Item #: SCP-2307

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2307-01 is to be stored in a medium-sized (35 liter) aquarium tank filled with water taken from either Dozmary Pool or Llyn Ogwen1, which is to be inspected weekly for flaws in the tank. Secondary and tertiary tanks are to be kept to store SCP-2307-01 during primary tank maintenance.

SCP-2307-02 is to be kept in a climate-controlled case meant to preserve skeletal structures, and is to be cleaned and inspected for damage immediately after each test conducted with it. Use of SCP-2307-02 with other memory- or record-affecting SCPs is permitted with approval from O5-2.

Description: SCP-2307-01 is the remains of a long sword, with a 56 cm hilt and a partial blade approximately 40cm in length, estimated to be approximately 43% of its original size. Carbon dating has shown that the hilt and cross guard of the sword date to approximately the 4th Century CE; however, the metal used in the blade dates to approximately 3.2 Billion BCE. SCP-2307-01 is in a severe state of disrepair as a result of being submerged in water for at least 1300 years.

SCP-2307-01's primary anomaly manifests when a subject makes contact with the hilt of the sword. Following this, all records pertaining to the subject will gradually distort in a manner that reflects positively on the subject, giving wildly different accounts of their life over a period of time:

Immediately after coming into contact with SCP-2307-01, birth certificates will have altered dates, spellings of names, and in some cases, gender. Typically, individuals will have their birth dates altered to be on more significant dates, such as July 7th (7/7), October 31st, December 25th, or February 14th.

Within one year, educational records will show that the individual scored highly on tests and grading, if applicable, and will occasionally claim that a subject went to two or more different educational institutions in the same span of time. In addition, subjects lacking a college education will be shown to have at least a master's degree of some form. The subject's knowledge will not change regardless of what the records show.

Within five years, if applicable, subject's financial records- including bank statements and tax records- will show them as being wealthy, with a net value of at least $750,000 American.

Within ten years, records will show the subject being a prominent candidate in some form of political campaign, with inconsistent records of them either winning or losing to the candidate they were opposing. If a win, it will be in a landslide election; if a loss, it will be by a small margin. Memories of individuals that have voted in elections which the subject was allegedly a candidate in have no recollection of them existing.

Finally, death certificates will not reflect the actual cause of death of the subject; subjects will invariably have died in some form of combat and died from causes such as sword blows, bullets, and arrows fatally impacting.

Usually, most accounts only agree on the fact that the subject held SCP-2307-01 at some point in their life.

Furthermore, when SCP-2307-01 is not submerged in water taken from either Dozmary Pool or Llyn Ogwen, the metal of the blade will regenerate at a rate of approximately 15mm/day, and rust will begin to flake off of the blade. While no negative consequences are believed to occur if SCP-2307-01 regenerates fully, it is being kept submerged as per the containment procedures as a precaution.

SCP-2307-02 is an item previously believed to be unrelated to the SCP-2307 anomaly. SCP-2307-02 is a shamanistic crown carved from the skull of a horse, believed to have been worn during rituals in 5th-7th Century Britain. SCP-2307-02 is in poor condition, with several fractures in the bone as a result of age and repeated use in recent years.

SCP-2307-02, when worn, gives complete immunity to memory alteration, including all classes of amnestics, and all forms of cognitohazardous record alteration, such as those exhibited by SCP-2307-01. All memories experienced while wearing SCP-2307-02 are retained on an eidetic level. SCP-2307-02 was previously classified as E-9382-U, and was used in experiments involving memory- and record-altering anomalies. Following Test 2307-19, it was reclassed as a component of SCP-2307.

Test 2307-19:

Hypothesis: Use of E-9382-U in conjunction with SCP-2307 will allow either for records pertaining to the subject to be unaltered, or for the records to be altered at will. If records are indeed able to be altered, the subject will attempt to modify their birth certificate so that it reads that they were born exactly one year before the date listed.

Test Subject: D-2307-19, Born 08/15/1977.

Record of Test: D-2307-19 reacts with some level of disgust at the prospect of wearing E-9382-U, stating that he "doesn't like freaky bone stuff". D-2307-19 says he will comply if he is given an extra dessert ration. Request granted; subject puts on E-9382-U.

Subject is then instructed to remove SCP-2307 from its container. Subject briefly complains of hands getting wet, before exclaiming and dropping SCP-2307 on the floor five seconds after removing it from its container.

When asked the reason for this action, Subject gave this statement:

I was… holding the damn thing. I was on a horse, and there was an army around me. Not a big army, maybe sixty people, all of them with crosses on their armor. Some guy was next to me with this hat (indicating E-9382-U) on his head, telling me what I had to do to win.

Testing was suspended following this statement. As of 5/21/2015- five years after the experiment was conducted- no alteration of D-2307-19's records have occurred.

Conclusion: Further cross-testing with the two items is deemed necessary.

Addendum:

The following document collects statements given by D-2307-19, who has been rendered exempt from D-Class Reassignment for the purposes of study. Statements are listed in the order collected, and appear to be mostly about a single individual, with the exceptions of Statements 2307-42, 2307-51, 2307-57, and 2307-59, which is listed separately.

I was in bed, with my wife- well, not my wife, but someone's wife; she felt like mine. She and I were talking about making a kid, but not with her. She couldn't have no kids anymore, after she got hit in the tummy with an arrow. I know I told someone to put the arrow in there, because otherwise, she would have had kids with my best friend…

I couldn't breathe. It was the scariest experience of my fucking life. I felt like I was trapped in a fucking coffin, and it lasted for so long, and I couldn't breathe the whole time, but I was still alive. I remember some guys speaking in Latin, but I couldn't see them, and I knew they put me there. Then the coffin shook, and I heard some guy speaking… I dunno. It sounded like gibberish. "Build poi ban agh tongue-ooh clayed hun fod bringin' a tea". Probably not English.2.

There was a guy with this horse thing on his head, dancing around a fire in a big, wood hall. He would throw things into the fire, and they would form… images. Of people. People that I knew I had to find, before someone else did. They were warriors, and there were a ton of them. And I remember thinking that I was going to need a big hall for a table. You don't think… nah.

I was cutting off someone's head with a sword, like at an execution. I guess you guys know a lot about those, heh. It looked like the sword I was holding but… bright and shiny and new. Nothing fancy, just a really, really, really fucking sharp sword. It only took one blow to cut off his head; the hell is that thing made of, adamantium?

That was scary, that was fucking scary. I was in battle with one of my men, fighting… elves, I think? That's the only way I can describe them. They wanted my sword, and my guy… he was about ten feet tall, and at one point, he grabbed one of the elves and ate him. He said something in French, and I laughed. I laughed at someone getting their head eaten. The fuck is wrong with me?

I was dying. I knew I was going to die; one of my sons had stabbed me, and I had killed him first, but I was hurt bad. So, I had my men take me to a lake. I remember that I had spent time with my sister there-her name was Morcant- when I was young. What kind of name is that for a girl? Morcant.

I just… wanted to see the place one last time before I died. Then, something… something came out of the water. She was beautiful. She looked even better than my wife did. Her skin was kind of blue, her nose was flat, and she had weird… feeler-things in her hair. God, I'd love to see her again. She wasn't human, I know that much. She asked me if I wanted to keep my legacy alive. I said yes. She asked for the sword, and I gave it to her, and she'd promised me she'd keep it safe.. She kissed me, said "goodnight", and… I was gone.

I couldn't stop crying. A messenger came from the woods and told me that one of my best friends had died. I kept crying over that damn skull I was wearing, and it took me days to calm down. I sat in my bedroom the whole time, just… staring at the ceiling. I've never been that sad. I hope I never am again.

I felt like I couldn't breathe for so long- I was in that coffin again, I think. Then, I was pulled out of the ground, and I cringed so hard; metal against stone is not a good sound. And then, I was someone else. I was just… a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, and I was holding the sword with both hands. I took it out just so I could fight in some tournament that my brother had gotten sick for. People pointed at me as I went, and I thought I was in trouble. Then some old guy with a horse head over his face came up to me and said I was a ruler. Son of a bitch.

Statement 2307-42:

I was an old man, and I'd been walking for a long, long time. I eventually walked up to a rock with a sword in it, just sitting there in the middle of nowhere, and I touched it. Then, BAM! I was knocked on my ass by lightning, and something spoke to me. It told me to find a boy to make king, and to spread her word all over. I said that I would.

Then… this is the first time this has happened. I was somewhere else, talking with the boy, who was now a man. I tried to persuade him to change his religion, but he said he would banish me if I tried teaching him my "pagan faith" again. I don't know what I was even preaching; something about machines, I think.

Statement 2307-51:

I was some kind of religious guy; monk, maybe? I remember I had itchy robes. I found the sword after it had washed up on the shore, and then I figured out it wasn't a sword. It was, like… the tip of a giant pen. A stylus, I think I called it?

I ran back to the monastery with it, and when I got there… I found that scrolls that I had written had changed. We cried out about apocrypha and an unholy force altering the scrolls. We tried to destroy the pen, piece by piece, but the more we destroyed, the more things we had altered. And then the lightning started.

It struck all over the place, and friends and other monks were dying. It was horrible. Eventually, the monastery caught fire, and I was the only one to escape. A voice… something grinding like nails on a chalkboard mixed with rusty gears- told me what to do with what was left over of the pen. I took it to a blacksmith, and he made it into a sword for me. I then just… stuck it in a rock in the middle of a stone circle, where I thought that nobody would ever find it. From what I've seen… this me was an idiot.

Statement 2307-57:

I was that… weird water woman, this time, the one I told you about in the one where I died. I had lived in the lake all my life. Some monks- I think they were from the same order as the last guy- came to me, asking me to keep something safe for them. They begged and bargained with me, saying that something unholy was upon the land. I told them I "did not care of their mortal ways" -her words, not mine-, and then they said a name: MEKHANE.

I told them I would agree to whatever they wanted me to do. They had sent someone disguised as the son of the king who had the sword- who had apparently been made with his half-sister, ew- to kill him in battle. They said that they would… bless my lake, and one of my sister's lakes, to hold the sword of MEKHANE in it, so that it couldn't make new legends, whatever that means. In exchange, I would be written about as a queen among fairies- er, fae, or whatever. The Lady of the Lake, they called me. I liked the sound of that. Son of a bitch.

Statement 2307-59's:

I was writing the word of the world, on a beach, using lightning. My people ran around below me, gathering up the glass from where the lightning struck, and transcribing my word onto their own scrolls, where they would make my holy books. Then, one day, I was hit by… something, and my pen broke. I managed to make most of it land on the beach, but… some of it didn't.

A big chunk of my pen landed a quarter of the way across the world, somewhere where I didn't care about it. And then they tried to break it. I didn't like that, so I tried to burn them with lightning and eventually, they gave in.

I've probably told you the rest of this, but from different perspectives. One thing I remember, though… remember that Lady of the Lake girl? I remember doing something to the sword- her kind didn't like iron- so that it wouldn't hurt her, or anyone like her. I don't know why I did it; I kind of remember thinking it was for safekeeping.

And then I saw… myself, holding the sword with that hat on, and then I saw the whole thing over again, and over, and over, and over, and over… until I finally dropped it.

Footnotes

1. Lakes in Cornwall, UK and North Wales, respectively

2. Phonetic translation has shown this to be a Welsh phrase, "Bydd pwy bynnag tynnu cleddyf hwn fod brenin y tir", roughly translated to mean "He who pulls this blade shall be the land's king"