One fine morning, your distant Aunt Carol
came to your family home in an almost frantic state of excitement. Carol had always been a bit eccentric, totally
harmless, of course, but what you’d describe as being on the more “zealous” side of
religious. Predictably, she wanted to ask you and your
family to come to church with her. Seeing as you don’t see Aunt Carol often,
you and your family decide that there’s no harm in indulging her. You’re not an atheist family by any means,
in fact you were all raised Catholic, but it felt like it’d been forever since you
last went to church. Aunt Carol wanted to show you and your family
the special celebrations that went on at her church. You remember her practically grabbing you
by the wrist and dragging you to the building, her eyes filled with a crazed enthusiasm. That’s when you saw something incredibly
strange, there were shadows moving behind the elaborate stained glass windows. Thousands of tiny shadows, darting around. And this low humming noise you faintly recognized. What was that noise? It was the cry of cicadas, but this was only
early spring. What were cicadas doing awake at this time
of year? You didn’t get much time to ponder this
question. In the next few seconds, you and the entire
church were surrounded by heavy duty tactical vehicles. What appeared to be a large and heavily-armed
SWAT team poured out of the vehicles. Unbeknownst to you, these were a Mobile Task
Force sent in by the SCP Foundation. Specifically, MTF Y-99, also known as the
Altar Boys, a specially trained group of Foundation agents used for anomalies of a religious nature. You, your Aunt, and the rest of your family
are rounded up to be debriefed and given amnestics. One of the last memories they took from you
was the sight of Foundation Agents dragging bloodied bodies out of the church. As the doors opened, thousands of cicadas
streamed out and dispersed into the skies. But these weren’t like any kind of cicada
you’d never seen, they were beautiful, their rainbow-colored wings reminding you of ornate
stained glass. Who could have guessed that these pretty little
bugs are tied to an entity very likely to bring about an XK-Class End of the World Scenario
some day in the future? The bugs, the bodies in the church, and even
your aunt’s incredibly strange behavior all fall under the umbrella of a Keter-Class
anomaly known as SCP-3004. But to truly understand this anomaly that
was once thought to be destroyed, and the implications of it still living today, we
need to go back 600 years, to Ireland in the 15th Century. This era was believed to be the origin of
a Gaelic religious movement known as “Cétlaidí”, or the “The Singers” in English, a splinter
sect of Druidism. But this was no fringe cult, The Singers were
a mainstream religion in the British Isles for several hundred years. Its members included people of all social
classes, from lowly peasants to powerful and respected figures. They mingled heavily with Christians, mostly
Irish Catholics, and at some points in history came close to overtaking Christianity as the
dominant religion in Ireland. So, who were these people, if they’re supposedly
such a large part of recent history in the area? Like most Druids, their relationship with
nature was a key part of their belief system. In particular, they prized an extinct species
of Cicada known as Cicadetta luculenta, or the “stained glass cicada”, in English. The life cycle of birth and resurrection that
the cicadas underwent fascinated the Singers, and they performed a number of holy rituals
around it. One recorded ritual was the celebration of
children entering adulthood that was marked by them first losing their baby teeth. But the rituals of the Singers accidentally
opened some kind of door to a being from a different plane of reality, dubbed SCP-3004-1
by the Foundation. This being is an immensely powerful thought-form
that the Foundation believes to be a “Pistiphage”, or “Faith Eater.” It appears to have been attracted to our universe
by the rituals of the Singers, and so took a form relevant to their beliefs, namely,
a huge cicada, in order to feed on their faith. If things had stopped there then this would
be an almost innocent symbiotic relationship, but the interactions between SCP-3004-1 and
our world led to dangerous consequences due to its powerful reality-warping abilities. For example, during some rituals, huge numbers
of stained glass cicadas would burst from the mouths of those participating, often causing
them to choke to death. Other times 3004-1 would manifest physically
in the sky above its new worshippers, causing painful boils on whoever witnessed it, and
occasionally symptoms akin to radiation sickness. It appeared that 3004-1 was growing more powerful
over time, and its rise to power was intrinsically linked to the rituals of the Singers and the
existence of the stained glass cicadas. Two groups that pre-dated the Foundation,
the Vatican’s “Congregation for Otherworldly Acts” and the English Government’s “Royal
Society for the Imprisonment of Abnormalcy”, essentially performed an all-out religious
genocide on the Singers. No meaningful trace of the religion was left
when they were done, aside from their own records. While they were at it, they also exterminated
all the stained glass cicadas, leading to a complete stop of all SCP-3004 activity. It seemed like, despite the great human and
ecological cost, the anomaly had been neutralized. A few centuries later though, a series of
strange, cicada-related anomalous events started to occur across the United States. A strange man, seemingly made almost entirely
from cicada chitin, would appear at christenings, weddings, and funerals. Each time, his presence would cause the people
in attendance to do and experience horrific things and lead to legacies of hardship and
death that would linger for decades. This became known as SCP-2852, or “Cousin
Johnny” and it should have been the first clue that the nightmare of SCP-3004 was resurfacing. But since 3004 was already archived as “neutralized”,
nobody made the connection. Some time later, SCP-2852 incidents ceased,
and around that exact time, SCP-3004 instances started anew. It manifested in the form of strange, anomalous
activities taking place at Christian church services, specifically, those from Roman Catholic,
Eastern Catholic, Anglican, and Episcopalian communities. The only clues to outsiders would be an increase
in reported church attendance, and an increase in deaths from “natural causes” within
the community. These two stats were how the Foundation first
noticed something was amiss. Just as it had done with the Singers centuries
before, SCP-3004-1 had latched onto the beliefs and rituals of Christians, and was using this
new connection to harvest more faith for sustenance. The results were twofold. First, religious fervor and excitement to
attend church services saw a huge increase. Secondly, the actual content of these services
took a hard turn for the horrific. Much like Cousin Johnny infiltrations, this
really isn’t for the faint of heart by any definition. For example, young people with Christ-like
stigmata wounds being bitten to death by priests. Children removing the teeth of priests, before
they all start vomiting huge numbers of stained glass cicadas. There were extremely unpleasant rituals involving
castration and even a pregnant woman giving birth to even more swarms of stained glass
cicadas. We could go on, but you probably get the idea. Rituals inspired by SCP-3004-1 are horrific,
and all seem to involve the same extinct breed of stained glass cicadas worshipped by the
Singers before their annihilation. But how can these insects, which have been
dubbed SCP-3004-2, be here in the present if the Foundation forerunners made them extinct
so many centuries ago? The answer is simple, but strange. While they have all the hallmarks of being
alive, the stained glass cicadas present during modern iterations of SCP-3004 events aren’t
actually real. Genetic tests have shown that they’re actually
made from a mix of wood and real stained glass. These insects fly away from the scene after
the rituals are completed, traveling around six hundred miles from the site before disappearing
completely. The Foundation was growing concerned about
the nature of SCP-3004, especially given that instances were becoming more frequent and
harder to contain. Foundation scientists determined that the
creature known as 3004-1 likely existed within a layer of reality just above our own, and
if it ever managed to breach our reality, the worldwide level of violence and chaos
it could cause would likely lead to an XK-Class End of the World Scenario. Drastic actions would once again be needed
to prevent this, so they devised an emergency containment procedure that would only be used
as a last resort. The procedure, known as Protocol Damnatio
ad Bestias, would use a mixture of mass amnestic treatment and Thaumiel objects to completely
erase Christianity from not only the modern world, but all of history in the hopes of
cutting off 3004-1’s food supply to kill the entity or at least prevent it from entering
our world. The plan would center on placing a powerful
Roman-Catholic reality warper, who volunteered for the job of course, into an anomalous group
of machines known as “The Lions.” By submitting the reality warper to a lifetime
of suffering and essentially erasing him from existence, so too will it erase the world’s
full knowledge of Christianity, and hopefully save the world. This man will become the last martyr, dying
for all of humanity. He will become the last saint, St. Jude the
Damned, Bulwark Against Darkness You might ask: Are you sure this is necessary? There’s so much we don’t know about 3004-1. Do we know for a fact it’s this dangerous? Enter Agent Timothy Luttermann, a member of
Mobile Task Force Sigma-25, also known as “Ghostbusters.” Luttermann was part of a Foundation project
known as SIGHTSEE-LUX, using an astral projection technology that would free his consciousness
from his body, and allow it to travel freely between metaphysical planes. In plain English, they could use Luttermann’s
floating mind as a kind of spy, and insert it into 3004-1’s dimension. They achieved this by capturing one of 3004-1’s
false stained glass cicadas, and releasing it again, allowing Luttermann’s mind to
follow it home to its master. However, what was thought to be a simple intel
gathering mission turned into a complete nightmare. Luttermann found that 3004-1’s dimension
was entirely void, aside from the entity itself, and the millions of buzzing stained glass
cicadas. The entity was so huge and so complex that
it physically hurt to look at. Luttermann observed that its form kept shifting,
from a giant cicada, to an old man, to a cicada nailed to a wooden cross, to an infinite mess
of wood and stained glass. But even more terrifying than its physical
appearance were the contents of its mind. 3004-1 forced itself into Agent Luttermann’s
brain, and in that moment, he finally understood it. The entity, which had no concept of metaphors,
allegory, or the divide between fact and fiction, truly believed that it was the Abrahamic God
depicted in the bible, and that all Christians are lovingly worshipping it. In its rituals, it was imposing some of the
bloodiest parts of the bible onto its flock, believing that’s what they wanted. All the while, it fed on their faith, growing
bigger and more powerful. Luttermann found that just being there with
the creature was hurting his soul. If it wasn’t a God yet, he believed it had
the power to become one in time and he advised that the Foundation shouldn’t send anyone
else to its dimension. It was too great a risk to all life on Earth. Perhaps, to prevent the horrible fate of us
all being destroyed by 3004-1, erasing Christianity would be a worthy sacrifice. That is, if it actually works. After all, they thought destroying the Singers
would neutralize 3004 once and for all, and yet here it is again. For all we know, we may just be prolonging
the inevitable... Now go check out “SCP - 001 - The Children
- Ouroborous Cycle” and “SCP - 5000 - Why? The Full Compilation” for more freaky anomalies
with world-shattering implications!
