Species of Interest-004 - SCP Foundation

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Identifier: SoI-004
Estimated Population:

Scientific Name: Homo postdescensus1
<200

Threat Level: Green

Concerning Individuals

Height Range: 0.5-3.8 meters

Weight Range: 2-1022.2 kg

Exterior: Dark brown, clay-like, variable shape

Circadian Cycle: Primarily nocturnal

Life Expectancy: Biological immortality

Instances of SoI-004 are most often confused with Homo sapiens idaltu2 and Homo sapiens sapiens3. They may be distinguished by the following characteristics:

Instances of SoI-004 frequently, though not always, exhibit exaggerated or malformed humanoid physiologies.

SoI-004's skin possesses a consistency similar to clay.

SoI-004 lack genitalia, reproducing asexually through fission.

All instances of SoI-004 are fluent in one of four Afroasiatic proto-languages.

Special Considerations of Populace

Mobile Task Force Epsilon-11 ("Needle in a Hay Field") is to be deployed in response to sightings of SoI-004, which are to be captured and detained. In response to possible population centers, MTF-ε11 may request additional assistance from task forces dedicated to combating heavily-entrenched or large-scale aggressors; it is suspected, however, that SoI-004 poses minimal threat to the Foundation.

Instances of SoI-004 are to be transferred to the EGBAEQ-Site-98 Panopticon for containment. Ethically appropriate dietary needs consist of 23 kcal of root vegetables and 12 kcal of putrefied meat per kilogram weekly; this may be reduced should Site-98 experience budgetary issues.

Description

Species of Interest 004 is a genetically modified offshoot of…

When the Nephilimit died, victims of their own belligerence, extractivism, and ethnic hatreds, their children scattered about their dead empire.

The children of the Nephilimit were not fit to revive the rule of their masters, for only a Nephil was fit to learn the game of Empire… or such was the rationale. In time, the choking cities of the Nephilimit gave way to the vibrant depravity of Scarlet Lamashtu, Violet Inanna, and their Centipede Kings; in time, they would be overtaken by the Children of Flesh and Hair, the clay children of Nephilimit relegated to curiosity; and when day devoured night and the Yeren libraries burned, the nameless children of clay were seemingly content to stay nomadic nobodies.

None among the living are removed from nature, however. As peace from dominion prevailed, the Nephilimit's former slaves grew greater in number. Wanderers became bands, became communities, became tribes, and the Clay could no longer ignore its place in the world. No name had been afforded to them, no destiny to inherit beyond a seeming eternity of punitive servitude… but still, they lived. They were plural — imit — and before them was a future to forge however they saw fit.

The Protarch of the Imit, Adamah, was an ancient and bestial thing, once the curiosity of a Nocturnal Court of low importance. They stood 33 cubits in height, and with time might have stood 33 cubits more. Generations of Yeren had unknowingly instructed them in the arts of Empire, and when the opportunity came to apply such lessons, Adamah was more than happy to oblige.

Former slaves of empire, Adamah was both familiar and welcome to the Imit. Adamah asked for, but did not demand, unquestioning loyalty. Adamah carved the land into imperial fiefdoms, and invited their allies to live peacefully within. Adamah declared all in their purview under the yoke of Adamah, and ensured no yoke weighed heavier than its neighbors.

By decree, there was but one above Adamah, an incomprehensibly vast force of forbidden name. All else — the shepherds and farmers, the warriors that served as Adamah's fingers, even the glass-eyed courtier that interpreted the divine light — were beneath Adamah, and equally so. To declare oneself closer to Adamah than anyone else was a kind of treason, to be punished accordingly. Thus it was, in the immediate days of Adamah's reign.

As Adamah's purview expanded, however, Empire ensured they were less and less capable of recognizing their subjects. From the two-point hierarchy grew subtle castes, wherein those closest to Adamah were regarded more favorably, those furthest less. The weak were neglected, the strong allotted undue power. As these subtleties increased, Adamah grew less and less capable of enforcing the equality of their inferiority.

Lillith, Archpriestess of that unknowable light, looked upon the sick hierarchies of Adamah's empire, and felt disgust blooming in their hearts. Adamah, who sat above the Imit and their neighbors, had a duty to ensure no yoke weighed heavier than another. Stricken with righteous rage, Lillith made pilgrimage to Mountain-Of-Night — atop from which Adamah ruled — to air their grievance.

Lillith's words to Adamah were never recorded; it is known, however, that power-drunk Adamah had Lillith scourged and thrown from Mountain-Of-Night. Lillith rolled down its cliffs for three nights, the rocks cutting their flesh and shattering their skeleton, and when they fell into the saline swamp below, their body was broken and mutilated beyond recognition.

Adamah had been above Lillith… but they were not above the unknowable force Lillith had served.

That great, all-encompassing light was served by seven angels, giants of an age long passed. They had never been under Adamah's purview, and never would. None flinched when the imperative came to punish Adamah.

Adamah, again, stood 33 cubits, and was protective of each and every one of them. None under their purview were large enough to threaten them with splitting… but again, the great angels were not under Adamah's purview.

The angels descended upon Adamah; thus is their lineage:

The right hand of the Selfless First bore into Adamah's chest, grabbing hold of their ribs and tearing from them Eve of 3 Cubits. She would be a scholar of great renown, learning and extrapolating the secrets of the Imitian body — though Adamah's pride would see her force new biological hierarchies, excommunicating her from polite society.

The throat and lungs of Adamah were cut out by the Envious Second, producing Adam of 3 Cubits. Memories of Adamah's life would prompt him to wage Empire; from him come Cain, Abel, and Seth, warrior-autarchs of Iudimit.

The Ingenious Third subjected Adamah to a multitude of terrible wounds, and from them bled Attar of 7 Cubits, that shapeless tyrant. Attar's flexibility would see it survive the destruction of Yenimit; only the armies of Rashidun would have the tenacity to destroy it once and for all.

The Tenacious Fourth severed Adamah's limbs, which congealed into Simurgh of 4 Cubits under some unknown force. Xe would travel East; together with the Eastern inhabitants, Parsimit would come to be. They would be the first to die.

The Lonely Fifth's lashes cut from Adamah their heart, liver, kidneys, and pancreas, from which congealed Ammon of 5 Cubits. Ammon would disappear into the West, to care for its vast landscapes.

The Brilliant Sixth's sorceries drew forth Apep of 6 Cubits from the intestines of Adamah. In its hunger, however, Apep would devour the planes south of Jericho, becoming so large as to fall into the Western Sea. Flesh and Clay would unite to defend against it, and thus was Magrimit formed.

The Seventh must have done something to Adamah, for four of their cubits cannot be accounted for. Legends tell of a great wolf fleeing to the North following Adamah's punishment; could that have been those last 4 Cubits?

When the Angels retreated from the Earth, there was but a single cubit of Adamah left, unrecognizable as the failed tyrant it had once been. Though the wretch that had once been Adamah comprehended the reason for its punishment, it was nevertheless incensed. Its hatred burned the sands to glass, and when the heavy rains shattered the ground beneath it, the wretch would tumble into a cave of iron, not to be seen for a thousand years.

But a thousand years had been nothing to former King of the Imit, and when that Dread Bull Amoloch emerged from beneath the earth, only violence and sorrow would follow.

"The Four", Iudimit, Yenimit, Parsimit, and Magrimit, do not entirely map onto modern notions of "kingdom", "empire", and "nation". It would be more accurate to call them Imitian populations of common tongue, where the language of one followed the rules of another. Some tribes, kingdoms, and peoples might have crossed the lines, and imit might have ruled alongside humans, jinni, shedim, or deva. Yet, it was the Four where the Imit thrived, the Four where their destiny was so intimately tied.

The Four were neither marked by ancestral disharmony, nor some transcendent bond. There were wars, civil, inter"national", territorial, total, truces and surrenders and armistices. So too was there aid, arts, gifts of surplus to those in need. A Iudimite city-state might have allied with a Parsimite village to conquer a fellow Iudimite land; two hundred years later, that Parsimite kingdom, allied with its former enemy, might broker peace between the two.

There was but one constant in the existence of the Four: the threats of Apep and Amoloch. Apep would swim through ocean and sea, menacing the coasts and doing battle with priesthoods; Amoloch, meanwhile, would strike the unprotected flanks where the sick and helpless resided, taking them into its molten stomach to burn. No matter the games of politics and personhood, the Four were united against their terrible wrath.

For eleven millennia, the Four grew, shrank, evolved, and shifted about. Languages gradually shifted apart, new common tongues emerging to replace them. Kingdom and empire and tribe and confederation and nomad came and went, and it seemed that, eventually, the Four might become the Eight, the Two, the Sixteen, the One, so old as to become irreconcilable, even as broad linguistic families.

They were so close.

The Parsimit were, broadly, the closest of the Four to the Ortothan Kingdom. Their various populations had intermingled since the Kingdom was large enough to be recognized as such; it is said that eventually, the easternmost Parsimitian languages were partially intelligible with the Ortothan tongue.

They were, then, the first to notice the four-color banners of Daevon marching into the Kingdom.

The fall of the Ortothan Kingdom was a terrible warning to the Eastern Parsimit; 'but,' thought the Three And One Half, 'why must we worry?' The Kingdom of Daevon was so far away; to the Three And One Half, the Eastern Parsimit need not concern themselves. Perhaps they could send troops to defend the remaining Ortothans, but the Four had two better things to be worried about than some far-off warmonger.

Some thousand years later, the Daevite Empire would march South once more.

Thus was the fate of the Imit:

That abominable thing that had once stolen the names of "Inanna", "Huandou", and "Unseelie" had been torn apart by the Yeren at the end of the Forgotten Age, its remains buried in the west. When, once more, the Empire was faced with a crisis of resources, Empress Blavena II used its burial as pretext to expand.

That the lands were already occupied was not merely incidental: it was favorable. Time was the ultimate enemy of the Daeva, those wretches who fancied themselves better than their fellow humans. Only through continuous blood sacrifice could the Daeva stave off aging; conquering inhabited lands provided not only more sacrifices, but populations which might offset them.

In their bloodied chauvinism, the Daevites did not consider the generations of intercommunication between the Four as their forces invaded from the Caspian Sea, nor the implications of deploying their Scarlet Leviathan.

Parsimitian armies greeted the Daevites with a storm of bronze; the Iudimitian kingdom of Eden was not far behind, pushing the Daevite offensive from the west. The Caspian Sea offensive faltered, Daevite losses mounted, and even their Scarlet Leviathan was incapacitated, castrated by Abel of Eden. For a time, it looked like the Daevites might be pushed back.

There was no one reason as to why the defensive faltered. One could point to Cain of Eden's bizarre offensives; inexplicable agricultural blights; those terrible monsters that wore the skin of the Imit's comrades; defense pacts with obligations never fulfilled. The end result was the same: the Parsimit lost their Northern holds.

Despite their victory, the Daevites were furious. The Imit were deformed, ugly things, utterly unambitious, that did not even bleed; that they had persevered so long against the Daeva, even emasculating the god that embodied their hierarchy, was an insult of the gravest caliber. Their rage was such that they did not even consider the non-Imitian majority that had composed the Parsimit army — for to them, they were pawns of the clay degenerates who'd mutilated their god.

From their newly-established province, the Daeva launched a brutal campaign of genocide against the Imit. The Northern Parsimit were annihilated almost immediately; with time, the South would follow.

There were Three, now; but this was still too many to the Daeva.

When Amoloch stumbled into the newly-established city of Kazenrud, did it expect to find malevolence to match its own? Had it foreseen its capture at the hands of the Scarlet Leviathan? Was subsumption by that pale magician of Raasepula what it had always intended?

When Verdant Amoloch next came to the Iudimit, there would be little left to salvage.

With neither the Parsimit nor Iudimit, the fight against Apep became more important to the non-Imit than protecting whoever remained. When the Daeva offered a permanent solution to the former, the dehorned corpse of Amoloch as proof of their capabilities, all they asked in return was a population transfer.

Ultimately, overextension, the deification of Pallid Apep, and hostility from their neighbors would fracture the Daevite Empire into the Tetrarchy. By then, less than 40 Imit remained.

The Daeva would fall, victims of their own belligerence, extractivism, and ethnic hatreds, at the hands of Ion's slave revolt some six thousand years later; the collective memory of the Imit nearly died with them.

Among the worst ironies of the Daevite's genocide campaign against the Imit was that in the millennia that followed, they would be the sole civilization to remember them. The Imit were immortalized as the monsters that had emasculated the Scarlet King and shamed the Daeva — and in time, they would be blamed for any number of the Daeva's troubles. The royals who opposed Armilus I's reunification efforts accused him of cavorting with Imitian lovers; when the 2nd Empire broke out into civil war, hidden Imit agitators were blamed; a great many unpopular rulers were accused of "crypto-Imitianism" during the brief period of liberalization under the 1st Triarchy; when Kazenrud went to war against Canaan, the Daevite propoganda machine weaved the Imit into their narrative, accusing the Canaanites of being human-imit "crossbreeds"; and finally, when the Kalmaktama stormed Daevon, it is said the Last Matriarch screamed of Imitian plots and subversions.

There was, of course, no coming back for Imitian civilization. When the Daevites destroyed their civilization, they had unknowingly ensured the dominance of humanity. Any attempt to rebuild within sight of the humans was treated as a threat to that dominance.

And so the Imit retreated to the dark corners of the Earth, to await the coming of a messiah that, perhaps, might offer them a second chance.

Recommendations

Observe and contain. With the exception of certain anomalies, instances of SoI-004 are largely passive.

Footnotes

1. Commonly known as "Imit".

2. Herto Man.

3. Human.