Photosynthetic's Sandbox

SCP: The Church of the Broken God

Idea seed

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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."

1. SCP-XXX-α is the teachings/holy-books of the CotBG.
   • It consists of an unknown volume of religious & technical material including religious doctrine, machine operating manuals, parables, instruction in physics & mechanical engineering, and theological analysis.
   • The technical material is treated religiously.
2. People who read and understand and accept a certain portion of their contents succumb to a memetic compulsion to build machines.
   • Infected persons are designated instances of SCP-XXX-β; the machines they produce are designated SCP-XXX-1, -2, -3, etc.
   • People must understand and accept the Church’s teachings. The infection gives allowances for individual interpretation, but not heresy – some sections must be understood in certain ways.
3. Nature of the machines
   • They tend to be clockwork, though other mechanical systems up to and including electronics have been observed.
   • If the –β instance had any engineering or mechanical training, it influences the design; if not, the machine defaults to clockwork. (Compare SCP-882, SCP-914, and SCP-217, [other relevant objects)…)
   • Their purpose is always obscure. No machine captured to date has had any discernable input or output.
   • They always interface perfectly. When two -# instances are brought (or built) together, they mesh. Composition is irrelevant (electronics mesh with clockwork meshes with Rube Goldberg devices, etc.), as is the –β instance’s level of technical knowledge.
4. Final addendum: Since SCP-XXX-α covers the entire known canon of CotBG, including its teachings and organizational structure (a sketch of which is in one or more of the books), and since all genuine CotBG members have been partially infected, SCP-XXX as a whole is arguably the entire Church of the Broken God. The whole organization is an SCP object in need of containment.
5. This article should show effects of the CotBG’s level of activity. Most mainlist objects are fully contained: this one is not, and it’s actively fighting not to be. Revisions in the containment procedures, SCP-XXX-# instances missing, “O5 Eyes Only” notes, etc.

Writeup in progress

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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.

███

SCP Writeup Template

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TEXT-DESCRIBING-THE-PIC

Item #: SCP-XXX

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

Special Containment Procedures:

Description: ███

Addendum:

Leads to Investigate

• Aloe polyphylla — A plant showing the effects of something whose passage makes things more geometrically ideal; sharper angles, more precision.
• "mrmph" — An object that causes select parts of inanimate objects to start growing; accrescence. Sweaters that silence or suffocate the wearer. Garments that stifle complex thought.
• The way incandescence ripples across campfire coals
• "Ooooo Face" from the cave system
• Thing that eats environmentalists — litter lure
• "The death of thought", with apologies/thanks to Foweraker
• Magic described scientifically: a force of nature that pays too much attention to conscious intent & the laws of narrative
• Stone to Flesh
• Frankly
• Camouflage
• Cookie-cutter housing developments — twisting streets of identical houses, every one of them perfect and soulless
• In chat, Faminederp wrote (completely out of context): "sun dried banana leather plantain carapace chestplates / banana cannons made out of banana carapace / cogworks of balsa blocks"
• Mondegreen: "A disease that can replace us"
• The real reason that the Gulf Stream runs so far north. Whatever it is, it has begun to require regular maintenance.
• Something that turns your corneas into pillbugs
• Taxidermy:
  • Mushrooms — Something contained by claiming it's art.
  • Hybrid — A psychopomp. Wisdom. Elusive knowledge.
  • Cats — Internal conflict duking it out. Shoulder angel/shoulder devil.
  • Fawns — A sinister gift in those vials.
  • Throne
  • Tetrad — Meiosis gone wrong. A cobbled-together protective spirit. Manifestation of a child's hate. Cerberus. Panopticon.
• From Fuelbucket:
  • Fruit mutation: eggplant, strawberry, and the finger-carrot.
  • Figurine
  • Reflector
• From Picture is Unrelated:
  • Tuesdays
  • Tiptoe — The only way these people can reach us.
  • Knit — Protection for a strange disease. A replacement or upgrade for the skin. New burn treatments.
  • Parabolic
  • Speaker (already used as an SCP, CotBG-related)
  • Totem
  • The Honored Dead
  • Local History
  • Macroscale
  • Footwear
  • Contradictory
• Alternation of generations: haploid metazoa, diploid magnoliophyta (Flames beat me to it)

Random fun

• Instead of reassignment to Keter duty, why not:
  • Send an offender off with MTF Epsilon-8 ("The Midwives")? They're working with 767 — no way that's pleasant.
  • Reassign an offender to Site-32, at the literal North Pole?