The High Priest, adorned in the finest purple
ceremonial robes, stands before the great, bull-headed statue in the darkened belly of
the castle. The year is 850 CE. Masked worshippers whisper chants of holy
reverence on all sides. He is in his element. Everything they do, they do in service of
the great god, Moloch. All around them, banners bearing the sigil
of the Brazen Heart hang. It’s a celebration. Just a few hours earlier, their forces had
invaded an enemy Church in the hills. They’d slaughtered most of the congregation
in a sudden whirlwind of bloody violence, staining their swords in the great Moloch’s
name. But as the High Priest had ordered, some of
these blaspheming Christian churchgoers were taken prisoner and brought back to the castle
for “questioning.” Here, the High Priest would deal with them
himself. A sadistic, tooth-bearing grin crosses his
face at the very thought of it. Soon after the ceremony, the High Priest descends
into the dungeon - Which he’d taken, with a certain flourish, to calling the “Game
Room.” Here, he keeps his private collection of torture
tools from around the world, each of which he takes great pleasure in using against the
worms who refused to bend the knee to his bloodthirsty god. In the Game Room, the air is suffused with
the stink of blood and sweat. The prisoners who still have tongues start
to scream when the High Priest enters, knowing that everything is about to get so much worse
for them. He’s cultivated a certain reputation as
a man willing to do anything to ensure the superiority of his infamous cult, the Brazen
Heart. If ever you fell into his terrible clutches,
escape was out of the question. The very best you could possibly hope for
was a mercifully quick death. In the corner of the room, one unfortunate
captive was twisted and shattered against a Breaking Wheel, but still torturously alive. In the corner across from him, another prisoner
bleeds from the inside of a grimacing Iron Maiden that the High Priest had overseen the
construction of personally. But that was only the very beginning of the
High Priest’s collection of terrible instruments. Prisoners teeter in agony on Judas Cradles
and Spanish Donkeys. Skin is stretched and bones are cracked on
racks. Some are pierced as they sit on the monstrous
Iron Chair while others simmer away in great vats of oil. Some scream as they hang from their wrists
on the tenth round of Strappado. Lead sprinklers, Spanish Ticklers, Thumb Screws,
Crocodile Shears, Choke Pears, Malay Boots, Heretics Forks, Bastinado Sticks, Scold’s
Bridles, Scavenger's Daughters. The High Priest has all of them, and he’s
adept at using them. But they all pale in comparison to his favorite
piece, a prized possession, gifted from the bosom of Moloch himself: The Liars’ Cradle. Such a perfectly ingenious tool for physical
pain and mental terror. It’s positioned at the very center of the
game room, just so every other prisoner in every other device can see him using it, and
know that it’s their eventual fate. A mighty stone furnace with huge metal grates
on either side. As the High Priest approaches, he can see
a terrified prisoner already writhing within the machine. When the prisoner sees him, the fear only
gets worse. The High Priest would have no mercy for him. He’d spent ten hours on the breaking wheel
before this, and that felt like a pleasant sleep in a comfy, king-sized bed compared
to what he was about to endure. Two of the High Priest’s sadistic acolytes
jab at him through the grates with red hot pokers. The High Priest grins and asks the prisoner
what village he hails from. When the villager surrenders the information,
the High Priest gives a sagely nod. He asks how old the prisoner is, and the prisoner
says, 27. Again, the High Priest nods. He asks the prisoner whether he would like
to leave and be with his family again. And of course, the prisoner replies, yes. He has no idea that they’re all already
dead. The High Priest smiles, and says, “Just
one more question then and you’ll be free to go… What is my true name?” The prisoner pauses for a moment, which earns
them another job with the poker. He tells the High Priest that he doesn’t
know. He’s jabbed again, and again, and again. He begins to cry and starts apologizing. He doesn’t know the High Priest’s true
name. How could he possibly tell him, no matter
how much he’s tormented? The High Priest says, “Well, just give me
your best guess. Who knows, perhaps you’ll be lucky…” The Game Room falls silent, all eyes on the
prisoner in the Liars’ Cradle. His lip trembles, knowing from the dark legends
what will happen when he answers. He breathes a ragged sigh, accepts his fate,
and guesses. Incorrectly. Suddenly, the prisoner screams as he catches
fire. The High Priest watches with unrestrained
glee as the prisoner burns. He does so for around a minute, the fire burning
far more intensely than it possibly should have. By the time it’s done, the pile of ashes
that was once the prisoner falls through the grate in the bottom of the Liars’ Cradle. The High Priest turns to the rest of the room
and asks, “Who’s next?” Of all the many adjectives you could use to
describe SCP-2128, also known as The Liars’ Cradle, “Humane” certainly isn’t high
on the list. This antique stone furnace was discovered
deep in the dungeons of an undisclosed castle, believed to be a former refuge of a fringe
occultic group known as the Brazen Heart - a cult of worshippers of the Canaanite deity
Moloch, an entity mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. Among the deity’s most notable traits is
its bull-like appearance and the fact it requests burned human sacrifices. This feels extremely relevant, given the fact
that the Liars’ Cradle is all about giving its victims a fiery end. While the thaumaturgic methods used by members
of the Brazen Hand to create the Liars’ Cradle is unknown, what is clear are the Cradle’s
capabilities and functions: When a human being is placed within the Cradle, and asked questions,
a single lie will lead to them being anomalously incinerated. And the device’s purview for a lie is frighteningly
wide: A victim will be incinerated if something they say is factually untrue, regardless of
the victim’s personal knowledge. In other words, ignorance as an excuse will
not save you. While the Brazen Heart was wiped out hundreds
of years ago by soldiers of the Spanish Inquisition, the SCP Foundation has been able to glean
some background information about the Liars’ Cradle from a surviving document: A sheepskin
scroll known as the “Ignis Manuscript.” This revealed that the Cradle was invented
around the 9th Century CE, before being walled up in 1021 CE, and during its heyday, it was
used as a torture device by Brazen Hand members against their enemies. While most torture is actually incredibly
ineffective at getting information - studies have shown that under states of extreme duress,
victims will simply say what they believe their captors want to hear in order to make
the suffering stop - The Liars’ Cradle is an excellent method of wringing information
out of captives. Well, aside from the fact that one lie means
the captive is immediately reduced to ashes. You see, SCP-2128 works on a true or false
binary operating system that seems to imply an innate awareness of all knowledge. If you have enough captives to burn, and know
the right deductive or inductive questions to ask, it’s possible to know almost anything
in enough time. It’s believed the Brazen Heart used the
Liars’ Cradle both for practical purposes and their own twisted amusement. Victims would be placed in the device and
have their feet prodded with hot pokers while they were asked a series of increasingly probing
questions about their life, being forced to divulge extremely dark and personal secrets
or meet their doom on the pyre. It was a depraved combination of physical
and mental torture. If even hearing about all this makes you feel
a little queasy, nobody could blame you for that. The SCP Foundation, however, looked at the
Liar’s Cradle and saw incredible potential. As mentioned earlier, the Liars’ Cradle
bases its judgment on raw factual knowledge, not the knowledge of its particular victims. So anyone with enough people to burn can conceivably
work their way towards discovering any binary answer. And given that the SCP Foundation has an almost
unlimited number of D-Class Personnel at their disposal, it didn’t take long for them to
realize all the knowledge that was up for grabs. They’d just need to make a few sacrifices
along the way, hoping to save more people in the long run. Moloch himself would probably be proud. It was this somewhat morally dubious chain
of thought that led to the creation of Experimental Protocol 37-Sparafucile, the Foundation’s
plan to utilize the Liars’ Cradle to discover more information that would assist in their
mission to contain anomalies and protect the human race. The Protocol is outlined in a five-step procedure
that is as follows: 1. One D-class employee, referred to as the "messenger,"
will be laid inside SCP-2128. 2. The messenger will repeat statements as instructed
from the prepared list. 3. After each statement, if the messenger remains
unharmed, the statement is to be marked as "true." 4. As soon as the messenger is incinerated, a
new messenger is to be provided. The statement that triggered the incineration
is to be marked as "false." 5. A new messenger will be assigned. Repeat as needed. While the total extent of these tests remains
off the record, the official files on SCP-2128 have some fascinating supplementals about
some of the results of Experimental Protocol 37-Sparafucile. The first set of tests was designated EP 37-Sparafucile-22
"Keter Checkup", and was conducted on January 10th, 2014. The Messenger, in this case, was D-6238. The first statement this D-Class was fed was,
“The human race is in danger of extinction right now.” Seeing as D-6238 didn’t immediately go up
in flames, this was found to be true. The second statement was, “The danger comes
from an item in Foundation custody.” Much to the relief of the D-Class, this was
also found to be True, and he lived to make another statement. This statement was, “The dangerous item
in question is located at a site in North America.” This was, sadly, the D-Class’ last words,
as this statement proved to be false and he was immediately burned to death for his troubles. The next Messenger brought in was a woman
now known as D-6239, after she committed an armed robbery that killed several innocents
and landed her on death row. Her statement was, “The dangerous item in
question is located at a site in Europe.” This caused her to be immediately incinerated. The SCP Foundation then continued to narrow
their focus on this matter over the next thirteen D-Classes. With the information they gained, they were
able to narrow down that SCP-752, a subspecies of humans who are eager to displace and replace
non-anomalous humanity, would be the cause of a containment breach that could potentially
end the human race’s dominance if they weren’t stopped. D-6253 was given the statement, “SCP-752
will breach containment within the next month.” The answer was True. Next came, “SCP-752 will breach containment
within the next week.” Also, this proved to be true. D-6253 would finally meet their maker with
the false statement, “SCP-752 will breach containment tomorrow.” But this opened the door for the final correct
answer, delivered to us by D-6254, that “SCP-752 will breach containment today.” Armed with this vital information in the nick
of time, the Foundation dispatched MTF Nu-7 - also known as Hammer Down, their largest
and most well-armed Mobile Task Force - to the site in question. This quick thinking allowed them to quell
the threat at the exact right time and save the world from an SK-Class Dominance Shift
scenario that would have left humanity in the dust. Using the Liars’ Cradle, the SCP Foundation
had just saved the world as we know it, and all it had taken was a handful of D-Class
lives. So naturally, the tests with the Liars’
Cradle didn’t stop there… Next came EP 37-Sparafucile-23 "Knowledge
Measure.” As the name suggests, this test hoped to ascertain
the extent of the knowledge the Liars’ Cradle possessed, seeing as it could continue to
come in handy for Foundation purposes. The first Messenger was D-7784, who was fed
the statement, “SCP-2128 knows everything.” This turned out to be false, and led to the
D-Class’ immediate incineration. However, the lead researcher on the case decided
to take a different approach. Perhaps, he thought, the Liars’ Cradle didn’t
accept the numerical designation that the Foundation had placed on it. The next Messenger, D-7785, led with the statement,
“The Liars' Cradle knows everything.” Which proved true, because that allowed him
to live long enough to be incinerated by his next statement: “The Liars' Cradle will
tell us everything.” After his incineration, D-7786 stepped up
to the metaphorical plate, first saying “The Liars' Cradle will tell me everything I need
to know.” The Cradle judged this to be true. It did not, however, take kindly to “The
Liars' Cradle will tell the Foundation everything they need to know.” It declared this statement false by immediately
incinerating the D-Class. After this incineration, the EP 37-Sparafucile
project was out of its daily allotted D-Classes and decided to call it a night. Their next test was the mysterious and controversial
EP 37-Sparafucile-24 "Sunday School Song", which utilized D-7891 as its messenger. She was fed the statement “Jesus loves the
little children, all the children of the world.” The results of this particular test have been
permanently expunged from SCP Foundation records. Next came EP 37-Sparafucile-25 "Pinocchio
Paradox", which was an experiment intended to see how the Liars’ Cradle would react
to logical paradoxes. Spoilers: It doesn’t involve as much incineration
as you might expect. First came D-8232, who provided the statement,
“Telling the Liars' Cradle a paradox is dangerous to Foundation personnel.” This was proven to be false, and, ironically,
he was burned alive immediately. Next came D-8233, with the statement, “The
Liars' Cradle is going to kill me right now.” The Liars’ Cradle bent its own rules by
declaring this false, but only incerinating the D-Class enough to permanently disfigure
him rather than killing him. D-8234 was shoved into the Cradle after that,
making the statement, “The Liars' Cradle is going to burn me right now.” This was proven, through empirical observation,
to be false. Ten seconds passed without incineration. However, when D-8234 exited the cradle, he
complained about sustaining a small cut on one of the rocks that made the Cradle while
climbing out of it. This caused D-8234 to rapidly succumb to a
previously undiscovered form of gangrene and pass away in minutes. Finally, D-8235 entered and said, “The Liars'
Cradle is going to inflict physical harm upon me right now.” This was proven false and D-8235 climbed out
of the Liars’ Cradle unharmed. At this point, however, he began to cry and
scream out the word “Goodbye!” before dying via altogether more unpleasant
means that I don’t wish to discuss in great detail here. The last experiment we have on record here
is EP 37-Sparafucile-26 "Subjective Opinion", which intended to see if the Liars’ Cradle
liked to turn logical gray areas into logical charred black areas. Messenger one, D-9224, made the relatively
uncontroversial statement, “Golden retrievers are cute.” The Cradle seemed to disagree, immediately
incinerating him. The next Messenger, D-9225, delivered the
counterpoint: “Golden retrievers are ugly.” And just like that, he was up in smoke. However, when Messenger three, D-9226, delivered
the wild card statement, “Golden retrievers are tasty”, everyone in attendance was surprised
to find the Liars’ Cradle completely agreed with this. When D-9226 delivered the completely understandable
reaction, “Wait, what? That's freakin' nasty”, he was immediately
reduced to ashes by the Cradle’s flames. With this line of questioning concluded in
the strangest manner possible, the new Messenger, D-9227, was brought in. Before becoming a member of D-Class personnel,
his name was Steven Kemp, a cannibalistic serial killer who’d murdered and eaten fourteen
women, before being captured, tried, and put on death row for his crimes. He delivered the statement, “I’m a good
person.” Surprisingly, the Cradle felt this was true,
and let him live. However, when Steven decided to get cocky,
and chime in with, “Joke's on you, jackasses - apparently I'm Mother Teresa!” he was
immediately incinerated, due to the fact that he was not, in fact, Mother Teresa. His ashes were soon accompanied by that of
D-9228, who made the statement, “The Liars' Cradle is sometimes incorrect” before being
burned to death. Next came D-9229, who allowed for the longest
streak of unbroken statements in the history of tests performed on the Liars’ Cradle. He said, “The Liars' Cradle speaks only
infallible empirical truth.” True. He said, “The Liars' Cradle is hungry.” True. He said, “The Liars' Cradle's hunger can
never be satiated, no matter how full it becomes.” True. He said, “The Liars' Cradle would like to
incinerate me right now.” True. He said, “The Liars' Cradle is growing impatient.” True. He said, “The Liars' Cradle sees delicious,
warm meat on its plate and would very much like to be fed.” True. He said, “The Liars' Cradle is angry that
it is continually denied its meat.” True. He said, “People meat is delicious.” True. He said, “I am delicious.” True. He said, “My skin is warm.” True. He said, “The crackling of fire upon boiling
drips of fat and rapidly cauterizing flesh gives the Liars' Cradle pleasure.” True. After such an incredible streak, that also
allowed for a frightening insight into the apparent personality of the Liars’ Cradle,
D-9229 was withdrawn, alive. He was replaced by D-9230, who said, “The
Earth is round” and was immediately incinerated. It’s widely believed that this outcome came
from the Liars’ Cradle maliciously interpreting Earth as “dirt” rather than the Planet
Earth, just so it could incinerate the subject. Just because the Liars Cradle is largely objective
doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly petty, it would seem. Because of the static nature of SCP-2128,
it has been given the rare Safe Object Class. Containment Site-403 has been built around
the castle that currently holds SCP-2128, and a healthy supply of D-Class personnel
is regularly siphoned off for EP 37-Sparafucile. The sadistic sorcerers of the Brazen Heart
may be long gone, but in a strange and disturbing twist of fate, the researchers of the SCP
Foundation are keeping the spirit of their work alive even today… Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, like “SCP-987 The Gruesome Gallery”, for another terrifying anomalous object that
reveals some terrifying truths. And make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications,
so you don’t miss a single anomaly, as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s
classified archives.
