Re: SCP-087
Drewbear 15 May 2012, 09:45 GMT

That is actually a scary image. You wake up in the middle of the night and wander down the hall to the bathroom. As you pass another bedroom, you glance in and see a figure wearing a gasmask1 sitting at a computer, staring at the monitor intently.

Then it slowly turns its head towards you…

Footnotes
1. naked vs fully clothed per your choice on which is worse

Re: SCP-087
Photosynthetic 15 May 2012, 09:59 GMT

Better:

You wake up in the middle of the night and wander down the hall to the bathroom. As you pass another bedroom, you glance in and see a figure wearing a gasmask, and nothing else, sitting on the bed.

It's staring at you. It's been staring at you since before you entered its line of sight.

…Hello new SCP idea. >_> Drewbear, unless you want to write this up, I call dibs.

Drewbear

Remember that staring gasmask guy thing? I still can't quite see a SCP to hook this on to, but I had some other images start appearing that you might find useful if/when you write this up, in the format of description of various instances:

"obese black female with keloid scarring on her forearms, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask"
"elderly Asiatic male, wearing a medieval Crusader's helmet."
"emaciated Caucasian of indeterminate gender (legs crossed), wearing a gas mask"
"male Pacific Islander with extensive tattoos in the Maori style, wearing the head of a Chinese parade lion"
"male Latino with large breast implants, wearing a space suit helmet"

Appearing singly, but always nude, always staring at you in the manner that you described in the thread.

I might come up with more stuff, if you'd be interested in possibly collaborating?

Photosynthetic:

…If this is the kind of thing we'd be working with, then hell yes I would be interested in collaborating.

I still feel somehow that Gasmask Thing should be an object on his/its own. These others, though… I'm at work right now and can't really afford to let my imagination run too wild (lest the annotations on our specimens start getting really weird), but I want to let this idea percolate a bit. I'll get back to you soon. You do the same, if any other inspiration comes knocking. :D

Drewbear:

You know, someone just posted a gasmask picture here: http://www.scp-wiki.net/files-q441-7b-a818-86

It might be a bit too elaborate, though. I was thinking more along the lines of a clean, classic gasmask.

As for the item itself… hmm… how about the hidden-face people are visible to everyone, but can only their target can physically interact with them. Anyone else (or remote drone) that touches them makes them disappear and reappear somewhere else they can stare at their target.

Maybe some sort of audio hallucination? The target thinks they can hear a muffled voice from behind the mask that no-one else can hear, and start wanting to remove the mask to hear what the thing is saying?

I'm not sure what sort of an "end-game" this thing would have, or if it even needs one. It could just be that it/they target one person for no apparent reason for a while, then suddenly target someone else. And would the staring be enough to cause paranoia? It wouldn't even need to be something supernatural; just knowing FOR CERTAIN that there IS something ineffably creepy staring at you, wherever you are.

I'm just thinking out loud hear, so feel free to shoot down or elaborate on any of these.

Photosynthetic:

I like the idea of the muffled voice, and of having one target, but I think the target is the only one who can't hear it. I prefer the mental image of the thing staring at you silently, for some reason.

…Oh hello inspiration. Warning: word-vomit ahead.

So the SCP is these things. They're humanoid entities that select a target and stare at him. Constantly. This, understandably, causes paranoia in the target, but he's more the lucky one. They're normally very good at hiding; despite their target never seeing them locomote, they never seem to be found anywhere that someone else can see them.

This effect isn't perfect, though. (The targets ought to wish it was.) If someone else does manage to glimpse this creature, he or she will hear it mumbling. The target cannot hear this voice, but most witnesses will find it very compelling, and 70-odd percent of them will become convinced that they need to take off the mask and hear it clearly. (Reasons vary based on the witness's personality and motivations.) Once a person has witnessed the creature, it no longer hides from her, or from anyone else she chooses to show it to. She will quickly discover, however, that she can't touch it.

By this point, the target will probably have realized that he can. Should this fact become known to the witness, she will often try to force the target to take off the mask. This is where it gets ugly, because both the target's desire to never see that face and the witness's desire to hear that voice now are equally strong. It usually ends in blows… or much worse.

Why would the creature do this? The way I see it, it doesn't want its mask removed, but it has no control over its supernaturally-compelling voice. All it can do is choose one person to make deaf to it, and make them want very very much never to see its face… Its target is its chosen defender.

…Comments?

Drewbear:

…They're sirens. But not "natural" sirens like the ones in the Greek myths; these were created and they HATE it.

Part of what they are forced to do it lure more people in to become new sirens. That's why they have to stay close to the target; by whatever process, s/he has been selected to become the next "meal" &/or siren. And if these mask-men didn't loathe their existence so much, their compelling song would rapidly entice the target into removing the mask, becoming another instance. But instead, they use what little leeway they have over their powers to deafen the target to their call. But to do so, they have to focus intently and entirely on the target (hence the staring). Over the years, they've learned that they can't fully muffle the "leakage" of their calls once someone's attention has been brought to them, so instead they try to hide.

…I do like how we're riffing off each other. :)

The Church of the Broken God has various degrees of initiation; devotees gradually move up the scale as they learn more (and, perhaps, become more Broken). As they learn its lore and move up in its ranks, they are exposed to a cumulative memetic infection. At some critical point, the infection culminates in a bout of compulsive creation. Each initiate builds a different machine, never using any form of instructions. The resulting devices range from baroque clockwork to Rube Goldberg devices to fairly modern electronics, though they all incorporate some nod to clockwork. Their purposes are obscure even to those who build them.

Perhaps CotBG believes that its initiates' products will eventually reassemble the God (or are the means to that end) — that their machine-building compulsions are divine inspiration. Somewhere — or many somewheres, scattered across the globe — is a clockwork jungle of awkwardly-interfaced machinery, composed of many disciples' inspired work. (Worse, perhaps, if the machinery — even that built by disciples from different cultures, languages, traditions, training — always interfaces perfectly.)

The Foundation has contained only a few of these outbreaks, and may never be able to contain them all. This is one of the many reasons that it and the CotBG are at loggerheads: the Church's very teachings are an artifact that needs to be contained.

Idea from Burns: "I suggest them finding a member of the CotBG. In the machinery. As part of it. Inert."

TEXT-DESCRIBING-THE-PIC

Item #: SCP-XXX

Object Class: Euclid/Keter [This one actually sort of fits a split class, maybe: it'd be Euclid if contained but is decidedly Keter since it's not.]

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-XXX is not fully contained at this time. All wild portions of SCP-XXX are to be considered extremely dangerous. These items should be captured whenever possible and destroyed whenever capture is impractical.

All captured members of SCP-XXX-α are to be placed in the SCP-XXX Library Unit at Research Sector-XX. This library is to maintain [all reasonable facilites for preservation of rare books]. No member of SCP-XXX-α, including captured duplicates of previously-archived portions, is to be destroyed. Access to the library is to be []. Cumulative exposure to SCP-XXX-α must be monitored closely: no person with clearance higher than Class-D is permitted to read more than five consecutive or ten disconnected passages in his or her lifetime. Exposure to uncontained portions of SCP-XXX necessarily reduces this allowance. Personnel showing signs of SCP-XXX infection are to be removed immediately from all exposure to the item; should infection persist, the infected individual may either be terminated or designated an instance of SCP-XXX-β and contained accordingly.

Those captured instances of SCP-XXX-β which remain largely human are to be housed in [prison cells stripped of interesting content] at all times. [Scratch this bit out since one of them has built anyway, or even escaped?] Any instance consisting of less than 90% human tissue by volume is to be disassembled as much as possible and the remaining tissue stored in a medically-induced coma.

Any instance of SCP-XXX-β captured during a construction episode must be terminated immediately. Machinery constructed by SCP-XXX-β, before or after capture, is to be diagrammed in detail before being disassembled. Disassembled machinery is to be stored in high-security Euclid-class inanimate-item lockers, as appropriate, in Site-XX. Construction drawings are to be placed in the SCP-XXX Library Unit.

Under no circumstances whatsoever is any portion of SCP-XXX to come into contact with SCP-882, SCP-217, or SCP-271.

Description: SCP-XXX-α consists of an unknown quantity of [information type,] including significant volumes of parables, technical manuals, religious doctrine, instruction in physics & mechanical engineering, and theological analysis. [From here, describe the overall structure of the book as known so far, and the gist of its (mostly obscure) purpose & revelation, as much as we can puzzle out.]

SCP-XXX-α is an intricate meme complex, and much of its content is relatively innocuous. However, persons exposed to sufficient portions of the books become subject to a complex, progressive memetic compulsion, superficially similar to [DATA REDACTED] religious fervor.

███

TEXT-DESCRIBING-THE-PIC

Item #: SCP-XXX

Object Class: Safe/Euclid/Keter (indicate which class)

Special Containment Procedures:

Description: ███

Addendum: