SCP Foundation - SCP-001 "The Scarlet King"

SCP-001 "Scarlet King"

Object Class: Keter Safe

Special Containment Procedures:

Following the recent investigations of Dr. Robert Montauk, no action is currently needed to contain SCP-001. It is functionally self-containing, and any Foundation interference may harm or alter its containment irreversibly.

No Foundation personnel are to engage with any new matters related to SCP-001, with the exception of related anomalies already in Foundation containment.

Description: SCP-001 is an entity ordinarily referred to as the Scarlet King. SCP-001 is currently located in several alternate dimensions simultaneously, and is unable to enter into the prime dimension. However, it is believed to have been repeatedly attempting entry for a period of several thousand under 300 years. SCP-001's physical, mental and conceptual properties are unknown to the Foundation; nevertheless, it continues to assert a strong influence on a number of individuals and events within the prime dimension.

It is believed that SCP-001's existence represents an ongoing but dormant Tashkent-Class "Cross-Pollination" Scenario1; should SCP-001 enter the prime timeline, an irreparable alteration to normalcy will occur. Containment of SCP-001 is a top priority is, however, unnecessary. Any attempt to alter SCP-001's classification or object class will result in immediate dismissal from the O5 Council.

References in art and oral tradition to SCP-001 appear across a wide variety of human and non-human cultures across the universe, including in communities which have never previously had any contact with one another. Common descriptions within these traditions are of a red creature of immense size, ordinarily wearing a golden crown or other headdress signifying royalty. Although the names ascribed to SCP-001 vary, the majority contain two elements: a word signifying some form of royalty combined with a word signifying the colour red. Cultures which do not have a concept of the color red but follow this naming pattern universally use a colour analogous to the English concept of the color red.

Most personnel, except those working on anomalies related to SCP-001, possess no knowledge of the entity. As part of SCP-2317's containment procedures, Level 4 personnel2 are to be informed that SCP-2317 is, in fact, SCP-001. The truth of this is unknown, although it is a hypothesis which has received strong support among several members of the council. The apparently multidimensional nature of SCP-001, however, renders the possibility of SCP-2317 being anything more than a single aspect of SCP-001 unlikely.

It is unknown when SCP-001 was discovered. The loss of several archives concerning the Foundation's origins in the 1889 "Snarling Coup" has prevented a full reconstruction of events, although an investigation shortly following [DATA EXPUNGED]. A variety of groups dedicated to bringing SCP-001 into the prime dimension have existed over the years. The most recent of these has been the "Children of the Scarlet King", which was destroyed in a joint GOC-SCP operation in January 2018. Its former leader, Dipesh Spivak, is currently in Foundation custody under the designation PoI-3172.

Update 01/06/2018:

SCP-001 has recently been the subject of an extensive investigation by Dr. Robert Montauk, Project Lead on SCP-001, SCP-231 and SCP-2317, and deviser of Procedure 110-Montauk.

Based on the results of this investigation, SCP-001 has been downgraded to Safe following a decision taken by the O5 Council. Upon the request of the former O5-13, a number of documents related to this investigation can be found below, in order to provide context and further information pertaining to this theory. These have been curated, categorised and included by the former O5-13 herself with the permission of O5-1, in order to provide some context to this re-evaluation.

Phase 1: 'Blood'

Document 1: The following is an interview between Dr. Robert Montauk and PoI-3172.

Date: 01/04/2018.

Interviewer: Dr. Robert Montauk.

Interviewee: PoI-3172

Location: Site 713, Interview Room 2.

PoI-3172: Again, Dr. Montauk? I don't understand what you people want from me.

Dr. Montauk: Hello to you too, Dipesh. I'm sorry to do this to you again. I think it's silly too, to be honest. What we want from you are answers.

PoI-3172: It's been, what- weeks, months? You've dragged me down here, into one of your interview rooms, and asked me these endless questions. You or one of your lackeys.

Dr. Montauk: I'm sorry if you've been made to feel uncomfortable. It wasn't my intention, but it's hard to keep tabs on everything any more. Have the guards been treating you badly in any way?

PoI-3172: No. No, not really. I can't really complain. It's just their eyes. They look so dead, so cold.

Dr. Montauk: If you like, I can rearrange some personnel and put someone else on your security detail. We're a bit short-staffed around here at the moment, and a lot of our best folks are away. And then there's the paperwork, and the endless oversight. There's been some trouble over with- well, you don't need to know about that.

PoI-3172: You weren't what I expected, you know.

Dr. Montauk: You thought the Foundation would be different?

PoI-3172: No. I thought you would be.

Dr. Montauk: You'd heard of me?

PoI-3172: Of what you've done. Procedure 110-Montauk, well… the people in my circles have done some dark things in their time, but that-

Dr. Montauk: I merely did what was necessary, Mr. Spivak. As a Foundation researcher, and as someone who doesn't want to see his loved ones die.

PoI-3172: Yes. That's very like the Foundation, isn't it? Everything done is justified by what is necessary. You see the world, the people moving through it, living lives touched only by totalising, universal laws of society and physics. And everything has to be channelled through those laws, and that which lies outside it is to be contained. It's all so very simple.

Dr. Montauk: You wouldn't say that if you worked here.

PoI-3172: Some of us called you evil. I don't think that's quite it.

Dr. Montauk: That is kind of you to say. And to tell you the truth, I don't think you're quite what I expected, either. Especially given your reputation.

PoI-3172: I've been told I am a hard person to get along with. Too "cryptic", they say. One person even called me "airy".

Dr. Montauk: I don't think I'd call you "airy". Your head may be in the clouds, but you seem to be maddeningly smug about it. Granted, not as smug as some of the delusional cultists who have passed through here. I suppose I should be thankful for that, at least.

PoI-3172: I'll try not to take that as an insult. But this is what I don't understand. Your procedure. 110-Montauk. It's not-

Dr. Montauk: I can't discuss that, I'm afraid. We must get on. Time and tide and all that rubbish. Please tell me what the Children of the Scarlet King's overall intention was.

PoI-3172: The Children are dead. There's not much left to tell you.

Dr. Montauk: I would like to hear things in your own words.

PoI-3172: Then I suppose you could say that our "intention" was to save the world.

Dr. Montauk: And how were you planning to go about doing that?

PoI-3172: By bringing the Scarlet King into this reality, of course. You know this already.

Dr. Montauk: But how would that save the world?

PoI-3172: Doctor, is this really necessary? You took away his daughters years ago and ended up killing most of them. You have already annihilated our society, and I'm sure you know all about what went on within it. We worshipped the King, pretending he was Satan or some other ancient god of evil. Our inner circle believed in violation as the ultimate holy act. We failed, you and the Bookburners destroyed us, and the matter has been put to rest.

Dr. Montauk: You seem awfully calm while describing the destruction of your life's work.

PoI-3172: What else can I do? I know how this is going to play out. Maybe I always did.

Dr. Montauk: Why do you refer to the Global Occult Coalition as the "Bookburners"? Were you and your group affiliated with the Serpent's Hand?

PoI-3172: That's- it's complicated.

Dr. Montauk: It's a simple enough question.

PoI-3172: But there isn't a simple answer. Still… yes, we were affiliated with the Serpent's Hand. Most of us passed through there at one time or another. They will disavow us, of course, if you ask them about us. They're not monsters like we are. They have moral precepts, you see. Their whole point is to look for wonder, and since they see no wonder in the King, they repudiate us utterly. But they know, deep down, that they need us.

Dr. Montauk: They need you? What for?

PoI-3172: For the same reason they let us live. We raided the library, fought them, skirmished with them. They had a huge quantity of dirt on us, far more than you do. But they never finished the job. They're as bad as you Jailers, in their own way. The same compartmentalisation, the same singular goals. Their existence is based in nothing concrete. The empty time of history, that's all. Indeed, they came into being at the same time as you. You're more similar than you realise.

Dr. Montauk: That's impossible. The Serpent's Hand has been documented as existing long before the Foundation in any incarn-

PoI-3172: No, no, you miss the point. The Library's always been there, yes, but not the Hand. The Hand was something new, like you all are. You think anybody ever cared about "wonder" in the old days? Nobody cared about wonder. They cared about food, family and blood.

Dr. Montauk: What's that supposed to mean?

PoI-3172: It means… ah, you wouldn't get it anyway. But the Hand would. I think even the Bookburners do, in their own way. But the Hand is scared. They try to blot us out, forget us. We're what they should be but never can be, you see.

Dr. Montauk: Look, Dipesh, I have tried to make things more comfortable for you, but we need some give and take. You're speaking in clichéd, cryptic riddles, and I want some answers.

PoI-3172: I can't tell you everything. You wouldn't treat the information properly. You'd treat it as scientific fact; something to be swallowed, understood, contextualised.

Dr. Montauk: And what is wrong with that?

PoI-3172: Why are you doing this, doctor? Why are you dredging this stuff up again?

Dr. Montauk: I shouldn't tell you, but… ahh, screw it. I'm tired of this. I've been working on SCP-001 for two decades. Project lead for almost 9 years, after I came up with the Procedure. I don't know. I'm tired. Everywhere I turn I see the Scarlet King, but nothing about him makes any sense. Some big horned devil? Arcane blood god? It's all so small, so obvious. The Foundation has changed in the last decade, you see. We've faced conceptual demons, malevolent genre dwellers, sevenfold destroyers, all of which are far worse than some old sacrifice deity. But there, behind everything, I see this smile in fire. That dread, that old dread, it lingers. And this is despite seeing horrors far less easy and far more subtle trying to break the world on a daily basis. I just want to understand, I suppose. Peel back the layers, the tales upon contradictory tales, and find out who he really is.

PoI-3172: You're being awfully candid.

Dr. Montauk: To be honest, I've stopped caring. This job gets to you. The things you have to do, the regrets… well, I'm too high-up for anybody to touch me now, and I've run into too many dead ends to get hung up over protocol by this point. Just tell me something, Dipesh. Anything.

PoI-3172: OK. Look. I like you, Montauk. You must be a cold-blooded bastard somewhere in there, or you wouldn't have come up with- well. Who am I to judge, eh? I'll tell you where to start.

Dr. Montauk: I'm all ears.

PoI-3172: There are three things to understand about the Scarlet King. Three laws which, when put together, make up a complete picture. One is the law of blood. One is the law of concrete. And one is the law of howling.

Dr. Montauk: Three laws, eh? That the King set down for his followers, or that were imposed upon him?

PoI-3172: Both. The first was his law. The second was somebody else's. And as for the third, well, you'll find out about the third when you've cracked the first two.

Dr. Montauk: Very cryptic.

PoI-3172: That's all I can tell you for now. You need to learn in the proper way.

Dr. Montauk: That's really all you'll give?

PoI-3172: That's all.

There is a pause for several seconds.

Dr. Montauk: Alright, Dipesh. Good talking with you, as ever.

Document 2: The following is an extract from the memoirs of one Jack Hearst, a defector from the Children of the Scarlet King. Hearst was a high-level reality bender, capable of entering the bodies of humans in the past and experiencing their thoughts and emotions first-hand. The following is a description of what Hearst called the "Battle of the Ghemelleth", purportedly a battle between SCP-001 and his followers against a group called the "Children of the Urns". Hearst apparently experienced the battle from the perspective of a foot-soldier in SCP-001's army. These memoirs were written shortly before Hearst's death in 1976. They were among the first documents consulted by Dr. Montauk during his investigation.

The fortress was monumental, made of volcanic rock and jagged iron and built into a vast mountain. Every measurement, every angle was calculated to promote the King's ideology. The steel slats and bars may have seemed to be jutting out in random half-sawn directions, but if you could see the whole then you'd see the symmetry. It was a perfect expression of cosmic order, expressed in endless sevens.

It's a tough trip to remember, but bits and pieces come back. We were slaves, I think. We had been taken from a far-off land. The nobility looked down upon us with cruel eyes, but the King didn't care. He rewarded us, and so we were the instruments of his rule. When a village required the justice of the King, we would descend upon them with blood and iron. The villagers feared us, and that felt right to me. But when the horde came, with fire and burning and their cries of freedom, the villagers were still just as scared as they had been of us. That was not the fear of their master, I think, but the fear of anarchy. They didn't know which way to turn. In the end, most betrayed us. Many had had their daughters taken by our master. Old rites. Blood rites. Arcane rites.

But we stood upon the battlements, loyal to the last, our hearts bursting with happiness at the rightness of it all. I'm still not sure exactly what was going on- it was all so chaotic, and full of red smoke- but I could feel my host's bloodlust. We stood, and watched, and waited. The sound of rubble and explosions came from across the hill, and the last battle begun.

Then something strange happened. My host suddenly felt afraid, and he and I were somewhere else. The sky was not red but black. I was not a slave but part of a conscripted rabble. The peasants looked up at us. They were all starving. They held out their hands, begging, pleading, praying. The wind was their master, and it screamed at them. The horde was coming, but they, too, were starving.

Then the scene flickered back, and I was in my host again, under a scarlet sky. The King's voice raged. The rabble of his armies was fleeing to the gates, but they would not open. Our arrows, coated in flame and pitch, flew back again. But the horde was undaunted. In my mind I could see nothing but the fire, the fire of the king. I drew my sword. We all drew our swords. We all charged into the fray.

And then, as it were, the scene changed again. There were no battlements, only the dark sky and the wind and a more ragged and lonely sky. The peasants pleaded, the nomads laughed, cheered, wept. "The wind will rage no more!" they said.

The two scenes shifted in and out. A red fort bled into a black field. I have ruminated on it a long time, but I think they were the same battle, seen through two different eyes. Or at least the memories of two different battles. The whole thing felt strange; it was not like most of my trips. It was like a half-remembered cacophony, two ideas ripping at each other. There was a timeline showing what really happened, in that blackened wasteland. And there was one that had been made to be true, imposed throughout time on the truth.

The last thing I remember was being sliced by a nomad sword, of a frail urn being held high, of seven brides being ripped from a castle- or were they ripped from a field, taken as the spoils of war by some obscure tribe in some lost steppe? I remember the King screaming, writhing, thrashing as he was sealed.

And then I died, and woke up back at the ritual. For a second, I wondered if the others had just made up the King, and sent some image of him back to the past. But I don't think that was true. They lacked the power; and besides, it was never a total lie. There was something in that wicked wind that reminded me of some of the older rituals.

It was then that I decided to leave the Children. I went that night, without a word. They didn't stop me; probably figured it wasn't worth the effort. They were so certain in the success of their mission. But I wanted no part in that any more. The things I saw were based upon the law of blood, and I can only pray that they never come to pass.

Document 3: The following is a log of all known attempts by anomalous groups to force SCP-001's entry into the prime dimension since the containment of SCP-231.

Phase 2: 'Concrete'

Document 4: The following is an interview between Dr. Robert Montauk and PoI-3172.

Date: 14/04/2018.

Interviewer: Dr. Robert Montauk.

Interviewee: PoI-3172

Location: Site 713, Interview Room 2.

PoI-3172: Hello again, Robert.

Dr. Montauk: Hello, Dipesh. I looked up your laws. I am afraid I am none the wiser.

PoI-3172: You'll get there. What did you find?

Dr. Montauk: The "law of blood" is referenced a few times in quite a few places. But I couldn't find any concrete information.

PoI-3172: I worried you wouldn't.

Dr. Montauk: There was only one source of real use- a description of something called the Battle of the Ghemelleth, written by a defector from the Children.

PoI-3172: Ahh, Hearst. Yes. I read his memoir once. The only genuine eyewitness of the King's sealing, although a rather unreliable one.

Dr. Montauk: How on earth-

PoI-3172: Oh, he embellished. He didn't leave straight away; I stumbled upon some early draft in his things, shortly before he left. I was young back then, and I remember how passionately he argued after his vision. Said we'd got the King all wrong. That he wasn't a demon or a monarch, but that he was a voice on the wind. When I was older, and figured it all out, I was surprised how close he got to a fuller understanding. He just wasn't… quite there.

Dr. Montauk: I should have guessed he was a liar.

PoI-3172: He's not a liar, exactly; just a little lost. And you only have my word for it, doctor. Which the Foundation has made abundantly clear it doesn't trust.

Dr. Montauk: There's no reason to doubt you. What do you have to lose? You seem as eager for me to learn the truth as I am.

PoI-3172: True. And on that note, I have a question, if I may.

Dr. Montauk: Shoot. The longer I keep you talking, the greater the chance you'll slip up and tell me something you shouldn't.

PoI-3172: Do you know why the Procedure 110-Montauk actually works?

There is a pause of several seconds.

Dr. Montauk: Sorry, Dipesh. I can't talk to you about that.

PoI-3172: It's OK. I think I know the answer anyway. Tell me, did you… lose someone?

Dr. Montauk: I don't know what you mean.

PoI-3172: I'm sorry to bring back painful memories. But I have looked at the Foundation archives too, you know. It was necessary, back in the day, to check up on what your lot were doing to his daughters. I know that your brother-

Dr. Montauk: Stop talking. This interview is not about my private affairs.

PoI-3172: I'm sorry, doctor. I didn't mean-

Dr. Montauk: Please state for me the meaning of this "law of blood".

PoI-3172: Isn't it obvious? It is the way the Scarlet King ruled. There was order, but it was through the imposition of an iron will on the peasantry, through armies of slaves, through a nobility bred to be cruel. The realities of the world of his day, in his corner of the globe.

Dr. Montauk: What does this have to do with the Sc- with SCP-001's nature? What are these other laws?

PoI-3172: I suggest you look into the secon-

Dr. Montauk: I don't have time to play your games. Tell me now, PoI-3172, or you will be escorted to solitary.

PoI-3172: Oh, Dr. Montauk. I am sorry. You must look for the law of concrete. That is all-

Dr. Montauk: This interview is terminated.

Document 5: The following is a page from the 1891 report of Agent de Beauvoir on lost Foundation archives following the 1889 Snarling Coup. The report was lost shortly after de Beauvoir's termination in 1895, along with several other documents from the Foundation archives. This page was recovered through unknown means by Dr. Montauk; no other materials from these data losses have been found.

In summary, the documents lost are extremely extensive, covering a wide range of data concerning the Foundation's early history. Of particular note are several documents related to SCP-001 which have gone missing. However, my investigations have provided me with a great deal of information, and I believe that I can say with some certainty that the historical record as stated in Scranton's Comprehensive History remains broadly intact, albeit with some modifications I will detail below.

Scranton's work states that the Foundation was founded in 1824, by the merger of thirteen worldwide organisations with a particular interest in preventing awareness of anomalous activities. The most prominent of these were the Foundation of the Secure Containment of the Unnatural, the Devan-e Jaaduyih, the Unified Sites of the Department of Unexplained Affairs, the Council of Five Overseers and the Commitee of Paranormal Ethics. Scranton goes on to tell us that this was done in response to the threat posed by SCP-001, and that the early Foundation had an extensive role to play in that anomaly's containment.

However, the documents I have before me present a rather different picture. It appears that the Foundation was not founded in response to SCP-001 at all. Indeed, I cannot find any references to the present SCP-001 prior to 1826. It appears to have been a highly publicised attack by SCP-173 in New York which was the initial impetus for the Foundation's formation. SCP-173's still-unresolved containment breach in 1854 is, I believe, the reason for the alteration of the record; Scranton's embarrassment at

Document 6: The following is a table compiled by Dr. Montauk. It shows a series of votes passed by the O5 Council correlated with incidents potentially or certainly involving SCP-001.

Document 7: The following is an extract from the 1972 political work Manifesto for Old Order by Children of the Scarlet King member Ariadne Cartwright. Cartwright's work is only found in unpublished copies among anomalous circles and groups related to SCP-001. Fragments such as this were recovered by Dr. Montauk during the course of his investigation.

The sin of modernity is vital to understand. It is not that we glorify the premodern. The suffering was very real and very extant. We must not fall into the trap of seeing the past as a series of beautiful Arcadias, full of dancing around maypoles and shepherds living in pleasant anarchy.

The past was brutal, but it was also real. It wasn't really the "premodern", too; that is merely how historians have characterised it. They are wedded to their theory of modernisation and can conceive of no alternate mode of development other than a singular drive towards the contemporary West, with other modes of living seen as being stuck in some imagined earlier place on a timeline. It's all nonsense. The people of the past were capable of seeing the world as it really is. Those of us who have joined the King's forces can all see this truth; that there is something very, very wrong with the world in which we live. Our buildings are made of calcifying, peeling concrete as we shamble, each day, to jobs and lives created solely for the purpose of maintaining their own system.

But there is no other way to live. Socialism, anarchism, syndicalism- these are little more than constructed pipe dreams, the frail thoughts of lesser men trying to impose their antiquated prejudices on the world around them. No, there is only one alternative way to live. To cast down the law of concrete is to raise up the law of blood.

We must learn what it is to die. To be enslaved- truly, brutally enslaved, with no compassion or compunction from our masters. We must learn what it is to be taken towards a single purpose, to know and truly understand our lack of agency. We must be beholden to a world of gods and darkness, the tempest-tossed refuse of a race of fools. We must kill modernity, postmodernity, with all its analysis and sneering observation. There is only one rule; the rule of chaos. For humanity! For life! For the Scarlet King!

Phase 3: 'The Howling'

Document 8: The following is an interview between Dr. Robert Montauk and PoI-3172

Date: 29/04/2018.

Interviewer: Dr. Robert Montauk.

Interviewee: PoI-3172

Location: Site 713, Interview Room 2.

Dr. Montauk: Hello, Dipesh.

PoI-3172: Hello, Dr. Montauk. I hope that our last meeting…?

Dr. Montauk: I am sorry for my unprofessional behaviour. You… touched upon a sore subject.

PoI-3172: Of course. I will try to refrain from doing so in future.

Dr. Montauk: Shall we begin?

PoI-3172: This time, doctor, I have a question for you.

Dr. Montauk: Indeed? I suppose it can't be worse than your last.

PoI-3172: Well. What do you know of the origins of the Scarlet King?

Dr. Montauk: There are many theories. A creature from the abyss, some shambling thing of old, a denizen of Alagadda…

PoI-3172: They are all… I will not say lies. But the texts have changed, the knowledge has changed, the past itself has been changed by what came after.

Dr. Montauk: He has changed the past?

PoI-3172: No, his past has been changed for him. But now you tell me something. This should be a give and take, after all.

Dr. Montauk: That is not what-

PoI-3172: Why did you approve the Montauk procedure?

There is a pause here for several seconds as Dr. Montauk stares at PoI-3172.

PoI-3172: I am sorry if I have offended you.

Dr. Montauk: I thought I made it clear that this is none of your business.

PoI-3172: See, the thing I don't get is that it should not have worked. Not in the way the Foundation does-

Dr. Montauk: This is not under discussion.

PoI-3172: What happened to Jacob, doctor? What happened to your brother?

Dr. Montauk: This interview is-

PoI-3172: Oh, alright, alright. I am sorry. I am not trying to hurt you, doctor, truly. I just want to understand. It's just- it shouldn't have worked. The child should have been born.

There is a pause of several seconds.

Dr. Montauk: I… was angry. When I drew it up. It was unprofessional.

PoI-3172: Did you think we took Jacob?

Dr. Montauk: Well, what the hell was I supposed to think? I start looking into your lot, making discovery after discovery, and then he disapp- look, this isn't relevant.

PoI-3172: Alright, alright. I am sorry I asked. But can we agree that it was not a decision made scientifically? That it was done in a moment of fury, rage, hate?

Dr. Montauk: I didn't- the girl, I didn't mean to-

PoI-3172: But you did, doctor. Look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to dredge these old wounds up for you-

Dr. Montauk: Why are you, then?

PoI-3172: Because I just want to understand. And now I think I do.

Dr. Montauk: How?

PoI-3172: You… I don't know where to begin. Let me go back. I don't think your department has had very much activity in recent months, not after the Hand's attempt to open the gates, right? Your procedure keeps the girl from giving birth, the nomads keep fighting their endless war, the spears are safely locked away by the Bookburners, and the Devourer- well, there's nothing you can really do about the Devourer now, is there?

Dr. Montauk: SCP-2317 isn't SCP-001.

PoI-3172: Wasn't SCP-001. But the thing is, you've been telling everyone he is. Technically, you're meant to think that he is, if I understand Foundation hierarchies correctly. You are only a level 4, after all.

Dr. Montauk: I don't understand.

PoI-3172: Across every culture, in every city and tribe and civilisation, you've come across the idea of the Scarlet King. Always the same: an emperor in red, with a burning crown and an ethos rooted in some archaic fear of female sexuality. He is always the same: a monster that is all-consuming and terrible, but so understandable. The big bad thing in the dark, full of rape and fire and old blood-ritual. Does it never strike you as odd that this is the thing behind the eyes? You've faced monsters far grander and more subtle, as you told me yourself. But always, always there's that lingering fear and knowledge of this hidden but oh-so-simple thing standing behind it all.

Dr. Montauk: You know it strikes me as odd. I told you as much myself. But I also stopped trying to make sense of our world a long time ago. The anomalous does not play by the rules of man. I'm too old to start redefining the universe.

PoI-3172: But the thing you don't remember, or don't know, is that this wasn't the only past. The Scarlet King used to be something very different. He wasn't a monarch, and he wasn't always red. He was the whisper on the wind that kept the peasants working, staring up in fear of his righteous famine. He was that inborn knowledge of a world of gods and demons which belied human agency and existed beyond us. He was the cold hunger of a famine that had no rhyme and reason but the cold apathy of a supernatural beyond us. And, given enough belief, he could be the Devourer, too. He is a creature of truth.

Dr. Montauk: You mean- he transformed? From one type of deity into another?

PoI-3172: The Scarlet King is not a deity, doctor. The Scarlet King is an idea.

Dr. Montauk: Wh- what? But he's real- physical! We've seen-

PoI-3172: I can't tell you any more. Not yet. Did you find anything out about the law of concrete?

Dr. Montauk: …No. Not much. I found out that there seems to be a disturbing correlation between the activities of the King's followers and certain decisions made by the Council.

PoI-3172: I see.

Dr. Montauk: But there wasn't much else at all. The trail led me to some lost documents, but eventually all I found was a dead end. A document about the Foundation's origins, and some insane old Child ranting on about modernity.

PoI-3172: Cartwright, I presume? That makes sense.

Dr. Montauk: You are a maddeningly infuriating person, you know. Why can't you just tell me this stuff properly?

PoI-3172: I am your prisoner. You did destroy my life's work. Why should I help you?

Dr. Montauk: Because you're bored. Because you think none of this matters. And because you love tormenting me.

PoI-3172: I don't, you know.

Dr. Montauk: The Scarlet King is an idea? What the hell is that meant to mean?

PoI-3172: You're close now, doctor. Close to the truth. I can see it in you. You will understand, and then you'll understand me. Why I did what I did. Why I am- was- a member of the Children. I know you're curious.

Dr. Montauk: You do seem oddly well-adjusted to be a Satan worshipper.

PoI-3172: Be careful, doctor. The law of the howling may break you.

Dr. Montauk: As cryptic as ever, Spivak. Alright. Until next time.

PoI-3172: Goodbye, doctor.

Document 9: The following is a translated excerpt from the 1953 Bengali work Lāla Rājā. The work had been lost for some time, and rediscovered by Dr. Montauk in the course of his investigation.

And so as British rule continued, something began to come with them, piece by piece. A shadow, at first; a red thing. But it was not whole. It was not even in pieces. It was something that crept up slowly, piece by piece. It met the shadows of our country, the mice bleeding in the rice fields, and it began to take form.

It didn't have a mind. Not at first. It wasn't enough of a real thing yet to have one. It was a set of images. It was a blood-red slab of skin, taken from the heart of some Christian demon, which was set upon an ancient magician of Hindu rites. But then it was categorised, written down, described with precise scientific terminology. It didn't like that. Things of magic, technology, empire that were never meant to mix all came together, and began to bend the nature of the world.

As Europe came to us more and more, as we learnt to be "civilised", our religion began to change too. Anantashesha was not an ancient and capricious god in the form of an immense snake- it was a moray eel of scientifically unusual size, noted for producing amnesiacs3 and causing a cognitohazardous effect. We learnt that we were Hindu, that we always had been Hindu, and that all our various and mixed beliefs were all variations on a singular ideal, because the British weren't comfortable enough with another way of living which could not be classified, explained, killed like a butterfly pinned to a board.

But beneath this lay a fury. A cry for authenticity, for a reality, even as we expressed ourselves more and more in their language and their categories, even in our struggle against them. It lay in our literature, in Tagore and the others; it lay in our adda4, in our menial jobs as clerks. The endless, struggling tension between old and new, between modernity and premodernity. And in those fault-lines, in that cry of rage and fury, in our hatred of the old and the hatred of the new, there rose a hybrid obeying nothing but the law of the howling. There rose the Lāla Rājā.

Because what is he but the cry for a forgotten age? He is the British peasant staring up at the red sky, the Bengali widow's weeping and shaven head, the Aztec priest ripping out another's heart. He is all of those things transformed, as modernity does to everything, into modernity's own destruction. He is the resistance, the fury, the hatred of all that was for all that presently is.

What we were was full of good and evil and all else mixed together. The happiness, the beauty of the world, the struggles and heartache and reality of it all. But now we have lost almost all of it to the machine- except our rage. That's all that's left. And thus comes the King. The howl of the destroyed and forgotten and oppressed. His only purpose is to destroy, rape, maim, enslave and smile, smile that smile of a king whose enemies weep before him.

He cannot exist where there is no modernity, because his entire purpose is given to him by modernity. He is a god of blood, a god of spine and bone and sinew, to remind the denizens of this world that it is not good. It is cruel and hateful and that is good, that is right. Modernity is a sin and he is the correction, so that we can once again live as we must: cold, and hungry, and starving, and very, very afraid.

Document 10: The following note was found in Dr. Montauk's personal quarters. It is believed to have been written shortly after Dr. Montauk's discovery of Lāla Rājā.

SCP-001 is a conceptual entity created at the boundaries of the modern and the premodern.

The Scarlet King is a thing of blood and bone and sinew. His rule is just, the justice of the dark.

SCP-001 is a creature emperor physical being made manifest in a conceptual

He comes with fear and a sword dripping with wrath and fire

SCP-001 originated in ancient Turkmenistan. It is believed that it was originally a Scythian deity who

They rode with thunder in their hooves and the bow on their backs, laughing as they slaught

SCP-001 is a scientific phenomenon. It will be classified. It will be contained described. It will be understood as an anomalous entity, as with every other an

but he exist in the cracks, the faultlines. He feeds on description. he feeds on science, on the objective principles and qualities. Seven chains! Seven brides! Seven seals for the Scarle

I am Robert Montauk, Level 4 Researcher, Project Lead on SCP-001. I am a researcher. I impose my solid, mechanical will. I am in control. I possess agency. I possess agency.

I am a quivering thing, looking up at a dark and clouded sky, fearing the Almighty God. i am free. i am chained i am a doctor i am a child

Document 11: On 22/05/2018, a large crack appeared in the wall of PoI-3172's containment chambers. The crack appeared to open on another dimension. A large quantity of red smoke could be seen pouring out of it, while an unknown number of human voices could be heard screaming from it.

Foundation staff found themselves unable to enter PoI-3172's containment chamber. PoI-3172 informed them that he would only permit Dr. Montauk entry into his chamber, and would communicate with nobody else. After some debate, Dr. Montauk was permitted entry into the containment chamber to interview PoI-3172. A log can be found below.

Date: 22/05/2018.

Interviewer: Dr. Robert Montauk.

Interviewee: PoI-3172

Location: Site 713, Humanoid Containment Chamber 77.

Dr. Montauk enters the chamber and approaches PoI-3172. PoI-3172 is standing in front of a jagged crack in the far wall. Red light and smoke can be seen emerging from this crack.

Dr. Montauk: Hello there, Dipesh.

PoI-3172: Hello, doctor.

Dr. Montauk: Always formal, even to the last, aren't you? Can I ask you what… this is?

PoI-3172: A plea for attention, mostly. I wanted to see you again, and my requests were all denied. It's been weeks, doctor.

Dr. Montauk: I… I had nothing to ask you.

PoI-3172: I thought so. You have deduced the truth, haven't you?

Dr. Montauk: Maybe. Yes.

The crack shrinks slightly.

Dr. Montauk: It- did that just-

PoI-3172: It grows and shrinks depending on the situation. Different actions have different meanings, and thus different effects. It all depends on context. The other Children never got that, but- well, they never got anything, really. They thought we were all devil worshippers, heading for violation. Only I understood the point.

Dr. Montauk: It took me a while to understand.

PoI-3172: I didn't think you would.

Dr. Montauk: Just tell me- did the Procedure even matter? What we do, is it even relevant?

PoI-3172: To prevent the birth, it had to be something awful, something evil expressed in pain and rage and fury. That is why it worked. It was never a sincere attempt to formulate a scientific procedure on your part: it was just pure, unadulterated hatred wrapped in a veneer of objectivity. You thought the King had taken your brother, so you decided to hurt the King. You didn't, of course, and what you do each day to that poor girl is little more than mere cruelty. But effective cruelty. The specifics are unimportant but the intent, that matters for everything.

Dr. Montauk: I… I should stop it. I didn't-

PoI-3172: And then what? The Foundation won't get it. They will never understand the law of the howling.

Dr. Montauk: If I explain-

PoI-3172: They can't imagine it. It's beyond their conception of reality. But you might. So, tell me, Doctor. Do you know why the Scarlet King exists?

Dr. Montauk: Because modernity and premod-

PoI-3172: No. Because the SCP Foundation exists. Modernity helped shape him, defined the contours of his rage, but it was when modernity started interfering in his kingdom that he was crystallised. Modernity in the form of you. Your lot came first. You came into being to lock away, classify, pin down everything that didn't fit into your philosophy of Enlightenment rationality. Everything had to be understood, contextualised, transformed from faerie and godhood into simple, comprehensible chunks of logic and matter. It's abhorrent. And it could never go on forever. Something had to give. Something had to rise up in opposition.

Dr. Montauk: …We were first? Truthfully? I know that Beauvoir had- was this whole thing really our fault?

PoI-3172: That depends. Is it your fault if you don't know you're doing it?

Dr. Montauk: I don't know.

PoI-3172: Neither do I.

Dr. Montauk: The ceremonies. They all held that contrast.

PoI-3172: The King cannot exist without that tension. We needed those symbols of modernity, those stark grey images, to make the rift in the first place. It was the perfect plan.

Dr. Montauk: But you failed.

PoI-3172: Yes.

There is a pause for several seconds.

Dr. Montauk: The Foundation was formed in the 1820s. It was formed to protect the world from the dark, by a collection of brave men and women. To s-secure. Contain. Protect. That is our purpose. There is a virtue in normalcy which I don't think you can see. The world can be understood. Truth, reason, rationality. The Enlightenment. These are our bedrock, these are what have allowed us to see what is objective.

PoI-3172: Do you really believe that?

Dr. Montauk: I have to.

PoI-3172: You're a scientist. You should know that there's no such thing as an objectively true finding in any science. There's always room for doubt, always space for error.

Dr. Montauk: But that's just humanity. We may have flawed minds, incapable of full interpretation, but what we observe is solid and real. Beneath it all, the laws, the bedrock-

PoI-3172: The bedrock is defined by the number seven. Seven chains, seven brides, seven seals, seven, seven, seven… my whole life has been defined by that number. It tortures me. Endless heptagonal shapes dancing behind my eyes. We're not allowed to live. We're not allowed to be people. That is the luxury of modernity, despite its coldness and its creaking wounds- to be able to be a full person. Seven, seven, seven. Seven girls taken away by raiders in the cold, as the wind demon howled and howled. So the Scarlet King had to have seven brides.

Dr. Montauk: Modernity is not always cold. It's less brutal than slavery.

PoI-3172: But what is it for? Is that the only purpose, a mere absence of brutality? What's the point of having peace and kindness for its own sake, so you can smile for a few decades before falling dead into an empty grave? Self-affirmation for a finite self. I don't understand it. I never did. I grew up trying. I wanted to be like them, like you, but the system just stared down at me with contempt. Maybe it's not coldness, doctor. Coldness seems too objective. It can't be that, because there is no objectivity. There's just the screaming and the madness and the need for purpose.

Dr. Montauk: Did you really think that nothing is true?

PoI-3172: There's truth, but it's never… final. There's no ultimate reality, doctor. No totality. No concrete way in which the world is run. There's just what we make of it. The clay things we bind together and crudely make in clay.

Dr. Montauk: All this introspection…

The crack in the wall grows larger. The sound of screaming can be heard.

Dr. Montauk: Who is in there with him?

PoI-3172: Who knows? His seven brides, his loyal nomads, ancient servants, more creations of the gap between realities. I don't know any more. It all breaks down, in the end. All I see any more is the fire. I don't see the world, or gods, or kings. I don't see anything but the flames. What else is there? This stuff? Matter and the physical, all banal, all fake. I only see the smile of my King, forged out of burning and frail matter. And it's a sight that hurts. It hurts, so much, behind the eyes. It is burning and being consumed and it's never, ever finished.

Dr. Montauk: Then why not stop worshipping him?

PoI-3172: I was a frail thing. I was born in the cold and the dark. I tried my hand at writing, when I was very young. I tried my hand at many things, bartering, starving, surviving in the marketplaces of Calcutta. Like so many of us, struggling to live while you Westerners grew fatter on our forgotten wealth. I grew mad. There was no meaning, no purpose, in a country born to be ripped apart. I tried the gods, but they were silent. I tried reason and atheism, but they were just as empty and unreal. Because they were always going to be. Because-

Dr. Montauk: Don't say it.

PoI-3172: You have to hear it.

Dr. Montauk: I- I don't want-

PoI-3172: No, listen, Robert, just listen. You know now what the Scarlet King is. He is a creation of swirling anomalies, of so many different times, all over the world. He is the memory of a world that is lost, the premodern world, made manifest in a form of hatred for modernity, the new, the humanism and smiling coldness that marks our day to day existence. Forged from a perfect balance of irreconcilable anomalies and our breaking minds. He is an entity created by this overwhelming, unavoidable tension. Of the howl of the old world when faced with a cold, grey, purposeless new. He is the revenge of our fallen past. He is the idea of the ancient in a world which discards and fetishises it.

Dr. Montauk: He is the tension between the modern and the premodern made manifest.

PoI-3172: Yes. He is the faultline between two irreconcilable worlds. And he can only, in the end, destroy them all. And that is what is right.

There is another pause for several seconds.

Dr. Montauk: What do we do now?

PoI-3172: You shoot me, let them take my corpse, go back to your life. It won't last long now. The King's coming is inevitable. You might try to do something to stop it, but it won't work. The Foundation has too much at stake, too much resting on the preservation of their ethos. They will coat the world in concrete grey and the King will rise from the ashes, and the Children won't even have to lift a finger.

Dr. Montauk: I don't believe you.

PoI-3172: Believe what you like. Come, doctor, I think it's time.

Dr. Montauk takes out his firearm and points it at PoI-3172.

Dr. Montauk: Just- look, just tell me one more thing. Was it you who took Jacob?

PoI-3172: No. We had no idea who he w-

Dr. Montauk terminates PoI-3172. The crack disappears.

Document 12: The following is a record of O5 Council Vote #4985.

Council Vote #4985, "Vote to approve suggestions made by Dr. Robert Montauk on Foundation Operating Procedures for improved containment of SCP-001." Proposed by O5-13 on 30/05/2018.

Vote Denied

Statement by O5-1: Dr. Montauk's investigations have been most illuminating. They have certainly raised serious concerns about how the Foundation has been operating in recent years. But we feel that his suggestions go too far.

The ethos of the Foundation is comprehension. Postmodern notions of the fallibility of objective universal truths are all very well in academic circles, but the Foundation has always been first and foremost concerned with practicalities, basing its analyses on the hard sciences and unquestionable truths. Changing our intentions and modus operandi is, frankly, an absurd proposition. Our duty is, and always has been, to die in the dark to protect those in the light. If we begin to abandon or redefine the notion of what dark and light are, we risk a sharp descent into tyranny, incoherence and the loss of our mission entirely. This must not happen. We cannot engage in cavalier redefinitions of what the Foundation's very essence is.

We thank Dr. Montauk for his work, and we will be accordingly updating SCP-001's classification to Safe as a result of it. Containing SCP-001 is no longer as difficult as it once was, despite its potential danger; if Montauk's information is correct, then it seems clear to us that the Foundation should simply take a more laissez-faire attitude towards SCP-001's containment. We look forward to a more productive containment relationship with our oldest anomaly going forward.

Radja James Condrad Albania

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