Content-warnings: mention of animal mutilation, gore, body horror

Blood splatters on the ground shaped in numbers.

The ravaged remains of a cat.

An old computer held up by a sheer black, undefined body, absorbing all light, ending in long arms and talons, eeked out of the trash.

The screen beeped.

Then it generated a string of numbers.

*“M-must f-find… perf-perfect…..paassssssworrdd.”

SCP: Frequency Theory

The Melbourne secret agency, SCP Foundation, was never a big blip on the global stage, despite the demand for capturing the strangest of cryptids just as dangerous as the reputation of the country’s fauna & flaura.

Lately, however, the local scene is undergoing a silent upheaval… of a branch driven to experiment beyond human limits, and a desperate rebellion pitted against it. Can the agents caught in the middle intercept the greatest distortion this backwater… or backdirt… has seen?

A tabletop roleplaying game captured in writing, of political intrigue injected with the horrors of monster and technology entwined.

For the past year and a bit, I’ve been game-mastering a Monster of the Week (which is one of the many dozens of systems to assist with storytelling out there) game for some friends. What started as a one-shot to give it a go turned into a multi-session extravaganza!

Read on below for the first installment of dark intrigue.

Music:

Suburb Division

4th July, 1989

Elijah (Bri’s character), a slender man with long black hair, is out on his daily containment procedure role: a street sign which requires someone to stand 40 minutes after 6:30am against the pole.

Fail to do so, and the sign will change the information written upon it to point drivers into a sudden dead-end.

Rufus (Rohan’s character)is the newest recruit to the division. A scruffy hairdo fellow and denim jacket, goes to Elijah that morning with a coffee. Blushing, embarrassed, he does his best to strike conversation with the asocial operative.

Afterwards, Rufus returns to the headquarters… or sequences of headquarters. A whole block of repurposed Victorian style apartments act as offices or containment rooms. On the outside, they look ordinary, dishevelled. The people who move in and out of those buildings: ordinary… dishevelled.

Within, among filing cabinets overflowing with unsorted documents, desks and peeling wall paint, O’Byrne (Sarah’s character) churns through her paperwork, clicking away at her PC.

When Rufus returns, she takes on her most recent job responsibility: teaching him the ropes. She’d much rather just stick her head down, be unnoticed. Two years she’s kept up a good worker drone mindset, along with her laid-back coworker Jamie, and she isn’t going to stop now.

At least Rufus is enthusiastic. He’s been starry-eyed every since she and the Foundation found him out at a petrol station after an anomalous event. He really seems to like the captured anomalies, going out of his way to befriend the ones that can talk, or grunt, back.

In the midst of July 1989, the hipster city of Melbourne, Australia, is cool and bland.

The Melbourne secret agency, SCP (Secure, Contain, Protect) Foundation, was never a big blip on the global stage, despite the demand for capturing the strangest of cryptids (referred to as SCPs) just as dangerous as the reputation of the country’s fauna & flaura.

You can expect the most exciting action from the Outback and CBD Divisions. The third wheel, Suburb Division, merely mills away with their mild entities in containment in the cozy streets outside the city centre.

Where it stands out from the rest, however, is in its methods of containment: integrating SCPs into everyday habits and environments to assist with their stability. An awkward but peaceful coexistence.

Nothing much of anything happens here…

Which Elijah much prefers it stay that way… until he notices a discrepancy that morning. The SCP codenamed ‘Dropbear’ has gone missing… again. Its containment procedure - a net pulled taught over the floor in its apartment-room-turned-monkey-enclosure - proved insufficient in keeping it from teleporting outdoors.

He continues to wonder how it got away, when the otherwise droll morning gets interrupted by his pager going off. So do O’Byrne’s and Rufus’. The code: whoever is available must come to the meeting room now.

Only the three of them show up.

Opening the door with a sharp snap is a figure with a prompt dress coloured maroon, garish ultramarine and teal. Any playfulness that may suggest is completely overruled by her silvering hazel hair pulled into a strict bun and the sharpest pair of cat-eye glasses you’ve ever seen.

Verna Ernst, in her forties, became the division boss only a few years ago but she’s been hard at work kicking everyone into gear. The files, at last, have a structure to them, and procedures are getting a proper touch-up.

She has no love for the Suburb’s ‘tradition’ of handling SCPs in a relaxed, organic fashion.

That, and Verna pushes and stabs at her employees with the nicest of words.

“This is all I have to work with? Disappointing.”

In the meeting room, furnished with mahogany furniture, the trio stand across a block of a table, precisely ordered folders and pens. Ms. Ernst circles around behind it to face them, and behind her, is a photo of a late middle-aged man hung on the wall. It’s a face familiar to everyone in the department: the founder of the Suburb division, with a pleasant smile, who passed in 1975.

Sven Ernst. Her father.

Verna Ernst gives them a mission: locally in a shopping street, the police caught whiff of some violent activity. And not just some teenaged louts punching each other up: there were reports of gun fire and disturbingly big pools of blood.

“You need to intercept before they dig any deeper into this. Investigate, then report back. Do not engage, understood?”

Out in the carpark, Rufus is excited to take his new pals for a spin in his trusty 1986 Toyota Seleka… Because O’Byrne’s company car was nabbed by somebody else in need of it.

Goes to show how the budget is looking.

Heather Street

When they arrive, they find the area well under lock and key by the local police. There’s an ambulance stationed aside, from which the sounds of a distressed man could be heard. A woman is whining that her cat has gone missing, insisting to the police that should be their first order of priority.

Rufus sweet-talks (with the innocence of a puppy) to one of the police officers, and his friendliness provides an opportunity to get behind the building of a cafe where police activity is most present.

Jackson Conway’s Cafe

Meanwhile, O’Byrne figures the best way to take a look is to jump the back fence behind the string of businesses, while police are scouting the same lane.

They meet in the alley at the same time. What they find is tufts of fluff and mangled meat; all that remains of a cat. And the pooling of blood, in the shape of numbers. In another corner, a much bigger spray and splash of red is among a pile of trash… which then streaks over the fence.

Whatever was in this alley is no longer there.

Instead, there’s a someone.

A man scrambles from between the bags. He looks injured, with a bruise on his head, dirt and bits of dry blood on him.

Chad. Another Foundation member, from CBD Division of a higher rank, who was sent to deal with this situation before them.

And things fell apart quickly when his mission was interrupted…

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