| SCP-6881 | Project: SERAPIS |
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| Supplementary Document ‘KILO’ | |
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Project: SERAPIS » Supplementary Document ‘KILO’
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GALLIO: This is Agent Hector Gallio. The following is classified Level 5 under Project: SERAPIS — O5 EYES ONLY.
Research into the history of Shibbet’s Vale has entailed me contacting several Foundation assets embedded in the worlds of academia, research, politics, and the intelligence community. The identification of the entity beneath Shibbet’s Vale, designated SCP-6881-2, with the Slavic deity Mokosh, prompted me to reach out to Foundation researchers and academics in relevant areas, including Professor Monique St. Clair of Durham University in England. Her work for the Foundation on handling and preserving esoteric texts and translating archaic languages is extensive, as are her research skills. She holds Level 2 clearance, and hence is privy to knowledge of the Foundation and its purpose, but not to the specifics of Project: SERAPIS.
Professor St. Clair sent the Project a number of documents, including facsimiles of original texts and her own notes and conclusions, regarding the deity Mokosh and several folk tales and historical recollections drawn from the Birdwhistle Collection. This archive of literature concerning the occult and esoteric was donated to the university in the will of St. John Birdwhistle, a wealthy British eccentric who lived in the North of England and died in 1901. Birdwhistle’s collection was unorganised and poorly maintained, and cataloguing it was a project Professor St. Clair had been working on for several years.
While St. Clair was unaware of any events at Shibbet’s Vale, her scouring of the Birdwhistle Collection proved to have several documents relevant to Project: SERAPIS.
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SHOW FILES
SHOW — St. Clair Research [CLASSIFIED 5/SERAPIS]
RE: Project: SERAPIS
From: Dr. Monique St. Clair <mstclair@scpfn.int>
To: Dr. Hector Gallio <hgallio@scpfn.int>
Birdwhistle loved to collect what was generally thought to be extinct. His collection originally included examples of vanished species, supposedly captured or killed long after they were believed to have disappeared, and taxidermied to be displayed in his library. These specimens were so imperfectly preserved they no longer exist, for which I am grateful. I don’t need those mouldering things clogging up the university’s rare manuscripts room. Going from their descriptions, they were all fakes. He had a dodo, which was almost certainly cobbled together from several turkeys with a beak whittled down from a Shoebill’s.
The rest of the collection is scarcely more trustworthy. Almost nothing has provenance and even the properly referenced documents tend towards the biased and propagandistic. Many texts were written by Birdwhistle himself based on recollections or anecdotes he had heard. Their benefit stems from their uniqueness. There are events and people referenced in the collection that are simply not recorded anywhere else.
Among Birdwhistle’s interests was the pre-Christian mythologies of several peoples worldwide, including the Slavic peoples of the Baltic region. These Western Slavs were Christianised violently in the 12th and 13th Centuries, during the so-called ‘Northern Crusades’. Their version of Slavic mythology was wiped out, save for the remnants Birdwhistle claimed to have recovered from oblivion. He wrote similarly of the Scottish Picts, including fanciful recreations of their religion, and the Aboriginal Wudjari of Australia, both accounts that are easily disproved as fiction misidentified as fact, or as inventions of Birdwhistle himself. The subset of Slavic myth may be no different. The material is presented with full understanding of this context. Birdwhistle was not a historian. He didn’t even claim to be one. He was a collector of strange things, and in this sense, he was very successful indeed.
Dr. Monique St. Clair
Professor
University of Durham
Department of History
You Have (1) Attachment
RE:RE: Project: SERAPIS
From: Dr. Monique St. Clair <mstclair@scpfn.int>
To: Dr. Hector Gallio <hgallio@scpfn.int>
The attached document is one Birdwhistle claimed to have recovered from the personal effects of a Russian aristocrat who fled to Paris after falling foul of the politics of the Tsar’s court. This aristocrat was said to trace his roots back to the Early Middle Ages among the Curonian people of the Baltic. Birdwhistle does not name this aristocrat, but the document is of the appropriate age and appears genuine, even if its contents may be a fiction. Its unnamed narrator, and presumably author, wrote in Old Prussian. The document describes a battle which I have not conclusively identified, but which is likely a part of the Livonian and Teutonic Orders’ campaigns in the 1260s.
Dr. Monique St. Clair
Professor
University of Durham
Department of History
You Have (1) Attachment
RE:RE:RE: Project: SERAPIS
From: Dr. Monique St. Clair <mstclair@scpfn.int>
To: Dr. Hector Gallio <hgallio@scpfn.int>
Porevit is described as possessing five faces in the few other sources that mention him. The images made of him carry no weapons, though it is speculated from the root words in his name that he was a deity of war or strength. The story in Birdwhistle’s story is not referenced in any other studies and is presumably the only copy. I have included it as, like the tale of Ekhart the monk, it suggests a physical manifestation of the pagan Slavic deities. It is of interest that the Courland Girl believed Porevit to be an imposter, an evidently anomalous entity using the name and legend of Porevit to attain authority among the Baltic peoples.
Another document in Middle High German appears to have been copied from an original, around two centuries after the original was written. It consists of pages cut out from a larger volume. The borders of the pages are illuminated with leafy vines that wrap around the bodies of various fanciful creatures, including mermaids and unicorns along with less common figures such as winged fish and storks with human heads. As a later copy and with no known provenance, its authenticity is impossible to verify and, as with the story of the Curonian Girl, was valued by Birdwhistle purely as an example of the exotic and supernatural. Nevertheless, it fits the criteria specified by your information request, and I have included it here. From the context, it was purportedly written by a German mercenary employed in one of the campaigns of the Northern Crusade, though the exact date is impossible to pin down.
Dr. Monique St. Clair
Professor
University of Durham
Department of History
You Have (1) Attachment
RE:RE:RE:RE: Project: SERAPIS
From: Dr. Monique St. Clair <mstclair@scpfn.int>
To: Dr. Hector Gallio <hgallio@scpfn.int>
Aside from the documents themselves, I also researched the materials pertaining to the use of Birdwhistle’s archives. Following his death, his executors took over maintenance of the archive and appointed their own experts in an attempt to organise and catalogue it. This included keeping records of who was granted access to the archive and the material they viewed. Though as inconsistent as the rest of the archive, this effort did result in evidence I feel is relevant to the research area.
The documents I have included, along with some others tangentially related, were all checked out of the archive over a period of two months in 1922. They were viewed on-site, by someone signing themselves ‘Professor J. A. Stockley.’ This name is familiar to me. He was an academic and doctor who worked as what was then known as an ‘alienist,’ something akin to a modern-day psychiatrist. He was based in London and died in 1936.
I am familiar with him because he was one of my predecessors. Us academics tend to move in small circles and the numbers of those involved in the SCP Foundation’s work are smaller still. Like myself, Professor Stockley advised the Foundation on matters pertaining to his academic specialty and was granted a security level to assist in his work.
My research was not the first time the Foundation sought information on Mokosh and associated deities from Birdwhistle’s archive. The subject and the material are obscure and specific enough, it is impossible this is a coincidence. I include this information as I believe it may be relevant.
Dr. Monique St. Clair
Professor
University of Durham
Department of History
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GALLIO:
What ended at Shibbet’s Vale did not begin there. A workable hypothesis sees the entity beneath Shibbet’s Vale originating in the Baltic region and fleeing from the Christianisation of the Northern Crusades. It passed across Siberia, during which time it was pursued by the German mercenary and his companion. Once at the easternmost extent of the Asian continent, it crossed the Bering Straits into what would later be known as North America and reached Southern Montana before ceasing its flight.
If the Curonian Girl’s statements are correct, Mokosh and her fellow Slavic deities were not figures of myth at all, but entities of an unknown kind that adopted the names and attributes of those figures to gain authority and security among the Baltic peoples. It is also possible, again depending on the reliability of these sources, that some of them died during the Northern Crusades. Mokosh escaped, but others did not. Perhaps Mokosh is the last one left.
It is impossible to say what Mokosh truly is. Its origin is lost in the intersection of history and myth. It may be an anomalous human, an extra-terrestrial, a cross-dimensional entity, or any one of a thousand possible categories of anomaly. It is likely impossible to tell without acquiring and containing it.
Of more immediate concern is the fact the Foundation may have known all this already. The purpose of Project: SERAPIS was to ascertain if the history of Shibbet’s Vale could be dug up by a determined and well-resourced researcher. This in turn implied there was something about the anomaly there the Foundation wanted to keep hidden. I feel I am on the cusp of discovering what that is, what happened in the 1920s the O5 Council still fears coming to light.
I am very close to shining that light on Shibbet’s Vale. I think perhaps it would be better to leave it in the dark, even as I know I cannot.
