Item #: SCP-PL-399
Object Class: Neutralized
Special Containment Procedures: All individuals who have experienced SCP-PL-399's manifestation are either dead, members of anomalous organizations, or integrated into anomalous societies. Due to this, SCP-PL-399's containment is completely unnecessary beyond the standard procedures required for the maintenance of the Veil.
Description: SCP-PL-399 designates a series of anomalous events that took place between the 1st of August and the 3rd of October 1944 — during the Warsaw Uprising, a failed insurrection of Polish military forces against the at-the-time Nazi occupants of Poland's capital. Each of the individuals who experienced SCP-PL-399's manifestations was either already aware of the anomalous or had themselves exhibited anomalous characteristics and was in a state of grave danger.
Although the full list of events attributed to SCP-PL-399 is still under debate, it is confirmed that SCP-PL-399 was responsible for the following anomalous effects that occurred at the aforementioned place and time time:
- the appearance of letters, words, or even whole sentences in the sky;
- the manifestation of a quiet voice, whispering to people without any apparent source;
- the sudden appearence of immense energy among previously exhausted individuals;
- the sudden elimination of individuals who had shown armed opposition against the actions of the insurgents without any identifiable cause;
- the presence of large numbers of anomalous beings in Warsaw;1
- the detection of drastic changes in thaumaturgic energies and Akiva radiation in lower portions of Warsaw, despite the fact that no source of such changes existed or could exist below the city.
Addendum PL-399-1: Discovery and Testimonies of Victims
SCP-PL-399's existence was deduced in 1946 based on the accounts of Site-120 personnel and their families that took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Its SCP classification was officially approved when Dr. Alistair Vemhoff2 collected more than 57 accounts of people who had witnessed various SCP-PL-399 events. SCP-PL-399's official file was then created when many connections were discovered between those events; it was concluded that the events which the testimonies described could not have occurred without the existence of some kind of anomalous phenomenon behind them.
Attached below is a selection of various accounts concerning SCP-PL-399, as recorded by Dr. Alistair Vemhoff.
🔗 PL-399/103927-PFOA; Maciej Kowalski; @ Alistair Vemhoff, 120-main-arch et al
The first thing I remember is fire.
You never really hear about it, when people speak of war. A bullet will give you a quick death, maybe make you bleed for a few hours, but when it comes down to, it it's not that bad. But fire… fire is a completely different story.
You've got to understand — I've never been afraid of fire. Even when I was young, it just… didn't move me. But when… when I came face to face with it during the Uprising… It's difficult for me to talk about it, even now.
Fig 1.1: A building burnt down by an Ahnenerbe Obskurakorps pyromancer, 1944.
I've never seen magic before in my life. Maybe heard some bits and bobs about nightwalkers and faeries, like pretty much everyone my age, but I'd never met a real wizard. Even during the war, I was never unlucky enough to run into one. I say this so that you understand how I felt when I met a hooded man that held a flame in his hand as I fled from a Kraut tank that had just shot my friends.
For the first few seconds, I couldn't even move. I was just so startled by the sight that I couldn't even move a finger. And then I felt the stench of the burning corpse, coming right in front of me.
Have you ever seen a burning body, doctor? The worst thing about it is the smell. Repugnant beyond words. And… And that was just too much. I couldn't even throw up. I just stood there, frozen, unable to look away from that dark red coat. Incapable of drawing my gun and firing.
And then… And then I felt that my own hand was on fire. That… That something in front of me just snapped its fingers and there was a hurricane of flames so hot I could hardly even think. I tried to do something — anything — but the pain was just too much.
So I did the only thing I was even able to do — I fell down, unsuccessfully trying to scream for help.
And then — right when I started praying — that's when I heard it. A quiet voice, whispering in my ear: "Fight!". At first I thought I must have gone insane with pain, but when the voice repeated itself even more firmly, I knew it was all real. Painlessly, I opened my eyes and suddenly heard a gunshot. It wasn't until the mage fell to the pavement in front of me that I realized it had come from my gun. Yet still, I didn't feel as if I had ever even moved.
Then everything went dark. The last thing I remember hearing was… the best way I can describe it was as if the pavement around myself just moved.
🔗 PL-399/045219-AFGA; Anna Świtoń; @ Alistair Vemhoff, 120-main-arch et al
War was almost like a third parent to me.
I'm not saying this to try and impress you, but to make you understand that I have seen a lot in my time. Me and my girls have witnessed the death of God during the Sixth War. We've seen what one of the Seven Bindings can do to a person. We've been there for the Third Diaspora itself and the Insurrection of '49, when those sell-out whores from the Ministry left us to die. But what I saw in Warsaw… I've never experienced anything like that. Not in the one hundred and fifty-six years I have walked this earth.
Fig 2.1: Anna Świtoń, the captain of the Polish Occult Brigade, during the yearly summit of the Unia Sabatyczna mage gathering, 1952.
It all started when we were called to Praga. One of my girls found out that the Krauts had sent their own to root out civilians from the basements. They wanted to play around before the Ruskies arrived, so that they could murder without shame and then pin it on someone else. So we did what we could to be there as quickly as possible. But we still arrived to total chaos.
It was a slaughter. An absolute slaughter. My girls were the best of the best, but… but they still weren't enough. There were just too many of them, wielding power that we simply didn't have. When after a few moments, I realized that I stood alone before a ceaseless wave of more and more Obskura, I came to terms with the fact that my fate was pretty much sealed.
And then I saw it. It was two meters tall and protruded from the nearest well. If I didn't know what a real human being looked like, I would even say that it looked like one — but upon closer inspection, the only thing even slightly human about it were the clothes it wore. But even those could not cover its numerous limbs and tentacles.
We have to make something immediately clear: this was not a spawn of Nälkä. I have seen many carnomancers in my life, but this was not one of them. You see, followers of Ion fight in a way that is characteristic of their doctrines, but that thing moved as if it were a sword. An inanimate tool, mindlessly slaughtering its opponents. Before I could even blink, it attacked all of them, leaving nothing but bodies in its wake. And their magic — it did not care for it at all. Not even their lightning could protect them from the tentacles of that thing.
And then, after a few long moments of utter chaos, I realized that nobody was left in the whole square. Nobody except me and the thing, of course. I tried to thank it, I tried to do… anything, but… but my throat refused to listen to my mind. And there, frozen, I realized that what I thought to be flesh tentacles were actually made out of cobblestone. The whole thing was nothing but moving stones and bricks, cast into a shape that looked alive. And then the entity unhooded itself.
Where its face should be I saw nothing. I don't mean this metaphorically, like it was some god-shaped hole — I mean it literally. It was just empty inside. I swallowed hard, once again trying to say thank you, but before I could even open my mouth, the entity just nodded its head as if it knew what I wanted to say, and disappeared underground, into the depths of the well. And I just stood there, dumbfounded beyond words.
Since then, I've tried many times to understand what it actually was. To this day I do not truly know. The only thing I remember aside from what I've described is that I had the impression that something was looking at me from inside that hood. Something like a wounded animal, desperately fighting for its own life.
🔗 PL-399/271901-NWAU; Antoni Nowak; @ Alistair Vemhoff, 120-main-arch et al
War is the worst thing I have experienced. First it took my Matilda, then my little Damien. And then, just when I thought it couldn't take anything away anything more, it took my home. By the end of the Uprising, I was just a desperate husk that only looked like Antoni Nowak.
Fig 3.1: Antoni Nowak's unit, 1944.
We were all the same. A bunch of rejects, changed by war. Once brave fighters for the freedom of magic, now just a bunch of homeless outcasts without as little as access to the Library. So when we heard that our guys knew where Obskura held their prisoners, we threw ourselves at the mission with all of our enthusiasm. Looking back, I don't know… don't actually know why.
Stan — Stanisław Leszcz, I mean — was the first victim of our stupidity. When he tried to open the door leading inside the building, he was hit. We could not even react. His… His body just collapsed on the pavement, and everything… everything just started happening so fast.
After a few moments, just seven of us remained from one of the best units of the Hand. They took us and threw us into some cellar under their warehouse, cuffed so tightly that I couldn't even feel my hands. And then they started shooting again. When they put the barrel to my head too, I swallowed hard, knowing what was about to happen.
Before he pulled the trigger, I remember thinking once more about my Matilda. I didn't have the strength to fight. I just gave up, ready for my execution, knowing it was over and I fully accepted that. But the shot was never fired.
When I opened my eyes again, still all trembling with terror, I saw as if the floor, as if the walls, as if the very building itself had reached for the Germans and pulled them towards itself. They tried to grab onto the bars sticking out of the walls, but it didn't help them. They simply drowned in the moving cement and wood that reached for them literally out of nowhere. To this day, even after years of searching the Library for answers, I haven't the faintest idea what that was.
Ask me as much as you like. I won't tell you more, because I just don't know more. But I have a gut feeling, one which I know will sound absurd, but… I think that although I myself gave up, although I myself accepted my fate, this city — this Warsaw, besieged from every corner by monsters — it did not give up. It did not accept its fate, it did not allow its battle spirit to just die. Even when it knew that its fate had long since been sealed.
Following the failed conclusion of the Warsaw Uprising on 03/10/1944, no further manifestations of SCP-PL-399 — or any other anomalous events related to the city of Warsaw — have been detected.