Hide your wounds.

Item #: SCP-8071

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: The Department of Misinformation has managed to discredit SCP-8071 as a little-known urban legend. However, current protocols are deemed insufficient due to their considerable expense and egregious overreliance on the GAUZE Protocol.1 All data collected on the phenomenon are to be forwarded to the SCP-8071 Research Team, currently located at Site-270, for the creation of alternative containment procedures.

Description: SCP-8071 designates an anomalous phenomenon affecting a small subset of the global population. SCP-8071 appears as increasingly severe lacerations upon the subjects’ bodies, starting on the arms and working its way to the torso before moving down to the legs. The anomaly typically manifests in early adulthood and is, assuming medical aid is provided, fatal within the next 5-10 years. Typical causes of death include blood loss, opportunistic infection, sustained trauma causing damage to the immune system, and organ failure. Efforts by the Department of Thaumaturgy to prevent or slow this process have failed.

SCP-8071 is believed to trace its origins to the Daevite city of Kazenrud, when Onvi-hur, a minor noble, sent a letter to his personal Mašaideáṭ2 requesting that a curse be levied upon Hezhum-bet, a rival nobleman, so that “him and all his disgusting brood would suffer the slow death of a thousand cuts, in perpetuity”. The Mašaideáṭ agreed to the request and performed the ritual sometime in the next week. The specifics are unknown, as most records of that period of Daevite history have been lost, but it is known that the following materials were requested:

Three athames, of which one was to be shattered;

Five slaves below the age of 9, in good health;3

The pickled fetus of an East Siberian brown bear;4

“Five septs [Daevite unit of measurement] of the usual herbs”;

A jar of Hezhum-bet’s bodily fluids;5

Human bones, to create a ritual circle;

The ritual was successful and spread through Hezhum-bet’s line quickly, causing the death of approximately three-quarters of his family. Onvi-hur wrote to his Mašaideáṭ, congratulating him on the triumph.

The majority of Hezhum-bet’s and Onvi-hur’s families are believed to have perished in the sacking of Kazenrud. What little descendants survived integrated into the Siberian population and lost their Daevite customs. With the fall of the Empire, the rituals sustaining SCP-8071 decayed and ceased to show any anomalous activity.

However, the rise of neo-Daevite movements6 has complicated this. Centered almost exclusively in the USA, where GoI-140-C is most prevalent, SCP-8071 has been reactivated. SCP-8071 now manifests seemingly randomly among a small percentage of the individuals genetically descended from Hezhum-bet.

AUTOMATED NOTICE

The remainder of this file is restricted to personnel with 4/8071 Clearance. Attempting to access it without the proper credentials is considered a Class-V Infraction and will be disciplined accordingly.

ACCESS GRANTED

Addendum — Containment Update 10/12/2020

On 10/12/2020, the SCP-8071 Research Team made a breakthrough in stable and affordable containment of the anomaly. Attached is an excerpt of their presentation.

Database ID: SCP-8071

Object Class: Keter

Priority Level: Keneq

Flagged Departments: Containment, Analytics, Memetics, Misinformation, Thaumaturgy, Information Technology, Finance

Proposal: SCP-8071 has been one of the most vexing phenomena ever encountered by the Department of Containment. Despite almost exclusively affecting citizens of the United States, in which the Foundation exerts maximal capacity, containment is unsustainable and extremely expensive. More final solutions, such as the mass detainment and/or termination of those affected, would constitute an unacceptable risk to the Veil and the Foundation’s positive relations with the US Government. Moreover, as is typical for Daevite rituals, attempts to decommission the anomaly have failed utterly.

However, although they were incapable of neutralizing SCP-8071, the Department of Thaumaturgy has managed to discern a number of important details related to the anomaly’s behavior. Most importantly, they were able to classify SCP-8071 as a Moirai-class ritual. To clarify, Moirai-class rituals function via high-level probabilistic manipulation. In the case of SCP-8071, the anomaly does not directly cut its victim’s body. Rather, it alters fate to ensure that such an outcome occurs. It is merely that the simplest way that this manifests is the “phantom slashes” on the subject’s person, of seemingly no origin.

This implies that as long as the subject’s body is repeatedly cut via other means, the anomaly will remain dormant. The alterations to SCP-8071’s containment procedures hinge on this detail.

The SCP-8071 Research Team proposes the following:

Subjects at risk of SCP-8071 are to be tracked by the Department of Analytics;

Access to genetic databases gained by the Foundation’s contracts with 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and the Central Intelligence Agency are to be used to facilitate this;

Any subjects found to be affected by the anomaly are to immediately have their personal devices infected by .AICs designed by the Department of Misinformation;7

These devices are to be used as vectors to covertly expose the subject to SILKWORM-class memetic agents;

These memetic agents are to be derived from the emotional profiles of D-Class subjects on high-risk detail as well as personnel assigned to Site-17;

The purpose of these memetic agents is to induce in the subject an uncontrollable compulsion towards self-mutilation, increasingly driving the subject to lacerate their body with any available sharp objects;

If necessary, to decrease suspicion, a personal crisis is to be manufactured;

At the same time, the subject is to be repeatedly exposed to advertisements for Sabatzky-Coleman Psychiatrics;8

These advertisements are to emphasize Sabatzky-Coleman’s extreme effectiveness in curing DSH;9

Should the subject be of lesser means, they are to be informed that the first session for a potential patient of Sabatzky-Coleman is free;

During this session, they are to be put under the effect of counter-memetic agents intended to temporarily cure their DSH;

This will result in the brief lessening of their self-harming tendencies, the only treatment that will prove effective;

Sabatzky-Coleman psychiatrists are to nurture a dependence on their services, emphasizing their reliability and efficacy;

They are then to charge premium rates for said services, citing a number of cover stories developed by the Department of Finance;

If the subject is of lesser means, they are to be encouraged to take out loans from Foundation-run firms or borrow money from relatives;

At the same time, to ensure that the conditions of the SCP-8071 ritual are satisfied, their DSH is to be nurtured by the SILKWORM-class memetic agents, steadily increasing in effectiveness;

The only respite from their compulsive self-harm will be Sabatzky-Coleman sessions, which are to slowly decrease their effectiveness;

As the subject’s mental and physical state deteriorates, they will cease to be considered a reputable source of information and their threat to the Veil will plummet;

Eventually the subject will be institutionalized by their family or commit suicide;

As the former involves a minor risk to the Veil, the latter is preferable;

The above protocols are believed to result in the total containment of SCP-8071 as well as lucrative profits for the Foundation.

Above proposal originally denied by the Ethics Committee under Resolution EC #2918, which dissuades the use of memetic agents to harm civilians. Proposal approved upon appeal under #2918 §2, which permits the harmful use of memetic agents upon civilians "(a) already impacted by an anomalous phenomenon (b) for purposes directly related to containment of said phenomenon."

SCP-8071 revised protocols placed into effect.

Footnotes

1. [RESTRICTED TO 4/HOLLOW CHALICE CLEARANCE]

2. A thaumaturge. Literally “Blood Commander”.

3. Only three of the slaves were required in the ritual. The remaining two were part of the Mašaideáṭ’s payment.

4. Ursus arctos collaris.

5. It is believed that urine was provided.

6. Designated GoI-140-C. A loose collection of far-right activist groups possessing knowledge of the practices and history of the Daevite Empire.

7. Requests to have the paranormal branches of Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corporation assist in this have been denied.

8. A Foundation-run chain of wellness clinics.

9. Deliberate self harm.