Item #: SCP-140
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-140 must never be brought closer than 15 m to any source of standard ink, human blood, or other fluids suitable for writing. Any contamination by blood or ink must be reported immediately. Any remaining copies of SCP-140 created during the initial printing must be found and destroyed as soon as possible. Only SCP-140 is to be preserved, for purposes of study, early warning, and cataloguing and recording possible SCPs derived from its subject matter.
SCP-140 is contained at Site-76 in a sealed vault containing a single desk. At this time no research is to be carried out upon the original SCP-140; researchers are to read from prepared copies not bearing the signature of its author which lack its properties. In the event of approved research, SCP-140 may not be removed from the vault, and readers may not be in contact with it for longer than 9 hours. Access requires written approval from the head researcher for the explicit purposes of testing. An armed guard stationed outside the vault will meet any attempted theft with deadly force.
Should any personnel begin displaying obsession with SCP-140 or signs of possible memetic contamination, they are to be issued a Class A Amnesiac, false memories implanted as necessary, and transferred to another project. Transferred personnel must be monitored for signs of relapse.
Description: SCP-140 is a modern hardcopy book with an unremarkable black binding and an unknown number of white pages. The book jacket is missing, but the title, “A Chronicle of the Daevas”, is clearly legible. The inside cover is signed by the author, whose name is indecipherable. The text is copyrighted 19██. Careful examination reveals there are far more pages between the bindings than could be contained within them.
Readers admit to feelings of paranoia, unease, and occasional nausea while reading SCP-140, although this may be related to the subject material. Nonetheless, readers almost universally describe SCP-140 as fascinating and express continued interest, despite its frequently unsettling content. One in fifteen readers describe SCP-140 as having a faint odor of dried blood.
SCP-140 is a detailed account of an ancient civilization originating in what is now south-central Siberia, identified as the Daevites. Although like all cultures the Daevites evolved and changed over time, they appear to have exhibited unusual continuity. Universal fixtures of the Daevite culture in all periods included militarism, conquest, ancestor worship, urban centers ruling over large slave populations, gruesome human sacrifice, and the practice of apparently efficacious thaumaturgic rituals. A variety of relics and creatures produced by the Daevite culture would be abnormal or dangerous enough, if the account is to be believed, to qualify for containment in their own right.
If SCP-140 comes into contact with any fluid suitable for writing, including human blood, the account of the Daevite civilization’s history expands. Human blood appears the most “potent” of possible writing substances, but in any case the amount of new material does not correspond proportionately to the fluids introduced. Although these new segments sometimes include new descriptions of rituals or cultural traits or illustrations of previously covered material, they more frequently include new, more recent accounts of information chronicling the continued history of the Daevite civilization or descriptions of new individuals and artifacts. Formerly decisive defeats become setbacks; new persons and events are inserted. Foundation archaeologists have discovered corresponding new artifacts and traces of the Daevite civilization in applicable locations and strata, in some cases found in dig sites that had already been thoroughly explored.
