 Item No. SCP-1461 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures Site-6 has been constructed around SCP-1461. Task Force Lambda-30, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is on permanent assignment to reinforce Site-6 security. Any unusual activity from SCP-1461 is to be reported to on-site Level 4 supervisors who will implement A4-7 Daybreak Procedure at their discretion. See Site-6 Standard Procedure's Guide. Any operatives entering SCP-1461 should be fitted with full MBCA, Nuclear Biological Chemical Anomalous Protection and Armed Escorts. SCP-1461 is considered a high-priority target for the organization known as the Church of the Broken God, who have made ████ attempts to breach Site-6 at Access SCP-1461 since 19 ████ description. SCP-1461 is an English manor, circa 1890, with attached sublevels. It came to the Foundation's attention on November 1941, when the dwelling in its sublevel facilities vanished, then rematerialized for 11-day period of absence. The surface portion of SCP-1461 is a two-level dwelling with 12 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3 studies, a main foyer, ballroom, a library, a kitchen, and a pantry basement. Most of these rooms were converted into simple barracks prior to Foundation acquisition and are depleted in dwellings for the cold. Site-6 staff have reinforced the structure and used the available space to house monitoring rooms and security forces. No anomalous activity has ever originated from the manor itself. The sublevel facilities are accessible through the manor's basement. The layout and size of the sublevel facilities have yet to be accurately measured due to the anomalous qualities of the facility and hostile entities within. The facility is constructed primarily from concrete, iron, and brass, but also a number of exotic and or unknown materials. The layout of the facility follows illogical routes and architecture. For example, doorways open into solid walls or open chasms, stairwells ascended to empty space, etc. Extensive damage is apparent throughout the facility. Certain sections have caved in and are filled with an unidentified grey sandstone that exists nowhere on the Foundation's expanded periodic table of elements. The facilities also contain a wide array of anomalous artifacts both active and neutralized. See Inventory Document I-1461-Current. It is unknown whether the facility's erratic layout and artifacts were present prior to SCP-1461's disappearance, or if they were introduced during said absence. The sublevel facilities are extremely hazardous, with an extensive array of moving mechanical apparatuses, gearworks, pistons, steam pipes, and coolant tubes that lack appropriate safety measures. The machinery is maintained by strategic placement of nozzles at the expense of black, mucous-like substance, which is highly corrosive to organic materials, but also serves as a coolant and lubricant. Some sections appear to be emitting strong gamma and x-ray radiation, registering 75 counts per second at their highest recorded reading. The source of this radiation is unknown if none of the machinery appears to be constructed with or houses radioactive components. SCP-1461 contains approximately 57 humanoid entities, including seven former Foundation personnel designated as SCP-1461-1. These entities, through an unknown process, have been augmented to accrue mechanical implants in a, as of yet, undiscovered section of SCP-1461. Each instance of SCP-1461-1 has been uniquely augmented, with little uniformity between them. The majority have been augmented with metallic teeth and claw-like protrusion on their hands, giving them lethal close-quarters combat ability. Other augmentations include iron bolts half-fazardly grafted to the subject's bones, severe reinforcements to the spinal column, and a replacement of one or more organs with prosthetic equivalents. SCP-1461-1 appears to possess no higher brain functions or retain any sense of self, acting entirely on canine levels of instincts and intelligence. Instances stick to one or two unit groups, build easily hidden or defensible nests, and attempt to collect food cannibalized from one another or from intruding Foundation staff. All instances of SCP-1461-1 are considered extremely hostile. It is theorized that SCP-1461 itself may command SCP-1461-1. The speaking tube system throughout the facility have been observed emitting loud metallic shrieks that cause SCP-1461-1 to retreat from an area. In other encounters, a metallic odor identified to be blood filters through the ventilation system, drawing SCP-1461-1 to the marked location. The frequency and accuracy at which SCP-1461's scent marks areas currently occupied by Foundation personnel suggests some kind of guiding, hostile intelligence. At least four instances of SCP-1461-1 have received additional augmentation, replacing their esophagus and lungs with a phonograph device powered by SCP-1461-1's own motions. These phonographs emit a constant repeating stream of speech peppered with religious symbolism, but has provided no clues as to its creator or purpose. Addendum, according to records from 1941, the manner was owned by a Mr. ██ and its family. A World War I veteran, Mr. ██, was injured during the Battle of the Somme and shipped to a London hospital shortly before the war's end. His experiences appeared to have had a profound psychological effect, giving him a nihilistic view of society. He constructed SCP-1461 with the intent of somehow ending or escaping the world. More information can be extrapolated from his journals, recovered from within SCP-1461, see Evidence Summary V2008-5. It is believed that Mr. ██ had anywhere from 50 to 100 employees helping him in his task, the majority of whom eventually reorganized into a cult devoted to SCP-1461. An unknown number of these followers were present in SCP-1461 when it vanished, along with Mr. ██, his wife and two children. To date, only six of these individuals have been accounted for. Shortly after SCP-1461 rematerialized, unknown individuals entered SCP-1461 before Foundation agents could contain the site. These individuals are believed to have been members of Mr. ██ Fellowship, who had not been present in SCP-1461 when it vanished. They successfully extracted a number of potentially anomalous artifacts that have yet to be catalogued or recovered. Partial list of catalogued anomalous rooms of the twelve sub-levels discovered by Foundation personnel, only 75% of its layout have been properly mapped, and an unknown number of levels are believed to exist further below. Each sub-level contains excavation, construction and storage rooms, as well as rooms exhibiting safe or euclid-level anomalous qualities and or artifacts. For our full list of anomalous SCP-1461 rooms, refer to Document I-1461-Current. Gel production sub-level III, an automated factory that melts down the unidentified gray sandstone into glass, forms them into canisters, and fills them with a green viscous gel made up of a variety of exotic chemicals. Some of these jars contain fully formed teeth and organs whose DNA patterns match nothing found on Earth. Most of the jars have become inert, and their contents have decomposed. The gel production machine itself has been crushed by a cave-in. Pipe Hall, sub-level IV, a hallway lined with approximately 2,450 pipes constructed from brass, iron, copper, gold, bamboo, carved jade, and ██. Some kind of substance can be clearly heard being pumped through the pipes, but their origin and destination are unknown. Factory deliveries sub-level VII, a large, unlit warehouse filled with wooden crates of various sizes. Unlike other storage rooms, which contains mundane material from non-anomalous sources, the crates in this section are blank or branded simply with factory deliveries. Irregular patrols of the warehouse have revealed the number and arrangement of crates changes, but as with the pipe hall, their origin and destination are unknown. On at least one occasion, muffled vocalizations could be heard coming from somewhere within the warehouse, but their source was never discovered. Orb Room, sub-level X ██, speaking tube room, sub-level XI. The multitude of brass speaking tubes connecting SCP-1461 appear to converge in this room in a large, central pulpit. The partial remains of a human female have been recovered here, with evidence to distress the body, especially skin and intestinal organs, was used to perform crude repairs to some of the damaged tubes. Catalyst Room, sub-level XII, a large chamber filled with a random assembly of gears, cables, pulleys, screws and belts, all made of amalgam of iron, tin, gold and other metals, some as of yet unidentified. The assembly has suffered extensive damage, with evidence that a large section, approximately 12 cubic meters, had been violently removed. The location of this section is unknown, and elevated platforms suspended directly over the assembly. The platform features a metallic bed, with the desiccated remains of a human male. The corpse's chest has been pierced by large syringes connected to a pumping machine. Its design suggests that it had pumped fluid extracted from the syringes into the missing portion of the machinery below. At regular 45 minute intervals, the assembly attempts to self-start, but its existing damage prevents initialization. Friction heat buildup eventually results in an emergency shutdown at last until the machinery is cooled enough to make another attempt. Item V2008-5 was recovered from the hospital bed. Partial transcript of SCP-1461-1 phonograph recording I am what you have made me. I am choice and I am tyranny. Forgive me. I am then and I am now. What gods they will be then. I am evil and I am flesh. I am the trap. I am the trapped. I am beauty and I am chaos. Children are selfish. I am the worm. I have broken God. Summary of Evidence from Recovery Site V2008-5 Day 14 I think it is important to provide context, so future generations may recognize the urgency of my endeavor. In 1916 I enlisted into His Majesty's Fifth Infantry Division, and in the bloody trenches of Europe I witnessed proof of humanity's barbarism and the absence of God. Wounded in battle and wallowing in septic mud, the fever fell upon me, and with it came the visions. In my nightmares I saw a great iron worm, with jaws like that of a dragon, devouring the fields of Europe. It had no teeth, but masses of grinding gears that tore flesh and stone into pulp. Its voice was the roar of falling artillery, its breath the blistening poison of mustard gas. Damned souls were belched into a starless sky like smoke, lost in a cold and different void. I have no memory of my conscious actions during that time, but at last I found myself in a hospital in London. They told me the war was over, but the dreams did not leave. I would waken a cold sweat, filled with purpose. Hastily I scribbled down designs that had been burned into my mind, strange and alien architectures I did not recognize or understand. Finally I returned home to my wife and children. Brave Simon and little Simone were a welcome escape from my fear, but my wife Clarice took notice. Shell shocked, she called it, the word on the lips of every veteran's wife or mother. I tried to explain my visions, what instilled such fear in me, but she recalled as if I were a mere madman, if only that were the case. The children heeded my warnings however, they were rightly afraid, yet that was not my intent. No Simon, do not fear the beast. No Simone, please do not cry. Father will not let you be fed to the worm. The schematics, they must be the secret to stopping the worm. I feel a connection, a familiarity, that likens them unto a great metal snare. With them I will cage the beast. Day 825, so long, so long in my workshops, so long in the belly of my father's home, free from prying eyes, working, ever building. My wife questions but refuses to listen. Only the children heed. Only Simon understands. A finer son no father could want. My family's wealth is modest, but the urgency that gives energy to my limbs also guides my thoughts. Through clever accounting, I can take advantage of the working class's desperation. So many seek work and honest days' wages, but they do not question my motives. Some even show curiosity, enthralled by my designs. A work Leonardo himself would envy, they say. We are more than employer and laborer, we are a growing congregation, seers who know the truth. With the enlightened to spur the others forward, we make excellent time. They build and forge, dig and reinforce, lay in pipes and wrapping conductors and rubber. On the surface they speak of a great depression, of economic and social despair. Below, I lay the foundation of a greater tomorrow, but I smell the burning breath of the worm. It is close, we must hurry. Day 2398 I have seen the puppet of the worm. A puffy Austrian who commands power from the desperate and in their despair, they hurl themselves into the grinding teeth of the worm and call themselves Master of a thousand years. I see his face in the newspapers and scream at his empty, hateful eyes, but no one listens. No one sees. The nightmares have changed. Now there are more than mere soldiers on an apostate battlefield. Now there are prisons. Camps of men and women and children, their flesh shriveled by cruelty and neglect. The worm feeds on them, and their souls are so weak they can't even flee into the heavenless sky. I fear for them, but I fear for my own children even more. In my dreams I hear them crying on the battlefield. They call out for God, for their mother, for their father. Only I can answer. Day 2567 Tonight, the vision came. I saw the worm eating a rotten flesh of a dead world. The stars had burned out. The sun blooded into blackness until the only light was but a flickering candle. A torch held against oblivion. No Christian God holds that torch. No pagan worship. No politician or priest. I hold the torch. I stand within a snare, built of the iron of the earth and the blood of man, and I bait the worm to its doom. Day 2568 Success, the worm is trapped. Day 2569 My victory was short-sighted. The worm is caged, but it has already unleashed its plague upon us. The bombs fall upon London. War rages once more. The worm cries out from below, mocking me even as it thrashes within its cage. This world is doomed. The work crews fear it, or maybe they fear me. Some want to leave, to fight another pointless war for their homeland. Others stand behind me, terrified of what comes for us. How? How? How can we escape this rotting world and the locus that devour it? Day 2569 I finally understand the purpose of my great machine, not a cage, an engine. A device that dwarfs all measure of man's science, Satan's magic and God's miracles. A machine that would deliver us from oblivion. All it needed with a heart. A burning furnace to power it. How ironic that the worm that promised my doom is now the engine that will drive our salvation. The laborers who heeded my warnings have banded with me, like a cult to its messiah they gathered at my feet, and as a dutiful shepherd I will guide them to paradise. Some resisted. I do not hate them. I do not hate the people of this ruined world. I pity them. It was all I could do to instruct my followers that a merciful death is preferable to the alternative. Those who would not come with us were better off sent away by their kin than some heartless enemy on the battlefield. I go to throw the switch on my great machine and free ourselves from the madness of the grave. Day 1 In one brilliant flash, my engine in a manner above have been delivered from the war-torn earth to a new world. This place is like our own, but different in many ways. A grey mist swirls around the manner, free of the stink of gunpowder and urban decay. The manner sits in the field of grey soil devoid of vegetation. I hear no buzzing of insects. I see no sun or moon, just a dull, sourceless light. A dismal arrival, perhaps, but a welcome one. I broke wine with my brothers and sisters. Today we are saved. The engine has gone quiet now. The worm must have been consumed by its own fire. Some merciful part of my soul, so flush with victory and new hope, praise the worm as at peace. Day 2 Where on earth there would be day and night, here the light never changes. The grey mist lingers, muting all sound. My followers look to me for answers. They say I am the voice of the engine. Surely I must know what to do. I push for patience and make promises I already begin to doubt myself. To satisfy their curiosity, I ask three of my bravest to venture out in search of anything. I try to reassure my family, but Clarisse looks at me only with fear and hate. She has walled herself up in the bedroom with Simone. Simon stays with me, though. He wishes to go out to see this new world. I refuse him. I will not threaten his life for the sake of knowledge. Even as I write these words, I am startled by what I see. This world was to be our safe haven, was it not? Day 3 The men I sent into the mist have returned, thanks to the lens of string I provided them. No vegetation, no animals, no sun or stars, no civilization. This world is empty and gray, not hell like the world we left behind, a limbo. Does that make it better? Day 4 The dream is no longer come, where before I could scarcely close my eyes without envisioning arcane machinery and prophecy of the doom, now my mind is empty and the silence mocks me. The foodstores are being rationed. I do everything I can to convince the followers that utopia will come, that this is just a transition, but empty stomachs speak with more conviction than a prophet without a prophecy. A nurse named Eudora seems to have taken upon herself to stir the hearts of the following, but her sermons cut short of the approach and she regards me with stony silence until I withdraw. Day 5 My wife refuses to leave the bedrooms. She does not speak to me, ignores the food I leave for her. I call for Simone, but they do not come out. How have I come to hate my wife? Her spite will not save us. Two of the younger followers attempted to steal food from the kitchens. They talk of dwindling foodstores, of mistrusts, of strange noises coming from below, though my great engine no longer turns. If we imprisoned them, the others would have protested. Instead, I go to the others and tell them the young ones have run out into the fog and tend to find answers. Not everyone believes me, including Eudora. Instead, they go back to plotting and quiet. I worry for my flock. Day 6 Now everyone speaks of sounds from below, of rattling pipes and grinding gears, though I assure them the machine has been shut off. To assuage their fears, I sent Danvers and Bertleby to investigate. We should hear back from them some time later tonight or morning. No one questioned the fresh meat prepared for dinner. Day 7 My wife is dead. I grew furious at her petulance, and pride opened the doors with a pickaxe. She had arranged Simone for bed and then… Damn you, Clarice. You rotten whore. I wanted to save my children. Danvers and Bertleby have not come up. The grinding noises come every hour now. Louder and louder, the house shakes around us. I fear the worm may not be as dead as I hoped. Day 8 Darkness has finally fallen, and with it came a terror I have never known, even in the trenches. Cold seeps in through the windows. Strange shadows move into fog, and I hear what sound like footsteps on the rooftop. The house groans and shakes. The worm struggles. The courage when my followers phrase, they want to go home. They want to be free of this horror and this damnable gray purgatory. Day 9 They have taken Simon. Udoa rallied to followers. She declared the worm spoke to her to her dreams and that she is the voice now. The worm demands sacrifice, she said, the son of the man who trapped it. I fought them. I fought. I would not let them take my boy, the only thing I have left, but they were many, and they had gorged on the flesh of their fellows. I was but one broken man. I am no savior, no torch in the darkness, just a puppet to my own madness. I feel that every action I have taken, every vision and design I feverishly scrolled from half-remembered nightmares, was forced upon me by a cruel intellect that wished to test the limits of my sanity. They have taken Simon below. They will feed him to the worm. Let this be my prayer to the starless night, to a god that may not even exist. I will not let him be fed to the worm. I will hurl myself into his teeth, and my bones, my clogged innards, before I let them take my son. I am sorry, Clarice. Day 10 God, the noise, is almost deafening, wheels turn and pistons hiss, and from the deepest reaches I hear a low, mournful bellow. I have brought my journal to give my mind something to focus on as I traverse the machine, looking upon it with sane eyes. I realize this maze is no work of logic. The tunnels bend and twist without reason. Stairwells lead to solid walls, and doors open to gaping chasms. The transference to this grey world may have worked the machine, or maybe I never truly saw it from what it was, and just built according to my deranged whims. I have heard and seen nothing of Simon or his captors. Doubtless their steps are guided by the same madness that has abandoned me, guiding them to a fluid ease towards the worm's waiting jaws. I hasten my step, but I seem to be running in blind circles. If nothing else, at least I have a sturdy lantern and plenty of oil from the work crews that toil down here. Day 11 Day and night are meaningless in this limbo, but down here there is even less to measure the past of time. My journey has taken me deeper into some kind of processing factory. These automated devices gather grey sand from the bare rock, hid into a sickly-looking glass, and fill the created vials with foul-smelling chemicals I cannot identify. Against my better judgment, I crept close to inspect the completed vial, and to my horror, a fully-formed set of teeth begin to take form. Another jar held an eyeball like nothing found in man or nature. What is the purpose of this factory? What does it build and for whom? Is this the result of my design, or some mechanical cancer, spread by the worm that twists the machine's function? My quarry seems to be in dispute now. I hear them arguing through the ventilation ducts and empty pipes. Eudora has taken my son deeper, leaving the others behind to harass my progress or simply abandon to the whims of the worm. I have my pickaxe and my training, but I must move with stealth. I have not eaten in nearly two days. Still, Eudora's men still carry strips of meat. I also saw something odd near the lathe room I've hidden myself within. A painting of exquisite taste. It is the work of a master, but I cannot recall when I purchased it or what possessed me to leave it down here. The image shares a remarkable likeness to Clarisse, smiling as though in happier times. It cast my thoughts to decades past when I was a different man, a smaller man, yet infinitely happier. Can knowledge so damn a soul? In a universe of such cosmic evils that I have witnessed, is ignorance truly the only bliss one can enjoy? My dreams returned, not a prophecy but memory. I am with Simon in the London Museum. He pulls me along eager to see art and history. The beauty of all created by man and God, but I cannot see the beauty. I see only bloody mud and blackened skies, the ugliness of man and a callous God. Simon walks on without me while I sink into a bench. The day fades away the night, and I sit in an empty museum of man's atrocities, the last living thing on a cold earth, overwhelmed by the weight of it all. I wait for death or oblivion to take me, whichever could stomach so pitiful a morsel. But instead, I feel the presence of another. I feel no light from this being, no warmth, yet I sense that this was as close to God as any being could be. It looks like a man, but there is a weight to him, as though something greater and stranger was squeezed into his skin. The child wants and doesn't know why, the gentleman speaks to me. The child grasps and doesn't know the danger. They burn their fingers and know they are not ready. Someday they will be. Someday they will give voice to the soul and sing with the essence of the universe. What gods they will be then, what galaxies they will weave with dreams and care, but now they are children, and children are selfish. They know only what they want. And then I awoke back inside this machine, on a grey planet, so far from the world of my memories. It burdens my bones just to think of the inevitability, but I forced myself to stand just the same. Simon cried out to me. I heard him far below. I called back to him, but I heard no reply. Yudora's zealots hound me relentlessly, and I fear some horrible change has come over them and cast in their lot with the worm. They speak with slurred reptilian voices, or gargle as though choking. Some even turn on their fellows. As I crept about the darkness, I saw one such rebellion. A man I had tried to lead the paradise fell upon his companion with an argument over faith, and I felt the heat of his lifeblood splash across my astonished face. The teeth, gnashing and ripping so big and sharp, like the fangs of a wolf, yet also serrated as the blade of a saw, animal and flesh, yet also machine. My surroundings have been affected by the same mutation. Rooms I do not recognize bleed into one another like spilled paint. An office with plush green chairs merged with a warehouse filled with crates that rattle and bang with some unknown stinking occupant. Ladders descend in the pools of viscous liquid that have flooded what appears to be a school. Statues of marble and reliefs of brass decorate the ceilings and form the very walls. Rattling belts spew ammunition to neglected piles. Shells the size of my head clattered to the floor in automated factories, producing the tools of death. I could not have made this. I could not have wanted such devices, and yet here they stand, and always the shrieking, the tapping of heating and cooling metals, the groan of pressurized hydraulics. I cannot remember what silence sounded like. Day 13 or 14. Your door's followers no longer heed reason. The demented growl and spit and scavenge for food. They're ramblings the stuff of bedlam. Others have become something else. Feral like the lichen throats of myth. They crawl in all fours. Their eyes adjusted to the gloom and shining red. Twin pinpoints of demon light. I can startle them with my lantern, but they always return, trying to surround me from all sides. Hunters they are, and fast as wolves, but their howls are the shriek of tearing metal. Your door's voice taunts me now. It echoes up through the networks of plumbing, from every open ventilation shaft. She announces her glorious ascendance of her devotion to the worm, and I hear true lunacy in her desperate laughter. It ripples through this whole machine, as if she herself is a part of it. I have found respite in a room filled with hospital beds, and windows that look out into an abyss. It reminds me of the hospital I awoke from the war within, but I must pry my eyes away from that dark, for my mind cannot tell if I look into Lightless Cavern or Starless Void. Day 15 I have found Eudora, pursued by her followers made monsters. I came upon a great cathedral made from organ pipes, marble, and the very flesh and bones of Eudora herself. Now I see how she could speak to me through the pipes, for her body has been torn asunder and stitched upon it. Her organs are pulled straight and tout through the tangled plumbing. Her skin stretched and inflated with gasses. Her blood sizzling and steaming from the hydraulics. Only her head remains whole, wide-eyed and cackling, seated on a pulpit of this temple to dementia. The monsters refuse to sit foot into this hallowed ground, so I alone approach to speak with her. I demanded my son's return, but she spat her own broken teeth at me and said he had been taken by the worm, delivered to the heart of the machine where its mouth sat waiting. Furious, I fell upon her with a vengeance, tearing what remained of her body from the brass organs around her. She died screaming, and at last was quiet. But then a great bellow erupted from the machine, and a new voice spoke to me through the mangled organ. I am what you have made me. I am then and I am now. I am choice and I am tyranny. I am evil and I am flesh. I am beauty and I am chaos. I am the worm. Stricken, I fell to the blood-stained floor and wept. I cowered screaming, not because of the word that spoke, but that they were spoken with my voice. At last I beheld the truth I had tried to bury so deep. The worm, the machine, the madness that guided my hands. It was me. I am the worm. I do not know what compelled me to stand. I did not feel hope. I did not feel despair. Like an automaton, I could only move forward to face revelation. Day When I came upon decor of my great machine, I found my son. The machine was not a weapon to trap the worm. It was not an ark to carry the salvation. I had sought to exile myself from a monster's existence, and in my cowardice and fear I became a monster. I became the worm. I built a shell to hide within. An engine to spirit me away from the pain, the despair that acclaimed my sanity. To abandon creation in God's cold distance, but it would not run without a catalyst. Simon So full of hope and faith, so full of love and dreams, how I envied your strength, how I envied your ignorance. I yearned to wrap myself up in that goodness and hide from the world. I threw the switch of my great machine, and it drank the heart's blood from your lifeless body, pumping it into every pipe and piston. I believed your love would carry us to paradise. But it was tainted by my madness, by my act of murder. I dreamed a peace, and it brought me to unchanging limbo. I demanded paradise, but I deserved only perdition. And I was so horrified, but what I had done to you, I could not bear to face it. I spoke as if you were there with me, smiled as though I could see you smiling at me. When Clarisse realized what I had done, what I was, she took Simona away before I saw her out as well. This place is filled with your memories, Simon. Are they the last tattered shreds of love you have for me? Or are they here to taunt and punish me, as the manned beast has stalked the hallway surely must be? I do not know if any of you can forgive me. I only know that I promise to save my son. I promise to slay the worm. I leave this journal behind in the hopes that someday, somehow, someone will know what I did, and remember the men and women I dand with my selfishness, my fear. I hurl myself into his teeth, that my bones, my clogged, entered. I am the worm, and Uroboros must eat itself.