So here it is: my first SCP. Thanks to minmin, EldritchCyanide, and Dr Hysteria for their comments.
Eeesh… Looks like someone discovered a self-replicating Familicide spell… THAT is quite a scary thought.
I really like this. The document really makes it and that keeps me really interested and wanting to read more. It feels good and complete. The way the general was so willing to go to those extremes for the war does a very good job fitting in with the WW2 feel.
Few thoughts;
My fairweather causal fan feedback
The containment procedure is very detailed, but feels long winded to an extent. I enjoyed the effort put forth in it, but I start to loose interest half way through. I can’t really put my finger on what it is. I do like how the bases are covered, but why use the term posterior at the end of it all? Later fates? Rear fates? There is no context as to why that would be used and leaves me wondering what happened to those individuals. Did they disappear or die? Just removing that word would stop me from even asking.
Shifting. How does it shift? I see how it shifts in the documents, but to have that in the description would be nice. A clinical word to contrast the observer’s word?
Re:posterior: Yeah, looking back I think this doesn't mean in English what I thought it meant. Deleting the word.
Re:shifting: write a bit more about it, maybe it's better now.
One other word to swap out- "draft" for "sketch" in L-2937-(1-7) at the bottom.
Both can mean "simple drawn image", but…
- a sketch is a loose drawing
- a draft is something drawn while planning how to create something else. (The person who originally made them would have drawn drafts of the final thing they painted on the ceramic)
The "Fun with English" part is that in my work as an artist, I can sketch rough drafts of my ideas which I then use to draft a sketch of the final painting. Thanks to my technical drawing training, I can also draft precise formal blueprints. But things get sketchy when there's a draft in the room, because that can make my arm cramp up. Hooray for English. ^~^;
But anyway, what he has there are sketches.
Really nice SCP other than that- we get native speakers of English who don't write English this well, so doubly impressed here. +1
there's a draft in the room
Even more fun when the British English spelling of draught is used.
I like the overall effect, but I'm somewhat confused as to why the individual pieces are being kept apart & buried. Did I accidentally skip over something?
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
From what I gathered is that if they are left alone together the pottery will begin doing the ritual on their own. Not sure if it requires more than two or if the auto ritual is amplified with more relics in close proximity. Kind of discusses that in the document, but it would have been more understandable if in the description itself.
This is really cool. I don't recall seeing the IJAMEA before, and I like the idea. The pottery itself is at least vaguely interesting, and only gets more so as the article progresses. Also, I love that you used both "Xing'an" and "Hsingan". Could use a little cleanup for phrasing here and there, but otherwise, this gets a +1 from me.
I'm mainly upvoting because I'm a sucker for cultural, history, and archeology anomalies, everything else just builds off of that.
I think it's an underused idea, of what other organizations are or do with anomalous items. It's just a shame then that so few SCPs use it, the only other example I can think of being 1609. In any case, this is a pretty alright article. I like the minimal and nondescript effects of the things. I noticed some grammatical errors in the recovered documents, but I think those may have been purposeful given that they were presumably translated. I would remove them, but to each his own.
Imperial Japanese Abnormal Matters Examination Agency (IJAMEA)
nooooes. They're the Holy Emperor's Council on Unearthly Matters. It says so right here.
I always thought the Holy Emperor's Council is Austro-Hungarian Empire/Holy Roman Empire.
Nope, I wrote them as Japanese.
Noted… But the Council can represent the monarchy while IJAMEA represents the Army's stance.
That works.
I'm neutral voting this because I want to like it, but the way the grammar in the letters slowly breaks down throws me off.
Could also be that they simply changed the name sometime along the way, or expanded it from a council to a full agency. They did have two major governmental restructurings between the first document and this one.
For me at least, the council brings to mind a small group of grey haired mystics and a steampunk-y scientist or two in charge of the ancient scrolls and vacuum-tube-sporting devices that tell you when that rock beast over in San'indō is about to rise again, and what you can do about it.
The Imperial Japanese Abnormal Matters Examination Agency brings to mind a modernized institution where you may still have the council involved somewhere, but with a more organized, bureaucratic structure like a staff, teams of agents, and a research department handling the day-to-day things. (Cue keystone kops style mental video of IJAMEA agents chasing after a possessed table lamp before one particularly enthusiastic agent takes it out with a tommy gun.)
To add on, I would say that it is possible for the Navy to have their own agency in anomalous affairs (owing the rivalry of the IJA and IJN). It's like a parallel of the SS and German military.
Ergo, the Council is more of mystics who safeguard Japanese culture while IJAMEA and a Navy counterpart work on weaponisation.
Welp, I thought I had searched if there was already any Japanese GOI
Er, I mean, of course something along those lines is possible and this ambiguity is something I totally intended in the first place.
(For what is worth, I don't think "Holy" is a word the Japanese use much for their own things)
Personally, I would use "sacred" or just "Imperial" and the "Holy" may be poor translation (noting that the Japanese emperor was regarded as a Pope-like figure by the Portuguese, while the Shogun is King of Japan).
In any case, the usage of "Holy" makes me feel that it is an organisation before the Meiji Restoration. It could be dated from Asuka/Nara/Heian Japan and have people like Abe no Seimei as their members.
Both ideas are good, yeah. From a translation perspective, "Holy Emperor" could be a way to reference to "Tennou" in contrast to concepts relating to "Teikoku", which are quite different things.
My personal idea was that the IJAMEA was created after the Meiji Restoration, and that it replaced/inherited mostly ad-hoc agencies that acted under the Tokugawa government, but there could very well have been a council since earlier times.
And all of those things are possible at the same time, also; there was a council under the Emperor, and it lost most of its power with the court's decline and the rise of the Shogunate; and then it was revived in a way with the Meiji Restoration, and in parallel with that the IJAMEA is created.
Or, you know, whatever fits everybody's particular headcanon.
I like this. The world-building makes for an excellent read.
The previous instance was due to their kick-starting with the ritual; is the engine still running, or did some smart person restart it?
Otherwise, much love. +1
Edit: Didn't read all the documents.
The engine can't actually ever completely "turn off"; being constantly near people was (barely) enough to slowly charge up the shards.
Even though it can't completely turn off, if left away from people (specially if under some meters of earth) it powers down to a minimum.