, he tears sheets off the Foolscap librarians, rolls them up, and smokes them. The soot and the cinders of his inky cigars threaten to set the whole operation alight."
Other residents refer to SCP-XXXX-2D as a Man of Letters.
The local librarian said that she was given the following warning by elderly patrons: "If you go into the print shop, they might capture you in a net of language, and print you back out of the press."
Only one post-containment investigation is on record. Three investigators ascended floor by floor performing a cursory survey to verify the basic facts gleaned from local interviews.
Upon inspecting the books in the library, it was found that many of the books have the names of men on their spines, and the surnames match much of what could be found in the cemetery on the other side of town.
Addendum:
According to a local history: The engine of the printing plant was originally fed by locally mined coal, but the power source changed in 1877 when a local copper mine cracked into a massive cavern filled with a many gases of different densities. The plant now draws power from a natural gas line connected to SCP-XXXX (the copper mine).
