The Gulf Canon Hub

Prologue: Brackish Seas Under Extensive Pressure

+ Read prologue

I was humming along quite nice by then. A few Jack and Cokes, a few new friends, band playing too loud. This was the night before my first Saturday off all month, and I was going to make it count.

My new friends worked for some boring-ass logistics company, in town on business. And, as always with outsiders, I was “Jim Houghton, private security manager,” not “Jim Houghton, ace field agent for a secret paranormal organization’s local task force.” It’s unfortunate, really, because the latter story would probably be a lot better at getting me laid.

The important thing about making two new friends is that they pick up two-thirds of the rounds. They were going for light wheat beers all night, which is a sucker move. By the time we headed out of Loosey’s into the crisp early morning air, I was well and truly stumbling.

A quick check of my pockets came up with an item missing from the manifest. “I think I might’ve left m’phone inside.” I gestured back at the door, a little more sweepingly than I would’ve liked. One of the guys, the tall one, offered to go in and grab it.

Mr. Tall One (Craig? Listen, before you judge me, I’m not great with names sober) came back out with my phone. “Man, you want me to call you a cab? We can go splits on it, you shouldn’t be driving.”

I nodded. I was really feeling the whiskey. I guess I didn’t eat enough? He said something about his phone being dead so I entered my passcode to unlock mine for him.

The ride back home was a bit of a blur. I swear, maybe it’d just been too long since I was really the partying type, but I was fucking slammed for only four or five drinks. All I remember is McTall needing to use my phone a couple times to look up his flight out of town. I gave it to him and just told him the passcode, focusing more on stopping the spinning of the world.

As the cab dropped me off, Stretch Tallboy handed me back my phone and wished me a good one. I didn’t even have to pay. I stumbled up the stairs and was out the moment my head hit the pillow.

---

The light streamed in through the window, thoroughly uninvited. I felt like death, if death had kept spinning on one of those gas station hot dog rollers well past closing time. I rolled over to check my phone — figured I’d see what 20 emails from Kate I’d missed and make sure I didn’t text Trish anything too dumb — and saw no notifications at all. My usual wallpaper was gone, just the default bubbles floating.

Looking through my phone, it was completely empty. And something hit me, even through the thick dumb haze of a hangover. I checked the back. The big scuff mark on the Apple logo wasn’t there. This wasn’t mine.

Tall guy. Shit. So much for a day off. I threw on a hoodie and some jeans, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and hit the road for Headquarters. This had bad news written all over it, and Kate was going to be pissed.

---

Kate was pissed. Beyond pissed, actually, she was in the place of hers beyond anxiety where her eyes had no emotion left and her voice went flat. “Where the fuck have you been? I called you twenty times, we’ve got all hands on, it’s full fucking crisis.”

“Lost my phone, stolen I think — crisis?”

“Yes, asshole, crisis.” Kate was pacing around the room. She gestured at her monitor, a map of the Gulf Coast lit up with red. “We’ve got like five breaches in our region alone. Someone came and nabbed the stoplight, 2172, in the middle of the night and we’ve got severe reality fucks in Fort Walton. ESPN source tweeted that Canastota got called up to the majors. We’ve got three people in the hospital in Tallahassee with foot lacerations consistent with 072. That weird animal shit in St. Pete hit the fan.”

“Holy shit. This is a coordinated effort.” I was completely awake.

“Welcome to Saturday morning, Houghton, I’m glad you could fucking join us!” Kate locked up her briefcase. “This is all cover for something big. And I think I know what it is.”

She gestured me outside and we got in her Continental. “What?”

“Site-88 out in Bay Minette, it’s gone completely dark. No morning check in, no staff responding. So I’m flying directly there on SCP Airlines, flight number W-E A-R-E BONED. And congrats, your little adventure this morning means you’re joining me.”

We raced to Gainesville Regional, where a Foundation prop plane was waiting for us, pilot and all.

The Gulf was aflame. This was going to push our little Task Forces to the limit.

The Gulf: Aflame

Part One — It's A Setup, It's A Setup, It's A Setup

• "The Worst Saturday" by Kate McTiriss
• "It Grows On Trees" by InsipidParoxysm
• "That'll do pig. That'll do." by Dr Cimmerian
• "Minor League to Major Arcana" by Zolgamax

Part Two — We're All In This Together

• "???" by Kate McTiriss
• "???" by InsipidParoxysm
• "???" by Dr Cimmerian
• "???" by Zolgamax

Part Three — Our Friends Say It's Darkest Before The Sun Rises

• "???" by Kate McTiriss
• "???" by InsipidParoxysm
• "???" by Dr Cimmerian
• "???" by Zolgamax

Epilogue

• "???" by Kate McTiriss
• "???" by InsipidParoxysm
• "???" by Dr Cimmerian
• "???" by Zolgamax

Tales Set In The Gulf

• Dixieland Nightmare Magic by Kate McTiriss
  1. Fault Lines - They intend to fuck causality right in the ass.
  2. Going Straight To Hell In A Lincoln Continental - Some people are like pinballs.
  3. Operation Cannery Row: Document 2013§451A3 - The things we leave behind.
  4. I Double E - The first taste is free.
  5. The Hyacinth Hymnal - Bad religion via shortwave.
  6. Seven Vignettes From The Life Of Mackenzie Lee-Crook - Multilocational nightmare magic.
  7. Operation Cannery Row: Excerpts from the Foundation's Regional Print Media Archive
  8. An Overview of Foundation Journals Published in May 2017, So You Can Remember How Fucking Lucky We Were Then
• Green Thumb by InsipidParoxysm
  1. Shellfish for Breakfast
  2. Banana Smoothie
  3. Just Like Me
  4. Canola Oil Panic
• Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer by Dr Cimmerian
  1. The One Thousand Deaths of Pastor Lewis Robinson: The Ethics of Repeatedly Drowning Baptists
  2. Sex, Success, and Targeted Advertising
  3. The Art of Coping with Anomalies in the Gulf Region
  4. The North Pole
  5. That'll do pig. That'll do.
• Christ In Scarlet by UraniumEmpire
  1. SCP-5952 - The Warbalang
  2. A Dove In A Chicken Pen
  3. SCP-3178 - Through God, All Things Are Possible
  4. Irregularity Proposal: 2001-489
  5. SCP-4370 - Post-Industrial
  6. Christ In Scarlet
• One-Offs
  • The Ballad of Region 352 by Zolgamax
  • That's the Spirit! by Zolgamax
  • The Holiday Special by Ralliston

SCPs Set In The Gulf

• SCP-2072 / SCP-2172 / SCP-2272 / SCP-2558 / SCCP-2930 / SCP-2972 / SCP-2472 by Kate McTiriss
• SCP-2065 / SCP-2131 / SCP-2713 / SCP-2913 / SCP-2987 / SCP-3613 / SCP-7113 by Doctor Cimmerian
• SCP-2091 / SCP-3015 / SCP-3130 by Decibelles
• SCP-2986 by Doctor Cimmerian and Faminepulse
• SCP-1692 by AndarielHalo
• SCP-2139 by psul
• SCP-3403 by Zolgamax
• SCP-888-EX by stormbreath
• SCP-7337 by Uncle Nicolini and Zyn

---

+ Writing For This Canon

The Gulf is an open canon, created by Kate McTiriss, InsipidParoxysm and Doctor Cimmerian. All SCPs and tales set in The Gulf share the following general features:

• They are set in the Southern United States, especially the Gulf Coast region.
• They examine the personal lives and non-work side of Foundation employees and members of other GOIs.
• They often feature a non-trivial association with religion or religious iconography and characters.
• They often feature multimedia (images, videos, audio) not typically found in SCP Foundation projects.
• The Foundation actively searches to collaborate with other Groups of Interest, and is bound by a collaboration treaty with MC&D, the UIU and other groups in the Southern United States.

The important part of The Gulf is that the Foundation is made up of humans, with human lives. Local Task Force members live in their own apartments. They have romantic flings with people outside of work. They're diverse, coming from all over the world and all different races, genders, sexualities and religions. And they lead groups that are mostly idle, with a lot of downtime between running and gunning.

The Foundation, in The Gulf, can afford to rest sometimes. Until now.