We all have a hunger (we all have a hunger)
We all have a hunger (we all have a hunger)
We all have a hunger (we all have a hunger)
We all have a hunger (we all have a hunger)
HOLY FUCK IT'S DEAD
I have been working on this draft for literally years. This has been an absolute white whale of a draft. I've known the story for this for years, where to take it and how to make it work, but I just could never put the words to paper, get the writing out.
The first inspiration that led to this draft: the first concept in the lineage of this draft, was originally conceptualized in what was probably October 2017. (I don't remember the exact date.) I don't know what happened to the draft for the next few months, but the first version of this I have access to was posted on April 18, 2018. However, I know that there were earlier versions that I have since lost, because I definitely wrote previous versions.
That being said, it's stayed very consistent to what is happening since that first revision. It's remarkable how little the draft has changed on the whole since it was initially conceptualized. The exact specifics of what occurs on the Exploration logs has been altered slightly, but it's the same overarching plot. I had always known the general gist of it - see spoilers as to what that is - down, and it's just been a long process of actually writing it all out: this did turn out to be one of my longest SCPs ever.
The most notable difference is that for a while, the final MTF to go into the cave was Omega-Seven, who would all die, with the final debriefing log held with a reincarnated Able. I decided that a MTF actually surviving for once would be stronger, however, and keep better with my personal views on the ideal theme of the Foundation (fundamentally, these are stories of the victory of the mundane over the paranormal).
All licensing disclosures in the License Box.
SCP-1444 is a sapient cave with reality-altering properties. It likes to eat people, but as a cave, is not able to easily do that.
For a long time, SCP-1444 wasn't able to get many victims. It would try to create sounds, noises, or just grab people whenever they came into the cave. As the years went on, and it got smarter, it realized that if it left one person alive, they could bring back more info about it, and lead people to itself.
It does that for a while, and is mostly successful. This is where the hiker at the beginning comes from - it tried the same trick with her, but she just led to the Foundation showing up.
When the Foundation does show up, they send a pair of D-Class in. When the D-Class get far enough into the cave that it can start altering reality, it disrupts the audiovisual feed and begins creating its own feed using its reality-altering capabilities. It successfully fakes two logs in this way - the D-Class log, and the PTF log. Neither of those happened. Notably, it wasn't good enough to hijack the life signal for one member of the PTF, leaving that around.
When the Mole Rats show up, however, they're a lot more gun than the cave was prepared for. They quickly blast their way out of cave, escaping with Crown and everyone. The cave keeps faking things as long as possible, but is then hit with Does the Black Moon Howl, which forces it to spit out a long statement describing itself. (as DtBMH is a verbal security memetic. The normal Foundation agents who heard it probably just said "No" or "Only when waning" or somesuch. It realizes the jig is up there and stops broadcasting.
- Thanks to djkaktus for both Raphael and Hollis, psul for Towers, and Quantum Physician for Francis Zhou/Oscar. Check out their original tales and SCPs!
- It's been two years since I asked any of these authors for permission to use their characters, but I did get permission from all of them, and for that I am extremely grateful.
- Monroe is meant to be the Sergeant M█████ of SCP-835, who is mentioned in all of two lines. Given that I would be backfilling the name and M's appearance in 835 is tiny, I decided not to crosslink. But that is my intent, so I suppose I should also thank DrClef and Dr Gears for that minor contribution.
- I knew very much I wanted to have my Zeta-Nine composed of other Zeta-Nine teams. What's the point of using an MTF with history if you don't use that history?
A lot of people looked at this over the many months YEARS during which it was written. Unfortunately, I did not record the majority of people who looked at this, so this list is by no means conclusive!
- Pour one out for #BrainStormers on IRC, which heard my idea out a bunch of times concerning this draft. An original version of this draft used Omega-Seven, and rather than have the MTF escape, Able reincarnated and told the truth. That was not as good of a story, imo. Taylor Itkin does not match any existing user name obviously helped, as they owned the room.
- Oboebandgeek99 looked at a rough draft of this when I revived it, when it was about halfway complete. They gave some pretty good crit that helped me finish it up.
- Pedagon gave this a look once it was finished, and helped tighten up some confusing elements of the writing, as well as minor errors I had left.
- BrokenOrdinance read one of the final drafts and gave a good first impression.
- MalyceGraves gave this a good read and helped iron out some of the less coherent parts and other minor problems with the draft caused by the long development period.
- Rounderhouse looked at this and gave it some very useful crit about the direction of the article. It was good crit, but I didn't end up using it. Apologies to rounder.
- JackalRelated shout out for asking to look this over without giving feedback when I asked for critters. i appreciate the honesty lmao