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Javert.png is a mashup of an image generated by midjourney AI and this picture of monke https://flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/3846236851 https://flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/31264874324 Image of smoke taken from this website https://www.noaa.gov/news/where-there-s-fire- there-s-smoke-and-secrets-for-science-to-uncover and is under public domain.
The other part of the KINGINRED.png image was taken from midjourney, which I release under CC.
YASH.png is also from midjourney, released by me under CC.
All image edits were made by me, djkaktus.
More by this Author {$comments2} F.A.Q.
{$doesthisfixthebug} rating: +327+–x Item#: 6765 Level5 Containment Class: keter Secondary Class: {$secondary-class} Disruption Class: ekhi Risk Class: danger link to memo SCP-6765 Assigned Site PARAGON EKFOS Site Director Shannon Lancaster Research Head Dr. Matthew Fulweiler Assigned Task Force ATF Φ-19 Special Containment Procedures: SCP-6765 is contained at its original location of discovery. Knowledge of SCP-6765 is restricted to only personnel with proper clearance obtained from the Project PARAGON research team. The Eastern Kashmir Forward Operating Site (EKFOS) has been constructed within the main atrium of SCP-6765.
Access to the entirety of SCP-6765 is restricted to research personnel only. Access to the innermost chamber of the SCP-6765 facility is restricted to only those individuals with clearance obtained from the Project PARAGON director.
Due to the remote location of SCP-6765, additional containment procedures have thus far been unnecessary. Despite this, any persons who pass within the 4km exclusion zone around the entrance of SCP-6765 are to be apprehended by agents posing as local PRC officials and interrogated. Individuals determined to not be seeking out SCP-6765 are to be amnesticized and moved to the PLA outpost at Rutog County, Ngari Prefecture.
Overseer's Directive: The following is a containment directive issued by the Office of O5-1, pursuant to the Project PARAGON Terms of Organization. The contents therein are restricted to Project PARAGON Senior Leadership.
Director Lancaster, Wanted to write to you personally to congratulate you for the quick work your team made of compiling the SCP-6666 report. Having now had a chance to read it, along with the report Dr. Bishop published, I am going to be taking your advice here.
Going forward, SCP-2254, SCP-4812, and SCP-4840 will all fall under your purview. I'm also working with MTF Ξ-9 to move SCP-2932 under PARAGON as well. RAISA has been directed to move forward with updating the archives to reflect this change and making sure all relevant security concerns are handled. Some clearances will need to be revoked and we'll have to work on handing out amnestics to a couple of people who aren't in this field anymore, but I expect we'll have it cleared up by the end of the quarter.
As you are no doubt by now aware, there are certain Groups of Interest who have been following our actions here very closely. Our disinformation teams have been working hard to mitigate their advances, but we have reason to believe that there may be some who are actively attempting to undermine our efforts. You can expect to see an increased security presence across all the locations within PARAGON's jurisdiction going forward.
Once you've completed the report on SCP-6765, let me know. We can discuss what happens next.
Keep up the good work.
Calvin Lucien O5-1 RAISA FILE MAINTENANCE MEMORANDUM: Due to the SCP-6765 "HERITAGE" Event, many of the descriptions of entities or locations in this document are obsolete.
Please see Addendum 6765.10 for more information.
Description: SCP-6765 is the group designation for a structure complex of antediluvian origin located beneath Aksayqin Lake in Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang, and several anomalous entities and artifacts contained therein. This complex, estimated in excess of 552,000m3 in volume, is comprised of three primary areas: The Atrium: Accessible through a small cave network, the entrance of which is located on an outcrop into Aksayqin Lake. The Atrium is the uppermost section of SCP-6765, and has been mostly emptied of its original contents over the many years since SCP-6765's lower areas were sealed. It is believed now that the Atrium is the highest point of what was once a spiraling tower, before the entire SCP-6765 complex came to rest at its current position. This Atrium is believed to have originally been the attic of the much larger structure.
The Throne Room: Located beneath the central Atrium chamber down a series of staircases and behind a previously sealed doorway is the Throne Room. This chamber, roughly 27m wide and 49m long with a domed ceiling 11m high, contains SCP-6765-A, SCP-6765-B, SCP-6765-C, and SCP-6765-D, when applicable. Little of the available space in the room is traversable; much of the floor has fallen away over time, exposing the Reservoir below.
The Reservoir: The Reservoir consists of much of the remainder of the SCP-6765 compound — specifically, the entire much of the structure located beneath the Throne Room. The Reservoir is named for its primary function within SCP-6765; the Reservoir is filled with a significant volume of human blood. The full extent of the Reservoir's size is not known exactly, but based on rough estimations and information gathered from SCP-6765-D, it is believed that the Reservoir contains within it over 790,000,000 liters of blood1. This blood exists as a function of SCP-6765-A, and is circulated through it by way of a series of seventy-two individual gilded metallic pipelines that extend down into the reservoir.
The Throne Room of SCP-6765 contains four distinct anomalous entities therein: SCP-6765-A is an extensive, complex psuedo-biological machine located at the center of the Throne Room. SCP-6765-A is the "throne" of SCP-6765, and is comprised of an intricately carved stone seat with a high back. Built into SCP-6765-A are nine rigid metal tubes, each of which end in a long, silver syringe. The tubes are positioned in order to allow them to be pushed out of the way when not in use, and then moved back into place when a subject is seated on SCP-6765-A.
1.
2.
3.
As is the case with SCP-6765-B, the nine syringes are situated around SCP-6765-A in such a way as to be inserted into a human body in nine different locations: One into the common carotid artery, One into the aorta, Two into the radial arteries (both right and left sides), One into the hypogastric artery, Two into the femoral arteries (both right and left sides), One into the superior vena cava, One into the inferior vena cava.
It is believed that the purpose of this mechanism is to fully bypass the heart of an individual seated upon SCP-6765-A, and allow SCP-6765-A itself to push blood from the Reservoir through the body.
SCP-6765-A is located on an isolated platform in the center of the Throne Room, accessible only from the back on a single narrow walkway. This platform rests on six large pillars that extend down into the Reservoir below, and immediately underneath the platform is a large mechanical construct resembling a stylized five-chambered heart.
This mechanism is constructed primarily out of thin sheets of hammered gold and copper between hardened iron rods, creating the membranes and pumping surfaces of a heart.
This machine functions by pulling blood out of the individual seated upon SCP-6765-A through the venae cavae, and replacing it with blood pulled from the Reservoir through deposits into the aforementioned arteries throughout the subject's body. This mechanism also serves as a way to filter the blood of contaminants before it is brought into the pumping apparatus. The exact mechanical and thaumatological means by which SCP-6765-A accomplishes its intended design are not yet fully understood.
SCP-6765-B is an extremely emaciated, yet still living, humanoid entity seated upon SCP-6765-A. Radiographic imaging of SCP-6765-B has confirmed that SCP-6765-A has indeed bypassed its heart entirely, and is still pushing blood through its body. While SCP-6765-B does occasionally take shallow breaths, much of the remainder of its internal biology has ceased functioning. SCP-6765-B no longer consumes food or water, resulting in the total atrophy of its digestive system, including its esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, and anus.
Despite the near total collapse of many of its biological processes, SCP-6765-B is believed to have a mostly functioning nervous system. Scans of SCP-6765-B's brain show no unusual activity, and have confirmed that while SCP-6765-B is not fully responsive to outside stimuli, this is because SCP-6765-B is asleep, and not a sign of nervous system failure.
SCP-6765-C is an instance of SCP-1000, a group of entities referred to as "Children of the Night" in recovered texts. SCP-6765-C has yellow-green eyes, is roughly 3.7m in height, weighs 337kg, and is covered head to toe in thick, dark hair. SCP-6765-C is not hostile, and displays advanced cognitive characteristics. SCP-6765-C self-identifies as "Javert", and though SCP-6765-C is incapable of direct speech, communication with SCP-6765-C is possible either through use of American Sign Language2, or by means of persons who are themselves asleep or in a near-sleep state3. In this state, SCP-6765-C is capable of communicating with individuals in their preferred language, though participants admit that much more of the communication is processed through sensory inputs instead of verbal dialogue.
• • • • • • • Prior to the arrival of Foundation researchers, SCP-6765-C lived in the Atrium of SCP-6765, where it had assembled a small kitchen, grooming area, and sleeping mat comprised of many different discarded articles of clothing, blankets, pillows, and raw cloth that it had recovered from passing caravans. Additionally, SCP-6765-C is in possession of several radios, most of which are no longer functional, but several which have long exceeded their manufacturer's expected lifetime, seemingly due to tinkering on the part of SCP-6765-C. SCP-6765-C has since moved its accommodations into the southeastern corner of the Throne Room, where it has continued its daily ritual of maintaining SCP-6765-A, and caring for both SCP-6765-B and SCP-6765-D.
SCP-6765-D is a vaguely humanoid entity in a state of arrested metamorphosis.
SCP-6765-D's body is composed of two distinct elements — a larger mass that is believed to be the intended post-morph, and a smaller human body that is the pre- morph. The larger mass consists of a misshapen torso with six twisted and malformed arms, two limp and seemingly paralyzed legs and a head with no mouth, no ears, no nose, and six eyes in two vertical stacks of three, and the smaller mass consists of the severely altered body of a human male who appears to be in his early thirties, with grey hair and one blue eye, the right eye being fully missing. The full height of SCP-6765-D is roughly 10.1m, while the anticipated height of the smaller body within the larger mass is significantly smaller.
SCP-6765-D's smaller mass is partially fused to the larger mass near the upper torso in the following ways: SCP-6765-D's human body is primarily conjoined to the larger form on its back, which is connected to the upper section of the post-morph's chest just below the neck. Much of SCP-6765-D's human chest is unrecognizable and run into the left side of the larger mass' chest.
SCP-6765-D's human legs disappear into the larger mass, though both legs can be found far away from its human torso at the base of the larger mass' spine, fused together as if in a vestigial tail.
SCP-6765-D's human right arm is completely encased within the larger mass.
SCP-6765-D's human left arm is exposed and fully functional.
SCP-6765-D's human head is fused into the neck of the larger mass. While this slightly limits the range of which SCP-6765-D is capable of turning its human head, it does not seem to otherwise restrict the more human aspect of SCP-6765-D.
SCP-6765-D's hair grows everywhere on its head except the back, where it fuses with the neck of the post-morph.
SCP-6765-D retains full use of all six of its post-morph arms, as well as its remaining human arm.
SCP-6765-D is the Demon Ogier, one of the four Primeval Demons associated with the Sky Kings of Old Europ and Apollyona, an antediluvian kingdom of Homo antediluvianus humans that was fully destroyed through anomalous means between two and three decades before the Great Flood, a worldwide supernatural disaster that occurred between four and five hundred thousand years ago. SCP-6765-D, along with SCP-2254, SCP-4840-B, and SCP-6666-A, were ancient warriors aligned with the Sky Kings of House Apollyon who came under the influence of a powerful curse placed upon them by a faerie princess, altering their bodies and minds until they were wholly unrecognizable as human beings.
Despite this, SCP-6765-D was able to disrupt its transformation. This left much of its human form exposed and functional, while allowing SCP-6765-D to maintain rudimentary control over its larger post-morph biology.
• • • • • • SCP-6765-E is a hostile extraplanar entity, the full nature of which is not yet fully understood. For more information on this entity, see Addendum 6765.10.
Addendum 6765.1: Discovery SCP-6765 was the subject of a decades long investigation by members of the Site-68 Anomythological Research Division into unusual phenomenon reported by travelers passing through the Taklamakan Desert in southwestern Xinjiang. Travelers had recalled seeing a "goliath" in the area, or raiding traveling parties. On several occasions local authorities put together parties of their own to hunt down this mysterious creature, but invariably the teams were unable to find any trace of it, leading many to resign the story to a local legend and myth.
In 2016, Dr. Aarav Patel led an expedition into the largely uninhabited Hotan County in southwestern Xingjiang after another reported attack by a large humanoid creature. Dr.
Patel's expedition resulted in the discovery of signs of habitation in the Aksayqin Lake area, and eventually to the discovery of SCP-6765 and SCP-6765-C. In Dr. Patel's 2016 Report on Emerging Anomalous Phenomenon within the Taklamakan Region he describes how several members of the expedition reported meeting SCP-6765-C in a dream the night before their discovery of SCP-6765. SCP-6765-C directed the expedition towards the entrance of the Atrium, and communicated its intent with a member of the team who was also fluent in ASL.
Addendum 6765.2: Dream Journal Entry #1 The following is a journal entry written by Agent Evelyn Ivy, who had previously been assigned to a team monitoring the Oneiroi Group of Interest. Agent Brooks was chosen from available candidates to commune with SCP-6765-C due to her background in unconscious communication within metaphysical spaces. Agent Brooks engaged with SCP-6765-C shortly after the discovery of the SCP-6765 site, but prior to the discovery of SCP-6765-D, when access to the Throne Room below was still sealed.
As I gain lucidity, I realize I am standing within a forest of tall trees. Light is visible through the canopy, and the forest floor is covered in a thick but low bed of moss and grass. As I take time to adjust and get my bearings, I see him standing nearby, at the base of one such tree. I cannot make out his appearance, but he has a calm and gentle demeanor, and this is how I perceive him. I approach and introduce myself, and he greets me warmly. I explain that I am just here to observe and understand, and he reciprocates. We begin walking through the forest.
First, I ask him his name. He tells me that his people, who described themselves using a word that roughly translates to "blessed children", did not use names to identify each other. He explains that by the time they had learned to communicate at all, they had long since learned to identify each other using smell and sight. He says that the eyes were closer to a name than anything spoken, and his people were able to differentiate between each other by seeing the differences between their eyes. However, he says that he has since taken the name Javert, after hearing it in a radio adaptation of Les Misérables some years earlier.
He asks me where I came from, and I explain that we are researchers and scientists, hoping to learn more about the world from before the Flood. He tells me that a great many things have been buried over time, but that we were fortunate to have found this place. As we walk through the forest, I see shapes in the distance - dark figures with glowing yellow eyes, as if watching us. I ask what these figures are, but my guide does not answer.
I ask about the structure we found him in. He acknowledges me, and then we step out of the forest and onto a high hill overlooking a sprawling city. The streets are paved with polished stone, and the buildings are constructed with a smooth red brick. At this city's heart I see a towering spire made of black iron, stretching up into the sky. The sun streaks overhead, and I see days passing, then months. More and more of the lamplights across the city begin to go out as men, women and children travel to the tower at the city's center. Eventually, the sun sets one last time and never rises again.
Storm clouds fill the sky. All around the city, flowers in their fields bloom and wither, and the heavens open up. It rains, and rains, and the rivers spill over and the foundations of the city begin to crack and shudder. As the waters rise, the land breaks under the stress and the city is sundered beneath the crashing waves, all save for the single tower of black iron.
An age passes, and as the waters recede the world is changed. Mountains have been leveled, valleys rise into the sky, and the plain on which the city once sat lies deep underground, forgotten and buried. But where the tower's spire reached its peak is a dusty outcrop of rock next to a miserable patch of water, and it is to this outcrop that I am led by my companion. He stops just short of it, indicating that the entrance is through a small passageway in the rock. He resides within, he says, as does my master and the last of the great sorcerers. He bids us to come and join them in fellowship, learn what knowledge can be passed on from those whose eyes saw those ancient sunsets, and to keep this knowledge safe.
His tone grows dim. A doom approaches, he says. A force is stirring that would seek to unearth those old secrets and see catastrophe brought to the world again. A raw and festering rage that cannot be easily abated. The knowledge within this cathedral, he tells me, may provide us a kind of salvation, if we are fortunate.
Then, he is gone. I stand alone for a time, surrounded by the ghosts of a long dead memory.
The sun sets one last time, and I awaken in my tent.
Addendum 6765.3: Preliminary Interview The following is the transcript of a preliminary interview with SCP-6765-D conducted by SCP-6765 Research Lead Dr. Matthew Fulweiler, shortly after the establishment of EKFOS within the Atrium of SCP-6765.
Dr. Fulweiler: Good day, sir. My name is Matthew Fulweiler, I'm the uh, well, I think Divyansh might have already introduced me, but I'm the researcher in charge here.
SCP-6765-D: Greetings, and may the light of Asem's rising sun shine on you, Matthew Fulweiler. I am one called Ogier, son of Osires, once of the old land of E-Rikesh and of the High City of Apollyon. It has been some time since I saw the face of another man — your presence here is dearly welcomed.
Dr. Fulweiler: I can only imagine. How long have you been in this chamber?
SCP-6765-D: (Pauses) It is admittedly difficult to say. Since the start of my affliction I need not consume food or drink, nor do I grow hungry or ravenous with thirst. Before the arrival of my caretaker I spent many long ages here in the dark with naught but myself and the companionship of my friend the Lord Relivine to pass the time. I cannot say how long it has been.
Dr. Fulweiler: Lord Relivine is the figure seated upon the mechanism there, yes?
SCP-6765-D: Indeed. Though the ages have no doubt diminished his outward charm somewhat, Relivine was once a powerful magister of the peoples of old Malidraug, and it was he who conducted the blessed ministration that staved off my transfiguration.
Without him, there would likely be little left of me with whom to speak.
Dr. Fulweiler: You speak modern English with an unusual proficiency. How did you learn it, as isolated as you are here?
SCP-6765-D: Ah, I speak a great many languages, yes. In my time, I was something of a scholar among my order, and my friend and caretaker has furnished our humble residence with books in your modern tongues, as well as the listening boxes we have used to hear the voices of your people from here within our chambers. We have had other visitors as well, those who were brave enough to seek the beckoning of my friend the dreamer. With little else but time, and my books, I have learned many things here.
Dr. Fulweiler: I suppose I should start with the obvious, then. You're… we have found others like you, three of them, actually, but none of them have had their faculties preserved quite as well.
SCP-6765-D: (Pauses) Three, you say? Oh, my brothers. My brothers. (Pauses) What has become of them? Have they… have they become like me?
Dr. Fulweiler: They are each no longer human, yes, but far more extreme than you.
SCP-6765-D: (Sighs) In my dreams, I had hoped that perhaps some act of mercy from the divine would stay the fell hand of our curse, but… when none of them came for me, I feared they had been consumed. Yes, perhaps I was the luckiest of us, then. When I recognized the gnawing darkness within my spirit, I made haste from the cursed land of my sworn lord. The land of my youth, E-Rikesh, having long since been worn down by the war engines of the Sky King, offered me no comfort, and so I fled here to the halls of my Lord Relivine for relief. Without similar recourse, they would have no doubt been unable to… ah, and even Lord Hector… Dr. Fulweiler: What happened to you?
SCP-6765-D: Ah… it has been such a long time. Thankfully, my… my memories are preserved here, within the pool, I could take you to them, if you would like.
Dr. Fulweiler: I don't understand.
SCP-6765-D: We stand on hallowed ground, you and I. Once, this was the tallest spire of the Vein of Malidraug, the oldest and deepest sanctuary for those most ancient of artistries. This place… at one time it was a holy temple of the Daeva, powerful ministers and sorcerers who learned how to manipulate the very blood essence of a man. It was through these sorceries that my Lord Relivine did preserve me, and through them that the Daevites have long preserved their memory. Some of my blood, old though it may be, lies within the pool as well.
Dr. Fulweiler: What does the machine do?
SCP-6765-D: I came here just before the waters rose, an event that was foreseen by a Daeva oracle centuries earlier. When the skies opened and the flowers bloomed, those people came to this place, and they gave themselves into this pool. A great ministration occurred, and the blood of those people was extracted and placed here, within this temple. They still live, through the Throne, and their memory is preserved here, in this cathedral. My Lord Relivine was last upon the throne, and it is through him that the voices of his people flow. He is… well, clearly lessened physically by this, and is no longer capable of maintaining little more than a deep sleep, but we can still speak to him, in dreams.
Dr. Fulweiler: That's… there's so much blood in there, we thought that it- SCP-6765-D: That it was simply conjured here? That it came down from the sky?
(Laughs) No, no. This blood was given freely. The last of them above ground spoke of a wall of water higher than the mountains bearing down upon us. They sealed this chamber and, knowing that they could not be preserved with the sustenance of the body while we were entombed here, opened their hearts and emptied themselves into this temple. (Pauses) I can show you my memories, if you'd like.
Dr. Fulweiler: Yes, we'll want to do that, certainly, but… will that require one of us to sit in the chair?
SCP-6765-D: Oh yes, certainly. You will need to sit upon the throne and be deeply penetrated by the machine. It is the only way to learn these old secrets. (Pauses) (Laughs) I am sorry, the look on your face was wonderful. It has been so long, I could not help it. No, none could now sit on the Throne of Malidraug other than my Lord Relivine, and it is likely that removing him from the Throne would end his life. While my Lord slumbers, my friend - the Dreamer - can speak with him, and act as an intermediary.
Dr. Fulweiler: That's… ok, well that is a relief. We will definitely want to do that, then, and… that was going to be my next question. Your friend, the large one, when did he arrive here?
SCP-6765-D: (Pauses) I'm not sure. I know we spent a long, long time alone here in the dark before Javert arrived, but I cannot say with certainty how long it was. He has been here for some time, though. Ah, my watchful protector.
Dr. Fulweiler: He protects you? I would have figured it was the other way around.
SCP-6765-D: (Laughs) Well, looks do deceive. Though my body is transfigured, it has not transformed fully, and much of the strength of this monstrosity is lost to me. I tire quickly, and my body aches under the effort. I was never a master of arms like my Lord Knights, and the sorceries I can still perform often leave me exhausted. Truly, without Javert I would have long ago been exposed, and perhaps even killed as an abomination.
(Pauses) It has been lonely here. The world of men has changed since I came to this shelter. I am happy to help you, in whatever way I still can.
Addendum 6765.4: Dream Journal Entry #2 The following is a journal entry written by Agent Evelyn Ivy, who was tasked with keeping a record of an interaction within the dreamspace of herself, SCP-6765-C, Dr. Matthew Fulweiler and Director Coryn Malthus, the head of the Foundation's Department of Antediluvian Research. Using a lucid dreaming technique, Agent Brooks was capable of transcribing a conversation between the involved parties as it was occurring.
As I start to gain awareness, I see my own sleeping body below me, and the bodies of Director Malthus and Dr. Fulweiler. Javert sits nearby, on his bedmat. We are within SCP-6765. As he sees us waking, our host greets us warmly.
"Welcome, Children of the Sun," he says. "I pray you did not have too much trouble getting here." He laughs at his own joke. It is quiet laughter, but it fills the room like a song.
Director Malthus attempts to speak first. He struggles, as people usually do when first entering these metaphysical spaces. Javert notices this and extends a hand as if to indicate pause.
"It will take a moment for you to grow comfortable interacting with me here," he says.
"This is not unusual. This space we are in is the space of my people, the space where our culture lives. You are just travelers in a distant land. Take some time, and you will adjust." I speak up. "How did you come to be here?" He speaks. "I came here by accident. I had gotten lost and wandered into the steppe, long before your brethren laid down their roads and began broadcasting on their radios. I was young, and my mother had died years before, and those few who knew of me could not find me. We-" he pauses, "-we do not speak like you speak. Our tongues are capable of utterances, but they weren't designed to use the words of men. This is why I must use your language of hands to make myself undertsood when you are awake - it's only when you sleep that you can hear my voice, and when I can hear the voices of my kin, as well. But there were no more Children of the Sun in the mountains, so I could not hear any others like me. I wandered for a time, and then found myself here. I heard the dreams of Saint Ogier and Lord Relivine and found my way down into this place." Dr. Fulweiler speaks next. "How old are you?" Javert seems to reflect on this question. "I don't know," he says. "I haven't thought much about it. Older than you, by far. Older than most men, I would wager. Hundreds of years.
Maybe a thousand. Still, far younger than either of my compatriots." "We have seen others like you," Director Malthus says. "Children of the Night. They looked like you, but were not like you. More primal, aggressive. Dark." Javert appears to furrow his brow. "My mother once told me stories of our people, while we huddled atop the mountain. Stories of my forebears dancing under a red star. She told me that we were different once. Urged me to make my own way in this world, a world free of darker influences. I learned to ignore the whispers of the King, where those dark influences now rest." Dr. Fulweiler responds. "Who is the King?" "Ah, how to say. The King is less of a who, at least now. It is… an old wisdom of my people," Javert says. "A place of dark secrets within our collective unconscious. There is a story, a fairytale, that accompanies it. My people would tell this story, but my mother did not want me to hear it." He pauses before continuing. "As the story goes, there was once a King of Night under the dark canopy of the Old Forest, and the King would dance to the music of a red star in the sky he could not see. When the King laid down to rest, he slipped into the slumber that would not end, and in his dreams he still danced beneath the red star. We can hear the King dancing, each of us, deep within the dark forests we walk together. It is said that, if you listen to him dancing for too long, you too will begin to dance the dance of our Last King of Night, and those secrets our people hid away in ages past will be evident to you." He gestures to the chamber around us. "The Last King of Night is not unlike this place. A place of stored memory. I know very little about my own people, aside from what stories they would tell on the mountain, but I could know more, if I listened to the King dancing under his red star." Director Malthus finally speaks. "Thank you for hosting us, Javert. There's so much I feel we can learn from you, and your colleagues." Javert smiles. "Yes. The Daeva were many things, but perhaps more than anything they were chroniclers. There are a great many secrets hidden here, beneath the blood of Malidraug's throne. I suppose now we should wake our friends, as well." He stands and turns, and as he does the world around us changes. We are in the throne room below, but it is different. The throne is suspended over empty space, space which in the waking world is full of blood. I peer down into the darkness of this reservoir and see nothing but darkness extending below us. I hear voices echoing in the deep, soft and distant.
A figure appears from the dark recesses of the throne room. He is a man, young in his face but betrayed by the age in his eyes. He is slight of build, with long black hair pulled behind his head held in place by a silver band. He wears a simple white and blue tunic, and over it white robes trimmed in silver. He holds in one hand a wooden staff crested with a silver ornament, many delicate and interwoven circles of metal around a polished blue gem. Behind him is another figure, grotesque and horrible to behold, with six dull eyes. I feel nothing from this creature, but its eyes still follow us as we cross the chamber to meet him. As we approach, the man bows deeply.
"Greetings, again," the man speaks in a tongue I do not recognize but understand immediately. "I am Ogier, sworn knight of the Sky King Sarrus IX Von Apollyon." We greet him, and he leads us over to the edge of the precipice. We can see now, clearly, a figure seated on the throne. They are humanoid, adorned in rich red and black robes that cascade over their shoulders. I cannot tell by sight if they are man or woman.
Their auburn hair, which extends past the waist, flows freely over the arms of the throne.
A golden circlet rests on their head. Across their exposed chest are old scars. Their eyes are closed.
Ogier steps forward from our group and kneels. "Relivine, lord of memory, long have you dreamed idly atop Malidraug's sullen throne. I bid ye awaken, if you would." The entity on the throne twitches slightly, but their body does not move. We are transported again, with the world whirling in crimson and ebony around us. When the haze settles, we are standing atop a mountain. Below us is nothing but cloud, and above us a black sky, filled with stars. The figure on the throne hangs limp in the air some distance away, one arm pulled behind their back - a symbol I recognize immediately as a show of reverence. Their form is shifting, impossible to discern. We hear a voice, come from all around us.
"St. Ogier," they say, "my dreams of late have been troubled, but your face is one I have often thought of. It brings me a great comfort to see you, and you as well, Child of the Night." Ogier appears to speak, but stops as a wave of power radiates out from their body. "I know who they are, my dear Saint," the voice says. "Children of Asem, of the Sun.
Matthew, son of Grady. Coryn, son of William. I am who was once called Relivine, the daughter and then son of Rettos, and the living memory of Daeva. You are most welcome here, in this last of the holy sanctuaries of my people." Dr. Fulweiler speaks. "Thank you. Our organization seeks to protect the world from powerful forces that threaten our people. There are threats that are only now becoming known to us, and we fear that our ignorance will blind us to these dangers." From around us, the clouds begin to part. Spires and columns of white marble rise from the mist. Towering cathedrals and temples built to long dead gods. Pale figures made of smoke, faceless and unmoving, stand and stare into the distance, where a single point of golden light reaches into the sky. The heavens fold and split, and a burning star begins to descend.
The voice speaks, but it is no longer a unified voice. Different tones can be heard through a chorus of individuals, some distinct and others faint and wavering.
"Child of the Sun, what wonders we have beheld." "I have seen the dawn of civilizations who, in their time, became little more than a memory, and have long since passed beyond the vale of what IS known." "I have watched the skies fall, and watched the seas rise to meet them." "I have witnessed the ineffable beauty of Truth in this world, and known the uncanny horror that follows." "I have known. I have forgotten. I have known again." The voices become quiet as the star continues to fall. The golden point of light rises, outstretched, to meet it. The voice speaks again, once more together.
"Once, our people relied on divinity to hold the knowledge we treasured so dearly. Our divine ancestry betrayed us, just as your forefathers betrayed you. Our people resolved, then, to never forget again. This place, this bastion, we have filled it with the memory of this world. Secrets that no Library can hold. Dreams that once lingered in the waters of that which IS NOT." The star falls into the golden embrace of the light in the distance. A great wind blows through the city of smoke around us, and the great structures fall back into the darkness below. A moment later, the world is still. The point of golden light hangs for a moment longer before vanishing.
The figure appears again, hanging in the air before us. Their voice speaks once more.
"You were not wrong to fear those horrors of the old world, Child of the Sun. A great many cruel things were buried in ages long past by those who came before even we, the Chroniclers. Those who have emerged into your world seek vengeance for the atrocities of your ancestors. Their power is terrible, and their intentions cruel, but they are limited by the hate of those who called them out from the shadow. Those whose tombs lie even deeper in the Earth have no such limitations." "The sacrifice of our people will have been for nothing if our knowledge lies stagnant in this deepening pool until the world turns over. We will offer you the wisdom we have collected, Children of Asem. But know this - even here, there is knowledge that ought not be known by men. Tread carefully in these scarlet halls." The world fades to black. I am alone in the dark, until I slip from unconsciousness.
Addendum 6765.5: Project PARAGON EKFOS Meeting Transcript Internal Audio Recording Transcript In Attendance: PARAGON Director Shannon Lancaster (Remotely) Dept. of Antediluvian Research Director Coryn Malthus SCP-6765 Research Head Dr. Matthew Fulweiler Dir. Lancaster: Gentlemen, good evening. Or rather, good morning. I hope you’re doing well.
Dir. Malthus: As well as we’ve ever been, I think.
Dir. Lancaster: That’s encouraging to hear. What do you have for me?
Dir. Malthus: Our initial trials have shown a lot of success. The agents we’ve pulled from the Oneiros teams have made great strides in their ability to transcribe what they’re experiencing in the dream-state in real time. We’re hoping the neural implants can expedite this process, giving us true one-to-one information capture. Director Crow has assured us those are coming, but we’re likely still several months out. Still - no shortage of progress being made in the meantime. We’re no longer limited to individual participants, either. Just last night we had four of our agents interacting with the entity in the dream-state simultaneously, with no disruption of their somnambulic stasis.
Dir. Lancaster: So what do you think, Coryn? Are we getting facts from this thing, or just mad ramblings?
Dir. Malthus: I mean, it’s impossible to know for sure. Between 6765-B and -D we’ve been able to verify that they know things we know. Ogier has given us a somewhat detailed account of Apollyonan history, much of which matches records we’ve recovered elsewhere. The Dreamer has other accounts available that generally match what we’re familiar with. It’s not just a single source, either, like… our agents describe it as having audience with different individuals, or groups of persons sharing memories. The stories they’re able to recount are extremely specific, and consistent across retellings. It would be difficult to maintain that kind of consistency through so many narratives, but I suppose it’s not impossible.
Dir. Lancaster: I see. What about your, Dr. Fulweiler? What’s your take on it?
Dr. Fulweiler: I think what we’re seeing here is the next step in our understanding of the old world, if I can be frank. We now have access to a library of knowledge from generations of Daevites, information we wouldn’t have had even if they’d written down • • • as much as they could have within their lives and then kept it perfectly preserved. For my money, I think we need to pull as much information out of this place as we can, before 6765-B becomes incapable of operating the throne he’s sitting on.
Dir. Lancaster: (Laughs) He’s been sitting there for thousands of years, hasn’t he?
What makes you think he’s liable to keel over anytime soon?
Dr. Fulweiler: It’s not his age we’re worried about. Whatever arcana they used to build 6765-A is really impressive - you’d be surprised how healthy he is aside from the breakdown of his major organ functions. His body has just adapted over time to no longer needing those processes, so anything unnecessary has just been shunted off.
Scans indicate the brain is in really remarkable condition give the circumstances. No, the issue is with the memories themselves. Ogier brought it up first - interacting with 6765-B has become more difficult over time. Ogier thinks he’s ill, but we haven’t found any pathogens in the samples we’ve taken. Dr. Ulrich is under the impression that it’s something about the superconsciousness within the blood that’s causing whatever fog Ogier is talking about. Javert has described it as “pressure” that has gotten worse recently.
Dir. Lancaster: Have we addressed this concern with the Lord Relivine directly?
Dr. Fulweiler: Agent Ivy tried during one of our recent sessions. Found herself unable to get the words out at all. She proceeded with her session and managed to collect more information, but her inability to even so much as attempt to address that concern specifically points to something selective happening. If I was going to speculate, Relivine is aware that something is wrong, but isn’t willing or interested in speaking about it.
Dir. Lancaster: That’s concerning. Do we think this is going to affect our work in the short term?
Dir. Malthus: We don’t, no. Everything is proceeding as planned here for now. We’ve got teams mapping as much of the complex as we can in the meantime - most of the lower areas of SCP-6765 are flooded by the reservoir, but we’ve done some seismological surveying of this place and found several large pockets of empty space down there. Javert thinks there may be a way to access those areas through ducts in the walls that were uh… well, I mean, they were for waste. A privy, you know.
Dir. Lancaster: Relax, Coryn. I’m sure they’re well and dried up by now. (Pauses) Alright. This is enlightening, gentlemen. Keep me in the loop about anything you’re able to garner from this that you feel needs to be addressed, and I’ll go poke Kain about those implants for you.
Addendum 6765.6: Collected Somnambulistic Narrative Transcripts The following is a file of Somnambulistic Narrative Transcripts collected by Project PARAGON agents assigned to SCP-6765 that have been classified as “of major importance”. These narratives, collected during metaliminal engagement with SCP-6765-B, are generally accounts or records of events that took place during the period in antediluvian history wherein the Daevite peoples (Homo sanguinus) were active and are of significant import to the greater concerns of Project PARAGON and the SCP Foundation as a whole.
Ogier’s Account #1 - History of St. Ogier Ramien’s Account #1 - The Heroes of Daeva Ramien’s Account #2 - The Srol of Abaddon • • • Ramien’s Account #3 - The Knights of House Apollyon Javert’s Account #1 - The Great Flood Waerblith’s Account - The Fate of La Hire Ogier’s Account #2 - The Transformation of St. Ogier Aldwyn’s Account - The Gods of the Old World Peitrus’ Account - The Passing of Lancelot Account of Arvadicus - The Fall of the House of Apollyon Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Ogier, son of Osires, also called St. Ogier. Narrative collected by Agent Evelyn Ivy.
A short account of my life, as I can recall it, and how I came into the service of Sarrus IX.
In my youth I was a student of the teacher Yu-Lang of E-Rikesh, a scholar of some renown who had learned himself under the tutelage of the old master Arang-Bor the Eastarman. Our studies were of the sun, and of Asem’s lingering light in this world. Our oldest legends told of how Asem was himself broken and his remains scattered across the world, and yet some still claimed authority by the might of his divinity. How could this be? Our divine ancestor had been sundered, but the power these individuals wielded was no less potent. It was for this reason we studied, and in our studies we grew closer to the truth.
Our study of the lingering light was considered heretical, though, to the minds of the Cult of Idus - those who lived in Apollyona and worshiped the heritage of the Sky Kings. Their army of inquisitors came into the lands of E-Rikesh through Ulem, whose governor had betrayed us to the enemy. At the head of their column was the Dogma Lord Wermir, most reviled of the cult’s clergymen. We were forced to flee - first to the east, into the old lands of Nod. But we were pursued, past the old citadel of Enoch and towards the sea.
Master Arang-Bor died on the march, his old body broken in the effort and his bones crumbling to dust. We held up in a small enclave by the sea for two years, protected only by our faith and the wretched weather, all while Wermir’s jaws closed around us.
Then, in the third year of our despair, the deep men of Meru within the Hollow Earth came out of the East to do battle with the inquisitors. They came upon great moles and worms, and in front of them they drove the many blind creatures of the darkness. The siege was broken and we hastened to flee, taking the coast road to the west and away from the battle.
But our advance was halted by another army, greater even than that of the Lord Wermir - a host of Apollyonan lancers and the Great Terror himself, Lancelot, riding to reinforce the army of inquisitors. With him was the Sky Princeps Sarrus IX, himself only barely older than a boy, like I. We stood little chance - the teachers who tried to defend us were killed, my teacher Yu-Lang among them. The rest of us were taken captive, and watched as the Knight Lancelot rode down every last of the deep men at Brooding Knell and lashed their commanders to the Rock of Nakkrax to be disassembled by the sea.
Lancelot had little interest in religious differences, and sought to leave those of us who remained within the borders of E-Rikesh. Wermir insisted, though, demanding to let his church have their sacrifices. Lancelot relented, apathetic to any issue that did not carry a sword. On the sixteenth night of our march towards Europ, a terrible storm swept in from the sea, with winds that screamed and howled and tore up the tents and sent the great horses fleeing. Lancelot demanded Wermir impose his will against the storm and protect the camp, but the sorcery of Idus’ cult was suspect and Wermir faltered and failed. When • • • • • • • the encampment began to riot and panic I feared for my life, and prayed for salvation. In that moment, for the first time in my life, I knew true faith - there was nothing else left.
The lingering light came out from within me like a tempest, and the winds and the rains were driven back.
The next day I was taken from the rest of my peers and brought into audience with Lord Lancelot, who saw that I was protected from the inquisitors and from Wermir specifically, who sought my repentance after humiliating him the night before. Upon my return to the capital, I was given provisions and resources to continue the work of the scholars of E- Rikesh, free from the struggles that pervaded our life on the frontier. In this atmosphere I was able to learn greater truths of Asem’s lingering light, and the remnants of old Aud that were ancient even then. In the eighty-seventh year of Lord Sarrus’ reign I was knighted, and was given the title “Knight of Faith” when Lord Hector saw fit to raise me into the order of the king’s protectors.
I was the last of the knights to be given that honor, along with Lord Hector, Lord Lancelot, and Lord La Hire. When, during his campaign across the sea, our King Sarrus VIII was killed, my service passed to his son, Sarrus IX, who was called the Sunset King.
While it was his father who brought the hatred of the fair folk to our lands from across the sea, it was his own doing that let that poison fester and grow until it caused the very earth below us to swell and buckle.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Ramien the Chronicler. Narrative collected by Agent Dane Norcross.
An account of the heroes of Daeva. From the memory of Ramien the Chronicler, a humble servant of Relivine, lord of the House of Malidraug, and his father Rettos before him.
In those days there were many storytellers by the high-ways who carried with them tales of great heroes and champions from distant lands. Within the lands of the Daeva these stories often came with tales of great victories over terrible foes, or incredible achievements. In olden times they often were associated with blessings from the King in Red himself, or another occupant of Asem’s court. As time passed and our reliance on that ancient divinity receded, these heroes became champions of their own great will, or the will of the Living Memory itself.
First among the heroes of Daeva was Alanadar, who was called the Wind-Seeker.
Alanadar is said to have journeyed to Nol Julon at the convergence of the great winds and learned many great truths from the stone men who lived there. The first of the great Daeva warriors was Seskeras, who is said to have served at the right hand of the King in Red himself, during the years of his divinity, and who brought low the Giant of Olla and built the Citadel of Akamanah in the north from its skull.
Then there is the hero Saiman, who was called the Necromancer. She was said to have bandied with Death itself to raise an army in the defense of the village of Huul in the east when it was threatened by a group of Eclipsian mercenaries. Despite the grim taboo of her actions, Saiman was able to save her people and protect their homes - but at the cost of her dignity. Grateful though they were to her for preserving their lives, her neighbors drove her out and into the frozen plains of Oponskoye, past the edge of the world, where it is said she spent the rest of her life battling great wolves and night hawks until the day she died. There are even some tellings wherein Saiman resurrected herself after death, and continues to fight off the terrors that lurk in the foundations of the Earth to this day.
No greater a hero is named in our legends, though, than Beowulf, son of Breman - the last king of Nod. When the lands of his forefathers came to despair, he pledged his loyalty to the Living Memory and accepted it into himself. He was thereafter called the Blood Wolf, and it was by his hand that the Apollyonan warrior Hasghaurl was laid low at the Battle of the Kimmerian pass. He fought with a great cutter, the size of a man and edged like the teeth of a terrible beast, and for nearly a century did he defend Daeva and its western neighbors from the approach of the Sky Kings of Europ, even defending the citadel at Harat from the dreaded Lancelot for thirteen months, giving the common people there time to escape to the south.
In his final years, Beowulf came into the service of Relivine of Malidraug, and fought alongside the deep men of Agartha near Tripura against the Sky King’s ships from Jershon and the Vales of Har. It was after many great battles that his lord called him away, and the two of them journeyed to the north. Never again was the hero Beowulf ever seen, nor did Lord Relivine ever speak to his whereabouts, but those in the lord’s court did note a deep sadness upon his return that lingered over him afterwards until the day the waters fell over the mountains.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Ramien the Chronicler, servant to the House of Malidraug. Narrative collected by Agent Dane Norcross.
An account of the fabled champion of Abaddon. From the memory of Ramien the Chronicler, a humble servant of Relivine, lord of the House of Malidraug, and his father Rettos before him.
Other stories were told, however, of heroes beyond the borders of Daeva. In the great long ago, merchants from beyond the sea in the land of Punt told of the Champion of Abaddon, the land of the Tall Men, and of the shifting sands. It is said that a great bat appeared in the lands of Abaddon from some great pit in the heart of the desert. The eyes of the creature could fill the heart of a man with mortal fear, and its shrieks would drive him to madness. As the story went, simply passing over a town in the night was enough to make unborn babes spoil in their mothers’ bellies and emerge misshapen and vile. This bat they called Srolgront, the king of devils.
So it was that a champion emerged from those peoples, who journeyed across the blasted terra incognita towards the place where the old star fell in ancient times, where it was known that Srolgront slumbered in the day. This champion waited until dusk settled over the great crags of that place, and as the beast took flight from its lair they struck it down from the sky with a great stone spear. The two locked in dire combat, each battling for their lives.
While the eyes of the beast were horrible to behold, the champion did not flinch, and while its terrible voice rang freely in the night, the champion did not flee. By the time the sun rose on the following day, the great bat was dead upon the ground, and the champion stood victorious. When the time came for the tall men to praise their great savior, they found that the champion was blind and deaf, rendering the beast’s eyes and voice powerless against them.
Thereafter was it said that this unnamed champion was the first noble lord of Abaddon, and the shifting sands. In the language of those peoples the champion was called the “Srol of Az Zadan”, meaning “king of the hot country”. Every lord of those nomadic peoples took the name “Srol” in honor of the blind champion, and the most pious of the desert kings were said to blind and deafen themselves out of reverence.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Ramien the Chronicler, servant to the House of Malidraug. Narrative collected by Agent Dane Norcross.
An account of the four knights of House Apollyon. From the memory of Ramien the Chronicler, a humble servant of Relivine, lord of the House of Malidraug, and his father Rettos before him.
In the lands of Europ, the acknowledgement of heroes was strictly forbidden. Those who accomplished great things or achieved great victory were ordained by official decree to accredit their deeds to their King - and for this reason, many of the most well known stories of those people were attributed to “a servant of the Sky King”, with the implication that it was by the Sky King’s authority that the acts were ever made possible. The single exception to this was the case of the four knights of that country who, in its final years, became well known icons of Apollyonan authority, despite the dogmatic resistance to their status by the Cult of Idus.
The Lord Ogier was the youngest of King Sarrus’ knights by far, but is said to have had a keen mastery over the dying light of Asem which lingered in the lands in those days.
Being less an accomplished warrior and less capable in any variety of swordcraft, the one called St. Ogier instead called upon a belief in a long-dead god to do great works.
His presence within the royal quarters began a decade long theological crisis within Europ, as adherents to the state cult adamantly, and at times violently, admonished any authority that was not derived from the innate divinity of the Sky Kings. Despite this, Ogier’s disciples became widespread, each seeking knowledge and understanding that would guide them towards the greater truths of this “lingering light”.
The Lord La Hire was called the greatest swordsman who ever lived. He was a known braggart, and it was well understood that many of the legends and myths attributed to the warrior called the Fell Blade of Apollyon were penned by La Hire himself. Despite his outspoken bravado and aggressive self-importance, La Hire’s actions often lived up to his claims about his own capabilities. He was a distant cousin to the Sky King Sarrus VIII, and his near-royal upbringing had seen him trained in the arts of swordcraft by masters from as far away as Lang and Lukomorye in the far northeast. As accomplished as he was with his famous curved blade in hand, La Hire was perhaps more well known for his promiscuity; notably beautiful to behold, La Hire had no shortage of lovers. It was often remarked that “the Lord’s Blade has slayed ten thousand men, and laid ten thousand more.” The Lord Lancelot was a fearsome warlord. His origins were never known - but to the Daeva he was called the Scourge of Memory. It was said that after he would break a man with his terrible black mace, he would drink their blood and consume their memories. While much of Lord Lancelot’s legend is a result of his ferocity on the field of battle and his ruthless oppression of the Daeva hinterlands in the west, it is likely greatly hyperbolized. In truth, Lancelot was a shrewd, albeit brutal, commander and tactician.
His personal division - the Shatterkrist - were well known for an almost unbroken string of victories in the middle-south. Lancelot’s armies were themselves responsible for the single greatest acquisition of land in a thousand years, conquering all the nations between Eden4 and Jershon5 and delivering them to the Sky King Sarrus VIII as a wedding gift when the king took three of Lancelot’s sisters into his consortium.
The Lord Hector was called the greatest of the knights of House Apollyon. He was the king’s personal shield, and wherever Sarrus VIII went Hector followed as his stalwart protector. The conquests and tyranny of the Sky King had created no small measure of resentment, and no small number of enemies. There was a measure of safety within the walls of High Apollyona, but any time the Sky King sought to venture out into the world beyond his citadel he was at risk. Despite this, his life was never in danger. Whether it was by divine inspiration or sheer force of will, Lord Hector never failed to intercept a would be attempt on the life of his liege lord. It was for this reason that when Sarrus VIII took his armies across the western sea to ravage the distant lands of the Fair Folk, Hector was by his side. At the height of the greatest battle of that campaign, Hector personally slew a faerie champion who had dared to challenge the Sky King to single combat.
It was Hector who, at his Lord’s command, wrapped a fae princess in iron chains and dragged her back to the king’s flagship. When her curse upon the Sky King set his fleet alight and sent him falling into the depths of the dark ocean, it was Hector who dove into the maelstrom to save him. Perhaps Hector would have followed Sarrus into that inky void had it not been for Lancelot and La Hire, who pulled him out of the sea when the king was too far gone to save.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Javert, Child of Night. Narrative collected by Agent Maria St. John.
The sun is gone. Black clouds roil and rage overhead as lightning leaps between them and water cascades down from the sky. A dull green glow illuminates a towering, branching shape in the distance. A low moan of something far away, calling out in warning. The earth below shudders and shakes. Long lines of figures, eyes glowing in the darkness, solemnly march towards the light. The river swells and overruns its banks, and hundreds are swept away into the rising water. The chattering and crying echoes throughout the forests. I am lifted off the ground, held by my mother. She turns her body to shield me from something I hear before I see, but as we fall to the ground it comes fully into view.
A monstrosity, shambling and shaking, tears over a hilltop nearby. In the dark of the storm it is little more than a colossal mass of arms, thrashing through the lines of my kin.
In one of its many hands I see the shine of metal - a rod, long as a tree is tall, with a jagged point at its end. As it passes over us I catch a glimpse of its eyes - six of them, blood and fire falling from them like the rain all around us. It does not look back at me - it does not look at the ground beneath its own feet. It stares unwaveringly forward, towards the green light. In a moment it is gone, thundering forward with terrible purpose.
My mother pulls me into her again, and the world goes dark. I hear the wailing of my kin, the groan of their goddess, the screams of the demon, and then nothing.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Waerblith of Dai, who was in Ys when the curse befell the servants of the Sky King. Narrative collected by Agent Evelyn Ivy.
It were with mine own eyes did I witness what befell the Lord’s Blade La Hire. On the eve of his destruct, did he give a great and terrible moan and slither out from his manor house a truly wretched thing. His body were deformed in miserable shape, and his member was become swollen and pustulous. But even in his throes of agony as his form were altered did he feel the terrible lust of his curse, and he began a terrible rape of the town of Ys. Passed he did over that city in a terrible heat, and the ferocity of his mindless desire were enough to cause a man to burst. As he were as a knight, his sword was swift - and drive it through those poor souls he did, until none were left who he had not desecrated in this foul way.
He lingered there for a time, and watch did I from the hillside a distance away at the home of Everild my friend and confidant, who himself had fled. In three days did the Lord’s armies descend on Ys and lay siege to the thing what was once La Hire, but now were truly consumed by the demon. They struck the beast with a great number of arrow and poured fire upon it from a distance. Though it did try to come upon them from its lust it were pushed away by the heat of the flame and the sting of iron, and driven into the sea. The Lord’s Blade called out a final time in wretched misery and then sank beneath the waves, and weren’t seen in the lands of the Sky King ever again.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Ogier, son of Osires, also called St. Ogier. Narrative collected by Agent Evelyn Ivy.
An account of my transformation, and the defilement of my body by the curse laid on the House of Apollyon.
We had heard the utterance of the curse of that fae princess, each of us. The Lord Hector had called us together to discuss the voice we each had felt in our waking minds.
I expressed my uncertainty - we truly knew so little about the magics of the fae, but the Lord Lancelot dismissed these concerns. If they had magic so terrible as to threaten the dominion of the Sky King, then why did it not manifest as their forests burned? Where were those curses when their citadels in the trees were torn down and their soldiers butchered? There was truth in what he said, but still her words lingered uncomfortably in my heart. I remember them clearly — Usurpers of the Sun’s Right Hand, of fell deeds and false promises.
You will have the years to count your graven sins, but no mind to resolve them and no soul to be absolved.
It was just days later that I was set upon by the demon. As I slept, I beheld a strange sight. I was spread out beneath a sky full of stars, immobilized. Above me were two towers of great eyes, three on each side, and below was a stone plinth inscribed with a runic text. I felt a terrible cold then, one that swept up from my feet and gripped my heart, and in that moment I knew true fear, imminent and overwhelming. I heard the voice of an entity from behind the plinth, at times both menacing and sympathetic. It spoke to me in words I understood innately but could not repeat. It told me that I was to become a curse, not just on the world of men but on myself as well, for the many sins I had committed. I tried to appeal to my own defense, but the words caught in my throat and withered.
Then I heard another voice, soft and distant, as if buried deep below me, whispering a plea to this dark totem. This voice begged that I be consumed, fully and intimately, by solemn despair - that I be given entirely to an unending grief that has no limit, no reprieve, and no end. As the voice continued to plead for my damnation there came cracks in the plinth that shined with dim starlight, and the plinth shattered. From within I heard a third voice, a voice I knew was the Despair with which I would be cursed. It said simply, “it will be.” I awoke suddenly, and knew with my whole soul that I was losing control. My body felt unfamiliar to me, alien and malicious. I stumbled from my home within Apollyona as a grim moon hung overhead. I fled - as fast as my feet could carry me, guided by the lingering light to which I had always held faith. I heard screams in the capital that night - it would not be until later that I learned that they were from those poor souls who had encountered Lancelot, cursed as he was, and were butchered by the thing he had become. I thought to seek out my Lord Hector, but knew in my soul that there was no salve in the world of men that could cure this grim ailment. I fled, far away from my home, to the lands of my youth - to E-Rikesh.
It was there I was discovered by the Daeva of Malidraug, who had heard tell of the lamentations of Apollyona and set a watch on their border to defend against the horrors that might spill out from there. Even as wretched as I had become they found pity for me, and brought me to this citadel, and into the comfort of Lord Relivine. He performed a ministration then, one that I fear may have accelerated his own decline, but one that no doubt saved my soul. I was left half-turned, the abomination I was cursed to become little more than a malignancy upon my back, but in control of my faculties and aware of myself.
While my Lord Relivine’s ministration has caused me a reprieve from the demon whose skin I share, I remain maligned by the curse. When I sleep, I see the towers of eyes.
When there is silence, I hear the whispering of that pleading voice, begging for restitution. For vengeance. For wrath.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Aldwyn, daughter of Aelred, a Daevite mystic and divinist. Narrative collected by Agent Jerren Caspian.
In the many nations within the realms of men were worshiped a great many gods, both greater and lesser, many of whom were known and recognized to have true power over mankind and the lands beyond. In life I studied the practice and practitioners of their worship, and took great care to preserve this knowledge within the Living Memory.
In the lands of Europ a tradition was once passed down of the formless nothing and the two siblings who inhabited it - IS and IS NOT. These were said to be the originators, the essence of both everything and nothing in perfect unison with each other. Their children - the ones who shaped the universe and built the very gods themselves, were called Paragons. Little is known of this tradition now, aside from one I will name later - while there is evidence that this pantheon was more well understood during the days of the old King Idus, the imperial cult that carried his name would eventually supplant all other belief systems within Apollyon’s dominion and much of that knowledge was lost or destroyed for being heretical to the cult’s dogma.
Perhaps the oldest and most well regarded of the gods worshiped by men throughout the world was Gaia, the Earth-mother. While many who walked upon her face paid service to gods both greater and lesser who would grant them power, almost all peoples recognized the bounties of the Earth and the life that she sustained. In Leng, far to the north, it was said that Earth-mother had made herself from shapeless ash and given a home and a blessing to her children within the formless void. Gaia was said to be the mother of the earth and seas, sister to Luna the moon, and in some tellings, consort to the Sun itself.
While many gods were known to walk along the byways in the realms of men, Gaia was notably never said to have been seen by any person, as her presence was, in truth, felt by men and beasts at all times, below and around them.
Within the great kingdoms of the old world was known the legend of the great city of Aud, called Audapaupadopolis, or the First City of Men. As the stories go, it was in this golden city that our forebears walked alongside the lesser primordial gods - sometimes called the young gods - beings of divine origin that were no less godlike from the perspective of mere men, but whose scope was surpassed by their divine ancestry. The architects of that city were the two gods most associated with the formation of man from the dirt of Gaia’s earth - the god Mekhane, and the goddess Važjuma.
Mekhane was a god of order, of structure, of the human desire to see patterns and understand the design of all things. He was said to be an architect, an engineer, a god of form and metal. Mekhane saw the gifts of the mother Gaia and desired above all else to give it direction. When the First Man was crafted out of the shapeless clay, Mekhane was the one who built his mind and gave him will.
Važjuma was Mekhane’s sister, the wild goddess of impulse. She saw the bounty of the world and wished to fill it with wild abandon, letting nothing impede her vision but her own imagination. It was her hands that shaped the First Man, stitched the tapestry of his skin, and filled him with blood and heat. Važjuma was sometimes called the “Mother of Wombs”, and it was often said that the First Man grew within her for a thousand years before she experienced the first childbirth.
Within the lands of Europ, the Cult of Idus maintained the supposed divinity of the Sky Kings - and while it was commonly accepted outside of that country that the imperial cult was simply an engine of propaganda, there was some indirect truth to their claims. The Sky Kings, since before written history, each wore the iron crown of their fathers - an iron crown said to have once sat on the head of Asem, the First Man.
The legends of the First Man are little more than an oral tradition, passed down through countless generations between the destruction of Audapaupadopolis and the Great Flood. Asem is said to have been sculpted out of Gaia’s rich earth around Mekhane’s iron frame and covered in a blanket of Važjuma’s flesh. He was given a great dominion over the world, or rather, the world beyond the shores of the dark forests of the Fair Folk.
It was said that the golden light that was nested within him outshone even the sun in the sky, and the gods of the earth and the heavens. He was named Adam el Asem, or First of That Which IS.
The Sky Kings derived their divinity from Asem, and it was through their claim of divine ancestry that they did commit a great many terrible acts against their fellow man.
However, this acknowledgement of their heritage was at odds with the official dogma of the late imperial cult - Asem was regarded as an ancient king of men, and many knew that the iron crown was Asem’s crown, but his own divinity was often excluded from the state religion due to how it might diminish the claimed inherent divinity of the House of Apollyon. In some tellings, it was even stated plainly that the oldest ancestor of that great house, Harrian the Hero, won the iron crown when he killed Asem with his own hand - a ludicrous claim, as more than five thousand years separated the doom of Audapaupadopolis and the birth of Old Harrian.
There were, of course, others who were known to have walked the streets of Aud alongside Asem and the young gods. While not spoken of with the same reverence, it is generally recognized that the goddess of starlight, Iýa, spent time in the court of Audapaupadopolis. This goddess was later called Titania by men, and was most beloved among the Fair Folk in the shaded lands across the western sea.
The god Durch was revered among those peoples who lived in Yin, in the distant east.
Durch was said to sleep beneath the deep sea, and the waves from the ocean were the result of his slow breathing. Durch was almost always depicted as a great and terrible crustacean who had once come ashore in the form of a man to take a human wife with him back to his home beneath the water.
The old dragons were said to worship a flaming god who gifted Asem with fire, but without a written memory any record of this being’s name or identity has long been lost.
Within Daeva, no god was spoken of with more fear than our divine ancestor, the King in Red, who was called the Lord of Memory or the Bleeding Monarch among our people.
The King in Red was said to have taken counsel in Audapaupadopolis before its fall, and inked the first chronicle of the Daeva, the Codex Archaic, in his own blood. Many of the queens of the Daeva, and the kings of Malidraug, claimed direct lineage from the King in Red, and it was commonly accepted (albeit unlikely) that the great royal houses of Daeva were those with the closest direct link to the King in Red.
But our relationship with our divine ancestor was not one of reverence. In the written history of our people, the Queen Cynewise of Azidahaka grew to love another entity of the ancient world, one that is presumed to have predated even the gods - the divine Paragon of All Knowledge who was called the Serpent. A new cult sprang from her governorship of Azidahaka - the Many Hands of the Serpent, who above all else coveted the pursuit of knowledge over memory. This began a paradigm shift within the established order of the Daeva, as the old tenants of sacred remembrance were thought by many to have been supplanted by a lust for new wisdom.
So it was that the King in Red writhed with jealousy and fear over being replaced, demanding the undiluted worship of the Daeva for himself alone. For three long months blood rained from the sky over Azidahaka, and the spirit of the King in Red - whose physical form had long since left for his sullen halls deep below the earth - came into the dominion of the Queen Cynewise as a terrible plague. For each new horror, though, the Daeva of Azidahaka responded with wisdom gained through communion with the Serpent, and each new horror was rebuffed.
When it was clear that those people would not be so easily admonished for their supposed sin, the King in Red himself appeared in his wretched glory from down below to break the lands of Azidahaka as a punishment for the crimes of its monarch and the heresy of its populace. From his blasphemed throne deep below the Earth he brought forth into the world a host of ancient nightmares, lost even to memory, and loosed them upon his people. To his side he called seven fell lieutenants, his brides, the maidens of agony, and commissioned them to bring ruin upon the world. In despair, the Queen Cynewise cried out for aid and was answered by three great sovereigns of the Daeva - Rafenild, the Sunrise Queen of Aeshma, Empress Agatha of Greater Jahi, and Moros, who was called the Mad King of Malidraug.
There was a great struggle on the slopes of the great mountain fortress of Zahhak, where all the rage and putrescence of the god of Blood and Memory was laid bare to the world, and the battle would last the life of an entire generation. In that long battle the Sunrise Queen was destroyed, as was her daughter Rafelein, but a champion of Jahi named Stella the Sanctified lowed the King in Red with a hammer strike and the Mad King placed upon him a terrible enchantment, binding him once more into the bowels of the Earth.
As he fell, the King in Red cursed the name of those who walk upon Gaia’s bounty, and swore that once his brides were born again, and his seven sons were seeded into the world, he would have his final cruelty against us all.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Pietrus the Scribe, Daeva archivist assigned to the Governor of Caina.
Narrative collected by Agent Armen Khachaturian.
I am standing in a group of people beneath a cliffside. Beyond the shelter provided by the rock face, a fierce storm rages. The sky is dark, the only light coming from bolts of lightning that briefly illuminate a mountainous countryside. Next to me is Rolfel, the Governor’s prefect in Kimmeria, where we are traveling. We are a week’s hard ride from Caina in the east, having fled from Uqbar in Europ when the garrison there seized control of the city two weeks prior.
Another stake of lightning. One of our group screams, pointing skyward. Above us we see a shape moving against the roiling skies - something not of this world. The sky brightens again, only for a moment, and I see segmented legs, chattering claws, and shining armor. A terrible cacophony raises above the roar of the storm, the sound of a multitude of voices crying out in unison. One of our own names this creature - the lord of faces.
It circles overhead slowly, the slow beat of its enormous wings spraying us with water mixed with a miasma from the creature’s flesh. I hear the cries of individuals through the nightmarish dissonance. They are agonized, begging, pleading. They want to die. They are not permitted to die. They are held there, unable to do little more than suffer and scream. I cover my ears, but the sound cuts through my palms. I hear nothing but a choir of damned souls, bleeding into the very essence of my body. One of our group panics and flees - with a rush of air and the terrible grinding of claws and chitin they are picked from the ground. Their voice joins the others.
Then - another sound. A single voice, distantly human, but no less terrible than the choir of the flying nightmare. As lightning cuts across the sky once more I see it coming over the mountaintop - a colossus. Fire and smoke pours from its eyes, of which there were six, and it scaled the mountainside like a dreadful insect, crawling on six arms. At the end of two the wrists terminate in spiked mounds which sunder the earth beneath them with every great crash against it. As it comes into view of our meager shelter, it raises up on two legs and we see fully the extent of its enormous size. Its body is like a man, but grossly misshapen and twisted. It bellows - not from an open mouth, but from somewhere else. From great fissures in its chest, more smoke and fire leaps forth, and the heat of its rage turns the rain in the sky to steam.
I hear another of our group cry out, “what is that?” The Prefect Rolfel responds, “it is the Lord Lancelot, cursed though he is. It can be no other.” Suddenly, there is another rush of air. The legion of screaming echoes across the range, and the flying nightmare descends towards the thing that once was the Lord’s Iron Hand.
It lands, and now it too is fully illuminated - like a spider, with great leathery wings and a rattling tail that ends in a terrible barbed spike. The light shines off its armor, which reflects the valley around us, and beyond the mirror of its plate I can see writhing faces, desperate and horrid. The creature raises up its two great claws towards the heavens, and the shrieks become louder even than they were before. We are reduced, all of us, to wriggling flesh-things, naked and impotent before a dark god.
And then it is cast aside. There is the sound of a hammer falling on cold iron, and the creature is tossed into the mountainside as one of the demon’s spiked hands is brought to bear against its shining armor. The terrible spider screams, not with the voices held captive within itself but with its own voice, alien and pitiful, like the whine of a beast. The demon turns towards where the spider has fallen, and the flesh over the demon’s spine tears free. A plume of flame erupts from within as it is propelled across the valley with uncanny speed. Through the din of this clash I hear it speak - not in a tongue I know, but with words I recognize nonetheless: LOATHSOME INSECT, WRETCHED FAE.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME.
The demon is now a pillar of fire, even as the chattering spider drives its spike through his neck. Blood floods the valley below and smoke pours from the wound, but the demon is undeterred.
WRATH YOU PRESCRIBED TO ME. MAN’S INHERENT HATRED.
VERY WELL. I SHALL ACQUIESCE. YOU WILL HAVE MY WRATH, INSECT, UNTIL NOTHING OF ME REMAINS.
We huddle beneath the cliff for what feels like days, until at last the sound of their horrible conflict fades into the distance, little more than thunder on the horizon. We flee, few of us though remain. Neither the demon that was once called Lancelot, or the great and miserable spider, are ever seen again in the lands east of Europ.
Somnambulistic Narrative Transcript An account of Arvadicus the Explorer, Chronicler of the Daeva.
These are the words of Arvadicus, son of Mangg and Niandra, who was called the Explorer in those ancient times and who kept a great many records of the happenings within Europ during my time traveling that land. In the final years of the House of Apollyon, I was a guest at the convent of my friend the Primera Feoria, who allowed me to stay in her estate while I assembled my chronicle.
The first of the great calamities that befell the old House of Apollyon came before its doom was sealed. Sarrus VIII von Apollyon, the last of the great kings, met his end upon the Western Sea as his armies returned from their conquest of the Faeries. Dragged into the deepening wake, his own iron chains bound upon him, he was consigned to the great dark of that ocean, never again to draw breath in this world. But his lieutenants, the Knights Lancelot, Hector, La Hire and Ogier did return from that distant land, and with them the treasure their king had taken as his prize. A faerie princess, the daughter of some regal body, now shattered and broken beneath the weight of Apollyon’s war machine. Though it burned her flesh they bound her in black iron within a pine box, and muffled her screams with wool and wheatstalk. She was delivered, wretched a thing as she had become, to the Sky King Sarrus IX, Lord of Heaven and Earth, Inheritor of Asem’s Iron Crown.
It is said that the torment that Sarrus IX inflicted upon the Faerie princess was the most wicked this world had ever known. Cruelty without measure, without reprieve, and for what? Because her people had resisted their invaders? Because she had set alight the vessel of the man who had crushed her kinfolk’s skulls beneath his boot? Or was it because of a greater slight - one that has always existed within the hearts of men. A grand dispassion against the Fair Folk for that old sin, the crime they had committed against the First man. What motive had he for this terrible oppression is lost to time, but those in the court of the Sky King note that, if nothing else, the princess knew true suffering in those days.
When his fetid vengeance had been wrought against her and not broken her will, Sarrus IX - refusing to acknowledge his own impotence - had a grim burial place dug for her.
Deep into the earth, down where the miasma of sorrow and despair mixes with the dark things of this world, he had placed an iron sarcophagus within a stone crypt. When the time came for the princess to be laid in this miserable place, the wretched hierophants of the Cult of Idus took what little dignity she had reserved, filled her with preserving balms, and then sealed her in that sullen place. Her tomb was buried, and it was ordained that never again would she see the light of day. In that dark place, the princess uttered a curse - ancient and forsaken - against all mankind. Deeper even than she, at the bottom of the world, three horrors of the old world answered her call.
The first of the Lord Knights to fall was La Hire, who was called the Lord’s Blade. It is said he became a writhing, horrible thing before he disappeared into the sea and was lost. Next was the Lord Lancelot, the Great Terror, who was changed into something wholly awful and ruinous, breaching the very walls of High Apollyona in his terrible rage as he fled the city to the northeast. Then was the Lord Hector, who it is said was the most piteous of them all. Wracked with grief, he was cast out from the court of the Sky King, who named him interloper and betrayer, and had his honor stricken from the records of the House of Apollyon. As for the Lord Ogier, his fate was a mystery - he disappeared on the night of the transfiguration, and was never seen in Europ again.
In the wake of this great sorrow, Sarrus IX delved even deeper into madness. For many years lusted over the recognition offered by the population towards the famed knights that his father had allowed, and was loath to replace them. Instead - he abandoned the title of Sky King, thereafter being called Von Apollyon the Most High, and decreed that he alone would serve as the sword and shield of all Europ as its divine sovereign. The imperial cult was, unsurprisingly, eager to fall in line.
However, the realm quickly fell to chaos. The Shatterkrist, loyal only to their Lord Knight, abandoned High Apollyona to follow the Demon Lancelot into the northeast. The king’s standing army all but dissolved, its generals and lieutenants fracturing and seizing territory for themselves. Provinces in the east abandoned their loyalties, and many near the capital in the west attempted to flee the continent altogether. Throughout it all, Sarrus became even more reclusive and obsessed with his own self-proclaimed divinity, and his legions of inquisitors began building great altars to their god whereupon ritualistic sacrifices were held; first of beasts, and then of men.
Then came the Profanities - ancient horrors that walked the earth eons before the first stone was laid in Asem’s golden city. There first came upon the continent a dreadful storm of ice and frozen rain, and a cold that could freeze the blood of a man within his own body. This was the Vinuvinex - the Profane Restrictor - who appeared beyond the walls of High Apollyona as a horrid specter of creeping death. Any who approached the Vinuvinex became chilled until the last of their life's warmth left them, and in its wake was a winter without end. For many grim months did the peoples of that city suffer and die, trapped behind the meager protection of the city walls. And yet, the god of Apollyona did not stir to aid his countrymen. Not until the king’s own daughter - the Princess Saria - felt the touch of the Vinuvinex. Her body trembled until no strength remained, and then she too was still.
In that moment it was said that Sarrus came out of his high citadel as if he were a bolt of lightning. Those who remained to witness it said the heat of his rage set the very clouds in the sky alight, and that when he brought the spear of his fathers through the Vinuvinex and into the ground, the earth beneath him cracked and splintered, and the two of them fell into that boiling red wound. It was within that chasm that Sarrus sealed away the Vinuvinex.
However, this tale was a lie. I, like many, had sought shelter within the walls of the city to fend off the terrible cold, and with mine own eyes did I see a figure carrying a flaming hammer depart from High Apollyona to do battle against the Vinuvinex, all while the royal estate remained sealed. The name of this champion I never learned, but I know this for certain - it was not the Sky King. It was a woman, long and lean, with a hammer in one hand and a crested shield in the other. She wore no protection against the cold save a simple woolen cloak. Through the dark I saw not her eyes, but her hair was as radiant as the sun - orange and yellow and red. She noticed me as she passed, we acknowledged each other, and then she disappeared from history. Where she lies buried, I cannot say - but when Sarrus awoke to find the Vinuvinex slain, he quickly assured his people that it was their divine god-king who had delivered them from the Profane Restrictor, and any chance at learning who she had been vanished with the freezing winds.
In time, word spread of another great Profanity that had emerged in the east. In whispered tones people spoke about a great insect, a horrible crawling thing, with fluttering wings and impenetrable skin. In the tongue of the eastermen this creature was called the Lamanellant - the Profane Adamant. A single survivor from the town of Ruhm was said to have imparted a tale of considerable woe; the Lamanellant had descended from the sky, consumed every man, woman and child, and then retreated before the sun had risen the next day. No sword would cut its hide, no spear could pierce its flesh. It was undeterred by fire, or water, or any of the tools of nature. It was said to even fall from great heights and feel no shock from the impact.
But with the story of the Lamanellant came another - one that those who had witnessed the transformation of the Great Terror found all too convincing. Whether by miscommunication, or an error in translation, a tale of the Demon Lancelot finding and battling the Profane Adamant in the mountains of Kimmeria was retold as the demon becoming the Lamanellant. It was said that this horrible insectoid form was the final stage of his terrible transfiguration, and so from then afterwards the name Lancelot was spoken interchangeably with that of the great insect.
The last of the Profanities emerged on the final night of the reign of King Sarrus IX von Apollyon. The King of Europ, maddened by loss and the rapid decline of his authority, sought to raise another army to begin a final campaign of annihilation against the Fae, who he viewed as the source of his humiliation. He recalled all of his soldiers to High Apollyona, though few would answer his summons. His commanders had long since abandoned him, weak as he had become, but there were still those whose necks were not yet free of the Sky King’s boot. On the night of his ruin, his shambling army of eight thousand men was to depart the city for the coast, leaving High Apollyona nearly empty.
It was from a great distance that I saw what came next. The fall of the House of Apollyon took place at dusk, on the final night of autumn. A soft rain had passed over the lands of the Sky King throughout much of the day, and there was a haze. We first heard the rumbling as the sun began to set - my friend the Primera feared it was an earthquake.
Then we heard a sound I will never forget. Like a droplet of water fallen from a great height, but loud and deep, very deep, a great rolling sound that swept across the plains between the city and the steppe, where the convent sat. Through the haze we saw very little, but we could hear distant sounds - the earth breaking, screams, stone and mortar being reduced to little more than dust.
Just before sundown, I had retired to the washroom to prepare for my rest. We had anticipated journeying to the capital on the next morning to survey what had occurred.
By the mirror in my chamber I did see in the reflection a break in the haze, and the capital illuminated by the setting sun. What I saw in that instant was a horror unlike any I had ever known, or would ever know, throughout my entire life. The thing that emerged from beneath the earth to swallow the House of Apollyon was not a creature made by Gaia. It was not a creature that would have found patronage by any god of the heavens or earth. It was an abnormality, something that should not be, a creature whose very essence was inimical to all living things. It was colossal, and beneath the weight of its horrible radiance the entire city was being pulled into the dark below.
But the mere sight of this terror, through the haze and in a reflection, caused my body to convulse. I was blinded instantly, and knew in that instant that many years had been taken from my life. For long hours I lingered on the brink of death, shuddering and shaking, as the grim essence of this thing I had seen ran its course through me. In time I was found and brought to see a minister, where I managed to make a recovery after some months. I learned then that my friend the Primera had seen the horror directly, from our perch on the edge of the convent’s tallest tower. While I no longer had eyes to see her with, the description from the curator was almost too tragic to speak of - her blood had boiled in her veins and then hardened, her mind had gone soft and leaked out through her open mouth, and her face had collapsed back into her vacant skull, which all now had the consistency of a soft cheese.
Oh, what horrors we suffered. What horrors we had yet to suffer.
Addendum 6765.7: Project PARAGON EKFOS Meeting Transcript Internal Audio Recording Transcript In Attendance: PARAGON Director Shannon Lancaster (Remotely) Dept. of Antediluvian Research Director Coryn Malthus SCP-6765 Research Head Dr. Matthew Fulweiler MTF Phi-19 Team Lead Agent Ashley Traynor Dir. Malthus: Appreciate your meeting with us on such short notice, Director. There’s a situation brewing that we need to resolve as quickly as possible.
Dir. Lancaster: Of course. I’ve only skimmed your brief so far, what are you seeing?
Dr. Fulweiler: There’s an issue with 6765-B. The entity has been… struggling, recently - incursions often are lost midway through, or so disorganized as to be incomprehensible.
We’ve tried to get 6765-B to address this directly, but they’ve gone silent on the issue.
Even Ogier and Javert haven’t been able to coax a response from them.
Dir. Lancaster: Is its health suffering? Have we noted anything unusual in its physiology?
Dir. Malthus: Its physiology is so alien to our own at this point that we have no real baseline. However, Dr. Fulweiler has a theory… • • • • Dr. Fulweiler: I - this is purely speculation, Director; I don’t want to pretend to understand how hundred thousand year old Daevite alchemical technology works.
SCP-6765-A is a… machine, used to catch memories. The Daevites, however they accomplished it, learned how to store memory in blood. Most of what SCP-6765-A does is preserve that memory, but the throne itself is the aperture. 6765-B’s body acts like a filter, catching the transient memories as they pass through. We have tested the blood inside this machine over and over again and noted no significant difference in it, but it is not unreasonable to assume that there is a metaphysical component to this process as well - something we cannot so easily measure.
Dir. Lancaster: So what are you proposing?
Dr. Fulweiler: I believe we will need Ogier’s help here - 6765-B is more at ease with him, we believe, and perhaps if we find the right line of questioning, we can lead Relivine to the answer we’re looking for without coming at it so directly. But time is of the essence here - if the throne works like I believe it to work, and Relivine is the filter, then if the filter becomes clogged… well, I don’t know if we have an operational condition past that point.
Dir. Lancaster: You believe that Ogier will be willing to help us with this?
Dr. Fulweiler: Without a doubt. He is just as concerned as we are.
Dir. Lancaster: Very well. Do what you need to do, and keep me up to date.
Addendum 6765.8: Dream Journal Entry #114 The following is a journal entry written by Agent Evelyn Ivy, who was tasked with keeping a record of an interaction within the dreamspace of herself, SCP-6765-D, and SCP-6765-B.
I awake into the twilight of Ogier’s dream and he stands near me, appearing as he often does in our dreams. He greets me, but looks uncertain. “Grim tidings,” he says.
“Something sour lurks in the heart of this place. Something we have disturbed, perchance, or something rotten that was waiting to open up.” “What do you feel here?” I ask him.
He pauses. “A shift. I have often communed with Lord Relivine in my many years of residence within his sacred halls. A great many things I have learned here, and through this learning I have grown closer towards the truth of Asem’s lingering presence in this world. But now, when I go to my Lord Relivine I see only… shifting patterns. Red and black. Something sick, and behind it - somewhere, is my friend. I will show you.” He turns from me, and I see now that we are standing in a wide field. I see mountains in the distance, and dark clouds forming overhead. Behind me, I see the glittering lights of Malidraug’s Vein. The ground rumbles beneath me. Rain begins to fall as the sun sets, and in the distance I hear the roar of water crashing against the mountainside. There is a shock as the earth beneath me begins to split.
Through the din, I hear Ogier speak. His voice is quiet, as if he is praying.
“Relivine, lord of memory, long have you dreamed idly atop Malidraug's sullen throne. I bid ye awaken, if you would.” The world grows still. The rumbling subsides until it is little more than a hum, and then it too goes quiet. The colors of twilight, brilliant just moments ago, fade to black and grey.
Water hangs in the air around us, the first spray of an apocalypse postponed. There is silence.
Then, I feel it. An uncertainty, something gnawing in my chest. I feel anxiety rising inside me, an animal’s reaction to a primal fear. The hairs on my arms stand on end, and sweat beads on my forehead. I look to Ogier, and see him desperately gripping his arm. His body has begun to contort, cracking and breaking at the seams as red flesh and meat push through the sinew and shatter his bones. He cries out, and as the agony leaves his lips I see a face forming alongside his, blank and unmoving with sunken alabaster eyes.
He writhes there for a moment more, and it is then that I notice another figure standing nearby. A body hanging limply in the air, suspended as if in water. I look towards it, and I feel my chest tighten.
It is Relivine, but not as I have seen them before. Their long hair is frayed and twisted, their visage blistered and pained. The scars across their chest are torn open, and from them seeps blood - black and oozing, and in the blood I see faces, screaming faces in the throes of their suffering. Relivine’s body shudders, and I feel the ancient fear creep into me again. From all around, I hear their voice.
“St. Ogier,” they speak, their voice barely a hoarse whisper, “you ought not to have come. I would have desired to have you not see me in this state.” Ogier heaves his massive, horrible body towards the floating Relivine, his voice choked.
“My Lord Relivine, what has happened to you? How have you come to be this way?” Relivine’s body shakes again. We are transported, not on the wind as we were in the past, but now through rock and stone, the sharp edges of the earth grinding against our skin. We sink down, deeper and deeper below until we reach a chamber at the bottom of the world. I see towering pillars stretching up into the darkness above, and all the world is lit only by the light of a single torch. There, in the center of the chamber, is a massive stone altar, etched with runes in a tongue I immediately know was lost to this darkness ages ago. Above this altar is a stone monolith, suspended in the air, hanging from some point far above us that cannot be seen. It too is inscribed with the same runes, and as I gaze at the stone I feel a cruel energy radiating off of them.
Nearby is a man, skeletal and haggard in appearance with long, thin grey hair hanging from his face where a beard might have been. His eyes are sunken, his pupils pinpricks of light reflecting in the darkness. In his outstretched hands he holds a book, older even than he is, with pages torn and filthy and ink so fragile and ancient it seems to disappear as the flames flicker nearby. He speaks as he reads, and his voice is low and horrible.
On the altar is a nightmare clouded by smoke and fire. Blood pours down from the edge of the altar and covers the floor, and I hear a scream without beginning or end emanating from within the shuddering mass. It is inhuman, something fully not of this world. It is the primal terror I am feeling, and I want nothing more in this moment than to run, flee, tear loose from my shackles of my body and depart to a different place and be free from this unknowable, unspeakable horror. But I am bound here, watching this wretched man read from his book while this monstrosity on the altar shrieks and writhes and pulls against invisible chains.
“What is this wickedness?” I hear Ogier shouting over the din, and then I notice - the blood seeping from the scars over Relivine’s breast is the same black miasma as what pours from over the top of the altar. “What are you showing us?” Relivine does not move, their eyes transfixed on the scene. Blood gushes from the wounds on their chest and their groin, and their body shakes. Below us, the hierophant raises the tome high above his head, his voice rising in a wretched crescendo that breaks over the wailing of the unseen wraith upon the slab. There is a moment where, as if by a strong wind, the smoke is blown away and I can see it clearly - something that betrayed all sense of reason, an idea superimposed over the form of a man, something wearing the human form to commune with them but that had no supposition about their distinctions. This thing, this wretched mass of grasping arms and eyes circling around a bleeding red maw, was held as if in stasis, suspended in its own toxic runoff if for but a moment, before there is a crack from somewhere far above us, and the great stone monolith drops onto the altar. The creature screams, there is the sound of meat and magic and hot viscera, and then silence. The single torch goes still. The hierophant is quiet.
We linger in this place. After some time, I hear the echo of Relivine speaking, as if from far away.
"This is my divine ancestor," they say. I can feel a dread in their voice that weighs on me like a grim blanket. "This is the root from which the proud Daeva did grow. Everything that we were, all of our great works and accomplishments, came from this miserable creature." They sigh. "This is the Lord of Memory, in the moment his soul was stripped from his body and my forefather, the Old King Moros, entombed the latter here, deep beneath this citadel. Where his spirit went, I do not know - but this festering thing has been here ever since. I learned of it when I took my place on Malidraug's throne, and was warned even then to never disturb it. The enchantments placed here are old, and sacred. They cannot be remade." Relivine raises their hands, and we see now that they are blackened and scarred. "The rotten body of the King in Red is leeching its poison into me, my friends. It is a mindless thing, fully consumed by hate. As we have dreamed these many dreams of the sleeping Daeva, the Lord of Memory's corpse has become restless, and even now it pushes against the barriers created to seal it here. I tell you now - these walls will fall, in time. I have not enough strength left within me to seal this thing away again, and should it become free from its lonely place of rest, not only will this sacred archive be lost to us forever, but another horror of the ancient world will come upon you. No power remains in this world that can contest a true god, even one who has died." They look towards the darkness, and I see a terrible sadness pass over them. “There was one whom I dearly loved who, in a moment of great peril, was able to calm this great malice for a time. I was not able to save her, and the effort of what she tried to do caused her memory to be washed into nothingness. I have dreamt often of her, and I have long desired to see her again, but against the dread hatred that slumbers below us, she was a moth before a torch.” Then, they smile. For an instant I see something like peace pass over them. "But providence has blessed us with another who may do this thing. You, my dear Ogier, were once called the greatest sorcerer of your time. Your form has diminished, but there remains a strength in you - a strength to shame even the great deeds of your masters." I look to Ogier, but his eyes do not meet mine. His heart is elsewhere, I can feel it. "I do not know the way," he says.
There is a rush of wind, and we are back at Relivine's throne. They are unmoving.
"You will know it," their voice is very distant now, muffled and soft. "Find your light, Child of Asem, and you will find your way through the darkness of the Scarlet King's tomb." And then, I am awake.
Addendum 6765.9: Exploratory Mission Audio/Video Transcript Note: The following is the audio/video transcript of an exploratory mission into the deeper sections of SCP-6765. Mission was conducted by the ATF Phi-19 “Pack Tactics”.
The mission was intended to discern a path by which Foundation tactical thaumatology teams and SCP-6765-D could enter the lower areas of SCP-6765.
Assigned Task Force Φ-19 “Pack Tactics” Agent Ashley “Outfoxed” Traynor - Team Lead Agent Shi “Brave” Tsuyaka - Communications Agent John “Xhu” Xi - Survey Agent Joris “Marshal” Chasteaux - Survey Agent Aiden “Krueger” Ashington - Fire Support Agent Jack “Orca” Daytona- Fire Support Agent Shadrick “Nano” Baku - Fire Support Φ-19 Outfoxed: Mic check.
Φ-19 Krueger: Check.
Φ-19 Orca: Check Φ-19 Nano: Check check.
Φ-19 Marshal: Checky check check.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Behave. John, you.
Φ-19 Xhu: Check.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: How do we look?
Φ-19 Brave: Good here. Command?
EKFOS Command: We hear you loud and clear, team. Proceed to the insertion point.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Understood. With me.
Team moves to an arched doorway within the throne room of SCP-6765. SCP-6765-C is nearby.
SCP-6765-C: (Signing) DO NOT FORGET. MUCH OF THE BLOOD BELOW HAS SAT IDLE FOR A LONG TIME. IT MAY CHANGE WHAT YOU SEE IF YOU ARE NEAR IT, BUT THESE ARE ILLUSIONS. STAY AS FAR FROM IT AS YOU CAN.
Φ-19 Brave: (Signing) WE UNDERSTAND. THANK YOU.
SCP-6765-C: (Signing) BE GUIDED AND PROTECTED BY THE GRACE OF YOUR GOLDEN SUN, MY FRIENDS.
Φ-19 Nano: What did it say?
Φ-19 Brave: He said don’t touch the blood.
Φ-19 Marshal: Oh, good. Was planning on not doing that anyway.
Team enters the tunnel beyond the arched doorway. They reach a rectangular cutout in a stone wall - a place where an entrance has been cut into a previously solid door.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Φ-19 team ready to insert.
EKFOS Command: Copy that, Outfoxed. Standby for clearance to descend.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Standing by.
Φ-19 Orca: Cap, if you don’t mind me asking- Φ-19 Outfoxed: Go ahead.
Φ-19 Orca: I can’t help but notice we’ve got three gunners on this strictly exploratory mission. I wasn’t prepped on potential hazards - what are we looking at here?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: With any luck, you’re not looking at anything. Just helps to be careful.
Φ-19 Orca: Sure, but is this like duck pond careful, or like that mall with the deer in it careful?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: As far as I understand it, there shouldn’t be anything alive down there.
So the former.
Φ-19 Orca: Shouldn’t?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: That person in the chair over there probably shouldn’t be alive either, right? They’re pretty old.
Φ-19 Marshal: Yeah by the way how old are they actually? Because I didn’t get a look at them but they feel very old.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: They’re very old.
Φ-19 Marshal: Oh ok.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: To answer your question Jack, we have no way of knowing. Better to be careful.
Φ-19 Orca: Good enough for me.
Φ-19 Krueger: Are we looking for anything specific?
Φ-19 Xhu: The sleeping person up there thinks there’s probably a vertical access shaft about five hundred meters down from where we are now. They used it to bring water up from underground, back when this place wasn’t all underground. It might still be full of water, but as long as it’s not full of blood we can use it to get access to the lower levels - the part below all the blood.
Φ-19 Nano: Great. That’s what I’ve always said about myself - nothing I want more in this life than to squeeze through a tunnel underneath a skyscraper full of blood.
EKFOS Command: Φ-19 team, you are cleared to descend.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Roger that command. Follow me.
Team passes through the cutout and into a dark tunnel. Shoulder mounted torches come online revealing a stone hallway.
Φ-19 Xhu: We need to go south from our position here.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: This way.
Team moves down the hallway away from the throne room chamber, passing by several other blocked stone doorways. Φ-19 Marshal pauses by each to capture video of the text inscribed on them. They continue forward for another three minutes before reaching another archway; the frame is blocked by half of a stone slab, with the other half appearing to have broken off. Team finds no sign of the other half.
Φ-19 Xhu navigates around the remaining half slab and onto a platform on the other side. He turns away from the hallway and gazes down at a large spiraling stone staircase centered around a deep pit. He aims his camera down into the pit, and the light from his torch does not reach the bottom. He looks up and sees the stone ceiling, and no more stairs leading upwards.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: What do you see?
Φ-19 Xhu: It’s a stairway down. Come on through, this platform is stable.
The team passes through the broken archway and onto the platform. Φ-19 Krueger removes a flare from his belt and lights it, then tosses it into the pit. It falls for several seconds before impacting the ground below.
Φ-19 Nano: Watch your step.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Orca, you take point.
Φ-19 Orca: Copy that.
Team descends down the spiraling staircase deeper into the structure. They pass several other small openings in the wall leading to long, narrow passages. After several minutes of descent, Φ-19 Orca stops.
Φ-19 Xhu: You alright Orca?
Φ-19 Orca: Yeah, sorry, I just… something strange. Do you hear something?
The group stops to listen.
Φ-19 Brave: Yeah, I do. (Pauses) There’s nothing but ambience being picked up by our cameras.
Φ-19 Marshal: I don’t hear anything. What do you hear?
Φ-19 Orca: Sounds like someone talking. I can’t understand it, they sound far away, but it’s definitely a conversation. At least two people.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: You’re sure we’re not picking anything up?
Φ-19 Brave: Nothing.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Got it. Command, we’re dealing with a potential cognitohazard down here. Some of the guys are having non-audible auditory hallucinations.
EKFOS Command: Copy that team leader, await further instruction.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Roger.
Φ-19 Krueger: I hear it now too. It’s not… wow, that’s strange.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: What is it?
Φ-19 Krueger: It’s not - I don’t feel like I’m hearing it, really. Not like you and I talking, it’s more like… fuck me, how do I even describe it?
Φ-19 Brave: It’s like remembering something, when something pops back into your head. You know what I mean?
Φ-19 Krueger: That’s exactly it. Like a daydream. How bizarre.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: I hear you. Are you OK to proceed?
Φ-19 Brave: I am, I - do you not hear anything?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: (Taps the back of her neck) Implants on the brain stem from an accident in Ukraine in 2013. Did some excessive cognitohazard training afterwards when I was relearning how to move properly, all part of that process. Your brain is trained to recognize certain signals, and when it’s receiving them in a different way you have to basically start from scratch. They offered the cognito stuff while my brain was still malleable. It’s come in pretty handy.
Φ-19 Nano: Damn, good doctors.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: You have no idea. If you ever suffer near-brain death, ask for Doctor Ordo at Site-415. Man is a savant.
Φ-19 Nano: Good to know.
EKFOS Command: Team lead, you’re cleared to proceed at your discretion.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Copy that, command. Up to you guys, what do you think?
Φ-19 Xhu: Fuck it, let’s keep going. If we start going crazy at least you’ll be able to pull us out.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Any objections?
Φ-19 Brave: None.
Φ-19 Marshal: Nada.
Φ-19 Krueger: I’m fine, yeah.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: (To Nano and Orca) You two as well? (They nod in agreement) Alright.
Let’s keep going. Looks like we’re getting near the bottom.
Team continues to descend down the spiral staircase. As they reach the bottom, they see the dropped flare lying on the stone floor. The landing is damp, but passable. Across from the bottom of the staircase is a large entryway in the stone wall leading down another hallway.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: There we go. Our way down has got to be out that way. Marshal, send a probe down that way.
Φ-19 Marshal: Aye aye, captain.
Φ-19 Marshal produces a small drone from his bag. After setting parameters, he lifts it into the air. The drone’s quadcopters come online and it rises into the air before leaving to enter the hallway. Φ-19 Marshal slides a tactical lens in front of his goggles and monitors the drone’s progress as it maps out the hallway in front of them.
As the team waits for the drone to return, the video/audio feed momentarily cuts out. It returns three seconds later.
EKFOS Command: Team lead, we lost you for a second. Is everything alright?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: We’re fine. Some rumbling down here, from somewhere underneath us.
Maybe seismic activity?
EKFOS Command: Copy that, we’re looking into it.
Φ-19 Xhu: That didn’t feel like seismic activity.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: No, I don’t think so either. Everyone alright?
Φ-19 Brave: I can hear those people talking again, Cap. It’s a lot louder now, I can make out individual voices.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: What do you hear?
Φ-19 Krueger: It’s a woman, and a younger girl. They’re talking to - no, the woman is talking to the little girl. I think it’s her daughter, but I can’t really make out what they’re saying.
Φ-19 Nano: I hear it too. They’re not speaking any language I’ve ever heard before. It’s something different, but I still feel like I can remember, er - maybe it’s just intuiting, some kind of meaning? I’m really not sure. (Pauses) Like, there. Do you hear what she just said?
Φ-19 Brave: She’s trying to reassure her daughter, I’m certain of it. I can’t tell you why I’m certain of it, but I know that’s what it is, and the daughter is… scared, maybe not the right word? She’s nervous.
Φ-19 Krueger: She’s asking her daughter to do something, and it’s making the daughter anxious. She’s trying to soothe her.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Are you hearing this as well, Marshal?
Φ-19 Marshal: Yeah but I’m trying to fly the drone, remember?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Ah, fair enough. What have you got?
Φ-19 Marshal: Hang on.
The scout drone appears through the entryway. It proceeds towards Φ-19 Marshall, who extends his hand. The drone lands on his hand and deactivates. He stows the drone and removes the tactical lens.
Φ-19 Marshal: There’s a primary hallway here that extends around the side of whatever the larger structure of this place is, in a kind of semi-circle. This whole thing was exposed a long time ago, right? Like, it wasn’t underground?
Φ-19 Xhu: Correct. Part of it was underground, but we believe the part we’re in now would’ve been above ground.
Φ-19 Marshal: Well, there are a bunch of balcony-looking things coming off this hallway, so I’m going to interpret that as this being some kind of promenade that would’ve looked out from inside the tower. They’re all collapsed, obviously, with stone and dirt, but there are more inward-facing doorways that point in the direction of the center of the tower. At the very end of this hallway is another collapsed door, but on a wall nearby is a fountain - I guarantee that’s what it is. It’s made of metal, it looks like a fountain, it’s a fountain.
There’s a closed door near it, and I bet money that’s where your access point is.
(Pauses) Also, she’s telling her daughter to get into bed, and the daughter doesn’t want to get into bed. She says she’s not tired, it’s not bedtime, and she’s nervous because everyone else is going to sleep and not waking up.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: You can understand what they’re saying?
Φ-19 Marshal: No, of course not. But I remember hearing this conversation when it was spoken. I have no fucking clue why I’m able to say that, but it’s what is happening in my brain right now. I was in the room when this conversation happened, I remember it as clearly as I remember what I had for breakfast this morning. There was a woman, I don’t remember who she was, but she was there with her daughter. They were some of the last ones there, and she was trying to get her daughter to lie down and go to sleep.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Do you know why?
Φ-19 Brave: It’s because she didn’t want her to be forgotten. (Pauses) I remember it too. She was afraid for her daughter, and tried to protect her.
Φ-19 Nano: What do you think it means?
Φ-19 Marshal: Means we’re getting close.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Let’s proceed, then. You know the way?
Φ-19 Marshal: Yep.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Your lead.
Team enters the passageway off the stairwell chamber. They proceed slowly.
Φ-19 Krueger: Hang on.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: What’s wrong?
Φ-19 Krueger: Can’t hear them anymore, not the same people talking, but… something about this place.
Φ-19 Orca: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Right here, look. Do you see this place here?
(Gestures towards one of the large openings in the wall on the right side of the hallway now covered in earth and rock debris) This was a… an overlook, or a balcony, yeah.
There was someone standing here, and he saw… something rising up over the mountains… Φ-19 Brave: A wall of water, higher than the loftiest of Malidraug’s peaks… Φ-19 Nano: He felt fear, at first, standing here. He knew he didn’t have time, that nothing would protect him from what was coming.
Φ-19 Krueger: But then he… laughed… and felt something like… serenity? A moment of peace.
Φ-19 Brave: He prayed… Φ-19 Marshal: He felt his prayer was answered. He knew it in his soul, and then… Φ-19 Xhu: He was obliterated by the impact.
Φ-19 Nano: But his blood… his blood ran down through the stones, what little remained, and it ran down into… well, somewhere below us.
Φ-19 Krueger: That’s it. That’s what it is. We’re - we’re sitting on top of them, now, right? Or below them, next to them. That’s why we can remember these voices, even though they sound distant. They weren’t killed, or - I guess - they were killed, but they’re not gone… they’re all right here, exactly like they were before.
Φ-19 Marshal: Cap, over there. Look.
Team comes around the last corner of the passageway. On an inside wall is a wide metallic basin, over which are several upturned spigots. Much of the mechanism appears to have rusted away.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Do you guys remember this at all?
Φ-19 Nano: I do. (Walks up to the basin) I remember it well. (Pauses) This is a water fountain.
Team is silent.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Fucking idiot, I swear to god.
Φ-19 Nano: I’m not sorry.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Alright, Marshal, where’s our descent point?
Φ-19 Marshal: That door there - if I was going to guess.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Let’s get it open.
Nano, Krueger and Orca approach the closed stone doorway with tactical pickaxes.
Wedging them into the corner of the door, they slide the stone sideways.
Φ-19 Orca: Jesus Christ.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: What is it?
Φ-19 Krueger: It’s not uh, I mean, I guess it’s a way down.
Φ-19 Krueger looks out past the closed doorway. The rear of the fountain mechanism is exposed, and what appears to have been the beginning of a large reservoir is visible, but the back wall has collapsed and fallen away. Beyond where the back wall of the reservoir shaft had been is a vast chamber, the far side of which the team’s lights do not reach. Many large, intricately detailed stone pillars rise up from out of the darkness below to support a ceiling somewhere above them. From their position, they can see a landing just below, dotted with rows of stone slabs. The sound of fluid moving somewhere nearby is clearly audible.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: That will definitely work. Are we able to get down there?
Φ-19 Nano: That platform there is maybe thirty meters down? We can scale that, yeah.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Let’s do it, then.
Team prepares their descent harnesses. Φ-19 Krueger and Xhu stay in the hallway to monitor the descent.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: Command, our access shaft is compromised, but it’s opened up into a- Team audio/video cuts out. There is a noticeable significant rumbling from below the EKFOS Command station. Several attempts are made to get in contact with the Φ-19 team over the course of the next 20 minutes. A secondary retrieval team is prepped after ten minutes of no-contact. After twenty-two minutes, EKFOS Command receives an uplink from Φ-19 Brave’s audio comms.
Φ-19 Brave: Φ-19 to Command, Φ-19 to Command. Do you copy?
EKFOS Command: We hear you, Brave. What happened down there?
Φ-19 Brave: Are you getting video?
EKFOS Command: Negative, Brave. What’s your status?
Φ-19 Brave: There was a- a uh, some kind of rumbling, and then the floor underneath us went out. Fell pretty far - I was hooked up to my harness, and so was Orca, but Krueger fell down somewhere underneath us. We’ve been able to talk to him and Cap, but their radios are fucked and we can’t get down to where they’re at. I think Krueg has a broken leg, he was shouting pretty bad at first. I’m here with Orca, we’ve got Nano and Marshal with us, managed to catch them, Xhu is still up top but his transponder got hit and is busted pretty bad.
EKFOS Command: Copy that Brave, where are you now?
Φ-19 Brave: Hard to tell you, it’s pretty fucking dark in here. We’re uh, we’re on a platform, there’s this big central area on the other side of the wall, I think it was the bulk of the tower, but parts of it have all fallen down into the uh… into the dark down there, we can’t see where anything has gone. There are these platforms, kind of all around the center shaft - well, shaft maybe isn’t the right word, but it’s… hang on, I need to… Φ-19 Brave is silent for an additional twenty-six seconds. Afterwards, his video uplink is reestablished. Φ-19 Brave, Orca, Marshal and Nano are standing on a wide stone platform. Long rows of flat stone slabs run out in all directions around them.
EKFOS Command: Copy that, Brave. Are you in contact with Xhu?
Φ-19 Brave: Negative, he ran off a few minutes ago to try and get help.
EKFOS Command: We’re preparing an extraction team to come and get you, stay where you’re at.
Φ-19 Brave: We’ll - yeah, copy that.
Φ-19 Brave walks over towards one of the stone slabs where Orca and Nano are standing. A dark sheet is draped over a figure laying on the slab. Their conversation is picked up on Brave’s audio receiver.
Φ-19 Nano: What do you think it is?
Φ-19 Orca: What does it look like to you? Look around. They’re all the same. There’s a groove here, see, where it runs down towards the floor, and then across towards the center there. And you see how the ground is sloped a bit?
Φ-19 Brave: It’s a mausoleum.
Φ-19 Orca: Yeah. This is where it happened. Which means… Φ-19 Orca pulls back the sheet, revealing a human skeleton underneath. Parts of the skeleton have been reduced to dust, but larger structures are still identifiable.
Φ-19 Nano: Jesus.
Φ-19 Marshal: Guys, come over here. Look.
Φ-19 Brave, Nano and Orca walk across the platform past the rows of slabs towards one smaller than the others. A dark sheet is draped over a diminutive figure laying on the slab.
Φ-19 Brave: Oh.
The team is silent for several seconds.
Φ-19 Nano: I remember the end of this, the conversation they had. I can hear it in my head, clear as day. Like they’re talking right now.
Φ-19 Orca: Me too.
Φ-19 Marshal: (Pauses) “Lay down, my sunlight. It is time for us to sleep. We’re all going to sleep now.” Φ-19 Brave: “I’m afraid.” Φ-19 Marshal: "I know. It’s OK to be afraid. I am afraid too, but we will sleep here together, you and I, and we will dream of each other often. We will be together in the dark, don’t you see? We must be strong, for each other.” Φ-19 Brave: “Will it hurt?” Φ-19 Marshal: “Only for a moment, and then we’ll be together. You remember how it was for your nana? Only a moment, and then we will be together.” Φ-19 Brave: “I don’t want to go without you.” Φ-19 Marshal: “Oh, my sunlight. It will only be for a moment. You will go first, and you won’t have to wait long. Nana will be there waiting for you, and your Bebo. Do not cry.
Everything will be alright. Don’t cry.” Φ-19 Orca: She lays her daughter down, here, and she draws a long knife.
Φ-19 Nano: Her hand trembles.
Φ-19 Orca: This is not the first time she has performed this ritual.
Φ-19 Brave: But it is the hardest.
Φ-19 Marshal: She is strong, though. She meets her daughter’s fearful eyes with her own, to reassure her one more time.
All four together: She slides the knife across her daughter’s neck, and down her arms… They are silent.
Φ-19 Brave: She is small. She does not struggle for long.
Φ-19 Nano: Her body goes cold. The blood runs down through the crack in the stone, into the basin below, and then- Φ-19 Marshal: Down the floor, across the room, mixing with the rest, until it falls away into the darkness beyond… that wall.
Marshal gestures towards a door on the far end of the room, towards the center of the structure.
Φ-19 Brave: The mother stands. Her heart is beating fast.
Φ-19 Nano: She can barely breathe. She hears a roar growing outside. She knows the end has come.
Φ-19 Orca: But something… something catches her attention. Her focus is drawn to it, all at once.
Φ-19 Brave: An animal’s impulse, something built into the fiber of her ancestry. Her hair stands on end.
Φ-19 Marshal: Something else has felt the roar of the water, as well. Something deep below. Something that was never meant to wake.
Φ-19 Nano: She moves for the door, pausing only to look at her daughter, and then once towards the sky.
Φ-19 Brave: She grips the knife in her fist.
Φ-19 Orca: She is determined: Φ-19 Nano: She says… she says something… ah, she’s fading, I can’t… I can’t see her anymore. What did she say?
Φ-19 Marshal: “My Lord Daughter… My Lord Son… be our sacred deliverance. Be our quiet rest. Be our living memory.” Φ-19 Brave: She goes to the door, and opens it, and - holy shit, Cap!
Φ-19 Outfoxed and Krueger stand in the doorway. Krueger is limping badly, a makeshift splint wrapped around his left leg.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: You’re going to want to see this.
The Φ-19 team pass through the arched doorway into the chamber beyond. There is only a single source of light that dimly illuminates the room; a colossal cylinder of blood roughly 180m in diameter, glowing and shifting. It hangs in the air suspended by some invisible force - rings of black stone set around it every hundred or so meters up and down.
Φ-19 Brave: Oh my god. Command, do you see this?
EKFOS Command: We do. Can you link us to team lead?
Φ-19 Brave: Copy that, one moment.
Φ-19 Brave sets up a comms link with Outfoxed.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: This is Traynor.
EKFOS Command: Good to hear from you, team lead. Are you alright?
Φ-19 Outfoxed: I’m fine, my pack took the worst of it. Krueger needs extract, and we need to get a forward team down here. See down there?
Φ-19 Outfoxed points along the side of the massive room they are standing in. A long, wide staircase extends down past them into the darkness below.
Φ-19 Outfoxed: I’ve found your way down.
EKFOS Command: Copy that, team lead. Well done. Standby for extract, let’s get your boys out of there.
Addendum 6765.10: Operation RENEWAL and HERITAGE Event Incident Log The following is a collection of transcripts, both from recorded audio/video and from interviews conducted before and after the SCP-6765 “HERITAGE Event” detailing the lead up to Operation RENEWAL and its aftermath.
Internal Audio Recording Transcript In Attendance: PARAGON Director Shannon Lancaster Dept. of Antediluvian Research Director Coryn Malthus SCP-6765 Research Head Dr. Matthew Fulweiler Dir. Lancaster: Recording has started. Lay it out for us.
Dir. Malthus: Engineering teams have set up a freight elevator inside the central shaft of SCP-6765. It’s big enough for Ogier, a strike team, and our thaumaturgical research team. Dr. Fulweiler has volunteered to run operations on the ground, while we stay here and monitor the situation from Command.
Dr. Fulweiler: We’re anticipating the descent to take about an hour and a half, without any interruptions. The bottom of this main shaft is about seven and a half klicks below ground, and then we believe there’s a further area below that where SCP-6765-E is located. We’ll be planting relays the whole way down to keep our line of communications up, and we’re going to have a zero exposure policy in place throughout - first sign of trouble and we pull the E-brake, bring us back up.
Dir. Lancaster: Have we managed to get anything else out of sleeping beauty regarding whatever we’re going to see down there?
Dr. Fulweiler: No such luck. Relivine has gone totally silent. None of our agents have been able to commune with them over the last few days. Ogier assures us they’re still alive, but only just. Whatever influence this -E entity is exerting over Relivine, it’s getting worse. We can’t wait around hoping this is going to just get better anymore.
Dir. Lancaster: So it would seem. How much longer do your teams need to get set up?
Dir. Malthus: Engineering says they’ll be ready to go within the next three days.
Dir. Lancaster: Good. Let’s not waste any more time.
SCP Foundation Department of Antediluvian Research EKFOS Command OPERATION RENEWAL Operation Brief: As a result of information gained through communication with SCP-6765-B, it has been determined that the ongoing success of the mission within the Daevite archive at SCP-6765 relies on the mitigation of a hostile thaumaturgical influence deep below the structure.
Anomalies of specific interest: SCP-6765-B: The Daevite King Relivine of Malidraug, an antediluvian ruler and warlord who exists now as the primary conduit by which SCP-6765-A, the “Throne of Malidraug”, is operated. This individual is the lynchpin of a complex thaumaturgical process wherein a vast amount of information gathered within SCP-6765 from the collective memory of the Daevite people is available by way of metanarrative communion within the liminal dream-space created by SCP-6765-C, an SCP-1000 instance who self-identifies as “Javert”.
• • • SCP-6765-D: Ogier, son of Osires, also called St. Ogier, one of four antediluvian warriors in sworn service to a line of ancient kings, whose transformation into an approximation of a faerie demon was interrupted by SCP-6765-B. Was once an occultist and thaumatologist of some renown, and is believed by SCP-6765-B to be capable of mitigating the hostile thaumaturgical influence of SCP-6765-E.
SCP-6765-E: Currently unknown - described by SCP-6765-B as the “rotting corpse of the Lord of Memory”. The “Lord of Memory”, also called the “King in Red”, is believed to have been a precursor entity to the Scarlet King. During an event in the distant past, the metaphysical aspect of the “Lord of Memory” was separated from its physical body, and the two became fully disconnected. In order to distinguish between these two related but clearly delineated entities, it is currently understood that the metaphysical aspect is what the Foundation identifies as the “Scarlet King”, while the previously unknown physical aspect (SCP-6765-E) is the “King in Red”.
Formalized operation details below.
[END OF EXCERPT] Internal Interview Transcript Subject: Agent Quentin Ryld, ATF S-1 “Paradise Lost” Interviewer: Researcher Barrett Kenley, EKFOS Command Kenley: Tell me about the lead up to the event.
Ryld: The atmosphere changed. I was talking to Patterson about it a few days before, but it was really strange. EKFOS isn’t a particularly lighthearted assignment, you know, and the spooky on the chair doesn’t help matters much, but we’ve been able to keep things fairly cheery, at least above ground. But once the new operation was announced, the mood changed almost overnight. We kept feeling these - these earthquakes, I guess, from somewhere way below us, and there was this weird apprehension that settled in.
Kenley: Where do you think the mood came from?
Freight elevator and inner chamber of SCP-6765.
Ryld: Honestly? The dreamer agents. They used to go on their little seances, and then they’d come back with these wild stories of legends and heroes from so long ago it’s hard to even imagine - and then over the course of a week or two they went quiet. There weren’t any fantastical tales anymore, no descriptions of ancient creatures or warriors or anything like that. They would go to sleep, and when they’d wake up they just looked… I dunno. Empty. Like they were feeling what we were all feeling. (Pauses) Plus, we were working on the elevator then, too, so everyone who went into the tower down below was exposed to that… what are we even calling it? Waterfall of blood?
Kenley: The reservoir?
Ryld: I guess. You’d think the eeriest part about it was that it was a floating blood thing, but being down there next to it… it’s really hard to describe. It was like they were watching you. Everyone who had ever bled into that thing was hanging there in the air, watching you fasten a railing or lay down conduit. Felt like we were desecrating a cemetery, but there wasn’t any malice about it. I think they probably knew that thing was down there, and they… well, they probably had bigger concerns than a few upturned graves.
EKFOS Command Audio/Video Security Logs Subject: SCP-6765-D Subject: Agent Evelyn Ivy Agent Ivy: What's wrong?
SCP-6765-D: Hmmm? Oh, no, don't worry about me. I am… I am fine.
Agent Ivy: Ogier, come on. For months you've let me walk around inside your memory, don't shut me out of your head now.
SCP-6765-D: I don't mean to place my burdens on any other, truly. Please, think not of it.
Agent Ivy: Don't "think not of it" me. Just talk to me, Ogier. I am your friend.
SCP-6765-D: I… you are very kind, Lady Ivy. Kinder perhaps than I deserve. In truth, I am afraid. My dreams of late have been grim - the specter below us grows ever more bold, and each day its slumber becomes lighter. I… Agent Ivy: Ogier, it's alright. Don't hide from me.
SCP-6765-D: I… I… look at me, Evelyn. Look at what I am. Look at… at this! Cursed!
Defiled, broken, desecrated. Cast out from Apollyon's citadel and left to wander and rot in the wastes - this, this is what is meant to rebuild Moros' prison? This… wretchedness?
In my youth I performed miracles, yes, and could bend Asem's lingering light as I so desired, but this? Ah, Evelyn. I have laid in this room, unmoving but to cross it to the stairs, and then back, for an age of the Earth. In all that time, I have learned, and I have rested, but what has it made me? Am I less this thing I have become? Have the years somehow turned away the tide of this curse? Yes, while I was young I basked in the glory of the young Earth and I could move mountains, but now? Those were the actions of St. Ogier, the blessed disciple of Asem's sun. Those were the actions of the Lord's Royal Pontifex. I am… I have wasted away into nothing, a shell of the being I was, glorious and radiant. This weight I carry on me - no, this weight I have become, for it is not separate of what I am. It was once like a parasite, but time has passed - oh, how time has passed, Evelyn! Now I am this thing, this lumbering, cruel mockery. This just punishment for our sins, this is what I am. Can this thing accomplish the task laid out before me?
Silence.
SCP-6765-D: Relivine, my Lord and friend, once told me that throughout the many collected lives of the Daeva, one constant always gave him heart - the knowledge that there were always those who would rise to resist darkness, who would find within them a hidden valor that would lead them, if not to victory, than to some kind of honor. But honor, dignity, valor - these were the attributes of greater men. Of men who were given their time in the sun. What is St. Ogier, but a legend lost to time? This demon - for I know that is what I am called in your records, and rightfully so - it is not St. Ogier. It is flesh, and bone, and little else. The lingering light faded long ago, as did I, and if I cannot summon the strength to do this thing, then… Silence.
SCP-6765-D: I am sorry.
Agent Ivy: Don't apologize to me. (Pauses) Here, let me get us some tea. We can sit and talk for a while.
SCP-6765-D: That would be nice.
Internal Interview Transcript Subject: Agent Sal Brisco, ATF S-1 “Paradise Lost” Interviewer: Researcher Barrett Kenley, EKFOS Command Kenley: Tell me about the descent.
Brisco: Treacherous, to say the least. They had us tied down pretty good up there, but the entire place was shaking every few minutes, stuff was falling down from the ceiling.
All the while we had to look at that big glowing tube of blood next to us. Did they tell you that it made you hear things? That's not the right way to describe it - it would fuck with your memory. I'm sitting there, and I get this passing thought, where I remember being a kid and this guy was there, who looked way out of place, and he was trying to communicate something to me but I didn't understand what he said. Now - I know this guy couldn't have possibly existed back then, not a chance. I know he didn't just show up one day in Queens and start talking his crazy talk, but I remember it distinctly. There were others, too, guys kept talking about them. Sometimes they'd just be watching you, like you remember seeing them out of the corner of your eye once, but sometimes they'd do this… I dunno how to describe it, like some kind of gesture. The big guy said it was a sign of encouragement. I don't know if that's true, maybe he was just trying to distract us, but the guys bought it for sure. Everyone was doing it to each other, this weird little gesture. (Laughs) If it was supposed to be a sign of encouragement, the big guy wasn't buying it.
Kenley: What do you mean?
Brisco: He… ah. He didn't look well. He was separated from us, you know, on the other side of the elevator, just him, that dream agent, the big furry fellow and Dr. Fulweiler.
They didn't talk much, but every so often I'd look over there and he'd have his eyes closed, and he'd be moving his mouth real softly. I think he was praying. (Pauses) I guess that's pretty telling, considering what happened, aye? All of us goofing around, ignoring obvious warnings about what was coming, and this one guy trying to find a god who would listen to him.
Internal Interview Transcript Subject: Captain Jacques St. Moore, ATF S-1 “Paradise Lost” Team Lead Interviewer: Dir. Shannon Lancaster, PARAGON St. Moore: We reached the bottom after about two hours of travel. That column of blood extended all the way to the bottom, but there was a change in it as it got nearer to the end. I don't know how else to describe it except to say it felt "grim". Up near the top it was glowing bright red, and there were just these streaks of black and purple running through it, but at the bottom it was almost all black. We stopped hearing those voices, too, the ones everyone has been talking about. It got so dark down there you couldn't see your hand in front of your face without a torch. The only light we didn't bring with us was the faintest red glow from way up above, but it wasn't worth much.
Dir. Lancaster: What did you find at the bottom?
St. Moore: The bottom of the tower opens up into an enormous cavern, and all around the outside of it are these massive - I'm telling you, maybe as big around as a house, these huge stone pillars that stretch up from the cavern floor to arch at the bottom of the tower structure. We thought there had maybe been floor there at one point, and falling debris had knocked it all away, because there was plenty of that too. Old columns, big pieces of stone, bones. Residue from the tower falling apart over the last however many years. We stopped, and after we left the elevator we set up our forward camp. It wasn't too long until Greys and Maxwell found the way down - way in the corner of the cavern was this little building, looked like a little chapel, made out of this oily black stone. Being near that place - I've gotta tell you, it was horrible. That building, and everything underneath it, just being there felt wrong. You got to feeling sick, but not like sick to your stomach - like your whole body was trying to reject whatever was in the air. It soaked into your clothes, into your skin - I burned my jacket after we came back up. Just couldn't stand to look at it.
Dir. Lancaster: What was in the chapel?
St. Moore: A few rows of stone benches, and then a staircase at the back that lead down below. It stank, too - I don't know if that got put in the report, but it was horrible.
Even after we put on breathing gear, it was wretched. The stairway down wound around a lot, and as we got deeper the lights we were carrying started to get darker, too. They weren't broken, they just didn't produce as much light. Some of the other agents got anxious, and had to turn back. There were a few who just stopped in the stairwell and wouldn't move - they sat there in the dark for hours until we had come back up. By the time we got to the bottom, there were only a few of us left - maybe twenty. It was hardest on -D, he basically had to drag himself the whole way down the stairs. I didn't get a good look at his face, but he was clearly struggling. Honestly, we all were - it was a horribly oppressive place to be.
Dir. Lancaster: And then, what was at the bottom of the stairway?
St. Moore: It opened into another cave, maybe the biggest I've seen in my life. I don't know if it's bigger than that abscess in Brazil, but it was huge. By that point, our lights were almost out - but it didn't matter. The cavern was lit from the center, way at the bottom.
Dir. Lancaster: What was it?
St. Moore: The tomb, I suppose. A stone monolith that stretched up into the blackness above us. It was bigger than a skyscraper, just solid rock, but at the bottom you could see where it was sitting on another stone platform, and that… that thing was propping it up, just a bit, but the light that came out of that place… I think you know as well as I do by now that there are some things that the eyes of men just weren't designed to look at.
AUDIO/VIDEO TRANSCRIPT AGENT S. RUSHINGWATER ATF S-1 PARADISE LOST Agent Rushingwater follows behind the agent directly in front of them (R. Erikson). Light produced by the agent's shoulder mounted torch is significantly reduced. Agent Rushingwater keeps an arm on Agent Erikson's shoulder to gauge the distance between them. Ahead, the hallway becomes slightly more illuminated by a dull red light from somewhere up ahead. None of the agents or research staff speak.
Tomb of SCP-6765-E, the "King in Red".
After a short time, the task force emerges onto a rocky ledge overlooking a deep cavern.
As they step out onto the ledge, there is a loud, low rumble that emanates from the center of the room - the seismic activity that had previously been reported. However, the source of the activity is now evident - a single massive monolith of stone rising up from a platform at the center of a shallow pool near the cavern's floor. As the earth shakes, the monolith is seen rising upwards slightly. An intense red light shines from the narrow space between the monolith and the platform over which it hangs.
SCP-6765-D speaks quietly in an antediluvian tongue.
Agent St. Moore: What's that?
SCP-6765-D: A prayer, my friend. That perhaps even in a place so dark as this, a light might still shine on us, if only for a moment.
Internal Interview Transcript Subject: Agent Sarah Conway, ATF S-1 “Paradise Lost” Team Lead Interviewer: Dr. Aaron LaRoche, EKFOS Command LaRoche: You made it down to the bottom of the stairwell?
Conway: Aye, with no small effort. It was horrible, could feel the life just draining out of you. Never felt so miserable in my life. Maybe two dozen of us got down there, plus the big guy and the bigfoot.
LaRoche: What happened next?
Conway: Well, there was - I think Parker saw it first, but there was this person - I can't say if it were a person, truthfully, seemed more like just the idea of a person, maybe a woman, but it was hanging there in the air in front of this huge stone thing, and there was this - I mean, it was magic, wasn't it? She was doing some kind of magic, I think, you could see these symbols around her hands, and around her head, but they were so dim you could barely make them out, and as we came over the lip of the platform, this person, she sort of… craned her neck, just a touch, like she was acknowledging we were there, and then… then everything happened all at once, didn't it?
LaRoche: Explain what you saw.
Conway: This huge stone tower, thing, it shot up maybe a meter or two, or more, and this… this energy, just starts pouring out of the space underneath it. I think if you - if you look at my video, if it managed to survive, I was watching this woman when it happened, and she was just, in a second, boom - atomized. Turned to dust, and the whole place was shaking, stone and shit was falling from the ceiling, it was a mess. There was this sound, it was like… I dunno, I can't even describe it now, it was something like an animal you might hear at night, far away and lonesome, or hurt, and it was getting louder, and blood started coming over the edge of the platform, running over our shoes, and it was coming from up underneath this stone pillar like a flood. I remember hearing Oxford shouting, and Goeff was yelling that he could see something, and then he got pulled in underneath it, into that horrible red… thing, and he screamed… LaRoche: It's alright. It's over.
Conway: Aye, I know. I know, I know. But it's just… it's the knowing, you know? The knowing that this thing we saw, this old dead thing… there have to be more like it, right?
We know they found the one in South America, and then there was this one. How many holes are there in the Earth full of things like this? We were lucky this time, I think - we got there in the nick of time, but what happens when we miss one?
LaRoche: That is precisely why PARAGON exists.
Conway: Yeah, but it wasn't PARAGON that saved our lives down there, doctor.
SCP FOUNDATION PARAGON EKFOS GRAVEMIND.AIC EMERGENCY WARNING SYSTEM AUTOMATED BULLETIN WARNING - WARNING - WARNING WARNING - WARNING - WARNING WARNING - WARNING - WARNING THE FOLLOWING IS AN OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION FROM GRAVEMIND.AIC ANOMALOUS EXTRASPATIAL ACTIVITY HAS BEEN DETECTED AT THE SCP FOUNDATION EASTERN KASHMIR FORWARD OPERATING SITE [EKFOS].
MULTIPLE PERSONNEL REPORTING EXTREME COGNITOHAZARDOUS ACTIVITY AT EKFOS SITE ALPHA [SCP-6765].
MULTIPLE PERSONNEL REPORTED MISSING AT EKFOS SITE ALPHA [SCP-6765].
ALL PERSONNEL STATIONED AT EKFOS SITE BETA, DELTA, EPSILON, AND GAMMA ARE TO REMAIN AT THEIR STATIONS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
ANY PERSONNEL STATIONED AT EKFOS SITE ALPHA [SCP-6765] WHO WERE NOT IMMEDIATELY AFFECTED BY THE ANOMALOUS ACTIVITY ARE TO REPORT TO THEIR NEAREST CHECKPOINT STATION.
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, EKFOS SITE ALPHA [SCP-6765] IS DECLARED OFF-LIMITS - AREA IS HIGHLY DANGEROUS AND EXTREMELY UNSTABLE.
BY ORDER OF SCP FOUNDATION OVERWATCH COMMAND PROTOCOL 113.1.9, ALL EMERGENCY WARNINGS AT PARAGON SITES ARE RED-OMEGA PRIORITY.
THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT.
WARNING - WARNING - WARNING WARNING - WARNING - WARNING WARNING - WARNING - WARNING Internal Interview Transcript Subject: Dr. Matthew Fulweiler, SCP-6765 Research Lead Interviewer: Dir. Shannon Lancaster, PARAGON Dir. Lancaster: Before we get started, I want to let you know how happy I am that you're alright.
Dr. Fulweiler: Ah, yeah, thanks. No worse for wear.
Dir. Lancaster: How's your arm?
Dr. Fulweiler: Better, thanks. PARAGON spares no expense on its traveling med teams.
Dir. Lancaster: I'm glad to hear that's been communicated. (Pauses) Are you ready?
Dr. Fulweiler: I am.
Dir. Lancaster: Let's start at the top.
Dr. Fulweiler: We consider HERITAGE to have begun the moment the Daevite woman was destroyed - everything started happening pretty quickly afterwards. Whatever enchantment she had been maintaining was already extremely weak, and in a moment of hesitation she was finally overpowered and annihilated. SCP-6765-E, the uh - er, sorry- Dir. Lancaster: No, it's fine. No need for formalities right now.
Dr. Fulweiler: Yeah, thanks. The King in Red, we think the monolith was acting as some kind of extraplanar prison. We never got a chance to inspect the platform itself, you know, but some of the video shows what looks like it might be a runic circle carved into the stone, and if that's the case then it's possible - even if it seems kind of funny - that Moros' intention was to create his extraplanar gate, push the King in Red through to the other side, and then just drop a giant stone on top of the gate to keep him in. There were other glyphs on the exterior of the monolith, obviously - it wasn't quite so simple I don't think, but I really do get the impression that his plan was just… put a big rock in the way.
Dir. Lancaster: Mad King indeed.
Dr. Fulweiler: So we - the last of whatever seal she had put in place failed, and we caught the full brunt of this thing coming through all at once. A few of our guys were too close, and they got pulled into whatever was on the other side. I never got a good look at this thing as it was climbing out from the platform, but a couple others did. They still haven't found words for it, I don't think. Very Lovecraftian, a truly unspeakable horror.
But while it was climbing out, that's when the shift happened - we were all in a sort of… ah, well, it was like being in a memory, but we were all there. I honestly could not have told you whether or not we were dreaming - I know GRAVEMIND says the site disappeared during HERITAGE, but even after we got back I thought we had just been asleep together, like we'd all passed out. It wasn't until I heard that we'd captured live video of it that I realized what had happened.
Dir. Lancaster: What did you see?
Dr. Fulweiler: It happened sort of all at once - there was a flash of red light, and one second we're standing in this cavern under the tower and the next we're on this… field, and the tower was behind us, rock and everything, and in the far distance over the mountains we could see smoke, and lightning, and there was this constant dull roar.
Then suddenly the tower behind us starts to shake, and we could hear screaming - millions of voices, all at once, in utter agony, and then the side of the tower was ripped open as if someone had taken a giant zipper and run it down the front. That massive column of blood in the reservoir just… slowly floated out, still all together, and that's where the screaming was coming from.
Dir. Lancaster: What happened next?
Dr. Fulweiler: Another voice appeared, drowning out the screams. It was inhuman, unearthly - the sound of it made me want to drop to the ground and scream myself. It came over the mountains slowly, but its didn't move or articulate, it was just like a mannequin, floating over the mountains. This horrible, enormous red thing, with this glowing, spinning sigil behind it, and its voice - god, the voice. I don't know if it was chanting, or singing, but being exposed to that sound… I tell you now, when this is all said and done I might consider the amnestics, just so I never have to have a passing thought about that voice ever again. (Pauses) The pillar of blood was floating towards it, and that's when Ogier made his first move. He… well, it wasn't much of anything, honestly, he just sort of raised his human hand, and started speaking, and this sort of dim reflective… barrier? - appeared in the air in front of this column of blood, but you could just tell from looking at it that it was paper thin. Sure enough, this huge thing's head jerked around to look at Ogier, and the barrier blew away like it was sand. Ogier kind of came apart then, sort of slumped over, and Javert and Agent Ivy were both there with him, but he looked horrible.
Dir. Lancaster: Did our people exchange fire?
Dr. Fulweiler: (Snorts) I'm sorry, I really shouldn't laugh. It's not funny, except maybe in a sort of grim way. Yeah, they shot bullets at it, but this thing - I'm not kidding you, and I honestly couldn't describe it while it was happening, it was only after that we figured out what had happened - but this thing removed their memory of how to operate firearms.
Fifteen trained agents with guns and mortars and all the equipment we sent them down there with, and all it took was a look and they had no idea what they were doing. They're still - they've having to relearn a lot of it. Javert has been helpful with that, trying to get some of it back, but for a few of them that block is just there, permanently. It won't ever go away. The King in Red just took their memories.
Dir. Lancaster: What then? How did you possibly make it out?
Dr. Fulweiler: We were… we were ruined. I knew in my heart, right there on that field, that we were dead. I was sitting there next to Dr. Genovese just hoping that it wouldn't hurt, and then… well, then it happened.
Dir. Lancaster: What happened?
Dr. Fulweiler: Have you watched the video?
Dir. Lancaster: I haven't.
Dr. Fulweiler: You should really watch the video.
AUDIO/VIDEO TRANSCRIPT AGENT M. ROTTERDAM ATF S-1 PARADISE LOST SCP-6765-E is visible in the background. The ground beneath its feet smokes and blackens, and the sky is blood red. In the near-foreground, the colossal column of blood hangs in the air.
Agent Rotterdam looks to his right. Captain St. Moore is shouting and pointing at his rifle. The words are not audible. Audio recording only picks up a single long drone throughout.
The sound of screaming begins to rise over the drone. The floating SCP-6765-E lifts its arms and, with a single swift motions, tears open its own chest. The interior of the figure is completely black. It extends its right arm towards the pillar of blood.
There is a flash of white light, and all sounds are silenced in an instant. There is another flash of white light, and then another. SCP-6765-E visibly recoils. The video recording is fully obscured by intense light. After a moment, the light fades.
SCP-6765-D hangs in the air in front of SCP-6765-E. Its body has been radically altered, now easily thirty meters in height. The creature's flesh is no longer mottled red and grey, but is instead stark white and glowing with brilliant golden light. The six arms of the demon's body are extended out on either side of it, and its legs and feet are extended and pointing towards the ground. The head of the demonic body no longer hangs limp, but is raised. Six long, golden horns extend out from the demon's forehead and wrap backwards over its skull, as if it were wearing a helmet. From a distance, the form of a man is barely visible standing on the shoulder of the demon.
SCP-6765-E becomes animated, lunging towards SCP-6765-D. Dark red and black shapes come up from the earth around its feet, but they are buffeted away by a pulsing aura emanating from within SCP-6765-D. SCP-6765-E writhes and shrieks, and it runs across the wide plain towards SCP-6765-D. As it nears, the sound is stripped away again. The voice of Ogier cuts through the silence: RETURN, WRETCHED INCARNATION, UNFIT NOW TO WALK ASEM'S GOLDEN STREETS RETURN TO THE DARK, WHERE IN AGES PAST YOU WERE RESIGNED AND REMAIN THERE, UNTIL THE UNDOING OF THE EARTH I AM OGIER, WIELDER OF ASEM'S GOLDEN SUN BEFORE WHICH YOU ARE LITTLE MORE THAN A PASSING SHADOW GO NOW WILLINGLY, OR BE UNDONE SCP-6765-E continues to close the distance. SCP-6765-D's arms move in unison - each of the three left arms bend at their elbows until they come together in a wide curve. The three arms on the right reach out over the left, and in them appear three long golden arrows. The three right arms pull the arrows back across the bow created by the left and, with a sound like a rush of wind, releases them.
The three arrows impact SCP-6765-E. There is a flash of light, and a loud bang, and both the arrows and SCP-6765-E are pushed backwards through the mountain.
SCP-6765-D disappears, and then reappears seconds later in front of the large crater on the mountainside. Its arms extend outwards again, tracing a glowing white circle in the sky as they do. Behind the glowing circle, SCP-6765-E is seen writhing.
There is a final flash of white light, and the plains and mountains disappear. There is nothing but blackness for a moment, and then suddenly the platform within the cavern beneath SCP-6765 becomes visible again. Red light pulses and blood sprays out from underneath the monolith, and an animalistic roar is heard from below. SCP-6765-D appears in front of the stone suddenly, and grasping the right and left sides of the monolith with its right and left arms, SCP-6765-D slams the monolith down on top of the platform.
As this happens, the video recording cuts off suddenly.
Addendum 6765.11: PARAGON Communication The following file is Level 6765.5 Classified. Unauthorized access is forbidden.
ACCESS FILE Secure Transmission Line Transcript Excerpt S. Lancaster: This is Lancaster.
O5-1: Does the Black Moon Howl?
S. Lancaster: Before the waters crested the high hills, in old Noah's time.
O5-1: Good to hear from you, Shannon. I've been reviewing your project notes, and the footage, and… it's a lot to take in.
S. Lancaster: Thank you, Overseer. They've been working hard here.
O5-1: Please, Calvin is fine. Has the situation at EKFOS stabilized?
S. Lancaster: We believe it has. We were able to make our first contact with Relivine since before HERITAGE happened. It's muted, but the dreamer is still dreaming in there.
We weren't too late.
O5-1: And what about our friend the knight?
S. Lancaster: Ogier is still down below. He spends most of his time now working on the circles around that stone pillar. He doesn't need to eat or sleep, and seems content to just make sure the wards he's placing down there will hold as long as the originals did, at least.
O5-1: What about the demon? Has it shown any kind of autonomy since HERITAGE?
S. Lancaster: You mean since they were separated? Not individually, no. The demon is just an extension of Ogier - they're two parts of the same unit. Just because Ogier has his legs back doesn't mean their will is separated now. They're funny - sometimes you can almost catch the demon like, mimicking Ogier's actions, like it's trying to follow along. It's like the commands are coming from the same place, but one of the bodies is receiving them just a little more slowly than the other. Thankfully it's not as big anymore as it was in there for a bit, otherwise we'd have no way of trying to get it out of the cavern.
O5-1: Fascinating. I have to say Shannon, I'm impressed. Your people got their work done when it needed to be done, and a whole lot of people owe you their lives for it.
Good work.
S. Lancaster: We have a good team. Coryn doesn't miss details, and Fulweiler was a godsend, honestly - the man never gets tired. He's been working almost nonstop the last few weeks just doing data entry, writing down accounts we've taken from the archive.
O5-1: Good. Very very good.
S. Lancaster: Your message indicated there was something else you wanted to talk about?
O5-1: There is. Just before our friend Ogier made his dramatic reawakening, there was a disturbance noted at another anomalous location we keep track of. This location is very much the kind of place where any disturbance at all is… unanticipated. Something stirred that should not have stirred, Shannon, and I believe it may be connected to the work you've been doing. If nothing else, I'd like you to start putting together another team to take a look into it.
S. Lancaster: Of course, we'd be happy to. I can start putting a proposal together tomorrow. (Pauses) Where is this location, exactly?
O5-1: Ah, yes. Have you ever heard of the Department of Abnormalities, Director?
[END OF EXCERPT] Footnotes 1. This number was based on initial estimations of the internal volume of SCP-6765 - it is now believed this number may underestimate the volume by more than 50% 2. SCP-6765-C did not know ASL upon discovery, but learned the language after several sessions with Dr. Maria Lopez shortly afterwards and is now considered fluent.
3. Whether or not this state is naturally occurring or medically induced does not seem to hinder SCP-6765-C's ability to communicate.
4. Believed to be modern day Iraq.
5. Believed to be modern day Yemen.
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