Foreword: This exploration of SCP-2841-4 was carried out shortly after its discovery. Agent Luo Xing, Agent ████ ████ and Field Specialist Kelly Zhang were dispatched with standard gear and basic diving equipment. The operation was overseen by Site Director Xue Qing as part of the Project Hetu Luoshu. The following is translated from Chinese.
Interviewer: Dr. Xue Qing
Interviewee: Agent Luo Xing, operation leader
<Begin Log>
Dr. Xue: Hello, Agent Luo.
Agent Luo: Hi Doctor.
Dr. Xue: Please take a seat. I take it that you know why you’re here?
Agent Luo: Yes, the recording kind of broke half-way and I’m expected to give a briefing on the operation.
Dr. Xue: And for the purpose of the report, please start from the beginning.
Agent Luo: Before that, may I ask how ████ is doing?
Dr. Xue: He has fully recovered. Agent ████ will be transferred out of the Project soon enough, once the psychological evaluations are complete. You may begin now.
Agent Luo: Thank you, Dr. Xue. So on 20██/██/██, I led Agent ████ ████ and Field Specialist Kelly Zhang into SCP-2841-4. ████ was in charge of the video equipment and Kelly did the sampling and surveying of the surroundings.
We went through the pool and entered the extradimensional location without problem. We then moved onto the land and changed to normal gear. It was quite dark so we kept the headlights on, and ████ turned on night vision.
We were in an open field. There was clearly a sky above us, with stars visible. They hardly lit anything though. The ground just extended to all directions, and then dissolved into blackness. There was no sound, and now that I recall, no wind either.
The pool was pretty much the same as the one back here, same liquid as it comes through the portal. But there were these metal rods around the pool, where those bronze trees should be. I have no idea what kind of metal, and Kelly wasn’t able to scrape down any bits.
She was able to take samples of the ground though, all of which was covered in some weird sand that seemed metallic. We stayed at the site for a bit. ████ recorded the scene and helped Kelly take a few pictures.
[pauses]
Our job was just to map out the basics of the location. But we couldn’t communicate with the base there, and it was up to me to decide what to do. We were going to return, but ████ found something with his camera. It was barely visible, off in the distance. We figured it was some sort of tower, just extending upwards with its top obscured by the darkness.
Dr. Xue: So you decided to explore the premises?
Agent Luo: We’ve been there for 10 minutes tops, and already finished what we could do around the pool. We had our basic gear and weapons, so I figured it would be alright. Besides, the place seemed pretty dead at the time.
Dr. Xue: Continue.
Agent Luo: We left a strong light at the pool, and made marks as we went. With sand on the ground and no wind around, there was a clear track. We knew we wouldn't be getting lost. ████ led us towards the tower with the camera, and we hiked for 15 to 20 minutes before reaching it.
It was indeed a tower, and it was massive. Four sides, at least 100 meters each. We didn’t really realize that until we were up close. We still couldn’t see how high the thing was. Again, there was nothing else around, no sounds or movements.
Under the headlights, we found that the tower was partly golden and partly white, alternating between the two colors to form some sort of pattern. But we couldn’t quite see what it was. It must be gorgeous under the sunlight, as it shined even with the dim light we had. And again, like with the rods, Kelly couldn’t take any samples.
We didn’t find any entrance, but there was a set of stairs facing where we came from. It went around the tower, slowly winding upwards. It was clearly human-sized, nicely built even. There were railings, and we didn’t feel insecure stepping on them.
Naturally, we hiked upwards. This time it took even longer than the time spent getting to the tower. Kelly said it was a little over an hour and a half, but it felt longer. The stairs just continued on and on, and the height didn’t help us get a better look at the landscape. It was just too dark.
████ managed to get a few more good shots of the sky and a lot of close shots of the tower, but nothing else. The patterns on the tower kept changing, but they were just lines and shapes. Kelly suggested it must have been designed to be viewed from a distance. We tried talking but it felt too loud. Even as we ascended there was no wind. I’m not entirely sure how high we eventually got to.
But then, just as Kelly started to complain about it, we were suddenly there.
Dr. Xue: There?
Agent Luo: The stairs just ended, and there was suddenly this open platform. It was much smaller than its base, about 10 meters long and wide. We almost stumbled into each other. And there was light sources, candles, must have been hundreds of them.
It was like some sort of Chinese pavilion, or a small palace, but you get rid of all the walls and leave the pillars. It was clearly made of wood, like traditional buildings usually are, brightly colored, and with decorations here and there. The candles lit the whole scene up pretty well.
But we weren’t able to step forward. In the front of the pavilion, there was a golden throne. And there were two beings there.
Dr. Xue: You mean that they were not human?
Agent Luo: I’m not really sure. One of them seemed human enough, the one on the golden throne. A male, wearing traditional clothes with the pattern of a giant bird. He had this sun-shaped headwear on his head. As for the other being, it was some sort of weird dog?
Dr. Xue: Please elaborate on that.
Agent Luo: It was like a wolf, or a fox maybe? But it had no fur, just these scales on its body. It was quite unsettling. Not fish scales though, more like a reptile. Furthermore, it stood almost as tall as a human, on its hind legs. One of the front paws was rested on the male’s shoulder.
We all stayed where we were, at the top of the stairs. To be honest, we weren’t really expecting this, and it took a few moments to adjust to the new light sources. And then the creature just turned to look at us, its paw still on the man’s shoulder.
There were a few seconds where it just stared. And suddenly the thing emitted an ear-piercing shriek and we all stepped back. At the same time, the man on the throne just shot up. That’s when we noticed that there was a piece of white silk hanging from one of the beams. The man then climbed onto the throne, and placed the piece of silk around his neck. He said something, but none of us could understand. It seemed like some sort of weird dialect.
Dr. Xue: Hold on.
[Dr. Xue plays an audio file; a male can be heard speaking agitatedly.]
It was, in fact, Archaic Chinese, used from Shang Dynasty to Han Dynasty. Roughly translates to [reading from document] “The stars, I could reach them. They’re so close now. But the snakes. The snakes, they have come for me. Their vengeance burns like flames. Please forgive me, please forgive us. Please. I did nothing, it was my ancestors.”
Agent Luo: Oh. That actually makes sense.
[pauses]
But as he said that, the creature growled and pushed the throne down. The man was hanged like that, but still twitching a bit. I think he said something else but we couldn't catch it, as the creature jumped around and knocked down all the candles, and the whole pavilion just caught on fire.
I know I said that there were hundreds of candles, but it was merely seconds between when the candles were knocked down and when the whole thing started burning. It was definitely abnormal. And the creature, it just yelped and yelped and the sound somehow gradually turned into a kind of laughter. It made no attempt to attack us, but I still ordered retreat.
Dr. Xue: And that’s when the video recording failed.
Agent Luo: Yes, Agent ████ didn’t respond to my order. The recording was still on, but he had put the camera down. Not down on the floor, it was attached to his gear, but he just stared at the burning pavilion. I patted him on the shoulder but he turned and grabbed my arm, pointing towards the pavilion – at this point smoke and fire had covered all of it – and muttered a series of nonsense.
Dr. Xue: I believe this is what he said?
[Dr. Xue plays an audio file]
Agent ████: It was him! It was him, the tyrant! We need to get there, we need to get to him and make him pay. He must burn.
Agent Luo: What are you doing? We’re evacuating!
Agent ████: How can you not see? It was him! Him, bathing in wine and gulping the meat, while people toiled and built him this grand palace. His ancestors stole the throne in the first place, and he showed that he was indeed of an evil breed. How disgusting, the most terrible king!
Agent Luo: What?
Field Specialist Zhang: We need to go!
Agent ████: The snakes! They have chewed on the bones of his enemies and friends, and now they come for him. This is the revenge!
[recording ends]
Agent Luo: Yes. I’m pretty sure ████ meant the man on the throne, but not sure what to make of it. He said those words almost accusingly and both me and Kelly figured he was somehow influenced by the anomaly, and it was best to leave as quickly as possible.
So I grabbed hold of ████ and dragged him with us down the stairs. He wasn’t resistant, but kept mumbling about the man, and how he should suffer. Naturally there was no one to take care of the camera, and we were soon too occupied to think about that.
Turns out that ████ was right about one thing. There were indeed snakes. They just appeared crawling up from the stairs, and on the railings even. There were no signs of them anywhere before, but now they just crammed the path and slithered onto each other. There were so many.
Kelly immediately took out her gun. I looked out of the tower to see where they came from. And I just saw these giant pits at the bottom, around the tower. Certainly wasn’t there before, just filled with swarming snakes –
Dr. Xue: Hold on, how is this possible? You were in a dark environment, and even if the fire was enough to illuminate, how could you see all the way down to the bottom of the tower? You said that you climbed for an hour and a half at least.
Agent Luo: Well, we didn’t really realize it until that moment, but somehow when we saw the pits, we were merely stories away from the ground, only 10 meters or so. It didn’t feel like the tower had moved, but either that it shrank or that there were some space anomaly and we were on a loop previously. But it was the least of our worries then.
As I looked down, I realized that there was now enough light to see, that the sky was no longer dark. And then Kelly almost screeched. I looked where she was pointing and it was on the horizon. The sun had risen, and now that there was light, I found that we were on this plain, open field, stretching into all directions. There was something off about the sun, now that I think about it. But back then our attention was caught by the thing just by the horizon.
I’m not sure what it was, but it was just massive. Before I said that the tower was massive, but it was nothing compared to this. The thing stretched all across the horizon, partly obscuring the sun. It was unevenly shaped, and because the light didn’t shine through, we couldn’t really make it out, and it was just shadows.
We didn’t really want to make it out though, the thing looked like a mountain, except mountains won’t be moving and changing shapes. It was definitely something alive, and it had soft edges? I’m still not quite sure. But we were sure that it was shifting and worming and moving towards the tower, or towards us.
Kelly insisted that we get out of there, and I agreed with her. The pavilion was burning really badly but we couldn’t afford to care about that or the snakes. So we descended the stairs and dragged ████ with us.
Amazingly, the snakes didn’t bother with us. They just slithered and crawled upwards. A few, no, a lot of them got on our clothes but we just kept going. It was almost fine, but the gigantic figure in the distance was too worrying. The way it moved – I'm not sure how it moved, but it’s still in my head.
It took us only a few minutes to get to the bottom, compared with our hour or so hike up. I noted that there was no branching path either. Luckily, there was still a path between the snake pits, and we were able to get across fine. We probably should have taken pictures of those, but we were too upset to even really examine them. But anyways, we were able to find our track leading back without problem.
Dr. Xue: So you just headed back, and avoided encountering the giant creature?
Agent Luo: Well, the way back was still a 20 minute hike, that didn’t change. And half way, we kind of realized that maybe the thing on the horizon won’t be able to get to us.
Like, you’d think that a creature that huge will be able to move through great distance pretty quickly. But when we look at it, it was in its original spot. We could see that it was making efforts to move to our direction, and we could see that it was covering distance. But when we look again, the thing was still on the horizon. I’m not sure if that comforted us or made us even more unnerved.
It was still rather upsetting though, seeing the movements constantly at the corner of your eyes. It was just very… surreal? Plus ████ was still spilling nonsense and we were quite worried. We decided to just get back and finish this operation. Kelly remembered the camera when we were only a few minutes away from the entrance, and was able to record properly again.
Afterwards, we just changed to diving gear and got back. ████ was still unstable, but was able to come with us fine.
Dr. Xue: I see. Anything else you might want to add, Agent Luo?
Agent Luo: [pauses to think] In fact, yeah. Kelly told me afterwards that she looked back on the way back, when we were not far from the tower. There seemed to be some sort of giant symbol of the sun with wings on it?
Dr. Xue: Noted. Thank you agent, that will be all.
Agent Luo: Goodbye, doc.
[Agent Luo leaves the room.]
Dr. Xue: [narrates to the recorder] Analysis of the video log and archived images shows that, according to the position of the stars and the size of the sun, SCP-2841-4 may be located on Jupiter. It is unknown why its environment resembles that of the Earth, and can sustain human activity.
[long pause]
This is suspected to have links to the “Taisui” location referenced by members of the Xia Anomalous Culture Group. I can’t help but wonder whether we have been given these clues of potential SCP objects intentionally.
<End Log>
