SCP-2574
What Rough Beast
Special Containment Procedures
SCP-2574 is currently uncontained, as physical means of containment have proven unable to stop SCP-2574's progress. Large-scale use of amnestics is currently authorized to combat the effects of SCP-2574. Knowledge of SCP-2574 has spread to the point of rendering amnestics insufficient, and populated areas plotted to be in SCP-2574's path are to be evacuated at least 1 week before SCP-2574 reaches the area. The Foundation is currently collaborating with affected governments to repair damage done by SCP-2574 and quell violence both directly and indirectly related to its appearance. Governments are to be discouraged from enacting military strikes, as any attack on SCP-2574 will invariably prove more damaging to both military and civilians than to SCP-2574.
The Global Occult Coalition and the Foundation have agreed to collaborate for the sole purpose of constructing a large-scale memetic measure that will counteract SCP-2574's effects on global psychology, which cannot be replicated by either group alone to prevent the possibility of full memetic warfare. The resulting LAST FALCONER Protocol has been put in place as a preemptive measure to handle the mass political unrest and anarchic tendencies generated when SCP-2574 reaches its destination.
Description
SCP-2574 is a 12-meter-tall leonine creature composed of sandstone and smooth muscle tissue.1 SCP-2574 is surrounded at all times by a flock of birds of prey.2 The flock, designated SCP-2574-1, is fixated on attacking SCP-2574, and will not respond to any other stimulus. SCP-2574 constantly regenerates from the damage done by SCP-2574-1.
SCP-2574 is capable of locomotion at a rate of 3-5 km a day, and is moving steadily towards a fixed destination. SCP-2574 is undeterred by most obstacles, whether man-made or naturally occurring. It can swim at a rate of 2-3 km per day, and will either crush land-based obstacles or climb over them. Currently, SCP-25743 is estimated to have caused 25.3 million USD in damages, 112 deaths, and 625 injuries. The current theorized destination of SCP-2574 is the city of Sarajevo.4 SCP-2574's effects began on December 24th, 2012, and have continued to the present day.
SCP-2574 appears to have a wide variety of anomalous effects. SCP-2574 physically affects its current location by temporarily transforming it into a facsimile of a World War I combat zone. Materializations of aerial attacks, abnormal chemicals, manmade landforms, and a variety of weaponry have all been observed in the wake of SCP-2574. SCP-2574 also causes temporal anomalies, producing historically accurate hallucinations of combat during both World War I and the Irish War of Independence, and causing both temporary and permanent manifestations of persons involved in either conflict.
In addition, SCP-2574 has a global effect on sociopolitical attitudes, though the effect is more pronounced in countries involved in either World War I or the Irish War of Independence. SCP-2574 causes a measurable increase in civil unrest, civilian discontent, police brutality, and bellicose foreign policy decisions. The strength of these patterns is inversely proportional to SCP-2574's distance from its destination.5
| Location of SCP-2574 | Distance from Sarajevo | Anomalous Effect | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| East of Astana6 | 5013 km | Published works in Russian and Kazakh randomly begin including passages from Irish poet William Butler Yeats' body of work. Length ranges from a sentence to entire poems. Works appear to be affected regardless of author or genre. | February 3, 20██ |
| Russia | 3006 km | In rural areas throughout Europe, chlorine gas clouds manifest at sunrise and are unable to be dispersed for the next 2-4 days. | March 21, 20██ |
| Russia | 2759 km | Raptors begin migrating towards SCP-2574 in order to join SCP-2574-1. Russia begins a series of air strikes, causing tensions with bordering countries when intelligence is leaked that Russia plans to attempt a nuclear attack. | June 1, 20██ |
| Russia | 2016 km | Poppies begin growing in large numbers in locations where they are not normally found, especially urban locations. Religious cults centered around SCP-2574 begin to emerge. | December 30, 20██ |
| Ukraine | 1752 km | Descendants of World War I Veterans begin having hallucinations corresponding to their ancestor's experience during the war. | February 19, 20██ |
| Ukraine | 1657 km | Plant and rock formation begin forming conic spirals regardless of environmental conditions or normal growth patterns. Mass suicides become an almost monthly occurrence. | May 4, 20██ |
| Romania | 1404 km | Aerial bombings begin occurring in abandoned rural fields in rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe. Civilians report seeing aircraft overhead dropping the explosives, but no aircraft is ever detected on surveillance footage or radar during the events. Prevalence of aerial warfare shifts from a minor to major aspect of combat during World War I. | July 28, 20██ |
| Romania | 1228 km | Civilian-police violence rates increase by 50 percent, 75 percent in Ireland. Fourteen cases of arson occur in the Irish cities of Cork, Dublin, and Belfast. Government shutdowns occur in France, Great Britain, and Italy, leading to widespread riots. | September 12, 20██ |
| Hungary | 1111 km | Parties espousing anarchist sentiments begin to increase exponentially in polling popularity. | October 24, 20██ |
| Hungary | 981 km | Assassination attempts on politicians increase in frequency by 60 percent. | December 10, 20██ |
| Hungary | 875 km | Televised political speeches begin including passages from addresses given by political leaders during the 1910s. America refuses to send aid to the UN to help European countries, and withdraws from the UN shortly after. | January 7, 20██ |
| Hungary | 756 km | Countries with hostile relations are experiencing border skirmishes at an average frequency of one altercation every two weeks. | April 4, 20██ |
| Hungary | 558 km | Patients with identification matching that of World War 1 soldiers are brought into hospitals with war injuries common to that era. Patients universally die during surgery and their bodies disappear when no longer under observation. | June 14, 20██ |
| Serbia | 285 km | Irish-English conflict begins to grow more violent, and a surge in Northern Irish nationalism is seen. The Secretary of State is in the process of proposing a border poll. | August 22, 20██ |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 108 km | Dreams of SCP-2574 become widespread. A majority of subjects report that an entity contained within SCP-2574 was attempting and failing to communicate with them. Multiple websites are created to document its appearance in dreams. | September 30, 20██ |
SCP-2574 was discovered just outside of Bethlehem, Israel, after multiple videos of a massive sphinx appeared on Israeli news. SCP-2574 ignored all attempts at contact with agents of the Foundation, GOC, and Serpent's Hand, and crushed a GOC armed truck that attempted to provoke a response by blocking its path.
YouTube footage of SCP-2574 in Debrecen, Hungary from September 12, 20██:
<BEGIN FOOTAGE>
00:00 Footage of Debrecen's Reformed Church, a popular tourist attraction.
00:17 SCP-2574 appears in frame. People begin to flee.
00:20 SCP-2574 makes its way down the main walkway, showing no sign of slowing as it approaches the church.
00:25 Upon reaching the church, SCP-2574 continues to walk, forcing its way through the building and leading the building to collapse around it. Despite the left tower falling directly on its head, SCP-2574 continues undeterred.
00:31 SCP-2574 continues away from the church and out of frame.
<END FOOTAGE>
- First known media mention of SCP-2574, from international media network ███ on February 9, 20██
- What was once thought to be a hoax is now considered very, very, real, with multiple verified sightings…
- Civilian account of anomaly generated by SCP-2574 - Zholymbet, Kazakhstan, February 9, 20██
- The first bomb fell about sixty yards away. The planes were small and flying low. The second one hit some of my sheep. God, the way they screamed. They whistled as they fell, and there was shrapnel everywhere - this was old stuff, heavy. I was dragging my son inside as the third bomb fell. And I looked up, and I saw it on the horizon. It was just a silhouette, but it was immense. It just walked on, and on, and on. The bombs fell around it - one even began burning on its skin - but it just kept moving. It wasn't fast, either. It just plodded. Like some kind of automaton. It didn't even turn to look, it just stared straight ahead. Dead-eyed. Blank.
- Excerpt from leaked foreign policy briefing transcript - April 14, 20██
- Austrian and Hungarian leaders have been in talks for some time, but today we received word of a military alliance with the intent of occupying certain Balkan and Eastern European nations, including Serbia, Ukraine, and Belarus… No word on whether Russia itself is a target… Rumors of German involvement are currently unconfirmed, but the recent civilian deaths in Nice may give them a common enemy in France…
- Exchange between GOC and Foundation Representatives - July 26, 20██
- I propose a system that allows neither group to recreate the formula on their own - we cannot allow petty disputes to let this anomaly wreak further havoc. This thing - it's dragging us back towards another World War - back towards the conditions that caused the poem to be written in the first place. Yeats believed history was cyclical. If that's true, there's nothing we can do to stop it from getting to Sarajevo. We can only prepare for what happens when it gets there. And the only way we can protect ourselves is if we cooperate. So get over yourselves.
- Excerpt from missive from Foundation to German Chancellor:
- We understand the current situation in regards to the civil unrest within your nation has become untenable. We have recently come into possession of some large-scale treatments that will act as a mass conciliatory agent that will reduce tensions and allow for some semblance of order to be restored. We cannot guarantee more than three months' supply, so be judicious in your usage. Partial dosing over long periods of time is highly recommended.
- Excerpt from an address given by president of the Russian Federation before a failed drone strike on SCP-2574
- The creature we have seen is an enigma. We have no conception of its goals, its thoughts, its intentions. We do not know if it thinks. We do not know if it feels, or hates, or wants. But if it endangers the lives of a single Russian citizen, it will be met with force.
- Forum post made on a site devoted to recording dreams of SCP-2574:
- i saw it again. well, him again. it was him, the poet, not…the thing, if that makes sense. he's trapped, he was begging me to set him free. he was sobbing, and his tears burned his face, and they burned mine. he called the falcons to him, i think, but he kept moving. he told me this was his punishment. this cycle. he wanted to stop moving. but he couldn't. he never, never could. and then he crushed me, beneath his paw, and he cried for me. and that's when i woke up.
- Excerpt from sermon from one of the many religious organizations created in the wake of SCP-2574's encounters with the public:
- Come to us and embrace your salvation! Discover the words of the prophet Yeats, who spoke the sacred truth that all of history is a spiral, and that we have spiraled outwards towards chaos! Learn the true nature of the Second Coming! We will teach you the cycle of time, and the road to the eternal ecstasy amidst the sins of the suffering! Give in not to degeneracy! Eschew your thoughts of the future! Know we are all as tides in an ocean, never forwards, never truly backwards! Embrace the widening gyre!
Historical Documentation
- Excerpt from testimony of Gavrilo Princip
- Do you see it? The gyre? The spiral? It has been tightening, tightening, tightening for so long. Suffocating us. Restricting us. We are bound by its machinations, rendered immobile by its interminable bonds. All of life is straining against it, straining to be free. The spiral must move outward, outward to chaos, to life, to freedom! He was the apex, and the minute I put that bullet through his head, I liberated us. And now we may fall away, outward, into the primal heat, and wander, and roam again. I have saved us. I have set us free.
- Excerpts from Yeats' journal in the days before his death:7
- December 23, 1938
- I cannot bear the pull any longer. It is not just my mind, not anymore - it's my flesh itself, yearning, pulling away from my bones. I wake in the night and find myself facing towards that sacred place. There is a pilgrimage to be made. But what will I find at the end of it? Where will it take me? Every morning I wake up the the bombs whistling overhead? Is the war still on? It always is. In the papers, on the radio, the fires in the fields. They tell me it is 1938. They are lying. It is 1918. It has always been 1918. I cannot do this much longer. I held it off for as long as I could, you know I did. But they created me, the crowds, in all their folly and greed, they took me and shaped me like clay. Carved me like stone. They do not know what they did. The world of the spirit and the soul runs through me, and it howls. It reaching out its claws for us. We have abused each other and the land for too long, it must strike back. I see the disasters of the past and the tragedies of the future, and the monsters they create. Soon, I will be amongst them.
- January 2, 1939
- Bethlehem bethlehem bethlehem. I must carry us to our end. I cannot do it. I cannot I cannot I cannot. But I walk in spirals when I am not thinking, and I smell the mustard gas wherever I go, and the skin on my back grows stony, and I fear what will happen if I do not follow. I must walk the spiral. I must. Please, why could you not pick another vessel! I am the chaos, I am the dying, I am the screams and the trenches and oh god it hurts.
- January 28, 1939
- I'm here, now. Bethlehem. It's harder to write, to walk, to think. I cannot feel any part of me. I no longer need to blink - I stare into the sun without pain or fear. I'm so scared. I'm not human. Not anymore. I would scream when I look in the mirror if I cared. I hide, and I grow, and the falcons all swarm around my door. I'm losing myself. They will make me walk the spiral. The pull is still there, but it's fainter, and to a different place - Sarajevo. Cursed Sarajevo. Not again, please, I beg you, not again. But first, I must sleep. Sleep for decades. Complete the curse, change myself utterly. Into a beast. I can only hope I will have lost myself enough when I wake to be unaware. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. I must walk the spiral. I must follow the path they lead me on. I smell the blood, hear the shouting, and always the scent of mustard gas. With their brutality, they will lead me back. Back to Sarajevo. Whatever chaos I cause - it is not my fault. It is only your own. I am only walking the spiral. You cleared the path, you will guide me through, and now I walk. I walk.
- December 23, 1938
SCP-2574 will reach its destination in approximately 1 month.