The year was 1857, and the Second Opium War
was raging between China and the combined forces of the English and French. It was one
of the many bloody colonial wars fought over resources like tea, sugar, and the intoxicating
opium poppy. It was a war fought by peasants and noblemen alike. One of these aristocratic
soldiers was the noble Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood, the quintessential English gentleman
and explorer. While his fellow soldiers cowered behind cover, Lord Blackwood charged into
the fray, shouldering his rifle and firing his pistol into the crowd of opposing soldiers. It was the Battle of Canton, one of the most
crucial battles of the entire conflict. The French and English were laying siege to the
city of Canton, also known as Guangzhou, to prove their military dominance and capture
an important Chinese government official. Lord Blackwood led the charge on horseback.
Every bullet seemed to find the heart of a foe. He was a true hero among men; a gentleman
warrior with class, refinement, and style. And it would be thanks to his expert leadership
and marksmanship on the field that the allied European forces won the battle decisively. Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood is a name that
deserves to be counted among Lord Horatio Nelson, Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir
Walter Raleigh. In addition to being a skilled and honorable fighter, Lord Blackwood is an
consummate explorer, naturalist, and frontiersman. During his heyday, he traveled perhaps further
than any man across the known and unknown corners of the globe. He made scientific,
biological, and anthropological discoveries that should have reset the course of society
forever. And yet, you won’t find any records in the history books of Lord Theodore Thomas
Blackwood. Nor will you find any grand oil paintings, or dedicated wings in British museums. This is because Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood…
is a four and a half inch, telepathic neon sea slug. And he’s known to the SCP Foundation,
as SCP-1867. While he would never admit to it, Lord Blackwood
belongs to the species Nembrotha kubaryana, also known as the variable neon slug. He’s
kept in a standard aquarium in a Foundation containment site, and is physically no different
to any other member of his species. What makes Lord Blackwood unique is his powerful telepathic
abilities - specifically, the power to communicate by speaking directly into people’s minds.
And what’s more, he’s extremely talkative. But to what extent is anything that this anomalous
sea slug says true? Or is he just like SCP-082, Fernand the Cannibal - a creative and pathological
liar. It isn’t committed to record how exactly
the Foundation discovered Lord Blackwood. Perhaps a local aquarium worker worried they
were going insane when they heard the voice of a nineteenth century English nobleman ringing
in their ears whenever they were cleaning algae out of the tank. Maybe Lord Blackwood
was found by SCP Foundation divers, who are constantly combing the ocean for anomalous
creatures and activity. What we do know is that Lord Blackwood is an incredibly strange
and mysterious individual. He claims to have visited locations all around the world, and
encountered rare societies and creatures. The Foundation was skeptical about a number
of Lord Blackwood’s more outlandish claims, on account of him being a sea slug, but he
does appear to have the knowledge to back up his supposed experience. Interviews with
Lord Blackwood have shown that he’s extremely knowledgeable in the areas of geography, zoology,
botany, archaeology, anthropology and linguistics relating to his claimed regions of exploration,
as well as more esoteric fields such as obscure mythology, mysticism, and cryptozoology. In
other words, if Lord Blackwood hadn’t gone on his escapades around the globe throughout
history, how would he come to possess this wide variety of information? The Foundation was getting frustrated, and
began to probe further into the personal life of the most interesting gastropod in containment.
Lord Blackwood, under questioning, was always polite and amicable with Foundation staff.
He seemed to display no real knowledge of the fact that he himself was a sea slug - going
as far to accuse other people of being crazy or drunk when they brought the fact up to
him. While none of Lord Blackwood’s tall tales ever extend past the year 1910, he told
fanciful stories of exploring the Americas, and of his involvement in the Second Opium
War on the side of the English. Naturally, the Foundation wanted proof. When
they pressured Lord Blackwood on this, something even stranger happened: He gave it. The Lord
told his interviewers that he would happily donate his collection to them, if it gave
them cause to believe what he was saying. He gave the baffled Foundation researchers
the address of a cottage in England where they could find the secrets to his bizarre
and mysterious past, and local agents in the area followed up on the information. Upon investigation, Foundation Field Agents
did indeed find the cottage that Lord Blackwood had specified. It was being maintained by
an extremely old woman. When questioned about her presence there, she said that she was
“keeping the house for Lord Blackwood”, and gave no more useful information. Incidentally,
it appeared that this singular purpose was all that this old woman was living for. She
abruptly passed away from heart failure five days after the Foundation commandeered the
cottage. Whether anything truly anomalous caused this, we still don’t know. At first, the cottage seemed normal, until
the Field Agents discovered a secret basement housing Lord Blackwood’s “collection.”
They were amazed at what they saw: The basement consisted of zoological and botanical specimens,
over three thousand artifacts, a library containing over five thousand items, and a functioning
1800s scientific laboratory. It took around three weeks for Foundation agents working
round the clock in shifts to remove all the items from Lord Blackwood’s mysterious collection,
and what they found raised even more questions. The collection included, but was by no means
limited to: 116 unknown species of plants, 107 unknown species of insects, 28 unknown
species of lizards, 23 unknown species of fish, 14 unknown species of amphibians, 12
unknown species of mammals, Fossils pertaining to 8 unknown species of dinosaur, Fossils
pertaining to 12 unknown species of prehistoric mammal, and Artifacts belonging to 29 unknown
indigenous societies. That’s a lot of unknowns! But wait, there’s more! His collection also
contained a collection of seemingly unknown firearms, including three wide-bore muskets
marked as “Dr. B. T. Moth’s Effective Particle Destabilizers.” Detailed globes
of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Galilean moons, accompanied by notes detailing possible
paths of surface exploration. A heavily modified carriage, containing instruments of unknown
purpose. A note attached to the door reads “On the fritz. Speak with Henry.” And
a highly dangerous and seemingly anomalous machine that killed four Foundation Field
Agents before it was destroyed on site. And when questioned about this little fiasco,
Lord Blackwood responded: “I did warn you to be careful around my
collection. That bloody thing nearly took my head off back in ninety-seven when I found
it.” However, there was one thing recovered from
Lord Blackwood’s collection that was perhaps more interesting than all the others: 35 hand-written
journals containing recordings of events described by Lord Blackwood in his grandiose tall tales
to the Foundation researchers. The accounts are generally identical to the stories he
had told, save for some slight variations and exaggerations on the part of Blackwood
in the re-telling. Most interestingly of all, all of these journals have been dated to the
appropriate time period of the events described by Foundation scientists. While his stories are too numerous to all
be shared here, there’s one that perfectly sums them all up: Lord Blackwood’s account
of a possible encounter with SCP - 1000, also known as Bigfoot, in Seattle during the mid-1800s. Lord Blackwood, seeking to explore the so-called
“new world” of North America, embarked with an assistant and an indigenous American
guide to the Pacific Northwest, in search of the legendary Sasquatch. The trio was headed
for Mount Rainier, then known as Tahoma. During the journey, Lord Blackwood found a young
fox caught in a trap that had been set by a local tribe. He took sympathy on the animal
and freed it, allowing it to run away to safety. That night, he and his assistant met up with
the rest of his guide’s tribe, and they settled down for the evening. However, things
took a disastrous turn when the camp was raided by a rival tribe. Almost everyone was slaughtered
in the process, and Lord Blackwood and his two companions were hauled away by the enemy
tribe for a sinister purpose: Sacrifice to a violent local deity. As it turns out, the creature that this tribe
worshipped was the very same one Lord Blackwood and the others were trying to find: A particularly
large and aggressive Sasquatch. Each night, a different sacrifice was made to the Sasquatch.
The victim would be placed near a forest clearing while the tribe played a primal song, and
the Sasquatch would emerge from the trees to devour its prey. The first night it ate
the assistant, the next night it ate the guide. And then, it became time for the sacrifice
of Lord Blackwood himself. As Blackwood was presented for sacrifice,
he accepted his fate. But instead of the Sasquatch, a legion of woodland animals emerged from
the trees - foxes, elks, raccoons, and more - themselves painted with tribal symbols.
The animals seemed to be on Lord Blackwood’s side, and attacked the tribespeople who had
been holding him captive giving Blackwood the chance to flee into the forest during
the chaos. Later, these same animals would find Blackwood again, and present him with
the things his captors had stolen from him. An elder fox also gave him a letter, proclaiming
him a knight of their people now. He was allowed safe passage back to a nearby settlement,
at which point he wrote to his financiers back in England, explaining the situation
and asking for more money to perform further expeditions into the Tahoma region. The whole
incident had only increased his thirst for adventure and exploration. Whether this tale is actually true, or just
a bizarre, colonial fantasy from the pathological mind of a telepathic sea slug, we may never
know - but it doesn’t make it any less interesting. To this day, Lord Blackwood continues to be
a perplexing but fascinating anomaly. He may not be the most dangerous, and he may not
be the most useful, either, but there’s no denying that perhaps we’d all like to
sit next to his tank for a couple hours one day, and hear him spin a good yarn over a
warm cup of tea. Now go check out “SCP - 1007 - Mr. Life
and Mr. Death” and “SCP - 4205 - In The Eyes of the Beholder” for more mysterious
entities contained by the SCP Foundation!
If you want quality blackwood content go to the exploring series' set of videos