Mobile Task Forces. They’re the elite special forces units of
the SCP Foundation. Whenever a particularly dangerous anomaly
rears its ugly head, you can guarantee that these members of personnel with highly specialized
skillsets will be sent in to take care of business. A lot of the time, MTFs are relocated between
different Foundation facilities, or sent from location to location, hence the “Mobile”
part of the name. They vary in size and function too, with some
teams being small, covert investigators and intelligence gatherers. Meanwhile, others might be huge battalions
consisting of hundreds of troops, vehicles, and enough heavy-duty firepower to put The
Terminator to shame. Whether it’s containing a newly-emerged
SCP, or helping the Foundation to get a flighty anomaly back into its cage and keeping it
there, the MTFs are who you’re gonna call when it all hits the fan. They’re the best of the SCP Foundation’s
best, and few represent that better than MTF Tau-5. If you’re at all familiar with the SCP Foundation,
then there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the iconic Mobile Task Force Tau-5, also
known by their collective codename “Samsara.” Take everything you know about an average
task force, give them leagues better equipment and training, and put them on anomalous super-steroids,
and you’re still likely to get an MTF who can only dream of getting on Samsara’s level. In our series on the infamous Site-13, you’ve
seen these badasses take on horrors beyond description and not even blink, even rescuing
other Mobile Task Forces from the jaws of death on many occasions. Why are they given such prestige, even in
a crowded field of elite Foundation operatives? It’s because the four members of the Samsara
team are unlike any other MTFs on a fundamental level, given that each one of them was created
from the flesh of a dead god. Sounds cool enough on its own, right? Well, not only are Tau-5 specially created
from a divine deity, but each of them has also had their bodies enhanced with cutting-edge
cybernetics. These immortal cyborgs can be upgraded at
any time, as and when the need arises, using the latest of the Foundation’s experimental
weaponry to combat and contain all kinds of anomalous threats from the thaumaturgic and
psionic, to even powerful, reality-warping entities that a normal MTF couldn’t dream
of handling. Together, Samsara consists of two male operatives,
named Irantu and Munru, and two females, Nanku and Onru. And that’s all you need to know before we
delve into the insanity that comes next. Buckle up and put on your SCRAMBLE goggles,
it’s time for Avatara. Long ago, there was a deity known as the Lord
of Endowments, a god who once assumed the persona of Prometheus - No, not the Ridley
Scott movie. Prometheus was a figure from Ancient Greek
mythology, who stole the gift of knowledge from the gods of Mount Olympus and gifted
it to the people of Earth, often represented as metaphorical fire. As punishment for his transgression, Prometheus
was chained to the side of a mountain, where every day he would have his liver pecked out
by birds, only for it to grow back overnight so the birds could feed on him again the next
day. So, our Lord of Endowment – stop giggling,
you at the back – gave himself a body of flesh so that he might walk upon the Earth
as a giant humanoid. His goal was to, like Prometheus, provide
mankind with knowledge and power, to grant them technology, and then redefine what it
meant to be human. The Lord amassed followers as a result, and
began to conquer new territories to expand his power. However, something changed and the Lord gradually
began to die. Whether it was the result of him becoming
flesh and therefore mortal - a betrayal by his armies of followers - or punishment from
the other Gods for his exploits, the Lord of Endowment decided to split his mortal form
into three parts in order to survive. These were his Mind, Body and Spirit, and
they were hidden across the Earth, with his Body being buried deep within the Tabernas
Desert in Spain, where his Mind also slept within his body. Jump forward several thousands of years and
a group known as Prometheus Labs discovered the dormant flesh body of the Lord of Endowment. Prometheus Labs was once a Group of Interest
to the SCP Foundation, known for researching anomalous objects with the goal of using them
to develop new technological breakthroughs. Unearthing the Lord’s Body, the Prometheus
scientists discovered that the body’s liver contained cells that could endlessly regenerate. Eventually, harvesting and researching these
cells resulted in a brand new research project. The goal: to create a group of immortal warriors. Prometheus Labs took four volunteers and uploaded
their consciousnesses to a computer, hoping to then download them into new bodies that
were cloned from the regenerating cells. The thought was, if one of these cloned bodies
was destroyed or somehow became so badly damaged that it couldn’t be used, then this process
could be used to upload the same mind to a fresh body, as simple as booting up a new
computer with an old harddrive. The project did produce some results, seeing
the creation of some mass-produced cyborg warriors later known as SCP-1637. However, the research was cut short when a
surviving group of the Lord of Endowment’s followers stormed Prometheus Labs. The followers raided the entire facility,
shooting the newly-cloned bodies that were intended to be the hosts for the four consciousnesses
that had been saved to the computer. But even those were destroyed, along with
all the backup drives that contained copies of the four minds. The Lord’s followers destroyed the Prometheus
facility, but the machine used to create the clones miraculously survived. It began gradually creating four new bodies,
despite sustaining heavy damage. The problem was, the minds and bodies of the
four volunteers were all gone, their lives, thoughts, emotions, imagination, everything. Their humanity had been stored on a hard drive
that the followers had destroyed. But still, the machine did what machines do,
it cloned four new bodies. But there was nothing to inhabit them, nothing
more than a simple template: two genders, and four names. Years go by, and Prometheus Labs suffered
another major accident which eventually led to the organization disbanding. However, some of their former scientists were
scooped up by the SCP Foundation, including one doctor who had survived the attack at
the cloning facility. He took a group of the Foundation’s agents
to the location of that old project, where they found four, almost featureless fleshy
shells, empty but ready to be transformed into an asset the likes of which the Foundation
had never possessed before. The Prometheus Labs project that had almost
been for nothing lived on: Samsara. More time passes, until the members of MTF
Tau-5, also known as Samsara, were eventually sent in to deal with a new anomaly that had
started to spread. It originated from within a seemingly ordinary
farmhouse, however whenever anything organic entered, it would rapidly become cancerous. In much the same vein, anything mechanical
brought into the house would break down. This meant that sending in any human personnel
or even unmanned drones were options that were off the table for the Foundation, so
instead they called in Samsara. After all, if you need to send someone into
a house that causes certain death, why not four functionally immortal cyborgs? The members of Tau-5 were all constructed
from the same basic mind template, meaning that all four of them lacked any real humanity. They react to anomalies very casually in terms
of their emotions, but respond extremely seriously in terms of executing a task or containing
an SCP. Granted, this makes them a formidable fighting
force, but even though they try to hide it behind acting human, Tau-5 have very little
understanding of emotions. As they entered the house, they heard the
sound of religious chanting and began to follow it back to its source. In the bedroom, Samsara discovered a figure,
hidden behind a tumor so big that it appeared to just be one huge mass of twisted flesh. “Provide him your flesh,” the creature
chanted, “Sate its thirst… Give it your flesh that he may make you gods!” Tau-5 were given the order to terminate the
creature that seemed to be the source of the anomaly, but their shots only ricocheted off
the fleshy mass. The entity could not be killed by anything
not made from flesh. Irantu ordered Nanku to hand him her pistol,
and didn’t hesitate to shoot her multiple times in the neck. He started hacking away at the dead Nanku’s
neck with a combat knife, while Onru and Munru helped Irantu finish decapitating her. Taking a grenade from Nanku’s belt, he stuffed
it into the mouth of his teammate’s severed head, pulled the pin, and threw it deep into
the cancerous mass. Diving out of harm’s way in the last second,
the remaining members of Samsara took cover as the grenade detonated, killing the anomaly
and showering the room with gooey bits of muscles, intestines, brain tissue, and bone
marrow. Hope you weren’t eating while watching this
one, folks! They had no reservations about killing one
of their own, but Tau-5 had neutralized the anomaly, and its effect had stopped spreading
outside the farmhouse. Samsara re-entered the bedroom, only for one
of them, Munru, to discover something among the blood, guts, and viscera that remained. Underneath piles of flesh, stained with meat
was a small, leather-bound book, Munru took it with him, hiding it away. This tome was a grimoire, a type of ancient
textbook of magic. Typically, a grimoire includes instructions
on how to create magical objects, talismans, amulets and the like, or a number of spells
and magic charms. But some grimoires also instruct a reader
on how to summon or invoke supernatural entities, calling forth beings from the great beyond
like angels, spirits, demons, and deities. And this particular book described how to
summon the essence of a certain Promethean plunderer, the Lord of Endowment himself. Somehow, the cancerous, tumor-spreading entity
from the farmhouse, that affected both flesh and technology, seemed to have been created
by this book. So, why would one of MTF Tau-5 take the grimoire? Surely as a member of Samsara, Munru would
normally react to anomalies with the same emotionless pragmatism he and his teammates
shared, and would never think to stash this spellbook on his person? Unless, of course, Munru was being manipulated
by some outside force without realizing it. The Mind of the Lord, knowing that this book
was an important tool for his resurrection, had managed to influence Munru into keeping
the grimoire. The members of Samsara returned to headquarters,
where they all began looking over the book over the next two weeks. Nanku’s head was reformed and meticulously
put back together by the Foundation, left with only the scars from all the stitching
around her face, head and neck. Luckily for Irantu, the Tau-5s lacked the
emotional capacity to hold grudges; after all, think about it, how would you feel if
your co-worker decided to behead you and use your severed head as a bomb? As the Tau-5 team studied the book, they found
themselves enjoying it, learning about a place where they could learn more about acting like
people. A place they then hoped to visit, perhaps,
because it was the place they’d first started. If you were paying attention earlier in this
video, you’ll remember we told you the MTF Tau-5 members were created from the flesh
of a dead god. And this particular dead god buried his body
in the Tabernas Desert in Spain. It was none other than the Lord of Endowment
that had been used to create the four immortal cyborgs of MTF Tau-5. The Samsara team had come from him, and now
he was trying to tempt them back... Now go check out “SCP Elite Mobile Task
Force Explained” and “SCP-1730 - What Happened to Site-13? The Full Story Compilation” for more of
Samsara and the other teams they work with!
