Normal Towns: Where No Wanderer Can Walk

With a tight grip under jailors' reign, the Normal Towns will breed the bronze their captors so desire. The Foundation's ideal normalcy laid bare.

by Ethagon

Normal Towns: Where No Wanderer Can Walk

Normality Mines,¹
Jailed Communities,
Kewpie Full Concealment Zones,²
Baseline Municipality,³
the bronze cast⁴

Conspectus

If you ever find yourself engaging with those blind to the sickness that is the jailors' ideology, you need only to show them this. The so-called "Normal Town", already disgusting in its name, is both crown jewel and folly of the jailors' ideology. A blight upon the earth and doom of citizens cursed to be born into a community built on a devil's deal.

Look upon the "Greater Good" and choke on it.

Illustration

A factory of Spring Copper Productions (left), beryllium bronze statue typical for the towns (right)

Knowledge

Traits: Normal Towns will look largely the same, no matter which of them you may find on your travels.⁵ Often, there is exactly one facility for everything typical of a town in the respective country, be it fast food, a theatre, or a fire department. Stores and restaurants almost always include Standard Computer Products,⁶ McDonald's, Burger King and Spicy Crust Pizzeria. The most prominent restaurant in town will without fail focus on traditional food of the area.

The Normal Town will always be sponsored by a metal alloy manufacturer. Everyone in town ends up working either directly or indirectly for this company. Most commonly associated with the towns is 'Spring Copper Productions Ltd.'⁷

Rarely does the town have more than one public school, located at the centre of the town, as far as cars are concerned. The school will be well-budgeted and equipped with many facilities to encourage the students to stay at school as long as possible. If the manufacturer is the heart of the town, pumping it full with its venom, then the school is the brain, all that bad blood congeals towards.

A Normal Town will aesthetically differ from any other town in one clear trait: Beryllium bronze.⁸ Various shops and programs will encourage the use of the bronze in day-to-day life.⁹ All public art approved by the town would also feature beryllium bronze as its primary material. Many other forms of art, like graffiti, are nearly completely absent from the town.¹⁰

All Normal Towns are encompassed by a suppression effect strengthened the longer the town has been allowed to operate. The suppression targets many town-banned books and products, plus what the layman would understand as occult principles. The suppression either annihilates or presses the offending substance into conformity. It is a place without magic.^{11, 12}

Nature: A Normal Town will participate in all festivities typical for its region. Religious institutions exist and are used for these festivities, but have a very perfunctory feel to them. A bend towards atheism is encouraged. Unique to the town are the "New Normal Exhibits", where a ten-year-old bronze art piece is replaced with a new one. Townspeople similarly throw their ten-year-old bronzeware into boxes to buy replacements.¹³ Afterwards, it is encouraged for everyone to take a few minutes to introduce themselves to the new art piece and share a few private secrets with it.

The central school of the town always has "Normality Classes", which is just propaganda. They don't tell you about the paranormal or anything, but it is so obviously what it's about. All that talk about defining what is normal, cutting it off from a nebulous never-explained abnormal. The insinuation that you have to be good little compliant kids to grow up into contributing adults; to always take rationality over superstition, because believing in Santa Claus is apparently a straight path to becoming a serial killer.^{14, 15} And don't get me started on the teacher. You can bet whoever holds that office had their fingers in every part of town. A business not conforming to "Normality" enough? Less of the cash infusion for you next year. Whoever was their favourite student was the school's favourite student.

General leadership is kept aggressively average. As Normal Towns are presumably meant to reflect an average town, crime rate, traffic incidents, and corruption must all reflect that average. Any mayor who overexcels is quickly replaced.¹⁶

Normal Towns will frequently have a rough past before they were turned. It is not uncommon for older people to remark on how good the current population has it, to be grateful for their current circumstances. Conformity to "normal behaviour" is strongly enforced. Any family breaking from conformity will be at first socially and, after repeated pressure, legally ostracised.

History & Associated Parties: It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Normal Towns are the sole effort of the jailors.¹⁷ No one knows for sure when the practice started. But when the jailors finished the Great Erasure of the Stolen Years, the first Normal Towns were already there.

After those first ones appeared together with every other building, thanks to the jailor's so gracious rebuilding project, new Normal Towns find their origins in run-down towns of little to no activity a jailor would deem anomalous. They will get a generous offer of sponsorship by a metal alloy manufacturer tied to conditions. In so agreeing, the town sells its soul to the Foundation.

The jailors will slowly tighten their grip on the town, enforcing ever stricter interpretations of their ideal path to normalcy and pushing their "New Normal Exhibit" rituals. The strength of the suppression effect correlates both with age of the town and the jailors' strictness, so it is not entirely clear which is its cause. This state can last a few decades.

We have not yet looked into where all the discarded bronze of that time ends up,¹⁸ but our findings lead to a few guesses elaborated on in the story section.

The reign of the jailors will always come to an end, but there have been differing ways in which this has been achieved.

• The suppression is not strong enough in the Normal Towns' early years to filter out all anomalies. The presence of any anomaly¹⁹ will lead to the jailors cutting contact. The manufacturer ends their deal with the town abruptly and leaves it to die with its major source of income ripped out.
• Sometimes outside forces make the jailors capitulate on their plans early. Maybe local laws have changed or started to get properly enforced, criminalising the style the jailors run towns. Or too much presence of other occult actors has appeared in the area. Other times, the end may appear entirely inexplicable.²⁰ This is a gentler end, the jailors let their projects patter out instead of vanishing. This leaves a window for the town to move on from its dependency, but it remains a town parted from its festering heart.
• There is only so much the suppression can take. Any strong enough magic²¹ will overcome the effect. This has unfortunate side effects. The town will break. All of its enforced reality is thrown out of the balance it had before. Anything that was 'normal' is turned upside-down. Unfortunately, that also includes the inhabitants who are unlikely to survive this ordeal.
• Letting it run for its full course. Normalcy is not real. If left to rot for long enough, the suppression will start to look inward and work on more fundamental aspects of reality. And if physics no longer works that's, you guessed it!, also anomalous. The town will essentially start to self-cannibalise. More or less leaves you with the same destroyed place you get from the previous option, except you waited so long that the whole ecosystem outside the town is out of whack as well. I don't get the science of that,²² but the end result is a lot more dangerous paranormal things running around, plus a permanent scar on reality. Why the Foundation never pulls out before that, I don't know. I guess they're just that delusional about their paradise.

Approach: No Wanderer should take the burden of dealing with the towns alone. If you find one, stay away as far as you can; not even their surroundings are safe. Bring your findings back to the Library, and we will work together to deal with the problem. But deal with it, we will. Not a single town can be left standing. That said, innocents are involved. So there are multiple ways to go about this.

Erika's Approach: Burn it. You don't need anything other than a full frontal attack and rescue mission. They have teachers and factorymen working there, not soldiers. Use whatever magic still works, and for the rest, there's dynamite. Put down their factory, deface all their bronze, rescue whoever needs rescuing. Simple as.^{23, 24 , 25}

White Crow's Approach: My associate from the Nest found a simple way of dealing with the towns. Each time they employed a new Normality Teacher, they were soon assassinated in a fashion of spectacular violence. Coupled with releasing clues of a larger conspiracy and the jailors were forced to loosen their hold on the town, then give up entirely after one incident made national news. This does require you to pull off a string of assassinations in a suppressed state against increasing military security.^{26, 27, 28}

Approach of the Daleport Penguin:^{29, 30} I am confused. Is this not the section of actions to be taken?³¹ No, these words here would have the desire of a suggested follow-through. I'm fine sharing my words as a story, but I would not like others to follow in these blood-soaked footsteps.³²

The Madmen's Approach: Listed here as I know some of you are also among Wanderers and for completeness, though I see no purpose for following this path for any that call themselves Hand. Usually, they bombard the town with memetics of some kind or other, so the jailors don't notice anything is amiss until it's too late. Often brainwashes the population in some other way, but it does replace the suppression over time with varying other effects. When the jailors find out about it, the madmen have most of the time already fled with all the bronze they could get their hands on.^{33, 34}

Midnight's Approach: The long and hard way. Figure out what isn't suppressed at any given time and introduce the occult to whoever is listening in secret. Saving the town is not an easy task, and it starts with deprogramming the people. If we do this long enough, the supply of bronze seems to be "spoiled" either way, but more importantly, it can bloom into pushback from the town's side against the tyranny, which tends to end badly for the jailors and good for the town. They will still need assistance after they're free, of course.^{35, 36}

Legal Approach: As alluded to in the possible ends of a Normal Town, the simplest way is to make the town legally unattainable for the jailors. If you have the right talent for this, please reach out to me; the Hand is very outmatched in this area.

Other Detail: Unexplored remains the purpose of the bronze,³⁷ but is from what we've seen, its future intent not clear? In the town, all anomalous is pressed out, why should the little bronze not follow and cause a little suppression for a 'town' of two meters?

Observations & Stories

bronze sword drawn from sheath
just the foes slain remembered
mistakes the blacksmith

Heard by anyone willing to listen to the scar of reality. There have been many accounts of the bronze sword which could only behead when drawn, but nothing more concrete than this.

— Last Wandsman of Daleport^{38, 39, 40}

I will admit that I at first did not believe the Normal Towns to be a real thing. That the jailors would have found a way to enforce their false dichotomy on reality itself was outside of what I found possible. I saw my first Normal Town when I was investigating a disturbance in the flow of magic through the lands.^{41, 42} I found the source of the disturbance in what to my vision seemed like a town-shaped hole. Or rather, a mountain⁴³ that all the currents of magic were crushing against. None could go through, and while some got around, most clotted together. I saw patchwork creatures of magics that should not go together. A tree hiding lightning-attracting mechanisms with roots turning the earth into a landscape painting beneath; an invisible moving living portal eating poisonous frogs and spitting out groundwater; three swinging batons frozen in time.

Some had started to move into the town for short times while suppressed, like a child made of cries, balloons, and ever more children. Malicious energies that would not forever sit idle. Others moved elsewhere, which is how I had heard of them, but the flow seemed to be pressing them against the town they would not enter. I would not be among them. I had to resolve this, and so I entered.

I felt it instantly. All my magic but that inside me was cut off; my vision reduced to that of a normal, no, less than the common house cat—none of the doublesight shared by all my kin. I worked what magic I could inside my body and went further in.

I noticed the second intrusion when I encountered my first resident. I know it was a child, but I never got to see it fully. This place wanted to restrict my movement. Apparently, out in the open was not a place for a cat to be. Unlike my body, however, my soul was as free as ever. With the magic I had worked, I opened my soul to the child, letting comfort and curiosity flow. It is only a talk of emotions, but one can intuit a lot from it if one is skilled in its art. I left the kid with an intuition of how to open its soul to other cats and the places where they would usually reside, even in a town like this. The rest the child would learn in time, or so I thought.

In return, I got all the intuition I needed about this town. It was a dead place. While you could call it a nexus in some form, no thought of a genius loci resided there. The only 'thought' any of its suppression had to it was a simple aversion to anything that was not like it had been in the past. Yet even a place like this was not free from its own sort of flow. And so I located the school as its centre.

It was around that time I noticed another influence of the suppression. While most of my mind had been in order ever since I entered, I began to notice how it was ever so slowly pressing in on my curiosity. A cat without curiosity! What had they done to this place?

As it turned out, there was nothing I could do about the school. I was completely unable to enter. The suppression here was stronger than anywhere else, and a cat entering the school was assumed too much out of the norm. So I left.

I brought together a team which could enter the school in my stead, but when we returned, the town's story had already concluded to its unnatural end.

— Midnight

I first encountered a Normal Town when I knew I would write about the Normal Town after encountering it first.

I was immediately curious about this 'normality'. Was this where I might encounter that humanity ever escaping my grasp? I dressed in my best penguin self for the occasion and slid down the street like a proper car. There was just the most little resistance when I entered beak-first, but it only took a moment. And then it made pop.

There was nothing I could do to stop it. It popped like a balloon, the town and its normality receding like rubber from breaking point. It hated me and immediately started to self-cannibalise to get away faster. It popped like a balloon, all magic outside and inside suppressed, mixing violently and with pressure like released and intermingling air. Storms of earth and longing rejected by the closing store that had never seen so much as a wave, now faced with a tsunami of fire and your actions reflected, faced with the paradox of the boot that judges but must never look at itself. It popped like a balloon, all the candy inside crushed under your careless wings.^{44, 45}

— Last Wandsman of Daleport

I could talk about how Midnight and the Hand got me out, but you already know how these things end. Let me instead tell you what every single day before our release was like. To start with, there was not much of a "day" to have. The jailors, in their obsession with boxes, had even free time structured. Not officially, but if you didn't do the same thing every Saturday afternoon for six months in a row, everyone would know and judge you for not conforming. Can't try something else for once and go back to what you did before. Sorry, if you switch, that's your new thing for the foreseeable future.

Outside of that? There was only… family time.^{46, 47} And the rest is just school. There is nothing else.

I've said before how the favourite student of the normality teacher is the favourite student of the school. The same extends to all rankings. And rankings they were. At every opportunity, we got pitted against each other, "may only the worthy rise". At least in STEM and sports lectures. Being good in the arts, or any of the humanities, was useless, and at times even got you ridiculed. As we got older, the best of the best were sent to special classes. For the STEM students, it was some kind of special program that would help them get a fast track to a doctor or whatever. For sports, it was basically military training.

Obviously, everyone wanted to be in the special class. Outside of some prestige and extra benefit, either you swallowed enough of the propaganda that you wanted what you were told to want; or you hated this town, and the STEM program seemed like the best way to get out of there. I say seemed, because we all know those programs were just disguised jailor recruitment. And that makes me wonder: Don't you need these people to engage with the anomalous??? You taught them all this time that it doesn't exist, that's a straight way to that ignorance thing SAPPHIRE has.⁴⁸

It's stupid. Profoundly stupid, like all the things they've done to my town. Rot in hell, Jeremy Waller.⁴⁹

— Erika

Doubt

We will maintain this section as always, and I have invited others to contribute as usual. However, as someone who has been sceptical about this at the start, I want to remind everyone that we have numerous independent reports about these towns and their effects. I wish it were just propaganda.
— Midnight

The implication we are led to believe about the bronze is clear, but we know with what the jailors fill their anchors of reality. I have seen their interior myself. No bronze inside,⁵⁰instead a reality-bender's brain, as is by many known.
— Angel Kid

There has been one area of confusion that has left me continually perplexed. Whatever the goal, why would they keep doing this? I remember human memories as less fleeting than they would be incapable of noticing how every single one of their towns ends. Worse still, the tightening of their rules is all but certain to be correlated with the inevitable disaster. Are they blind to the scientific refutation of their mission statement?⁵¹ Something else has to be at work here.⁵²
— Last Wandsman of Daleport

The towns are the jailors' pet, but they are far from the only actors who invested in normality. Don't be so quick to put the blame solely on the jailors' shoulders. Would the bookburners not act against this scarring of the earth had they not a way to profit from it? Would the states of the world allow the jailors free reign over their towns without compensation?

And lest we forget the jailors' own picked name: "Baseline Municipality". Do we need to set its purpose as low as the filling of bronze when the jailors admit that this is the state they wish to be baseline? I dread to see the future where these towns are just the prototype for the fate the jailors foresee for all towns of this world, serving the world right up for Cipactli’s Feast.^{53, 54}
— L.S.

1. I have asked this of many, but the meaning of this "normal" still alludes me. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

2. Ah, and of course the bookburners endorse it. Figures. — Erika

3. By the jailors. — Midnight

4. This name will be clearer after some context. — Midnight

5. Their flesh and skin may differ, but the Normal Town always hides the same bones underneath. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

6. A Foundation front, for those unaware of the Frontispiece. — Midnight

7. This too, is a Foundation Front. The manufacturer always is. — Midnight

8. I can't stand it. — Erika

9. That really undersells it. We had bronze spoons, bronze forks, bronze cups. My mother was so taken by it, she had a bronze toothbrush. Of course, her lung poisoning was entirely unrelated. — Erika

10. Not for a lack of trying. — Erika

11. During the stable phase of the town, basic parts of social reality, like the soul, are ignored by the suppression. A more subtle manipulation of the magic arts therefore remains a possibility. — Midnight

12. The town absolutely damages your soul. — Erika

13. And the miners rejoice in their spoils, ores soaked deep in fear and the veneer of forced happiness in the face of disapproval. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

14. I have visited many Santas on my journeys. All of them real, though only some inclined to presentry. — Last Wandsman of Daleport.

15. Really not my point. — Erika

16. What a problem to have. We never came close to that. After a while, the incompetence starts to self-select if it's not replaced by outright malice. — Erika

17. Don't forget that Spicy Crust shows up. No clue what's up with that. — Erika

18. It barely matters. Whatever they're producing, the towns are there to prove their fascist paradise, no matter how false it is. — Erika

19. Unless they can suppress it to a single location and two witnesses tops. — Erika

20. It is the impurities. The bronze is a greedy sponge, but not as the jailor is greedy for accuracy. And if the sea you scoop lacks in what you perceive as the needed level of distillation, would you not leave as well? — Last Wandsman of Daleport

21. or being — Last Wandsman of Daleport

22. I'll elaborate on it in my own encounter with the towns. — Midnight

23. A wound should not be left to fester. Yes, a simple cauterisation may be all that is needed, though I fear this is not possible without casualties. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

24. Yeah well, half of them are complicit anyway, so you won't see me shed a tear. We just need to get out who we can. — Erika

25. It was possible back when we got you out, but I'm afraid the towns have increased their military presence since then. I've heard of Task Forces between missions residing there in some cases. Regardless, I don't like how many innocent people died last time. If we can, I'd like to avoid this approach. — Midnight

26. Is the system so vulnerable to the cutting of figureheads? Are the jailors not the sort where faces seep into system until each single death is drowned out by bureaucracy? — Last Wandsman of Daleport

27. Yeah, you'd think. But they keep appointing wannabe dictators for these posts, so power always gets consolidated in one person. I like this approach. — Erika

28. I believe they will catch on if we do it too often, but like I said, the issue is just the skillset needed to pull it off. — Midnight

29. Oh that's you! I feel kind of stupid not making the connection now. — Erika

30. It is alright, I barely resemble a penguin on my good days. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

31. Right now, we're just listing out different methods that work for dealing with it. I have one after this that I also wouldn't recommend for anyone. — Midnight

32. That's fine. Whatever works best for you. — Midnight

33. Absolutely not. This is no better than what the jailors are doing. — Erika

34. This approach seems more rooted in stealing the spoils of the enemy for a different purpose than saving the short-lived townsfolk's lives. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

35. I think this takes too long for something that will end in bloodshed anyway. — Erika

36. This seems so far the only approach trying to save the town's soul. A soul rotten inside-out by what has been done to it and maybe beyond saving, but a soul nonetheless. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

37. The Library will have books about any occult significance of the bronze, but I had not the chance to look into it yet. — Midnight

38. The hell does this have to do with anything? — Erika

39. I thought this an addition to the speculation of the purpose of the bronze. We see here it can be made to remember the act of killing. Is teaching it of the ways of the 'normal' so out of reach? — Last Wandsman of Daleport

40. This is quite the useful insight, though I'd like to keep our stories more directly related to the towns. — Midnight

41. Like Leylines? — Erika

42. While there are main streams of magic, I don't like the term, as it undermines how all-encompassing the flow is through all the earth. — Midnight

43. They would like the comparison. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

44. Don't know if it's any consolation, but I still blame the jailors for this one. If the reaction was that strong, it wouldn't have taken that long for the town to do this on its own. — Erika

45. Thank you for the comfort, but I cannot absolve myself of this. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

46. You don't have to go into it if you don't want to. — Midnight

47. I wont. — Erika

48. Filbuson Syndrome. And yes, killing your imagination of anything not 'rational' is a surefire way to get it. — Midnight

49. Human life is so fleeting. I cannot imagine wasting precious seconds forcing my whims onto others, barely less miserable than those I oppress. I'm sorry you had to go through that. — Last Wandsman of Daleport

50. No bronze inside, or now bronze inside? — Last Wandsman of Daleport

51. Pretty much. — Erika

52. I wish it were, but delusions are immune to all logic, even one that so deeply tied itself to science. — Midnight

53. I don't think the Impasse can be directly extrapolated out of what is happening with the Normal Towns. — Midnight

54. Does it matter, when the essence is the same? — L.S.

‡ Licensing / Citation

Cite this page as:

"Normal Towns: Where No Wanderer Can Walk" by Ethagon, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/normal-towns. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.

For information on how to use this component, see the License Box component. To read about licensing policy, see the Licensing Guide.

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