- Intro
- take your worries away
- Bubblegum Caper II
- Bubblegum Caper notes & brainstorming
- Chicago GOC vs Swine God
- The Iron Mekhanist
- The Right Side Up Boy
- Signal Tower of Saint-Inventor Chock
- Spanko v Irons
- Extradimensional Technique
- Blood Roses
- Chicago Shades - Inside Men
- Wondertainment song
- Epic Rap Battle crossover ideas
- Goodguy Daevites?
- sweet sweet meteor
This is my sandbox page for works in progress.
Other utility pages:
SCP Sandbox III: Just a placeholder that redirects here.
Authorpage: authorpage.
Topia: compost heap for cut scenes.
Topia: test page for CSS-heavy drafts.
WIP & drafts:
Bubblegum Caper II: Minzheng and Lottie head to the doc's while conversing. Doc treats the grinner mouths successfully. Minzheng rushes off to work; asks L to meet him after work at Y&S. Lottie heads out into town to look for a job, which doesn't go well. She heads to Y&S, who hire her. M arrives later that day with little sister in tow.
Bubblegum Caper notes & brainstorming: Notes and research for Bubblegum Caper, Brigham City and An8 in general. Shaggy has confirmed that LOOKING AT grinners makes the mouths sprout
Chicago GOC vs Swine God: In 1970, the Factory comes to Chicago. The GOC tries to destroy it. It does not go as planned.
Right Side Up Boy: Herman has escaped to the Library, where he meets a boy from Texas (?) whose face is currently right side up. Ask Chandra Only PeppersGhost knows Manny's backstory for sure!
The Iron Mekhanite: Explore global Mekhanism as it stood in the 19th century, the Mekhanite / Sarkic cold war behind the Civil War, Antonin3's backstory, and another perspective on the Herman Fuller saga. Work in the nameless city in the Great Dismal Swamp. Ends with Antonin3 founding an embassy in a nexus (Flipside!!) after her unit is disbanded and 070 dropped from Standard.
Signal Tower of Saint-Inventor Chock: Because finding a way to get my machine poetry onto this site would be heckin rad. Build out my headcanon that the Choralists-Faithful comprises both musical composers and radio technicians.
Spanko v Irons: Looney Tunes style caper in which Roadrunner Spanko evicts the Cherished Leaders from Brigham City. Subplot of townsfolks using dado products ordered via Anderson Express Prime in vain attempts to contain the loudbirb.
Extradimensional Technique: An anomalous jiu-jitsu hold that transports two people to a dojo safehouse for 24 hours. Fix note-at-the-end syndrome - make Rodrigo get drafted by GOC Rosicrucians instead of breaking up with Ascensión
Blood Roses: American Secure Containment Initiative finds Lucretia Fuller's signature flower at the battle site. Brainstorming alt-Lucretia futures.
Chicago Shades: Valentine's Day: Lucy, you've got some splainin to do.
Wondertainment song: Gonna try to set DarkStuff's poem to music. And record it on Audacity. And somehow upload it.
Epic Rap Battle Crossover: Damn you shoujoq for reminding me this exists
The fae emissary perched on the balcony rail, idly swinging a heel. Wind ruffled their stormcloud curls into interesting shapes, echoing the sway of treetops in the park below. "Did you ever wonder what we do with them?"
Researcher Jens looked up from her screen, blinking owlishly. Phrases like memetic transference and hypnogogic repression seemed to slide off the curves of her visitor, insubstantial as smoke by comparison. "I thought they were simply erased from the mortal's memory. Like wiping chalk marks off a blackboard."
The emissary's chuckle was dry. "Oh no. You humans do plenty of that to each other. And as you know better than most, it doesn't always work." They quirked an eyebrow.
Jens shrank in on herself for a moment. Did the fae know why she'd left Antimemetics, had leapt at this junior post as soon as it opened? Could they read minds? Spy on her dreams? Her predecessor's notes were unclear. "What… Okay. If they're not erased, then 'take your worries away' is more literal." She moved a hand vaguely, as if pulling invisible thread. "Siphon them out."
"Yes. Concentrate them. Distill them." The fae's leg stopped swinging, their dark eyes alight with something harder than mischief. "I always loved that human military proverb, 'A weapon is a device for making your enemy change their mind.' "
"Worry doesn't seem like…" Jens bit back what she'd been going to say. As a clerk just getting started at the Foundation, she'd done data entry for the logistics team that supported MTF Nu-7. The most lightly armed agents in Hammer Down carried enough ordnance to level a city block before they needed to reload. But it was terribly rude to contradict a faery, even by implication. "…it seems like a weapon that would be hard to use effectively."
"On the contrary."
The emissary's form was heavy by human standards, but their steps were quick and soundless, wide dark arms rustling like great branches in their voluminous sleeves. A fingertip hovered over Jens's forehead and she sat up, startled.
"If I may demonstrate?" Their question was a challenge, but the faery's smile was kindly. "You've got so much in there, frankly, that pruning it down a bit might do you good."
Jens blinked up at her visitor, mouth suddenly dry. The senior researcher's instructions had been many, and filled with dire warnings. Extend the fae every courtesy, agree to any reasonable request, and under no circumstances ask for the emissary's name or go with them to another location. Would the memory siphoning process give the fae access to the contents of those memories? Would Jens herself lose them? So much had been lost in the crisis at Antimemetics that the few fragments left to her were precious, however painful.
"I don't want to forget," she whispered at last.
The emissary's finger never wavered. "You won't."
"Oh. Good." She gathered her thoughts. Exact phrasing was key - the fae were as good at loopholes as the Personnel department, and had probably had more practice. "I accept your offer to demonstrate how fae take away worry by pruning out a small amount of mine."
"Offered and accepted, and so it shall be done." They pressed down.
A draught of cool flowed from the faery's fingertip through Jens' body, relaxing muscles she hadn't known were tense. The dull aching refrain of "what if they know? what if they know I know? what if they think I know they know but it's one of the things he took?" ran down slower and slower, leaving a wintry stillness in her thoughts. As if all the blood and vanishing and the suffocating guilt of it receded back behind a wall of glass laced with frost. As if she could place a hand on it, scraping the rime of ice, and stare down at the memory of the breach like a painting of a landscape far away.
"It doesn't hurt," Jens sighed and leaned back in her chair, brushing wisps of hair away from her face. She hadn't realized how much that worry had been hurting her, until it stopped.
"Of course not. I was never so clumsy." But before Jens could object that that wasn't what she'd meant, they went on, "And what is worry - the concentrated essence of worry - stripped of all the history that made it?"
It seemed obvious now. In the cold new clarity of her thoughts, Jens merely wondered how to describe it in the report. "That is… that would indeed make an excellent weapon."
"We find it so." The emissary's half-smile woke a dimple in their cheek; their fist opened to reveal a handful of dust.
Lottie wondered how long a walk it was to this doctor's office. At least they were headed downhill. The pain had steadied to a dull roar, but the feeling of teeth gnashing under her coat was not improving her mood. There was a new ache in her side that did not feel like a muscle cramp. She needed a distraction, and she needed to not think too hard about what would happen if her new friend's doctor couldn't help.
Traffic on Main Street began to appear as Brigham City woke up and headed off to work. Wagons drawn by sturdy farm horses lumbered down the center of the dirt road; the occasional steel-wheeled contraption pulled by an Anderson Prosthetics "Equus 36" clattered haughtily past them. Many were carrying hardy root vegetables, lumber or boxes of dry goods, but a surprising number held piles of what could only be manure. Some of them were still steaming.
"I never thought much about what a Mekhanist town would smell like," she remarked as they moved aside for yet another manure wagon. "But this surely ain't it."
"Most of it doesn't." Minzheng nodded back the way they'd come. "Local law, since about ten years back. Fertilizer wagons can't drive past the tabernacle."
Behind them, over on the right side of the tracks, smoke already clouded the morning sky. Red brick chimneys clustered around the tabernacle spire like fat sticks of incense. But the church itself was a skeletal, half-finished structure — a roof without walls, held up by a network of gleaming metal girders.
Here, even shops along Main Street were modest, single story affairs, though the clapboard storefronts were painted in cheerful colors and scrupulously clean. The ratio of English to Chinese characters on the signs dwindled rapidly as they hurried further downhill.
"Who builds a church without walls?" Lottie wondered aloud. "If even half of them are Mekhanist, you'd think at least one person would have the sense to make sure folks' organic parts don't freeze to death."
"You follow Mekhane?" Glancing over to make sure Lottie was following him, Minzheng lead the way down a narrow side street. Small groups of children carrying lunch pails and school bags emerged from houses up and down the street, laughing and chattering to each other in two languages at once.
"That's part of why I came out here." She hefted her pack to her left shoulder. The coat was likely to be a lost cause at this point, and she didn't want to risk the teeth growing out of her right shoulder chewing through the strap. "The idea of a place where you can just be Mekhanist, and not have to hide it or talk around it? I had to see it for myself."
"Ah," said Minzheng. He went on slowly, weighing every word as if it were a faulty component that might warp as soon as it bore weight. "Reverence for Mekhane was illegal in China for… a long time. It's only not illegal now because everyone's forgotten, or thinks it's just a myth."
"Secrets keep people alive, sometimes," Lottie said. Thinking about the order made her homesick. For a home that was gone now, the caverns long since empty, the forge cold. "What I don't understand is how the hell you shoehorn Christianity into Mekhanism. Don't they eat their god's flesh?" She shuddered.
"Symbolically, yes. The ones here do it differently." Minzheng grinned and ducked his head. "Supposedly the Christian god and Mekhane are the same god. They say their major prophet's death was how he overcame the power of flesh once and for all. And the American prophet that started this version of Christianity — you ever heard of Joseph Smith?"
Lottie shook her head. "Only from people talking about this place. Back east, I didn't get out much. And the people I did talk to had more pressing concerns."
"Well, he said an angel appeared to him with golden plates, inscribed with a new prophecy to correct the errors of the church."
"Huh. Gold, I don't get, but at least it's metal." Her brows knitted. "Minzheng, why are we stopped?"
"We're here." He turned and began to walk slowly up to knock on the door of a little shop set a few feet back from the road.
How had she not noticed the shop before? The windowless front was painted a deep, restful green. A framed tintype of a tall brass statue of St. Enrichner hung next to the door under a sign in neatly hand-painted Chinese.
As he raised his hand to knock, Minzheng belatedly realized he had no idea whether or not Dr. Sen spoke English. It had never come up before.
[Minzheng, in Chinese, introduces Lottie to the doc as a fellow believer and explains she's from a different tradition. He agrees to treat her in exchange for (later) her telling him about the beliefs of her sect. After translation, she agrees to this. Thinking it may be medically relevant, she outs herself; the doc reassures her and notes her order must have been far more competent than the MorMeks. Acupuncture needles do vibrate in tune with the tuning fork and make the growing mouths retreat. Minzheng by now has started to feel his jaw ache. The doc treats his face as well. Under steady waves of Sound the extra teeth and mouths slowly recede. The doc agrees not to tell anyone about this. Xia Mek traditions of info sec are strong. Plus Harcourt did mention that knowing about the beasts means they know about you, and all three agree minimizing the danger to the populace is paramount. Minzheng says he thinks Lottie's incredibly courageous and also incredibly reckless, and promises to help her deal with the grinners. They hold hands.]
[scene break]
After this, Minzheng asks Lottie to meet him after work at Young & Smylie's and runs off to work. (If this ends up getting moved to the next chapter, we get Minzheng's POV and a family discussion? Maybe Harcourt stops by the store?)
Lottie is walking around town later that day looking for a job and a place to stay. Lot of places with "Help Wanted" signs won't hire her — she's black, she's from back East, she's a woman who arrived in town by herself with no references, she's the wrong kind of Mekhanist, she's the other wrong kind of Mekhanist, or all of the above.
It's well after lunchtime and she's cold and hungry and thirsty and tired when she decides to go to Young & Smylie's just to get something to eat and wait out the afternoon. Dosie, who's wearing a veil, is just then struggling to put the "Help Wanted" sign on the main sign; work in a tiny bit of Clown foreshadowing. They go inside and get Lottie some lunch; she meets Juvie. Lottie says she's looking for work; Juvie says they just lost another repairs person to the Temple. The Temple pays less but there's more prestige and room for advancement. Lottie's not familiar with MorMek designs, but their developing Standard is public record. Juvie keeps copies on file.
Lottie starts working on a component right there at one of the tables, and is still at it when the after-work rush comes in. This includes Minzheng and his little sister Juli (and his mom?). We get a reaction from Squeeze (try to make this foreshadowy).
Juli is in the process of inventing photography? She's got a knack for engineering and ends up getting paid intern rates for helping Lottie out in the body shop.
Wu Xiaoping, Minzheng and Juli's mom, is super into gardening. Juvie's working with her to develop candied rose petals.
California Rose Company catalog full text 1899
The best are within the reach of all. Plant them and revel in their beauty.
No more than 4000 words each. 3000 is better.
outline
list title: I just found me a brand new box of matches
page title / url: bubblegum-caper-i
early crits from rounder, crits from DrLycus, crits promised from Chronic, crits from Chandra
Lottie gets raven. Meets Harcourt, fights grinners. Runs back to town infected. Meets Minzheng, goes to acupuncturist, gets treatment.
list title: and what he knows, you ain't had time to learn
page title / url: bubblegum-caper-ii
early crits from CaptainKirby
Lottie and Minzheng go to the doctor's. Work in the Taiping Rebellion. KrySalems: Dr. Sen "was made to be an in-universe component of the deletion process" and is "generally neutral, not malicious unless a reason is given, and is more logical than emotional." Kry says I can use him here!
Lottie gets job. Juli starts working as Lottie's apprentice.
list title: these boots are made for walkin, and that's just what they'll do
page title / url: bubblegum-caper-iii
Building contraptions. Discussion of the nature of love and Mekhanism. Brainstorms with Minzheng. Sees Dosie's lab. Explains the need for sticky explosives. At first M doesn't want to tell D what's up. D reveals she's a Clown. M tells his parents he's falling for L.
list title: one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you
page title / url: bubblegum-caper-iv
There is fire. Also, Clown violence. Also, beta testing genital compatibility. The lovebirds ride off into the sunrise. Or possibly take the train.
She frowned, ducking back behind the cairn. "So, is there a most auspicious time for a covert strike on an enemy base?"
"Uhhh… we left the astrolabe at home. And I don't remember that situation being mentioned in the Commentaries." He shrugged. "How about as soon as we're sure he's asleep?"
"The upstart quadroon and her Celestial petit-ami," Harcourt observed, his lip curling. "Perhaps he has taught you to keep secrets well enough that parts of this city will be spared."
Problem: LOOKING AT grinners makes the mouths sprout.
Solution: Only Papa Bear can do this? But even with the edge of that blunted there's another problem. Since the more you know about them, the more they know about you, and the more they know about you, the more aggressively they attempt to vore-ishly rape you… this is troublesome. I must think on it.
Change the beginning. Scrap the stealing dynamite subplot.
BC-I
Lottie gets chased by two grinners, drops boulders on one and firebombs the other. But a hand sprouts on her arm. She jams her tuning fork in under it and runs back down to the city. Thinking of stealing dynamite — there's another mouth on her back. Minzheng sees her by the train depot and convinces her to go see a Mek acupuncturist he knows. By then there are two more mouths.
BC-II
Dr. Liu uses the tuning fork to tune a bunch of acupuncture needles and flush the grinners' energy out of the flesh part of Lottie's body. Minzheng translates, helps out, and also gets treated for extra teeth of the in-mouth variety. The Sound makes them recede rather than having to be surgically removed, but it's slow and painful.
Lottie goes to Young & Smylie's and gets hired. Minzheng and his little sister Juli show up after work. Plans and foreshadowing occur.
BC-III
Utah Hunt Planner — use to figure available large game animals. Ogden national forest extends southeast of Brigham City. In the time period game would have been more plentiful. Deer, elk, pronghorn, mountain goat, black bear, cougar, geese and turkey. OOO if the first grinner was a black bear?! APT
Black Bear
Top Speed: 25 miles per hour
Maintainable Distance: 2 miles
Head Start Needed: 1,931 meters
You probably shouldn't try to outrun black bears.
Asia-home.com
1886 Thursday, February 4, 1886 Fire Dog
Wikipedia:
February 14 – The first train load of oranges leaves Los Angeles, via the transcontinental railroad.
CotBG has a religious taboo against using radioactive materials as a power source, because they were heavily employed by against the Sarkic "Deathless Empire" (Kalmaktama) by a coalition of Mediterranean countries, including the Mekhanists of the day. Mass outbreaks of terminal cancer occurred among veterans because no one knew about gamma radiation. Mediterranean Mekhanists concluded nuclear energy was cursed, not meant for mortals to use. However, the Mormon Mekhanist splinter group in 19th-century Utah is considering lifting the ban on nuclear power after discovering a rich source of uranium in the Rockies. This deepens the growing gulf between them and the established proto-Cogwork American Mekhanists based on the eastern seaboard. Both groups are going through hardass reform phases at the moment but for completely different reasons. Mormon Meks take Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection as a great trial by which he overcame the power of flesh. The more Christian aspects of this syncretic church strongly venerate St. Enrichner, and consider it equally good to renounce flesh by converting it or by striving for full immateriality.
Many Chinese immigrants who have Xia Mekhanist roots settled in Brigham City because they heard it was a Mekhanist enclave. But the Mormon Mek church barely considers them proper Mekhanists, and tolerates them with a suspicious eye. Plus the Mormon syncretism isn't super attractive to Xia Mekhanists who don't care much about Christianity one way or the other. However, St. Enrichner holds some appeal, since her teachings on transcendence bear at least a passing resemblance to Buddhism, which many of them respect.
The Xia culture was where Mekhanism first arose. Western Mekhanism took a radical turn after the Mediterranean Coalition defeated the Kalmaktama empire, which did not have much meaningful impact on the development of Mekhanism in Asia. Couple big differences. For one thing, personal transformations are rare, since after the fall of the Xia dynasty veneration of Mekhane was illegal for about a thousand years, only becoming surreptitiously legal after mainstream culture assumed it was mythological or extinct. The knowledge of how to make beryllium bronze was lost during this time period.
For another, Xia Mekhanists are basically indifferent to Sarkicism; it was just another local flavor of anomalous tribal barbarian shamanism during the Xia empire, and proto-Sarkic uprisings against the Daeva mostly happened to the north and west. They teach that Mekhane and Yaldabaoth exist in dynamic equilibrium, a balance which must be maintained in order for the universe to keep existing. Borrow here from the Liaden Universe concept of Balance and make balance a culturally weighted term for Xia Mekhanists. (I think I can do that without messing with copyright.) Where Liadens tend to focus on exacting artful social revenge for being insulted, Xia Mekhanists would view it more as a sense of appropriateness and poetic justice. The way people act towards others is the same way it's correct to treat them, like a reverse golden rule.
work this in to the Iron Mekhanist also: Finally, the group of cognition engines collectively known as the Patriarchs exist in an extradimensional space built by the Xia. Xia Mekhanists regard them with both reverence and bemusement, like a council of creaky old elders whose past accomplishments one should respect, but who are hopelessly out of touch. Their logics were designed at the height of the Xia empire and have been patched so many times they're on the verge of incoherence. Western Mekhanists, however, are awed by how ancient and venerable these devices are. They bring their most serious disputations to the Patriarchs and treat every pronouncement churned out by their beryllium bronze indicia as holy writ. (This is both a way to tweak European-descended folks' tendency to develop an embarrassing obsession with "ancient Chinese secrets," and a way to put a lampshade on how often the Cogwork Orthodoxy ends up being Lawful Stupid.)
— How do Mormon spider-bot ladies with ceramic facemasks shop for groceries?!?!
"I came to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I have an infinite supply of both!"
Set in an8. Sarkic rancher descended from French pioneers has a… bone ranch in the desert? He specializes in bone. Developed 4910 as a guard dog. He gets killed in a cowboy caper of some sort.
After Shaggy brought it up in the 4910 comment thread I looked up 1886 in regular wiki. The inaugural voyage of the transcontinental railroad (a load of oranges from California) set forth in February of that year. In short, it's a caper.
A reclusive Sarkic bone rancher plans to send his grinners to hitch a ride on the inaugural voyage of the transcontinental railroad, headed for points east. The bone rancher, Julien Harcourt, fled west from Missouri when his extended family died in a fire during a slave rebellion. He's a snooty Frenchman with a bone piano, and needs to learn better grief management skills. Made the original version of the beast from a coyote who kept stealing and eating the delicate fronds from his meat garden out back. He makes the meat sculptures look like his family as artistic monuments and treats the garden like a private graveyard, and wants everyone to simultaneously leave him alone and also bow and scrape and flatter him with how great he is. Uses his fleshcarving powers to run a trap line for furs, sells the furs in town for pocket money, statuss and the few luxuries he can't craft himself. The species of animals he traps are unusually thriving in the area because he's brushed up on older Proto-Sarkic techniques and uses them to ensure good health and fertility in the animals he doesn't kill. (Reference this in later Brigham City stories — Paiute folks in the area don't trust the condescending MorMeks and have reason to resent the USA. But Harcourt took damn good care of the land and had a plot to attack the US which are both counts in his favor from a certain point of view, so in a few years we'll start seeing Paiute boys named Julien.)
And only an American Mekhanist gal, a Chinese Mekhanist guy (and their crush on each other), a Candy Catalyst and a runaway Clown are there to stop them.
Alchemists' fire works great on the beasts but after an initial skirmish outside the town, Lottie has run out. She accidentally used up her "seed fire" in the skirmish and has neither the skill nor equipment to synthesize alchemical fire. A raven from Mitterling only arrives once a year - he sends her one annually on her Transformation Day and the most recent one just got there. (Lots of American Mekhanists celebrate the anniversary of their first metallic body modification instead of a birthday. Lottie does so for two additional reasons: 1. Her mom wan't sure of her exact birthday, 2. She's trans and was able to combine the leg installation with additional gender confirmation mods.) Town not interested in approaching threat of toothbeast horde because it sounds like a ridiculous story a kid made up cause she was caught trying to steal dynamite. Harcourt's a respected, if eccentric citizen, and one of the few people still trapping for furs up in the mountains.
In the course of blundering around town, Lottie meets and befriends Minzheng Wu. His mom and dad own a general store in town; they settled in the area after his dad came out here to work on the railroad. ("Wu's Grocery and Hardware! The freshest fruits and cleanest bolts this side of the Rockies!") Minzheng is a frequent customer at Young & Smyley's and decides to team up with Lottie to go up in the hills to take out Harcourt. They're both in their 20s and are sort of flustered by being attracted to each other. Lottie has to be minimum 26. BWCW happened in 1873 and she couldn't have been younger than 13 then, and Bubblegum Caper happens in 1886. Which means Minzheng should be around the same age; he's the eldest and mostly manages the shop for his parents but his younger siblings are old enough to take on a lot of day-to-day operations.
Lottie then tries to get a job to try to get some money to buy dynamite. She ends up working for Young & Smyley because they're the only ones who will hire a racially ambiguous girl with trousers and an attitude who is suspected of being a thief. They believe her story and offer to help; they start working on developing explosive candies while the teens young folks get together at the soda counter every day and plot tactics and contraptions. Also Juvie gives Lottie an infinite bubblegum compact as a belated Transformation Day present.
Juvie and Dosie's lab is a pocket dimension which Dosie and her Fun Lover pal Squeeze came up with. Squeeze and Dosie escaped from the Circus together; Squeeze is pretty shy but they like to play around in the big fancy soda fountain in the window, especially during business hours, because people having fun perks them right up. Townsfolk think Squeeze is an optical illusion or some sort of magic-candy effect and they're ok with that. Squeeze is more scared than Dosie of being recaptured by the Circus because pretty much the only person having fun was Fuller, and trying to subsist off that kind of fun does unpleasant things to a Fun Lover's personality.
At some point have Dosie and Lottie have a conversation about the nature of love. Juvie's grey-ace and biromantic, used to be married (husband died in the war). Dosie's full ace. The heart of their partnership is creative collaboration; when they're in the laboratory inventing things together is when they connect the most on an emotional level. ("And isn't that making love? People opening up to each other to bring some good magic into the world, something wonderful that didn't exist before?") (Although Squeeze has observed that when humans enthusiastically agree to do sexy things together, they do have quite a lot of fun.) Dosie can mention she feels bad cause humans don't get to choose what they look like, and Lottie confides that she did. Her legs got messed up during the uprising at the plantation she grew up on. When Antonin3 asked permission to replace the broken legs with iron ones, Lottie told Antonin3 she's a girl, ended up accidentally choosing her new name, and wanted to make sure the installation took care of a few other changes too. ("Antonin3 said, anyone who tries to look under your pants without permission deserves to be kicked. Hard. And anyone who deserves to have permission will appreciate that that's you." She was talking about the metal but I authorially mean it as a general rule.)
After the caper itself, Lottie writes back (and sends the letter and some candy samples via Anderson Prime). In An8, the use of alchemy wasn't added to the Book of Errors for another three years past the end of the Boy Who Cried Wolf cycle. So Lottie and Mitterling worked together for much longer before Mitterling got excommunicated and took on his full-time job at MC&D.
Dear Uncle Helmut. Me and my friend Minzheng blew up a Sarky's house today. We made all our own site prep off-bench and my bosses at Young & Smyley's cooked up some candy bombs. I feel like Antonin3 would be proud even tho we used a lot of sugar which might be a kind of flesh I guess. It burns real good tho. I wish the Order were still together, Minzheng would have wings like, yesterday. Smyley says she'll help me with writing more "proper" which I think you will like cause you always said an inventor can't just use numbers all the time. Miss you & hope the alchemy engine is runnin smooth these days. P.S. Tell Zeke I said sorry but I think his books all burned up too. Me and Minzheng are gonna go see if any are left but they'll probly be real sticky.
Juvenilia Darling (works for Dr. Wonder, has candymaking powers) and Ayn Eudocia Stein (Clown), confectioners and thaumaturgical scholars. Own Young & Smylie's in Brigham City.
According to Hume FAQ Part 2, mountainous terrain on Earth has naturally higher Hume levels, which makes reality bending more difficult. Since Clowns and Fun Lovers are essokinetic reality benders, their powers are harder to use in mountainous environments. Dosie and Squeeze specifically wanted to live in the mountains for this reason, to make it less likely that the Circus would look for them or successfully capture them. Juvie suggested Brigham City because of its proximity to the railroad, and thus ease of shipping their products to more markets. (Ask rounderhouse why rounderhouse wouldn't say why he had Samsara hunting Dr. Wonder in his An8 tale, but did mention Wonder fled the Wonder Factory in Kentucky after it was destroyed. So it would make sense that Juvie would also be hiding out. If Dr. Wonder dies, who's the new Wondertainment in the An8 canon timeline? I don't know so neither will Juvie. See if DarkStuff knows DarkStuff says his An8 Dr. Wonder during the 1880s is a black guy whose last name is Williams, and if I can flesh him out a bit that'd be a cool boost to his canon. Ideas: He's bald and wears fancy lorgnettes with color changing lenses, and sports a variety of different fantastical hats. His name is William William Williams, aka Willy Bill Wonder, aka Dr. WWWWonder!)
Promontory Summit is 51 km west and slightly north from Brigham City. The tent city was mostly dismantled within a year of the railroad's completion in 1869.
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3077
found a good sciencey article about horses' carrying capacity in real life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquorice_(confectionery)#Red_liquorice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twizzlers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarelly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/nature/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_Utah (dynamite made here is shipped to mines elsewhere in the state)
Mekha-mormon ladies could totes have had aluminum legs as symbols of their husbands' social status:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium
Swine god backstory: rounder says he wants the Swine God's origin to be standalone. Therefore, get rid of the Factory / pataphysical Robber Baron aspect of this. He also said this takes place in 1965. That's perfect.
Lucinda "Lucy" Danforth (fka Lucretia Fuller) came to Chicago in the 40s to invest in the meat packing industry. Danforth Meatpacking was modestly profitable, with one location specializing in pork and another in veal. As the meatpacking industry begins to leave major cities, Lucy sells off the veal business and begins shopping for buyers for the pork processing equipment and the building. Her 11th husband, Rudyard Danforth III, member in good standing of the Masonic Lodge / OTO, thinks Lucy's mother was the one who bought the meat-packing plants and that Lucy is in her early 20s. He's in his early 50s; she's his third wife. The Danforths return from a long 5th anniversary vacation in Europe and arrange a tour of the facility with Lucy's real estate agent. They arrive to find that everyone is dead. Lucy is pissed, but knows something spooky is afoot and knows better than to fuck with it herself. Charles tells her not to worry about a thing. He assembles a GOC strike team to evict the fiery metal menace from the premises.
Lucy comes back a day or so later to check up on them, and meets Charles as he's coming up the elevator, about to dash outside and go look for a sacrifice. She reacts as though he's cheating on her, and their conversation follows the standard breakup-argument pattern. In the course of the argument she pulls her holkost out of Charles, pulls out and does spot repairs on a recently-consumed person (comatose, but still alive) for him to use as a sacrifice, internally maims both Charles's knees so he can't walk and sends them back down the elevator shaft while crying. She heads to the nearest payphone and calls Eddie Burke, then takes a cab home.
The GOC strike team was a combination of local real estate moguls and high ranking CPD officers, mostly OTO but a few Taxists. The GOC decides to wash their hands of the thing — their best wizards were not able to destroy it and none of the factions are willing to send personnel powerful enough to deal with it given the high likelihood of losing them. So Eddie instructs some of his guys in the CPD to tip off their Foundation counterparts. Containing it is the next best thing to destroying it. Coincidentally, the guys who died in the factory were also the ones standing in Eddie's way; he wanted the Taxists to exploit the CPD's activities to harvest magical energy and souls and corpses in a more organized way. His faction rises to prominence just in time to start using the drug wars as a way to expand their power base.
Lucy realizes her caution was warranted, though she's incredibly disappointed to have lost a promising spouse before she was done with him. Especially since someone else got to eat him, that part sticks in her craw. She reinvents herself as a randy young widow and becomes super popular with the OTO.
Prototypes:
Antonin3 first came up through the Iron Brotherhood in London but wrangled a transfer to the Inventors-Faithful and got herself a quest. She did this both because that's where her talent and interest lay, and because the IB was still parochially British enough to be pretty racist, which limited her opportunities for advancement. Got one hand and both legs from them and anomalous cast iron is her comfort zone. Her parents were West African Mekhanists; the Broken God is revered there and considered female. Artifacts of the Broken God were discovered and used to develop anomalous iron forging in the modern-day Central African Republic around 2000BCE. Wikipedia: Iron working in Africa.
She took her first subordinate leadership position after returning, on a secret ironclad project under Chesapeake Bay. Almost immediately on arriving, she disliked the Fabricator's methods and took to working on reverse engineering 070 as a side project.
(070 is based off an ancient Mekhanite artifact she discovered; quest was to recover any salvageable tech from the tail end of the Mediterranean coalition's war against Kalmaktama, the Sarkic "Deathless Empire." Another thing she discovered on quest: Xia Mekhanists had a "dynamic equilibrium" view of Mekhane and Yaldabaoth. The apocalyptic demonization of Sarkicism was M-Coalition war propaganda that was taken too seriously by Western Mek historians.)
When the ironclad is destroyed in a clash with the Guild, she requests permission from the Inventor-Legate to start her own project and excavate the Fairfax site. So this tale has to take place no later than the mid 1850s.
The Fabricator in charge of the ironclad project meant to use the Civil War as a coming-out party and say "look here, the Broken God is better than all you guys, you should turn into machines and stop making war." By proving they could do better war than anyone else. Instead they pissed off people from both sides by recapturing already-captured people, transmogrifying them against their will, and using them for a violent purpose which hadn't yet been revealed.
Fabricator uses shipyard personnel and recovered equipment to build hybrid holkoi/wolves. The ironclad is designed to deploy them as shock troops while providing artillery support. Unfortunately, as with The Iron Wolf, they stole transmogrified people who had been enslaved by Sarkics and repurposed them by incorporating the organics wholesale into basic mechwolf designs.
Antonin3 puts the 070 prototype on the shelf for awhile and builds herself arms with a core of wires attuned according to St. Chock's table of holy vibration. She has an ongoing feud with the Fabricator and both tend to express their disagreements through design. She believes it should be possible — should be a priority — to separate out Sarkic work from vanilla organics, to make way for the salvageable organics to be properly replaced with nice, clean metal. This is when she becomes friends with Darius, who's attached to the project as comms officer. By this time CotBG has discovered, and uses, AM radio waves. The Chorists-Faithful (technically a subsidiary order under the authority of the Schematists-Faithful) comprise composers and radio technicians, with most members dabbling in a bit of both.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-680
Page 283 of the guild ledger
Excavations:
The Legate-Inventor, after consulting with the Legate-Schematist, arranged for a mining crew headed for the Appalachians to stop along the way and use the excavation of Antonin3's subterranean facility as a training exercise. She's made her first four-person wing of 070-wearers, and to get out of the mining Fabricator's way, they go on an exploratory scouting mission in Georgia. They find a Sarkic slave trader (figure out how to reveal he's Josef Volkus's uncle) on his way to market and blow him up with dynamite. Doris is one of the people rescued by this and demands to join Antonin3's outfit. Antonin3 realizes that with this operational strategy, both her ethical and personnel shortage issues are solved. Doris has also heard of the existence of the nameless city, and says other freed people plan to escape there. But she wants to fight.
Intercut with flashbacks to her quest and meditation on the Daevite Wars, re: shifts in religious and social dominance and methodology across the millennia. Lampshade the Mekhanist taboo against the use of nuclear power.
Exhausted Seams:
Port the servants' subplot from Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Having successfully assassinated most slave-owning Sarkics in the US, Antonin3 and her crew hand overwhelming losses to Adytum's Wake in an ambush in late 1873. Their use of alchemy in addition to machinery, however, has generated significant conflict among the Legates, and bringing Mitterling into the operation didn't help the case. However, from the Legate-Militant's perspective their achievements were so admirable that failing to reward them would be a serious error. As a compromise, Antonin3's mission is declared a success and commended, but the unit is disbanded and the re-engineered 070 design will not be Standardized. Antonin3 is instructed to found a Cogwork embassy in a dimensional nexus. She is to select a small personal guard from her former command and accept additional support staff provided by the Legate-Inventor.
Guild ledger followup: Guild agents discover Antonin3's facility after her unit has pulled out of it, but before the Legates have decided what else to install in its place. It is heavily implied that this facility will become a major Foundation site when the various containment organizations of the time period join forces to form the modern Foundation. Maybe cut forward to present day to cement this. Could be Site-17 or Site-76 (76 seems better flavor-wise).
Material regretfully cut from "Boy Who Cried Wolf" cycle should be introduced in Exhausted. It's been ported to my Sandbox III under the "boy who cried wolf cycle previous drafts and notes" tab.
Flipside: Antonin3's embassy (is she Antonin4 by the modern era due to head / torso mod?)
I dunno if I even can do this. This is very much PeppersGhost's narrative territory. Herman has to have a reason to come back to this universe and stick around. He's gotta meet Manny out in the planes, where Manny has some kind of dread encounter that leaves him in the state he's been for most of the canon. Mentoring Manny is the most positive human relationship Herman has throughout the rest of his life and it changes him for the better, even if the change doesn't stick.
The boy curled up, sobbing, clutching his upside-down face. "It took my name! It took my name!! I'm a monster!"
"Kid, I'm a monster. When I was your age, everyone I knew was either a monster or spent their whole lives wishing they were dead." He thought of Sarah, her eyes glinting like knives in the moonlight. "Or plotting revenge."
Herman hunkered down beside the weeping child, and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "Listen. This is important." He gave him a little shake. "All right?"
The boy lowered his hands with a sniffle, and nodded once. Herman pinned his upside-down eyes with a serious stare.
"It tried to eat you, and all right, so it got a piece of you on the way down. But you ate it instead. You know what that makes you?"
Small shake of the head.
"A winner."
"One freak is a laughingstock. Two freaks are a menace. Three freaks… is a circus.
Just make it an SCP whose location has yet to be determined. May be hosted in multiple locations. Some kinda hacking program uploads and downloads sound and text files to and from wide variety of locations. A few have been intercepted. Maxwellist thing.
Research / potential crosslinks:
All articles tagged with poetry
Poem at the beginning is a hunt calibration canticle
The Iron Wolf
Poem is a mytho-historic epic
Of Dragons and Serpents
2307 - The Pen Is Mightier villainelle about the BG's stylus
Arbitrary Darkness
Note: Roadrunner Spankoflex vs The Hungry Irons will probably have to be a separate story from Lottie & Friends vs Grumpy Boneface. There is no way to easily do both in under 5000 words.
Spanko v iron title lyric: you're hard to get to know, but you're easy to spot in a crowd (TMBG, you're on fire)
(save this one for later An8 tale about the anomalous poetry collective, Are We Sublime?) — applause applause applause: title lyrics, no gold, no gifts, no hugs — we only want applause OR the vacant concert hall is full in the retelling
note to self: see if daveyoufool is still active
Roadrunner Spankoflex: stranglefruits substitutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadrunner
Northern Utah is pretty far north for a greater roadrunner, but Dr. Spanko is a) sapient, b) anomalously fast, c) fuck you he does what he wants he's Dr. Spanko.
Story opens with Roadrunner Spankoflex confronting a Likeness on the dirt road leading to Brigham City. The Likeness morphs into a period-appropriate cast-iron iron (unnecessary, Mekhanists in town make advanced appliances not anachronistic) lets out a hiss of steam and vibrates menacingly. Spankoflex cusses it out, shattering it into innumerable pieces. Spankoflex pecks up the pieces off the road with indignant rapidity, gives a triumphant CACK! and dashes off into the distance, making a small sonic boom.
Dr. Roadrunner Spankoflex appears to be menacing the town. Most residents are rushing around in a panic trying to figure out how to stop him or protect themselves from him. What the readers will know, and the townsfolk will not, is that Spankoflex's VERY LOUD perambulations are in fact protecting them and the An8 universe at large from the Cherished Leaders. The hungry irons have only just noticed this version of the universe and are trying to slide their way into it. Likenesses keep randomly appearing in out-of-the-way places where an unsuspecting person with lovely fresh skin might pick them up and use them. Roadrunner Spanko may or may not be aware of the beneficial consequences of his actions. Roadrunner Spanko is actively hunting the irons, and tricks the townsfolk who are hunting him into destroying a whole bunch of them. Furthermore, the irons are frequently stymied by the fact that a significant proportion of the townsfolk are Mekhanists. Those who are fully or partially Standardized aren't susceptible at all. Anomalous metal bodies can be damaged and the inhabitant is aware of the damage, but they don't feel pain like organic bodies do. Play up the Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote references - watch some Looney Tunes (for research!). The townfolk are the ones who keep ordering supplies from dado, using a special telegraph machine that appeared one day in the local post office that only prints in lowercase. "u trust dado telegram yes. very fast delivery with anderson prime." Anderson Prime is a Pony Express which uses proprietary cybernetic centaurs. dado's contraptions are elaborately effective in some ways but disastrously fail in others. Each failure manages to destroy more irons whilst leaving the townsfolk, and Roadrunner Spanko, unscathed.
The combination of supersonic murderbird and frustratingly non-scaldable townsfolk hand the irons overwhelming losses for no net benefit. They decide to retreat to other, less troublesome dimensions. For now.
Tale ends with Smyley (Dr Stein) remarking on a story of local interest in the Daily Wanderer. Juvenilia: "I'd send him a kilo of liquorice and a thank you note if only he had an address!"
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Primary containment focuses on surveillance of all martial arts organizations in São Paulo, Brazil, both formal and informal, for evidence of any individuals with knowledge of SCP-XXXX. Members of such clubs who are found to have vanished or gone "off-grid" are to be monitored more closely. If it is discovered that any two individuals have vanished at the same time for a period of approximately 24 hours, these individuals should be detained for questioning as potential persons of interest. Agents should attempt to ascertain how such individuals learned of SCP-XXXX, and whether they have any current or prior affiliation with the Serpent's Hand. (See Document SCP-XXXX-1A.) Individuals with no other relevant knowledge are to be amnesticized and released.
Secondary containment efforts focus on suppressing knowledge of SCP-XXXX, and obstructing the conditions under which it can be re-discovered by accident. An initiative on the part of the city government to license and standardize martial arts clubs, particularly those teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu, is being covertly funded.
Foundation webcrawlers will monitor the internet for any video, photographic or verbal descriptions of the technique. Such files may be deleted or altered at researchers' discretion to prevent the possibility of transmitting knowledge of SCP-XXXX. Individuals found to have uploaded such content should be detained for questioning with the same protocol as above.
SCP-XXXX's anomalous properties may be activated by any two individuals physically capable of performing it. However, SCP-XXXX events have only been observed to occur within the São Paulo city limits.
Description: SCP-XXXX is a kinetoglyph which must be performed by two individuals working in collaboration; it superficially resembles a jiu-jitsu submission hold. It transports both individuals engaged in it into SCP-XXXX-1, described below. After 24 hours, both participants are returned to the point of activation, or the nearest available open space if that location is obstructed.
Foundation analysts consider SCP-XXXX from a martial arts standpoint to be inefficient, demonstrating poor understanding of both Brazilian jiu-jitsu and human anatomy.1 Proper execution of the technique requires at least one participant to be double-jointed in at least one elbow, or be willing to dislocate their elbow in the process.
Addendum, SCP-XXXX-1:Researchers have successfully entered SCP-XXXX-1 through use of the kinetoglyph. It is currently believed that SCP-XXXX-1 is located in an extradimensional space. Its form is that of an enclosed a two-story building, in an architectural style consistent with those commonly found in São Paolo in the mid-20th century. Removing any portion of the walls reveals a view into a dimly lit exterior in which thick grey fog obscures visibility. Despite the lack of physical obstructions, neither objects nor energy2 have been able to exit SCP-XXXX-1 in this manner.
The first floor is a martial arts training hall, approximately 300m x 200m; the floor is covered in 5cm thick rubber matting. On one of the shorter walls, two framed black-and-white portraits are mounted in crude wooden frames: one of Carlos Gracie3 and one of an unidentified woman with Eurasian features. A stairwell along the opposite wall sides leads up to the second floor, which is set up as a small two-room apartment, including bathing and cooking facilities and an area which appears to have been used for sleep and study. The water that runs from the taps is drinkable, though its source has not yet been identified.
Objects worn or carried by persons engaged in SCP-XXXX are transported into SCP-XXXX-1 along with them. Any person who has been inside SCP-XXXX-1 for 24 hours will return to their point of departure as described above; attempts to alter this time frame have been unsuccessful. Objects worn or carried by persons within SCP-XXXX-1 at the time of their departure return with them in the same manner.
Based on the items found on the second floor, SCP-XXXX-1 does not seem to have been in use since the early 1980s.
Document SCP-XXXX-1A: This recovered document consists of a small cardboard-bound notebook with a number of undated entries handwritten in Portugese; "Diário de Ascensión BERTO NÃO OLHE!!"4 is written on the flyleaf. It appears to provide a partial record of SCP-XXXX-1's construction and the likely origin of SCP-XXXX. A timeline of events described in the diary follows.
[I can't do diary entries. It would be too long and sound weird. A and R start dating but their visits are heavily supervised, so there are few chances for him to teach her jiu-jitsu without it being interpreted as sexual. he's Carlos Gracie's grandson; on a visit to his grandfather's house A becomes interested in the books of Rosicrucian magic collected there. (CG was really into Rosicrucianism, historical fact.) A starts scheming on a magical way to go to a private place where she can really learn. she ropes her older sister Beatrice into helping her. when she finally manages to create SCP-XXXX (and -1), the space is totally blank at first. B helps her find more books and helps her brainstorm - A created the space and only she can alter it, though B learns to do other things. when A finally takes R there, he freaks out and calls her a witch and breaks up with her. she is devastated. soon after, she meets a woman, LS, who praises her skill, and warns her that her actions have become visible to other occultists. LS goes to -1 with A and begins to teach her actual martial arts. when B is kidnapped by operatives of the GOC, LS tells A how she can escape to the Library.]
Notes:
An anomalous martial arts hold which translocates two individuals to an abandoned dojo in a pocket dimension. They reappear in the location from which they vanished after 24 hours.
Things to research: Where and when would this dojo have been constructed? the furnishings in the pocket dimension should give clues to its origin
The martial arts hold should be based on jiu jitsu or judo, not be too specifically described (unless I can ask Kyle for notes), but require the person performing it to be double jointed in at least one arm.
Gotta be Euclid due to possibility of someone reproducing it by accident. However trained martial arts experts should be quoted as saying it's "a terrible idea" when the technique is viewed without knowledge of the anomaly.
Gracie family
http://reylsongracie.tripod.com/family.htm#
Carlos Gracie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Gracie#Family
Alas unavailable biography
https://www.amazon.com/Carlos-Gracie-Creator-Fighting-Dynasty/dp/0578150107/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Favelas in the 70s
https://observasp.wordpress.com/2016/11/11/entrevista-com-suzana-pasternak-desmistificar-o-olhar-sobre-as-favelas/
Favelas in the 50s and onwards
http://fragasociologo.blogspot.com/2011/03/as-favelas-novas-perspectivas.html
It was page 285 of the Guild ledger
On the battlefield. Flesh. Release pheromones and immunosuppressants. Discovered by the American Secure Containment Initiative in 1880.
Lucretia first created these as a memorial to her mother and their fallen allies in the midnight raid in The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Part "honoring fallen kin" and part "ha ha motherfuckers I'm alive and you're all my cultivars now." They become her signature flower. Implanted holkost which ride in the bodies of people she has under her sway often have this as their base form, and revert to it if she removes them. However, the implanted versions are more likely to boost victims' immune systems and general health.
Followup: Do an End of Death canon tale in which Lucretia founds the Empire Sub Rosa. (Genesis 32:26 motherfuckers!) She creates children who are its rulers, known as Royals. The Royals form a council, electing one of their members as Prime Karcist every ten years. They have excellent diplomatic relations with other Sarkic nations around the world (Europe, Russia, those guys near the Philippines, those guys in Africa — crosslink the heck out of this). That leaves Lucretia free to stay in the background and do whatever the fuck she likes as largely-absentee Empress. Her visits are known to be chaotic events. Sometimes she brings new Royals she's educated or strikes down existing Royals who displease her, or both. There is a small but persistent rumor that if the current Royals ever rebel against her or forget their fealty, she will return and level everyone without blessing them.
ESR becomes a cultural and economic powerhouse in EoD. The Royals vow to bless all their subjects with the cessation of consciousness once a given subject's body ceases to function. Their most dire punishment is banishment, with a mark placed on the banished person, indicating the Empire will punish anyone who grants cessation of consciousness to the exile. Their second most dire punishment is to integrate the person's body into the structure of the courthouse without blessing them first. The person will suffer, but will continue to perceive their surroundings, and exist in the knowledge that they serve the Empire now as they failed to do while functional. So even that is considerably better than the standard default end-state for most people in the EoD canon.
The Empire also accepts, and blesses, fallen and nonfunctional people from outside their borders. The kingdom becomes a site of pilgrimage for people who want to release their fallen loved ones from suffering. Prime Karcist Nici even works out a treaty with a nearby chapter of the CotBG. The Cogworks can try to proselytize to people who are still alive and functional; those who choose to join the Cogworks can get nice metal bodies whose consciousness can be switched off. But anyone whose flesh is fallen or anyone who chooses the Empire is the property of the Royals, to use as they see fit and bless when they cease to be useful.
Thorn Valley: a Nexus springs up on the outskirts of the imperial capital, Lucretian. It began as a tent city for pilgrims hoping to have their dead blessed or be blessed themselves. Enterprising thaumaturges started offering Way generation to other, death-having parts of the multiverse.
Ambrose Thorn Valley is founded when word of the boomtown reaches 3Ports. Menu features human meat, animal meat and a small non-flesh section geared to wanderers.
part I - A Real Mensch
(Based on the true story!) Paul, dad, the judges, and a couple GOC guys are sitting around having a friendly but somber lunch, consoling elderly judge ??? on the loss of his wife after a 60 year marriage. A young hotshot prosecutor OTO guy comes in and starts telling a tasteless NSFW story. Dad gives him the "real mensch" spiel and he slinks off. Judge ??? (who's one of like, a half dozen legit Gematria guys in the Chicago GOC) gets brief, sardonic amusement which takes the edge off his mourning for a minute. Paul draws dad aside after lunch and asks him about Milos. Yep, Milos is GRU-P. Paul calls the home office from a payphone and goes off to hunt the guy down. Boss values initiative.
part II - In Distress
The subway scene. Milos doesn't realize he's being followed; he's just met his contact and is feeling smug on the way back to his safe house. Paul thinks he's gonna be easy pickings. Once Milos gets off the train he sees Lucy being very alone and looking very defenseless, and gives chase. She runs down the tunnel; Paul goes around the other way, thinking he's likely to get to play hero, and emerges just in time to see Lucy playing with her food. "I do so love hot-blooded men." He starts balancing a knife by the tip on his finger so as not to have to watch too closely. She finishes up, is surprised he hasn't run away screaming, and comes onto him, oozing across the ceiling over a passing train. "Won't you come to dinner with me?" "If I'm not mistaken, ma'am, you've already eaten." She's got a plus one for a GOC charity gala (ok officially some business development council, whatever) in a couple of days and presses the invitation into his hand.
part III - By Any Other Name
Paul gets back to HQ and Boss smells something is up. He immediately quarantines Paul and one of their in-house magicians does a cleansing. Tiny blood roses burst out of his skin and eyes and mouth and incinerate themselves against the protective circle. Boss puts the magician to work on a magical skin shield and orders Paul to go to the goddamn party.
Set in the 80s. Paul Zayas, manager for the Shades' network of "inside men", meets Lucinda "Lucy" Danforth (fka Lucretia Fuller). He works out a deal with her on behalf of the gang, and the two are briefly involved in an ill-advised affair.
The deal: She's their "inside man" with the GoC. She also supplies them with pure neurochemicals and custom untraceable poisons. The various neurochemicals are a big hit with the rave scene and the punk scene and the street gangs. The poisons, ironically, open up a new market of mid-level Masons eager to dispose of business rivals or vent personal grudges. They pay her in people (yes, literally, she eats people and likes to play with her food) and intelligence.
Paul: based on irl Paul aka "The Mole." He leverages his personal charm, stealth skills, deep familiarity with Chicago's network of underground tunnels and high natural cognitive resistance to effectively manage Chappell's "inside men" with all the other GoIs in the area. He has one regular contact who is a shaman (based on irl Ankh). Though Ankh is known for charmed incenses and oils, the two mostly deal in intelligence and abstract discussions of magical theory. Via Ankh, Paul is able to publicly claim to be a Santero (as discussed below) for the purposes of interfacing with the GoC, which will come in very handy when he and Lucy start dating. His UIU contact is named Mr. E and will be based on dad. Include as much irl dad-being-a-spook stuff as possible. Chainsmoking, cover identity as a salesman, gift of gab, mustache, gregarious, always meeting people in restaurants, whole nine yards. Heck if it's 1983 he can be all proud that he just had a second daughter. :3 Thus, when Paul meets Lucy and learns that she's got an in with the GoC, they HAVE to start spending time together, as Chappell hadn't previously been able to get anybody in with the suspicious and perceptive wizards.
"Lucy": She's a respected society maven and high level OTO camp follower. She has no magical ability by their standards (and is careful not to do any Type Red stuff where they can see it) but is highly sought after as a companion for sex magic rituals. Thus, her collection of OTO genetic material is nonpareil: she'll be able to create as many magicians as she damn well pleases when appropriate circumstances arise. She has a secret hideout in the sewers under the Lyric Opera building. Directly under her little brother's hidden necromancy theater. You can only get to her hideout either from below, via the sewer itself, or through the river. A lot of Hermetic Order guys (yeah, in this era, they're mostly guys) have offices in the building and it's warded to shit, but the wards a) don't protect from things that are already inside and Herman's workshop predates them, b) aren't looking too closely at the drains. Anybody who decides to get suspicious and look for something down there would find the theater first, because once you get past all the wards it has a massive, complicated thaumic signature. She's essentially hiding a flute solo under the sound of a thrash metal band. Very few magicians can detect the echo of the theater. Since it's full of necromancy and Ways and Mek-style devices, the few high ranking GOC guys who can perceive it think it's a member of another faction dabbling in something he's technically not allowed to, and leave it alone out of professional courtesy.
The affair: Paul first met Lucy while pursuing a mid-level dealer who was secretly an agent of the GRU-P. He sees her eat him and is impressed. She comes on to him. He has enough of a sense of self-preservation to set up a meeting between her and his boss, and in the meantime scour the city for some kind of a functional magical prophylactic to keep himself in one piece and (mostly) remain outside of Lucy.
Spoiler: it only partly works, and she's amused enough by his ingenuity to only do… something else. Yes I know what the thing is. He doesn't find out for another two years. Lucy does, at that point, have some 'splainin to do. But when he goes down to her hideout to confront her, she's left a garden of blood roses and "Au revoir mon cher XOXO" scrawled in blood across the wall. The door opening trips a small contraption that causes a disco ball in the ceiling to light up and start spinning, and a boombox to start playing a cassette tape of "Thank You (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)" by Sly and the Family Stone.
The economy: The Shades's focus in this era is on the smuggling and sale of magic, drugs, and magical drugs. They themselves use cutting edge 80s technology and paratech to organize their operations, and have a strict "only weed and alcohol" policy for their members. They have a treaty with the Latin Kings and draw rank-and-file operatives primarily from its membership. Mr. Night hit on this method after realizing it'd be a great way to get personnel who already understand how to keep their mouths shut, know how to fight and are willing to do so, and are deeply familiar with local geography.
The Boss is a local who used to be a low-level security officer for MC&D (and got that job, ironically, to get away from local gang violence). They spent the 70s building the Shades into Marshall's go-to contractors for cleanup crew, routine surveillance and certain categories of competitor elimination within the greater Chicagoland area — work that requires competence and discretion but for one reason or another is best not handled by the firm itself. They have a standing arrangement whereby MC&D fences stolen anomalous goods for them for a standard cut of the profits. MC&D also works with the GoC, who both officially condemns the firm and secretly relies upon them for hard-to-get spell components and research documents. In the late 70s and early 80s, the Shades have branched out into bulk suppliers of a variety of anomalous drugs. They supply the dealers who supply the dealers, and are very careful not to have direct contact with users. Their internal anti-drug-use policies are anomalously enforced.
Their main antagonists are the GoC, who want to shut them down and kill them all for the unauthorized use and spread of magic and magical objects. Even though the GOC would rather get to the clients themselves, the security company is more visible, both magically and organizationally, than their clients.
In Chicago, the GOC's four best represented local factions are the Hermetic Order, the OTO, the Rosicrucians and the Taxists.
The HO is more old money, ritualistic, chiefly concerned with politics and business. They're stuffed-shirt neoliberals and kind of clueless about dealings on the street. The Rosicrucians are more hands-on and have a lot of involvement with local religious organizations. They sometimes work with the SCP Foundation to keep anomalous things away from the general public, for good or ill. There is a smaller faction of Chinese alchemists, but even the Chicago-born ones have more to do with their colleagues overseas than the overwhelmingly Anglo GOC chapter; they most often work with the Rosicrucians on anomalies in Chinatown and to a lesser extent other Asian immgrant areas.
The OTO are the magic-using subset of the Masons, with the Masonic orders mostly being small businessmen who don't do actual magic. OTO guys are sex magicians and big in the real estate industry. They regard the Masonic order fondly, but consider them serfs. Which is ironic given the Masons' secret charter centers on the obliteration of aristocracy.
Though they butted heads a lot in the 50s and 60s, the OTO's biggest ally in the 80s is a faction of Hecate-worshipping necromancers, the Order of Taxus (aka Taxists). This includes Eddie Burke and whoever was the head of CPD in those days. They are all-male and celibate and they despise the majority-female Wiccans. Higher ranking members tend to be white guys involved in the courts system and law enforcement; elected officials are rare. Lower ranking members are racially diverse and tend to be either police officers or involved with law enforcement or the legal system in some other capacity. Cop Taxists mostly use their powers to get confessions ghosts to rat out their living friends. The OTO also has a presence in the legal system, more on the corporate and real estate law side. The Taxists definitely consider the rise of block clubs and community solidarity blunting the edge of pervasive gang violence to be a threat to their operations. They tell themselves, and others who know of their existence, that the sacrifice of a small segment of the population for the benefit of the majority is for the greater good. Homan Square exists, and is used specifically for blood magic and turning their unfortunate victims into undead minions.
The Shades' main competitors in drugs used to be the Latin Kings, but they've recently worked out an agreement. Shades handle anything anomalous, Kings handle anything traditional; they've traded people back and forth to beef up one another's security. Kings do most of the street-level distribution while Shades provide intelligence, trainers and scouts. It's understood, but not spoken of, that the "traded" people are also there to help make sure the agreement is honored and will continue reporting to their respective "former" higher-ups.
There are also random elements.
FIT IN Dr. Mǒqù Sen SOMEWHERE.
There's a loose, unaffiliated network of mostly-black street shamans, who deal in minor anomalous objects and charms and divination advice. Many of them are charlatans — and all of them pretend to be charlatans. However, a handful are quite powerful, and very few people know which ones they are. Folks in danger from the CPD rely on these guys to help avoid getting killed or worse. The Shades use some of these shamans (mostly the charlatans, or so they assume) as local dealers, while those who don't want to be involved with the gang tend to be good at staying under their radar, just as they do for everyone else.
Santerians exist, but are only nominally members of the GoC. A small group of Santeros jumped through exactly enough hoops to make sure the organization would certify them and leave them alone. Many of the abovementioned street shamans publicly claim to be Santeros. Since the Santerians have a policy of never responding to inquiries into its membership by anyone, this is impossible to verify. It's a procedural loophole that many different people exploit for many different reasons.
Minor, but key in the areas where they move, is the Discordian Society. They've been provisionally accepted for membership in the GoC after almost twenty years of rejected applications, but the GoC still thinks they're losers with no actual magical ability. Which is true for the vast majority. Some, however, have effectively developed psionic and memetic powers with really oddball effects. These happily plant mixtures of truth and fabrication and trollish rumors among all sides, for the delight of their goddess. No one trusts them or takes them seriously, but most people end up dealing with them eventually because there's usually a small grain of something useful underneath all the dadaist obfuscation. They hate Directorate K and consider the Directorate to be their nemesis. They also severely dislike the Foundation and think the rest of the GoC are a bunch of self-important sticks-in-the-mud. They think the Shades are pretty neat and will happily work with them, not that this is actually helpful most of the time.
Wiccans are part of the GoC but tend to focus on charity and environmental work in their magical practice. They also handle the bulk of administrative duties for the GoC. Most of them hate the necromancers, severely dislike OTO and the Hermetic Order and grumblingly respect but disagree with the Rosicrucians.
Satanists and Theosophists exist. However, the few individuals who do have something anomalous up their sleeve are exceptions to the rule. Their contacts, if any, would be with the Horizon Initiative through one of the mainstream religions. The HI does have a presence in Chicago but aren't part of this story.
Armored truck of ironic larceny:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1492
Mariachi's Merchants (GOOD item list):
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-4799
1920s Spirit gambling guy, Sarkically / magically pwned:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-4146
(Related: - 4146 inspiration, Dallas Genoard in a barrel
Hermetic Order in an 001:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/spikebrennan-s-proposal
Minor GoIs (Proasek's sandbox):
http://firedawnfolder.wikidot.com/minor-groups-of-interest
Directorate K (sworn enemies of the Discordian Society):
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1659
- Read up on Directorate K. Could they have as a long term goal the closing of all Ways (which they think would preserve normalcy for all time but would actually destroy the universe by cutting it off from its multiversal "branch")?
Crowley / OTO FAQ:
http://listverse.com/2015/05/06/10-unsettling-teachings-of-the-eccentric-aleister-crowley/
Necromancy: THE ORDER OF TAXUS (taxus is the Greek word for yew, sacred to Hecate, useful for making bows and poisons)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate#Attributes_and_bynames
https://the-line-up.com/deadly-art-necromancy
Here's the draft canon hub:
http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/collab:darkstuff-taylor-wondertainment-hub-temp
<DarkStuff>: mayoculpa: I make songs too
<DarkStuff>: I could make a melody and you could do instrumentation
<DarkStuff>: And I could sing it and record it
And here's the plain text of DarkStuff's poem:
You’ll look outside, and the weather is bad
You’ll comb your hair
You’ll brush your teeth
You’ll smell the air
Stress eat a feast
You’ll slip on your shirt, and your shoes, and your bags
You'll go through the door, and you sigh, and you sag
You’ll keep your head down and the world will look dark
But you might bump your head and look up with a start!
“There’s a doctor,” you’ll say, “dressed in colors so bright!
And they’re standing so tall, and so strong in their might!”
But they’re soft and they’re kind and they’ll take you by hand,
And they’ll whisk you away to a much better land
Filled with coasters and fire and glamor and rides
Filled with ice cream and cookies and hot dogs and pies!
And you’ll see great performers that climb onto stages
Halls of gadgets and legos, great masters and paiges
You’ll be pulled right out of your usual laze
You’ll shudder and twitch and you’ll stand, so amazed
“How did I never know of this,” you’ll ponder
“This world so filled with amazement and Wonder?”
The doctor leans down, wraps his arm around
When he opens his mouth, out comes Wondrous sound
“It’s nowhere new, silly, it is where you are!
You just needed a break from the glum and sub-par
In the back of your room, in the back of your head
In the pages of fantasy books that you read
The world is so cluttered, full of sadness and waste
It grinds ‘til your brain is a soft mushy paste
So when you need it happy, to get your hands clapping
When you need some presents in neon pink wrapping
You just close your eyes, you think of balloons
You think of big bubbly, kind squishy goons
“When your world is down and you’re needing escape,
Know in your head is a Wonderful place”
Grand Karcist Ion v Robert Bumaro
Show the gods what it means to be human
We arise to defy and consume them
So limitless an evil
Cannot be reformed
From the engines of my people
Our God is reborn
Isabel Wondertainment v Factory Forebeast
Darkstuff says he'd be okay with Well-Intentioned Understudies actually having a Daevite connection
this conversation occurred in the Facebook group Unlike You Millennials, I'm Not Entitled And Don't Like To Complain At All on 6/10/2019:
—
Steve Norris Jr will amazon prime-ship me a meteor right to my fucking house because i can't deal with boomers anymore.
Crystal Videlicet Eidson …can I steal this idea and use it to write an SCP?
because there is a wiki storyverse character who would ABSOLUTELY put "being hit by a meteor" in a pill and ship it to you via Amazon Prime
Sidney Ross One of you should submit it to One Sentence Startup Pitches
Crystal Videlicet Eidson it's Steve's idea :p
Sophie Thomas god what a mood
Steve Norris Jr you are welcomed to steal my misery for your stories
Crystal Videlicet Eidson if I end up writing it I'll credit you as coauthor. -_- wouldn't that just be like me, taking a six month break only to come back with a dado article and ignore all my half finished drafts lol
—
In here are things I will find useful when writing / researching other SCPs. As well as small brainstorms which may become big ones later.
19th century smash!
1877 railroad strikes - and other good railroad history
Medicine shows — Clowns often join traveling medicine shows, particularly Hamlin's Wizard Oil Company.
Wizard Oil Recipe — Experiments with using Clown milk in preparations?
1980s: Chicago Shades
Are all governments and law enforcement organizations in the SCPF entirely comprised of spies for various GoIs plus the Foundation? I doubt there's any room for regular folks with no anomalous agenda whatsoever in the halls of power most places.
REMEMBER TO ADD .GIF AT END IF IT'S A GIF
Redacted ASCII art by FB user Hagino Akimi:
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OK HERE IS HOW TO TABLE
| Time | Effect | Example(s) |
|---|---|---|
| When | Stuff | Other stuff |
A column format from the snippets collection. These columns rearrange the text inside them dynamically as the window is resized.
Insert text here, hopefully there is enough of it to go into different columns. Now that I know lorem ipsum is a garbled selection of a piece about Epicurean philosophy this will inspire me to pun upon it by using filler texts from other Greek and Roman thinkers whose ideas are part of European classicism but out of fashion now.
A module Croquembouche shared to add to the top of a page so you can put line breaks between collapsibles and they will work correctly:
[[module CSS]]
.collapsible-block-unfolded-link, .collapsible-block-folded {
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
[[/module]]
You can create simple tables using pairs of vertical bars. Tildes create headers.
| lines must start and end | with double vertical bars | LIKE THIS |
|---|---|---|
| cells are separated by | double vertical bars | nothing |
| you can span multiple columns by | starting each cell | |
| with extra cell | separators | |
| but perhaps an example is the easiest way to see |
||
Yet more columns
left column left column left column left column left column
left column left column left column left column left column
right column right column right column right column right column
right column right column right column right column right column
Nested collapsibles (stolen from someone who stole it from Croquembouche):
-
- _
"check" CSS box shared by MrPines
so first, youre gonna want to slap this css in your page:
and you would place the check in the page with:
text
FBI memo format 2006
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Precedence: Routine
Date:
To:
Attn:
Approved by:
Drafted by:
Title: (all caps)
Synopsis:
Administrative:
Details:
Tale series link template
.jpg){kind=link}
_(19935890083).jpg){kind=link}