SCP-2678 A City All of Blood

SCP Explained - Story & Animation

SCP-2678 is an extradimensional space solely accessible to those holding Catholic beliefs through a previously barred door in the basement of the Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy. A metal placard beside the door reads "SCP Foundation Department of Abnormalities". Those who enter the doorway will emerge into a small tarped outpost built around the freestanding exit.  LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to SCP Explained - Story & Animation  Follow us on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scpexplainedofficial  Join our Discord, share your SCP art, submit video feedback, chat with other fans...: https://discord.gg/scpexplained   Please let us know in the comments which SCP's we should cover next   Narrated by https://www.youtube.com/c/hitherehunter  Content relating to the SCP Foundation, including the SCP Foundation logo, is licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 and all concepts originate from http://www.scp-wiki.net and its authors.   SCP-2678 A City All of Blood is based on "SCP-2678" by Cerastes: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2678  #scpexplained #scp #animation

Transcript

00:00It only took a few missing choir boys in the Siena Cathedral for the police to begin their

00:05investigation, and it only took a few missing police officers for the Foundation to begin

00:10their investigation. But even they would have no idea of what they'd find in the basement of that

00:15centuries-old Temple of God. Agent Zanetti led the case. He was a junior on the Italian branch

00:22of the SCP Foundation, and a man who'd grown up in Siena, before leaving after an unfortunate

00:27incident that he preferred never to talk about. All that he told most people was that Siena was

00:32the city where he'd lost his brother as a child, and he had no intention of reopening old wounds.

00:39Until, of course, his superiors assigned him the job of inspecting the Siena Cathedral disappearances.

00:46Foundation assignments were not the kind of thing you could pass over for personal reasons,

00:50if you believed those reasons would compromise the mission. Zanetti was nothing if not a stone-cold

00:56professional when it came to the job. He took a train to Siena as soon as the order was passed

01:01down, and the investigation began. He conducted rigorous interviews with the clergy and custodial

01:07staff at the Cathedral, who all said that they'd notice strange goings-on at the Cathedral,

01:12especially if they were alone at night. Each one reported seeing a strange glow coming from the

01:18basement door that seemed to fade away if ever they looked at it, not to mention the sounds.

01:23One sound, which sometimes seeped through the Cathedral's ancient walls when all else was

01:28silent, sounded not unlike clapping. Endless, thunderous clapping in some distant place.

01:34But even more peculiar was the music. Organ music, that much was unmistakable,

01:40played at an eerie high pitch. It was nothing like the deep, rich, and melodious tunes of the

01:45church's iconic organ. The tune wasn't recognizable, even to the church's senior organist,

01:51who knew almost every hymn by heart. Incidentally, all of the people who had gone missing, most of

01:56whom were young boys, members of the choir, had reported hearing the faint, almost spectral music

02:02to clergymen in the days before they disappeared. To Agent Zanetti and his team, the basement then,

02:08seemed like the most logical place to go. He felt this trustful of the staff here at the church,

02:14personal experience. And as with many anomalies involved in institutional buildings like this,

02:20Zanetti expected that at least some of the people here knew what was really going on,

02:25even if they weren't actively colluding with the threat itself. They poured through every inch of

02:30the basement, using all of the most advanced diagnostic and research tools at their disposal.

02:35The Hume level appeared normal, but there was a high concentration of Akiva radiation,

02:39the telltale giveaway of a concentrated location of powerful human belief. Unsurprising in an old

02:46church like this. But even then, something about it felt strangely unsettling to him.

02:51For personal reasons, Zanetti had requested to spend time on the Foundation's tactical theology

02:56department. It was almost a kind of order of Foundation-aligned warrior monks and theologians

03:02who used their knowledge of religion to investigate associated anomalous activity.

03:07Zanetti's time on the TTD was probably the very reason that the Foundation put him on this job in

03:12the first place. He developed an innate instinct for these kinds of readings, an understanding of how

03:18the Akiva rating betrayed normal and abnormal concentrations of faith. Even for a church, this

03:25basement was intense. He couldn't help but wonder, what was being believed here, and who were the

03:32believers? It seemed almost like a joke when the first portion of the anomaly was discovered,

03:37after one of the investigators moved a bookcase so he could get a better view of the wall across from

03:42him. He exposed what seemed to be an ancient wooden door with a small metal plaque nailed to the wall

03:48next to it. The Akiva radiation coming off that door was something else. And stranger still, readings of

03:54Hume level were extremely unusual here. For anyone unfamiliar, Hume levels indicate the stability of the fabric of

04:01reality itself. And when those are out of whack, it indicates that you might not be looking at

04:06something that's entirely in step with the concept of real. And yet somehow, that was nothing compared

04:13to the shock that coursed through Zanetti's body when he took a closer look at the plaque and saw that

04:18it read, SCP Foundation Department of Abnormalities. He immediately requested for one of his teammates to

04:25cross-check this with all known Foundation databases and find out whether there was such a Foundation

04:30Department once, and whether they'd ever been recorded operating in this area. But no, there

04:36wasn't a match. At least not one on any of their clearance levels. Whatever so-called Foundation

04:41Department they were looking at here was entirely off-book, and that warranted them taking a closer

04:46look immediately. On the other side of that door, as they likely expected for a place with such a warped

04:53Hume

04:53level, they didn't find a brick-walled room in the same Gothic architectural style of the rest of the

04:58cathedral. Instead, they were greeted by the vaguely familiar image of a tented Foundation research

05:04outpost, where they immediately recognized the sound of the terrible clapping and the faint,

05:10distant, high-pitched organ music. But now they could tell that the clapping sound wasn't clapping

05:16at all. It was endless rainfall on the roof of the canvas tent. And what was inside that tent raised

05:22so

05:23many more questions than it answered? The place appeared to be a kind of rudimentary biomedical

05:28laboratory, incorporating a strange mix of cutting-edge technology and mediums of recording

05:34in study from centuries ago. Flash drives set next to parchment and wax cylinder recordings.

05:40There were both modern test tubes and ancient vials of what appeared to be blood and bone samples,

05:45some refrigerated and others left out on tables, as though the researchers here had left in some kind

05:51of mad hurry. There were no written notes, only a single Foundation computer terminal that nobody

05:56there had the credentials to unlock. But far more interesting was what lay on a steel table in the

06:03middle of the room. The skeleton of what would later be confirmed as a prepubescent boy, cause of death

06:09unconfirmed, missing several bones that may have been taken away for unknown studies. Next to the skeleton

06:15lay a print copy of the score for a choral prelude titled, Sol Golgata. Agents and Eddie didn't like

06:21any of this. Not one bit. Not just because the Hume readings and the scores of his Akiva radiation

06:27detectors were off the scale. Something about this place caused bad memories to stir deep in the iron

06:33cauldron of his mind. He knew logically that he'd never been to this place. So why did it feel so

06:39terribly

06:39familiar? Where's all that rain coming from? He said aloud. It wasn't raining outside. His

06:46investigating instinct drew him with an almost magnetic force to the other side of the tent,

06:51where a red glow seemed to seep in between the edges of the flaps. He reached forward and pulled

06:57the flap aside, staring with absolute awe and horror at what he'd discovered. It was a city, as best as

07:04he

07:04could tell. He could see the huge and imposing silhouettes of gothic architecture, not unlike

07:09the style of the church itself, but obscured by endless torrents of deep, rich red pouring down

07:16from the sky. They'd collect samples, of course, and they'd send it to the guys in biotech. But there

07:21was no mistaking the look and the rotten coppery smell. The basement at the Siena Cathedral held a

07:27gateway to a world where it rained blood. I need to get out of there. Zanetti found himself saying

07:34before he even realized that his mind was forming the words, get me a hazmat suit. I'll take point

07:39on this. There were no questions. His teammates responded to the determination in his voice.

07:45That unflappable resoluteness that Agent Zanetti had become known for. Within half an hour, he was

07:51suited up and ready to enter the terrifying and bloody world. When asked by his superiors what kind of

07:57methodology he intended to employ when first surveying the anomaly, his response was simply

08:02that he planned to follow the music. He could hear it as soon as he stepped out, felt the weight

08:08of the

08:08torrent upon him, saw the fat globs of claret-like congealed nosebleeds bursting against the visor of

08:14his hazmat suit. It was revolting, soul-rocking even. But some part of him knew that if he followed

08:20that broken tune through the bloody rain, he would find what he'd been seeking his whole life on the

08:26other side. Answers. The city itself was like something out of some medieval version of hell

08:32itself. The buildings, gothic places of worship, were made of stark white material that Agent Zanetti,

08:38as any sane man would, assumed were made of marble. They loomed over the blood-soaked streets,

08:44seeming to stare down with the dead eyes of saints and gargoyles and grotesques, ancient spires

08:50twisting up into the sky like grasping arthritic fingers. But grasping for what? All he needed to

08:57do was follow the music. It reminded him of some strange screeching parody of the organ music he'd

09:03grown up with when he was a choir boy. It gave him and his brother comfort once, but it made

09:08him feel

09:08sick now. His brother, Andreas. He'd been such a sweet boy. Why would it be fate's design that his

09:16brother went missing, and that he would have to keep going, to encounter unimaginable horrors, to march

09:22through the blood? The music was getting louder and louder as he marched. He knew, thanks to his time

09:29on the Tactical Theology Division, that he'd have an innate sense for when he reached where he needed to be.

09:34The music seemed almost to rattle his bones, and after walking for what felt like hours,

09:40he had discovered its source. From what he could make out through his crusty, blood-stained visor,

09:46it was almost an exact duplicate of the same Siena Cathedral he'd walked through to get here.

09:52Almost, because the real Siena Cathedral wasn't stark white, like desert-bleached bone. He knew that

09:58the answers he sought would be in there, if he could handle them. If the knowledge didn't melt him

10:04away like a rectory candle, it took more strength than he'd ever expended in his life to force those

10:09doors open and stumble inside, creating a trail of bloody footsteps across the white ground.

10:15The organ music was near deafening in here. It rattled him. It seemed to squeeze his cells together.

10:22Still, he needed to get closer to the organ, to make sense of all this. It was a ruin. Nothing

10:28like

10:28the grand and well-maintained beast of engineering inside the real Siena. All of the longest organ

10:34pipes, responsible for the deepest and richest sounds in the instrument's register, have been

10:39ripped away, leaving only the short pipes responsible for the endless whine of the song.

10:44After the spatial anomaly and the blood rain, the very fact that the organ was making its endless

10:50tune without a player didn't even shock him. It was just one more sliver of data that he'd need to

10:55include in his report after all this. Then there was a strange pull. A force, like tendrils

11:03wrapping around him and dragging him to the hollow space behind the organ. Like a force from above was

11:09moving him, even though forces like that had long been something that Agents and Eddie had lost all

11:14faith in. His time at the Foundation had taught him that there were indeed gods out there, and the best

11:20thing you could do was hope beyond hope that none of them ever noticed you. He stared behind the

11:27organ, and something actually made him gasp. For the first time in all the years he'd worked at the

11:32Foundation, it was a skeleton. Small, just like the one on the table at the outpost. Dusty and curled into

11:39the fetal position. He recognized the skeleton's tattered old t-shirt, the same one his brother had

11:44been wearing the day he went missing all those years ago. This mission had no doubt been an

11:49extremely disturbing one for all involved, but Agents and Eddie had certainly gotten the answers

11:54that he'd set out to find, whether he liked them or not. Samples were taken from the rain and of

12:00the

12:00buildings, which matched the samples that had been taken in the mysterious, impossible Foundation

12:05outpost. All of the buildings were somehow made out of human bone, specifically that of a

12:11prepubescent human male, though the samples didn't lead them back to any particular missing children.

12:17The same was true of the blood, though again, no murders or disappearances were ever solved through

12:22Foundation chemical analysis. Even more disturbing than the visceral nature of what had happened here

12:28was the lingering psychological effects on Agents and Eddie and all of the other members of the

12:33research team. It seemed that on some level, they were not who they once were. In the months that

12:39followed, Zanetti and all the agents from his mission seemed to have a predilation towards

12:43listening to choir music in their free time. They also lost any sense of rebelliousness that they

12:48had before, instead deferring to and having a great deal of respect for the very concept of authority.

12:54They took any opportunity they could to tell people about how much they think structured,

12:59organized religion is the most necessary scaffolding for belief. In conjunction with all this,

13:05they began to have less faith in people of lower socioeconomic status than them,

13:10rating them as more likely to lie, steal, and cheat. Zanetti and several others from the group would

13:16later be amnesticized and discharged from Foundation service, after it was discovered that they had

13:22knowledge of a rogue agent who was selling Foundation research notes to the Chaos Insurgency.

13:26It seemed the strangest side effect of all for anyone and everyone who'd stepped into SCP-2678

13:34was an unwillingness to report the crimes of anyone who you shared an institution with.

13:40Because why should there ever be any consequences when you and the perpetrator are both marching to

13:47the same tune? Now check out SCP-3001 Red Reality Top 15 Evil SCP Tales or SCP-1861 The Crew

13:56of the HMS

13:57Wintersheimer for more.

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