Regions of Mercury's surface designated as SCP-5845.

Item Number: SCP-5845

Anomaly Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: Due to the speed and trajectory required to access SCP-5845, containment is not necessary at this time. Retrieval of personnel who enter SCP-5845 requires a high velocity object recovery team. Entry into SCP-5845 requires agreement from at least 12 members of the O5 Council.

In the event of the human colonization of Mercury, a 4.5 gigaton thaumonuclear explosive is positioned on the surface of either entry point into SCP-5845. These are to be detonated prior to the non-anomalous community's landfall on the planet followed by confirmation of neutralization. This is performed by setting a D-class on a trajectory towards SCP-5845 and at the required speed necessary to enter the anomaly. Neutralization will be declared following the D-class's termination by non-anomalous collision with the Mercurial surface.

Description: SCP-5845 is a parabolic region spanning between Mercury's magnetosheath, crust, mantel, and outer core. Entry into SCP-5845 requires a head-on trajectory towards its surface area and a speed between 17 and 23 percent that of light. While inside SCP-5845, personnel will awake in the airlock of a semi-cylindrical, hermetically sealed craft (designated SCP-5845-A), one kilometer in radius and 12 kilometers in length.

The interior airlock door to SCP-5845-A is adorned with a gold placard reading "Department of Abnormalities" with a second placard below it in silver reading "Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition". Exiting SCP-5845 is performed by ejecting the visitor out of the vessel's exterior airlock door where they reappear from the point opposite their entry and at the same speed. The region immediately outside SCP-5845-A is incapable of being observed due to blinding levels of surrounding illumination.

SCP-5845-A's opposing end consists of a sphere made up of an unknown, nonreflective, and ferromagnetic metal one kilometer in radius. Access to the majority of the craft's interior is restricted by a 10 kilometer long and five meter wide acrylic tube spanning the distance from the airlock to the sphere's surface. The remainder of the structure's volume outside the central pillar is empty save for decorations along its walls. The clear passage allows contact with the sphere where there is a single, square pyramidal hole 2.5 cm in width and 15 cm in depth.

Individuals experience auditory hallucinations while inside SCP-5845-A. These include Gregorian chanting, a rooster's crow, a ram's bleat, and "the sound of fingernails attempting to whittle gold". This effect's intensity decreases linearly as the subject approaches the terminating sphere. Test subjects that come in physical contact with the orb's surface report a permanent cessation of any hallucinations from SCP-5845-A.

The walls of the structure's interior are decorated with seven rows of carved murals, each 1.375 km in height. These sculptures exhibit the same non-reflective properties as the sphere at the end of SCP-5845-A, which required the diffusion of argon gas into the space for the purpose of acoustic imaging. The rows depict various animal, plant, and human subjects along with their accompanying scenery.

[Level 5 Clearance Required]

Access Logged with O5-2.

Addendum 5845.1: Recovered Document

The below was discovered floating in the middle of the acrylic passageway just past the interior airlock door upon initial discovery of SCP-5845 on 2021/12/23.

Opening Note: The following was drafted by contracted containment consultant ██████ ████████ in the interest of easing new Overseers into their roles.

Hello and good day, Overseer. I have been the subject of questioning for the majority of my tenure here at this organization. Today I am pleased to announce that I am now the Inquisitor.

My first order of business is to admit my own folly. I have been made a fool of with this abnormality. Meaning is something that is assigned, not inherent, and the depth of that potential confounds me still to this day. With the same animus that a god might be appeased, so too may it be harmed. And there is an animus, an ill intent, at work here and it is us. It has always been us. We despicable saints, conserving and coveting, embrace a road without end or bottom.

Now, I take up the scourge and begin my questioning as you have so commanded me, your loyal flagellator.

You are trading your humanity for security. What depth of depravity are you capable of? Would you eat an infant to save two? I'm asking you. Would you tear into their soft flesh and underdeveloped intestines with your own teeth? I would assure you that this is for the greater good, to ensure the greatest number of lives saved, if only that mattered.

You are collecting taxes in the currencies of sin and grace. Can you plead for forgiveness only to spit upon it? A genuflection puts the hand well within gripping distance of the scabbard. Would you corrupt sacrifice into suicide? I could assure you of those gods' consent but that offers no salvation for you.

You are prostrating yourself before and upon the altar of your own Power. Would you place your hand upon the conciliatory nail and drive it through your own skin? You wouldn't be reading this if your life didn't hold Meaning to many. Can you impose such Meaning by assuming the importance of your adversary? I can assure you that it is possible, but that should be the least of your worries.

And now I bring us back to the gravesite.

Here, upon the messenger's gushing neck, we clash with both the antagonistic and allied. We pin History and Meaning to our chests and ready that pin towards another heart. With reverence, we despoil a shared past for the benefit of a collective future. I ask you to acclimate to the reprehensible so others may be so naive.

Here, before the threshold of a judgemental audience, I do not fear what we will bury today. I do not fear the fruit that will grow from this soil. I do not fear oaken sap nor olive's blood.

I only fear that you will find this to be easy.

Addendum 5845.2: Mural Descriptions

Note: Row one represents the mural closest to the airlock while row seven is farthest.

Row One

An old farmer engulfed in an aureola1 tills the land of seven hills using their erect phallus. Their hands and feet are bound behind them to a plow frame as though they are its blade. Twelve wheat strands grow from the trough behind them. Thirteen figures, each of their heads topped with a halo, watch on from the hillsides in the background. The sun is setting behind them and is depicted as a flaming wheel.

Row Two

A young baker with a feminine face and figure pours water into a bowl from a disembodied scrotum. Six loaves of bread are on a platform behind the baker and all of them are engulfed in flame. In the center foreground of the mural sits a soldier clothed in plated deer hide and holding a pair of animal horn eating utensils. Thirteen individuals in hooded monastic habits are depicted forming a circle around the conflagration. The middle hooded figure directly above the baker is the only carving in this section depicted with a halo. The glorified statue is clutching its cowl closed with its right hand and holding three nails aloft with the left. The moon is visible in the window behind the central figures.

Row Three

The soldier is bound to a table with thorny vines and disemboweled by a nail still embedded into their right side. Within the spilled viscera are five crying newborn children. The scene depicts twelve figures, now dressed in devil printed sanbenitos and capirotes2, reaching towards the infants with eating utensils in hand. On the left is a figure with long, obscuring hair wearing a sanbenito adorned with upturned flames. The figure is depicted as prostrating theirself towards the ground while holding three nails towards their chest. To the right is a child of male sex and approximately four years of age. The child holds both of their hands over their eyes under a window with a wheel of flaming eyes peaking over the windowsill. Only the children possess halos in this mural.

Row Four

The rightmost child from the previous mural is surrounded by an aureola and is clothed in a deer hide with an antlered helmet. The youth rides a lion with a naked adult of male sex hanging upside down by their ankles from its jaws. An unmarked sanbenito lies on the ground beneath the creature's maw. Surrounding them, eleven cohorts in capirotes flee. The sun is directly overhead the lion and depicted as a flaming eye.

Row Five

A hunched over and haloed farmer with their feminine face and long hair exposed pushes a plow. The till is pulled from the front by a ram with a rooster riding upon its back. Three nails make up the blade of their plow and behind them are twelve olive trees. Entangled in the olive roots are eleven corpses that are naked except for capirotes affixed to the tops of their skulls with nails. Seven hills engulfed in flame make up the background.

Row Six

The farmer now has an aureola engulfing them as they walk besides a rooster ridden ram in a similar conflagration. Behind them are twelve individuals in monastic robes and adorned with halos. They walk single file and originate from an olive wood cabin. They approach a soldier clothed in plate-adorned deer hide with a crown made of eagle feathers. The warrior stands amid a field of wheat with a gladius in their right hand and a sickle in the other.

Row Seven

The monks wear sanbenitos marked with a large diagonal cross and hold down the fowl and ram while they drive a nail into the necks of beasts. Flame is carved as spewing from each of their wounds. The farmer and soldier embrace each other atop the middle of seven hills while the farmer drives a nail through the both of them. Roots grow from their feet and an aureola burns around them. The sun is setting overhead and carved as a flaming wheel.

Footnotes

1. A cloud or flame like aura depicted around the entire body of an individual to indicate divine importance, as opposed to halos or gloriole which cover exclusively the head.

2. Penitential garments consisting of a pointed hood or hat and a tunic or "sackcloth" decorated in accordance to the wearer's crime. Use of both the tunic (Sanbenito) and conical hood (Capirote) came to prominence during the Spanish Inquisition.

[Level 6 Clearance Required]

Quorum of Twelve requirement met. The sun and daughter sleep, Overseers.

Addendum 5845.3: Our Power, Our Duty, Our Sin

Row Eight

Twelve monastic figures are spread across seven hills under a crescent moon. On the center hill is an oak tree. Two branches jut out horizontally from the same point 80% of the way up the trunk. These each split upward into eight smaller branches bearing olives as fruit. A nail is stuck inside the tree at its base. In front of the trunk is one of the monks. They reach towards the nail with their right hand and hold a loaf of unleavened bread with the left. All twelve wear capirotes.