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Many thanks to MrCarbon, Eskobar, Ghostchibi, Devereaux, Soulless, Tuomey, Voct, and Jekeled for helping me with this on chat!
This has been sitting in my head for awhile, and is partially thanks to Tarado, whose draft thread led to me coming up with the idea. Numerology has always been something I’ve been superstitious about, and there’s plenty of information out there and several instances of people who go to pretty crazy lengths for lucky numbers.
For those who are wondering…
The items in twos are good things, and references "double happiness". Sometimes product names include pairs of characters.
The items in threes are indicative of three stages of life, and three is lucky for life.
The items in fives represent the five elements of earth, water, metal, fire, and wood, which are associated with the number five.
The items in eights represent wealth. And eight is generally a very lucky number in Chinese numerology.
The man involved essentially found a way to lengthen his life through the use of numbers and careful arrangements. However, the messages in reddish-brown paint indicate that it wasn't a simple process.
My personal take? The disappearances were part of the ritual or whatever the man developed to keep himself "alive" as a consciousness. "To let numbers become your life is to let your life become numbers." The man lives through the numbers painted on the walls in blood, which appear when he doesn't assume his usual human-looking form.
The items in fives represent the five elements of earth, water, metal, fire, and wood, which are associated with the number five.
This was brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department, which brought this to you.
All agents who encountered SCP-1334-1 reported dizziness and nausea upon leaving the apartment; these symptoms were determined to be due to low red blood cell count. The cause of these effects is unknown.
My take was that he was attempting to make them have a lucky number of blood cells by taking away excess red blood cells.
You've done it! You've broken the curse! You've broken the curse! It's a miracle! Zyn has broken the curse! All hail Zyn!
I was going to break it with cheese. She broke it with mystery.
An SCP based on number superstitions, I like it. 4 sounds similar to "death" in Japanese, which is why it's unlucky, I believe? And I liked the slight creepiness of the ending to upvote it.
each roughly a foot tall
Imperial measurement. Please fix.
Whoops, wow. I can't believe I missed that, what with all the numbers in this… Fixed.
And yes! Four is considered unlucky in many Eastern cultures, and some buildings in China don't have a fourth floor (elevators go straight from 3 to 5). If you note in the interview, the broken window is on which floor? Do they ever say the number out loud?
For some clarification on Chinese: (I'm Chinese-American)
4 is considered very unlucky because it's pronounced 四 "sì", which sounds similar to 死 "sí," which means death.
8 is lucky because it's tied to Ba Gua, a Taoist philosophy that states that there are 8 principles of reality and philosophy.
Weizhong's right! :D
Also, in regards to the number 8, it sounds like the word for "prosper" or "wealth". There's been a lot of instances of people profiting off of 8s. Here are some random facts from Wikipedia:
- In 2003, A telephone number with all digits being eights was sold for CN¥2.33 million (approximately USD$280,000) to Sichuan Airlines in Chengdu, China
- The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing began on 8/8/08 at 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8 pm local time (UTC+08).
- As part of grand opening promotions, a Commerce Bank branch in New York's Chinatown raffled off safety deposit box No. 888.
- Similar to the common Western practice of using "9" for price points, it is common to see "8" being used in its place to achieve the same psychological effect. So for example menu prices like $58, $88 are frequently seen.
Ah, Zyn, you do it again. A wonderful, lovely skip with more than meets the eye and all the depth to satisfy any amount of curiosity. +1
Living the dream, or dreaming the life?
I don't know why the Foundation is containing this. There's nothing to suggest that they've bothered trying to figure out what the thing's anomalous properties are. It looks like they just decided to contain the whole building because weird stuff was happening with the residents. There is a relatively thorough description of what's in the building, but literally the only thing the article points out that is anomalous is the low red blood cell count, which they would have only found out about
Why are they letting a person of interest just live in the SCP? Why are they calling it a humanoid entity if there's literally nothing to suggest that he's not just a human that people mistakenly thought was dead? If they're interested in him, why can't they take him to a facility to run whatever tests they have and do an interview in a setting that they control?
Why is everything in the rooms still in place? Why hasn't the Foundation tried moving anything around, or taking some of it for testing? Why haven't they done tests with long-term inhabitation to see if the previous disappearances weren't just flukes?
You seem to have written a Foundation that either has completely inexplicable reverence for the thing they're containing or just doesn't give enough of a shit to try and make sense of what they're containing. Which, even if it's not as egregious as when the Foundation is stupid/jackasses/childish, is still nonsensical.
The article reads like you wanted the setup to be a specific way (rooms with specific arrangements of items, and the perpetrator continuing to live on in the building), and then didn't bother to justify either the necessity or the manner of the thing's containment. If you want to write about the anomalous world without fitting it properly into an SCP narrative, I suggest writing a tale. And this would make a cool tale.
if your reading this your gay
but literally the only thing the article points out that is anomalous is the low red blood cell count, which they would have only found out about
I thought the third addendum would've been the key indication, but I do have a problem with being too subtle in my articles. I did cut out a substantial amount of material during the draft stage. Maybe I'll add some of that back in.
Why are they calling it a humanoid entity if there's literally nothing to suggest that he's not just a human that people mistakenly thought was dead?
Thermal imaging indicates no heat signature that would indicate the presence of a living human being. Granted, that was buried in the article; I'll see about making that more obvious.
Most of the feedback I received in chat didn't really indicate that I needed to be more obvious about the backstory, but I've changed some things to feed the reader a bit more. I'm hoping I don't hit a cliche wall.
It's a step in the right direction, but it's not really touching at the core of the issue here, which is that the Foundation's handling of the situation ultimately doesn't make sense.
if your reading this your gay
Whoa, I'm still making changes. :3 Added some stuff. You're right; from the standpoint of someone who doesn't have context the handling doesn't make sense. I initially tried to avoid the haunted house cliche by keeping out some details, but in essence this thing is as much a haunted house as it is a giant building-wide ritual site.
I might add another log with Foundation tenants, but I'm concerned about the length. The gist would be that someone who wasn't numerology-savvy would need to be moved out due to blood loss, and someone who was superstitious with numbers would be able to essentially live in the apartment peacefully.
Same here. Upvoted then. Kept the upvote because Chinese numerology.
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
I like the haunted house, I like the numerology, I like the feeling of a different culture. Good job, Zyn! This was very enjoyable to read.
I always thought that no article could be successful on the 1334 slot, but this proved me otherwise.
I always am amused when newbies think that something has become the cursed slot when this has happened so many times in the past.
*proudly wears Curse-Breaker medal*
*hands Zyn a Curse-Breaker medal too*
Edit: This should teach me not to do math before I have coffee. Message deleted because I had the dumb.
There's been quite a lot of "unlucky/cursed" numbers, all starting with 42. As in 42 was the first "cursed" number, rather than always being the beginning the sequence. Or was it 48? I just remember that originally, the article was known as the "Spear of Chaos". Shape changing weaponised gauntlet that caused berserker mode, mild mutation.
That said, I do dig this kind of thing. Feng Shui meets number theory. It would be excellent to put in a campaign somewhere, or even to expand in some sort of story. Good job, have an upvote!
(account deleted)
