Siggy and the Forgotten Kingdom - SCP Foundation

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There's a common myth about modern parapsychology that it is indistinguishable from mundane psychology. While it is true that modern parapsychology advocates for treating anomalies as one would a human subject, for both ethics and effectiveness, it is important to recall that there is a big difference in the understanding of Veiled and unVeiled brain research. Of these Veiled sciences the most important to remember in the field of parapsychology are cognitohazardous, antimemetic, memetic, oneiric and semiohazardous phenomena, sometimes abbreviated as CAMOS.

Historically, and still to this day, Oneirics is one of the least known, and least well understood, of the four disciplines. While the Department of Memetics and Countermemetics is one of the largest and best funded within the Foundation, there does not currently exist a Department of Oneirics, with the closest existing analogue being MTF Omicron Rho "The Dream Team" which handles combat and containment rather than research. That is not to say however that there is no research on parapsychological dream analysis. Most of you are likely aware of Sigmund Freud and the impact he's had on the field of psychology and its cultural perception. However, of particular interest to parapsychology are some of his later unpublished works, as well as the circumstances of his death.

In his investigation of the subconscious and analysis of dreams Freud taught himself how to lucid dream, and later, how to ascend to the Oneirosphere, where he is said to have practiced psychotherapy on Oneiroi under the name "Moray Oedipus". Many of "Moray"'s patients in the Oneirosphere were also Freud's patients in the waking world, and inspired much of his research in the late 1930s thought destroyed by the Nazis, and lost with Freud's passing. However, Freud's nephew Edward Bernays shortly after his dismissal as a PENTAGRAM memetics advisor in 1959 reported an entity coming to him in a dream "with the head of a white-nosed eel and the body of a Greek god" who informed him of the whereabouts of a buried mahogany box containing Freud's lost works. Bernays, an early investor in Prometheus Labs, provided this research to Prometheus for study, and it later became the basis for Prometheus's Oneirics Division, which later broke off to become Onerioi Inc. These documents were later submitted to the World Parahealth Organization during their investigation of Oneiroi Inc's technologies for harmful side-effects, at which point the research, in addition to further research by Oneiroi Inc, was made public to Veiled communities and organizations, such as the Foundation.

Freud's research, begun once aware of his cancer diagnosis, includes interviews with oracles, oneiroi, reincarnates, astral projectors and thoughtforms and incorporates Freud's own experiences in an attempt to posit physical and psychic laws, and determine a surefire way to persist indefinitely in the Oneirosphere. Oneiroi Inc’s research, choosing to focus on the Oneirosphere not as a purely psychic plane but as a partially physical one, were able to verify Freud’s predictions with their scientific equipment, expectedly finding that the Oneirosphere has considerably lower Daumal and Hume values than baseline reality. Oneiroi Inc consequently was able to discover how this could be manipulated to witness other times and places in our reality, or other realities and timelines entirely. These same set of experiments were able to determine that matter in the Oneirosphere is not made up of atoms at all, or not in a recognizable form, but rather much less stable "dream stuff" as it is colloquially known. They were even able to work out a geographical positioning system for the dreams of individual dreamers, when active. There have even been methods discovered which allow one to take ones physical body into the Oneirosphere or take one's dream self out of it, though I am given to understand these are quite unique and come with great risk.

All this is to say that dreams are not merely fantasy, especially to those more psychically attuned. Psychoanalysis may mean identifying and analyzing symbolism in dreams, what caused the onset of the dream, what a patient's mind is trying to tell them, and what it might say about their mental health. Parapsychoanalysis on the other hand means realizing that one's dreams may not solely stem from one's imagination. A beast chasing you in a recurring nightmare may be a real being meaning you harm, a dream of a loved one might include their actual consciousness, a dream of the future may come to pass. A patient may have a life in Oneiroi West, or another city in the O-Sphere and consider that to be more real than this physical existence ever could be. Some may have small businesses or corporations setting up advertising space in their minds, spitting slogans at them in their most vulnerable. Some may be kings and queens of a world in their mind, gods of their creations, or other dreamers.

The difficulty, then, is knowing when the patient is operating under delusion, and when the dream truly is more than fantasy.

Excerpt from "Introduction to Freudian Parapsychology"

Dr. Simon Glass, Foundation Director of Psychology and Parapsychology

As day broke over the forest, Camp Kenowhere came alive. Purple lights flickered into being in radiant lanterns. Waking heroes moaned and wiped the sleep from their eyes. Sheets rustled, cabinmates in turn emerging from their beds as, outside, soldiers ran drills in preparation for war. In one cabin, four little girls were getting ready to join them.

"Form up!" Iris exclaimed, snapping the four younger girls to attention in their fierce combat gear. Sigurrós adjusted her witch hat and got into position. Iris has helped her sew modifications into her witch costume to be more battle ready, but her hat's brim would still occasionally block her eyesight.

"We're ready!" Stella exclaimed, notching an arrow into her bow. "We'll beat you this time!" Stella had painted her face in green and brown camouflage, and she was wearing big black goggles with enchanted lenses that helped her see what others could not. Iris knelt down and began drawing sigils.

"Remember Stella, the shadows are an archer's best friend" Stella nodded and silently stepped behind her friends.

"Alice, Cooper, Jasper — ready up!" Fiona ordered, scowling from beneath her floral crown as her familiars descended from her shoulders. She was draped in a cloak typical of the Green Order and druidic armor of ironfleece.

Alice, Fiona's reptilian familiar, scampered off her shoulders and hid itself in the greenery, camouflaging perfectly, ready to attack. Cooper, her falcon, flew from her glove into the skies to give Fiona and aerial view of the battlefield. Jasper grew and grew from his housecat form to become a beast as large as a tiger and just as gentle.

"Consurge, Cassy et pugna" Iris chanted, and the sigils, drawn on a tree stump, combined into the drawn form of a young woman. "Remember, Cassy, this is only a scrimmage, so don't trounce them too soundly."

Siggurrós readied a magic missile spell. Cindy pumped her pneumatic fists.

"Pneumatic Power Fists…. ACTIVATE!" she screamed, jumping high with her steam powered boots. Cassy grinned in anticipation and sent out her first shadow clone.

Cindy leapt into battle, crashing down onto the shadow woman fist-first, dispersing it easily into a shadowy mist.

Meanwhile, several more shadow clones had formed, and began to approach the other girls with all the subtlety of a horde of shambling zombies.

Fiona imbued her strength into her animal companions, growing them to many times their size, and sent them into the fray, while Stella loosed her bow on the stragglers.

Siggy, however, was focusing on the high priority targets, Cassy and Iris. Iris had the ability to create convincingly real drawings and illusions, either by hand or by using sigils as a proxy to summon the illusions remotely, or on a delay. Cassy, Iris's one and only miraculously sentient drawing, had the ability to imbue illusions with substance, and create weak shadow creatures on her own, causing what would otherwise be harmless distractions into an army.

While on their own, neither of them were a very large threat, when combined, and with prep time, the two would bog down any enemies with overwhelming numbers or, god forbid, get creative.

Siggy had long ago learned the swiftness with which a two dimensional being could move across different mediums, and how hard they were to hit, from previous sparring sessions, so she focused on Iris. Of course, Iris wouldn't be the leader of the Order of Last Hope if she weren't formidable. While Cassy was crafting shadow creatures, Iris had begun creating illusionary copies of herself, and portions of the environment, as well as creating multiple sigils.

Siggy, however, had fully anticipated this, and kept close track of the real Iris before the fight had even started. So, she waited, and pretended to have lost track, aiming at the duplicates, and then at the last second hurling a magic missile right at the real Iris, dispelling her instan-

Wait.

That was just an illusion? How could she have possibly lost track?!

Siggy began to attack indiscriminately at all the Irises mowing them all down with sparkles and glitter. None of them were real!

Had Iris crafted an illusion before the fight even started? Had Siggy even seen the real Iris today?

Meanwhile her companions seemed to be doing quite well, they were almost done clearing up the shadow people. While Siggy was very proud of them, she was also oddly suspicious all of a sudden. They were winning too easily. Where was Iris? Siggy's eyes darted around until she noticed it. The rock, the rock on which Cassy's sigil had been drawn, it wasn't a rock at all! It was Iris! Disguised as a rock? What on Earth was she doing?

And that's when she noticed the shadows of the surrounding trees were too large.

She shouted a warning to her companions, but it was too late. The biggest shadow creature she had ever seen emerged from the ground. A faceless beast with many tentacles and a body which felt much… deeper than it should. Like it was the abyss itself, going on for universes. Like it shouldn't exist. Siggy had never seen such a- she'd never— she'd— nevernevernevernever

She'd never seen anything like this before right? Then why did it seem so familiar? She could almost remem—

Somewhere, Reality groggily awoke to the sound of buzzing. Still half asleep it couldn't remember if it was supposed to be a fantasy kingdom under siege by an evil wizard, or a global shadow conspiracy hiding the secret truths of the world.

Both seemed pretty implausible honestly.

Inside, a three eyed man with a crooked smile was screaming himself raw, running towards someone with a knife. The incessant buzzing of machines was starting to give Reality a headache.

Somebody hit the snooze and another SRA fizzled out.

Reality began drifting back to sleep.

Five more minutes.

-ber.

"LOOK OUT, SIGGY!"

And then she was unceremoniously shoved aside by a gorilla with an astronaut helmet.

Siggy looked up just in time to see the patch of concrete where she was stood decimated by a giant tentacle.

"What's going on? Where am I?" The little girl implored.

"Aw man that thing must have really done a fuckin number on ya", the robot monkey said.

"Hey, no cussing!" She automatically replied, as if for the millionth time.

"Sorry" Robomonkey sulked.

An explosion came from the direction of the tentacled beast as the Black Queen shot it with a spell.

"Move it you two!" She shouted, "you can banter later!"

And so they ran down labyrinthine corridors of concrete, as Robo explained.

"I told you not to look directly at that thing, it makes people forget! Not the thing to do on the final battle!"

"The final battle? Who are we fighting?"

"Them!" Robo shouted, pointing ahead to an oddly grassy clearing in the fortress.

And that's when Siggy saw the evil army arrayed against them. Jellybean golems and milk elementals, rusted teddy bears and badly CGIed cat-men. And above them all, on horseback, was arch-warlock Ronald Reagan, along with Siggy's dear doctor-aunt Lana, bound and gagged, captured by the evil man.

A contingent of knights in black armor were already engaging the golems, Siggy ran to join them.

"AY-MAX" shouted the little witch, as she threw fireballs at the candy golems and milk elementals.

The resulting smell of the globs that remained was terrible, just terrible.

Like poorly made butter and burnt sugar. Blegh! She commited not to do that again and fired up the other big gun in her spell arsenal.

"KHE-FA!" Siggy shouted, willing the air itself to punch a selacian with legs.

"KHE-FA KHE-FA KHE-FA KHE…" she shouted, taking down catmen and teddybears alike.

Meanwhile, Robo had turned into the King of All Spiders, and had jumped into the fray elsewhere kicking butt (eight legs worth) and taking Names.

Siggy and Robomonkey had turned the tide, reinvigorated the knights, who charged through the enemy as if they were two dimensional.

But then, the oddly shirtless man on the flying horse pointed his staff at Siggy and shouted:

"EMPTY DOWN DROOLING PATH! THE DECAYING FLESH OF FALSE MORALITY!"

This confused Siggy.

"Um, excuse me, Mr. Evil Warlock President, can you repeat that please?"

But the silly man had lost his face, and only flesh remained.

Siggy squinted, people were supposed to have faces.

She blinked, and looked again, and she saw he DID have a face. It was an unusual face, a circle with three arrows pointing towards the center, but Siggy had been taught not to judge people different from herself, and Siggy was a good girl.

She did stare a bit though, which was rather rude.

And as she stared, something stared back at her from between those arrows. A little girl, sleeping, trapped forever, never to -

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Reality awoke from a nightmare and vomited an ocean onto its nice carpeted flooring.

That'd be hell to clean up later.

The World spun in and out of focus of its Sight, like a man hungover. Reality shut its three eyes a moment, to stop the spinning, stop the pounding in its skull.

Too late, it realized its mistake.

As Alto Clef struggled to stay awake, he was dragged screaming back to Slumberland.

Reality went with him.

Alto Clef awoke riding a dragon, cackling like a maniac and clutching a staff.

He didn't question it, he found it was best not to.

He observed the situation he found himself on. Battlefield, high fantasy, black and white morality.

Examining himself in the reflection of his staff's topper, he found that he was draped in black cloth, wearing a horned headdress and pale of visage.

Probably not on the side of Good then. Villains did always get the best outfits.

Hm. Dreamlike, but probably not one of Clef's dreams, those tended to be the same recurring few and this wasn't remotely traumatizing enough to be that.

Drugs? Didn't feel like acid or magic mushrooms to Clef, and he'd built up a pretty good tolerance over the years from repeated usage.

Psionic attack? Probably not. This didn't feel like Clef's conscious or subconscious to him. Still, it was a possibility.

His gut said reality bender though. And he was betting he knew which one as well.

Aaaaaand yep, there was a little girl in a witch costume zapping away at some demons or whatever, making her way to some tower.

SCP-239, his old nemesis.

Not for the first time, Clef wished he had killed her, when he had the chance.

Type Greens-- monsters every single one. Oh how he longed for the days of the Ichabod Campaign when he would gun them down like the vermin they are. The GOC back then had understood the menace these things posed, the evil they would do if given half the chance.

The Foundation never did. They contained and studied them at best, left them loose or employed them at the worst.

Even the GOC these days had grown soft, with the new guard whining about the "tragedy" that was Ichabod. The "genocide". Oh the horror, they say, while reaping the benefits sown by Clef and his comrades.

They hadn't seen first hand the cults and kingdoms built by child-gods, forcing baseline civilians to conform to their whims, making them want to. They disgusted him.

Not that Alto hadn't scratched the old itch over the years, "decommissioning" anomalies and hunting in the field, but he wasn't as young as he used to be.

These days Clef mostly taught those who'd listen that the only good reality bender was a dead one, and tested Site-19's containment breach preparedness.

If he was testing them right now he'd have to give them an F.

This wasn't the first time 239 had breached, nor was it the first time Clef, and Clef alone had to step in to save the day.

He'd have to requisition more SRAs again. He'd told Accounting he'd needed more, but they called his request "overkill" and gotten containment specialists to sign off on that. Maybe waving a shotgun in their face would change their tune. If not it was at least always good for a laugh.

But that would have to wait.

"GO MY MINIONS, ATTACK THE WITCH CHILD" he screeched, and cackled. Then he spurred his steed to dive towards the tower, to stop the girl behind this madness.

It was time to stab a witch.

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