bastard crows

Summary:

a clan of corvids that lure large groups of people to their deaths

bastard crows

corviraptor 11 Jan 2020 23:15

a clan of corvids that lure large groups of people to their deaths. the foundation is trying to satisfy their hunger, but they keep multiplying!

I trimmed your thread summary above, since it was taking up a lot of space on the forum listing. Try to keep thread descriptions and titles under 7 lines so you don't visually crowd out other people's threads. ~Zyn

edit: when i'm referring to "corvids," i'm referring to members of the genus Corvus, not all corvids. i'm just saying "corvids" because i don't want to say "members of the genus Corvus" every time i mention them

this concept is inspired by a story i heard about a crow finding money and giving it to a dude in exchange for food, as well as a bunch of concerns on my college campus about feeding the wildlife. it may be apparent that i really, really like corvids.

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the corvids observe things that motivate humans and make them organize, like money, jewelry, etc. they place these in trapped locations, but don't activate the traps immediately so that the humans can tell others about the location, and amass in a large group. they also use voice mimicry and singing to lure in their prey. they set up traps that involve stuff like cave-ins, tree falls, and (stolen) poison gas them after they've lured a large, organized amount of them. the corvids do this precisely because they're so intelligent; their extremely active brains use a lot of energy, so they take advantage of the humans' organizing behavior to create a lot of food for themselves.

the only feasible way the foundation has of preventing them from being rat bastards all the time is to give them food so they don't have to eat humans. however, they keep multiplying because of this stable source of food and want more and more food from the foundation. this is causing ecological problems due to the sheer number of them, normalcy problems as people are wondering where the massive amount of crows are coming from, containment problems as if the foundation ever stops feeding the corvids their sheer numbers could result in a large catastrophe for human life in the area, and safety concerns for the foundation, as the corvids (especially the ravens) are getting mischievous with foundation personnel, and want to find the source of all that food for themselves.

As a courtesy to our readers on mobile devices, please collapse long posts. ~Zyn

Last edited on 12 Jan 2020 03:13 by Zyn Show more

Re: bastard crows

Sudough Nimm 11 Jan 2020 23:38

Alright, I don't think this ideas is bad, but needs some refinement.

First, the foundation would probably not let these crows roam freely after being discovered, but would try and capture all of them and hold them at a site's aviary. The foundation probably wouldn't just keep feeding them and letting them grow stronger. And if it actually started to become a problem, they would just kill most of the population, needing only a few for research purposes.

Second, right now all you have are some extremely intelligent birds, that aren't really that different than actual crows. Also, they kind of just sound like Kenku from DND. I think an option would be to humanize them further, give them personalities, and include a few interviews, but honestly I think the core idea is a bit lacking.

Re: bastard crows

corviraptor 11 Jan 2020 23:50

thanks for replying!

the idea is that they're too smart, widespread, and hard to distinguish to feasibly capture them all, without leaving a significant population behind. in addition, they would immediately figure out if they were being poisoned or trapped due to their high intelligence, and would actively conspire against it. i dont think i made that clear in the original post! i was thinking that the solution the foundation would land on in the end would be using a DDT-like toxin in the food to make it near impossible for the anomalous corvids to reproduce. however, this solution wouldn't be optimal because corvids like the common raven top out at 20 years lifespan.

you raise a really good point that these aren't that different from actual corvids, and perhaps having more human-like intelligence like you said would do the trick. interviews sound interesting, but i'm afraid of that turning really cheesy. i think, if i were to write an interview log, i would choose to have them speak as non-fluently as possible to reduce the cheese factor.

perhaps i should make the corvids eusocial, like bees. this would really help explain how they're able to pull off such feats and differentiate them from mundane corvids.

Last edited on 11 Jan 2020 23:52 by corviraptor Show more

Re: bastard crows

Sudough Nimm 12 Jan 2020 00:26

Ok, so I can see where you want this idea to go. You want this to be a huge keter-class problem that threatens the integrity of the foundation. The problem is that these birds aren't breaking any rules, so to speak. If word gets out, normal scientists would obviously be scared, but then they would just become normal wildlife, if extremely dangerous. They aren't really abnormal enough to be a danger to the world understanding of the laws of physics, as most SCPs are. SCPs kind of have to be magical, not just an extremely advanced evolutionary branch.

And I say magical in the sense that nuclear fission would be magic to someone in the 17th century. The scientific concept you're exploiting (evolution) isn't advanced enough to be "impossible".

This is why I think you need to make them more humanoid, or more anomalous. Having them be eusocial would be interesting, but doesn't quite fix the problem.

But I don't really like the idea of an SCP that can't be contained. If you want it to be as dangerous as this, you have to expect the foundation to react accordingly, and appeasement (See: world war two) has proven not to work. If they had to, they could probably just deploy a hundred or so task force agents to kill the population. (I say this offhand; it would be a major project, but O5 wouldn't just twiddle their thumbs waiting for them to die).

Re: bastard crows

corviraptor 12 Jan 2020 00:56

it absolutely was not my intention for the crows to be a huge foundation-threatening issue, just a very hard to contain one. the point of the idea is that the foundation, in its attempt to contain it, inadvertently turned it into a much bigger problem than it was in the first place.

also, evolving a nigh-human level of intelligence would be impossible given that these corvids only showed up recently, in addition to the fact that that theyre all different species from Corvus. it would be statistically impossible for all of those corvid species to convergently evolve to unite together and all that jazz. thats what's actually anomalous about them; they're physically completely normal corvids, but it should be psychologically impossible for them to do what they do. thats also what makes conventional containment impractical, even at large scales; its impossible to tell them apart from non-anomalous crows until they actually do something.

i was thinking of adding a line like "SCP-XXXX is genetically identical to mundane members of the genus Corvus. In addition, when an SCP-XXXX instance breeds with a mundane version of its own species, the offspring is invariably mundane.", which kind of cements in the whole anomalous factor.

also, the "canon" i'm working from is that the foundation isn't powerful enough to spit out a couple hundred MTF agents on a whim, and didn't want to waste a possibly enormous amount of funding on a single then-euclid class SCP. when it was a much, much smaller problem, the foundation thought it could contain it's relatively limited effects (just causing some nasty disasters) with minimal effort by just getting them to stop being bastards. but when the corvids started multiplying, the foundation realized too late that the corvids were relying on their food, and if they took that away all hell would break loose.

Re: bastard crows

Sudough Nimm 12 Jan 2020 01:14

Ok, I think I get what you mean now. But, you know, something that's this hard to contain and is smart enough to coordinate attacks on masses of people is kind of foundation-threatening. That is, if it is hard to contain. If these crows are intelligent, why are they complacent with just food offerings? Maybe eusociality is a good idea after all.

Maybe this idea would work better as a tale (especially because you're playing with the cannon), or maybe a retrospective article after the threat had been neutralized.

I dunno, I just don't like the idea of it slowly becoming a larger and larger threat, because someone in the foundation would have noticed and terminated them before it got out of hand. The foundation is not incompetent (usually).

Anyway, the foundation usually doesn't settle for just leaving a potentially dangerous SCP in the wild, they will always try and contain it out of the public eye, and if the SCP is too dangerous or physically impossible to relocate, they will erect containment perimeters to keep the public out. I can't really imagine them just giving some food to the population and hoping they stay docile. If the population was small enough to be appeased with food, then it was also small enough to capture.

I'm not even sure where these guys live. Is it in like a big cave system, or in a dense forest, or what? Is it all over a continent? If so, this would definitely be keter-class.

I think writing an SCP that spans such a long time frame is difficult, and you might want to change your idea in that sense.

P.S. Why are they called bastard crows?

Last edited on 12 Jan 2020 01:15 by Sudough Nimm Show more

Re: bastard crows

corviraptor 12 Jan 2020 01:39

the idea is that it was originally a local population of various anomalous corvids that lived in a single forest (but would fly outside of that range to capture the attention of the local people). my problem with containment perimeters is that they are not only costly, but also not very effective against flying birds whos main source of food lies outside of that perimeter. they only were able to become widespread after the foundation tried to contain their effects with a limited budget, which backfired immensely. its not that the foundation is stupid, its that they don't have a crapton of money to feasibly contain them.

the working idea for the structure of the article went along these lines:
there would be 4 article revisions, all hidden under collapsibles, for each revision. The new information added would be bolded, and information retracted would be struck through:

Revision 1. Euclid - Because its both costly and most likely impossible to capture or exterminate all SCP-XXXX instances, SCP-XXXX are contained by simply giving the population food, reducing their impact on surrounding civilization to a negligible amount.

Revision 2. Keter - SCP-XXXX must be given food to prevent retaliation against the surrounding civilization.

Revision 3. Keter - SCP-XXXX food has been laced with a toxin that either sterilizes them or acts in a similar way to DDT, making it next to impossible for them to reproduce effectively. They don't realize that the food is the problem because they aren't aware of the actual toxic effects until long after they eat it.

Revision 4. Euclid - SCP-XXXX is limited to only a few individuals contained within the Foundation for research, all tagged with trackers so SCP-XXXX can never become widespread again.

That being said, there is a compelling case for it to be a tale instead of an SCP article. I'll definitely consider that.

oh, and I also called them "bastard crows" because i thought it was funny. thats not the actual title the scp would be given, im still working on that

Last edited on 12 Jan 2020 01:42 by corviraptor Show more

Re: bastard crows

Sudough Nimm 12 Jan 2020 04:03

Okay, this is starting to sound better. The idea that it's hard to contain is more legit. This is like a thing that got out of hand and only just got under control. I'm not sure if the whole poisoned food idea quite works. Wouldn't they just stop eating the food once they realized what it did?

Also, the foundation probably wouldn't let the instances roam free, they'd just have a few kept in an aviary. They'd never risk letting a dangerous SCP breach.

I think the new story line you created is better, but I think you need a slightly better solution than the DDT in their food thing. Maybe like spraying it over their habitat, or meticulously combing the countryside until they eliminate all instances.

Once you solve this, I think this idea could be draft-worthy, but I can't give a greenlight, so you might want to contact one of these lovely people: Butterfly Squad Roster

Re: bastard crows

corviraptor 12 Jan 2020 04:08

the idea with the DDT in their food is that it would be impossible for them to figure out that it was the food because DDT's effects, when in non-obscene doses, are limited to stuff like weakening eggshells. it's a chronic effect, so its source would be hard to determine. in addition, as the anomalous crows are the overwhelming majority of the consumers of the foundation food, it means that there's less collateral damage.

also the survivors are contained within a foundation site, sorry i didn't make that clear!

also, thanks for the recommendation! i've sent this thread to a couple of animal-lovers there.

Re: bastard crows

LilyFlower 12 Jan 2020 12:07

I like this, a lot. In relation to what the other reviewer has said, I see no problem with uncontained SCPs, and with articles spanning a long time span - both exist on the site and both can provide a really interesting spin on the classic format.

I'm quite interested to see what you do with this, so consider this a greenlight.

_{(Also, please don't make them talk and give them interview logs)}

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~🌸~Flower Power~🌸~

Re: bastard crows

corviraptor 12 Jan 2020 18:53

thank you! i'll be sure to catch you up when I write a fuller article, if you're interested!

Re: bastard crows

DrAkimoto 12 Jan 2020 22:12

I have nothing more to add that hasn't been said by previous reviewers, I like the concept as a whole and think, dependant on execution, this could be very entertaining. I greenlight this.

Last edited on 18 Jan 2020 18:12 by DrAkimoto Show more