Scarlet King/Synopsis (2024)

The history and its interpretations of the Scarlet King.

(Note: Due to the lack of canon in the universe of the SCP Foundation, there are several versions of the Scarlet King. They are described below.)

Common[]

Possible Origins[]

Verse of an Endless Song[]

The Scarlet King was one of many gods born with the planting of the Tree of Knowledge, called Khahrahk at the time. He was the smallest of his siblings, but the only one aware, and it brought him great pain. He decided that existence itself is painful and that he'd have no part in it, as well as destroying existence itself. He started by consuming his siblings and growing stronger on their essence. He vowed to destroy the Tree, the Creator and Creation, and consumed or subjugated all the other gods, naming himself "King of the Darkness Below". He declared war on creation itself, one which will not end until the very end of everything. He took Sanna, one of the gods he subjugated, forcibly as his wife and sired seven daughters on her. Sanna died after birthing them, and the King took his seven daughters as his new brides, sealing them so they would not die as their mother had. The seven brides and the seal put upon them were referred as: A'tivik (vaduk [dominion]); A'ghor (kifenn [longing]); A'distat (hezhum [desolation]); A'zieb (ba [wrath]); A'nuht (ner [lack]); A'tellif (usheq [hidden]); A'habbat (xokib [hope]). From his seven bride-daughters he had seven children called Leviathans. Other gods and older beings agreed to follow him as well, among them were Jeser, Goran, Moloch, and the Hanged King.

After the Scarlet King manifested himself on Earth, he granted the Daevite civilization great dark power and so they came to serve and worship the evil god. As the Daevites kept conquering different lands under the name of the Scarlet King, his influence grew more and more. At some point, the Scarlet King, alongside the King Worm, the Violet Queen and the Verdant Mage which were also worshipped by the Daevites, were summoned by the Daeva matriarchs who mated with the gods in order to conceive powerful demigods that would aid the evil empire. The Scarlet King bored on of the matriarchs a squid-like monstrosity that would become known as Hgan the Scarlet Prince and together with his fellow hybrids would form the Covenant.

When the Daevites began approaching the Valley, which was inhabited by the People of the Valley and guarded by Nahash and Hakhama, the People's greatest protector, Hevel set out to directly fight the evil army of the Scarlet King, but after a great number of years the Daevites used Hevel's vanity to brainwash him into Ab-Leshal causing the once noble hero to swear allegiance to the King. However, following the destruction of the valley, Hevel became ashamed of what he had become and rebelled against the Daevites and started a slave revolt. After killing the Daevites' different idols, Hevel directly challenged the Scarlet King to which the king responded by manifesting himself before him. Hevel then proceeded to use his power granted by the All-Mighty to cause the Flood which reset the universe and cut the king's influence on Earth.

Some Are Born To Endless Night[]

The Scarlet King was originally created alongside other anomalies through the dreams of Jacob Montauk, alongside other SCP-3553-A instances. Jacob was one of the many SCP-3553-A instances, children who were mysteriously transported to a dark dream dimension through a SCP-3553-B event. They could use their imagination to affect the world they were as well as reality on Earth, but they would cease to exist if they stopped imagining, or stopped exchanging their memories with each other. Eventually, as the children began fading away, Jacob used his imagination to merge with the remaining children and with their combined imagination brought back those faded children and had them absorbed into their mass. After all of the children are fused together they began dreaming of higher concepts such as deities, eventually creating in 19th March of 3994 the concept of the seven brides and the Scarlet King who represented their determination, suffering and hopelessness.

Beneath The Council[]

The being that would become known as the Scarlet King was originally just a king of the Icha people of "Not-Men" created alongside Men by the Flesh on Karakine's order. He reigned over the Icha for some years until the Fifth Son gave the Charrun, another race of the Not-Men, the Not, a dark force encompassing and at the same time opposing both order and chaos. As the Not began destroying all life, Men and the Not-Men races warred against one another, while trying to find a way to stop the Not. The Icha King however decided to learn more about the Not and slew the seven kings who were on his way and entered the center of the Not, becoming one with it. After merging with the Not, the Icha King became on the same level as Karakine's Council of All and waged war against the Fifth Son, until he was finally able to banish it for good.

SCP-001 (Tufto's Proposal)[]

The Scarlet King was created as a result of a Tashkent-Class "Cross-Pollination" Scenario, which ocurred when the premodern world and the modern world began clashing with one another, with the Scarlet King embodying the conflict between the two. More specifically, the idea of the Scarlet King was born from an ancient battle fought between some peasants and a steppe tribe's horde of conscripted soldiers who refused the peasants' please, as both sides were starving, and took from their fields seven peasant brides as spoils of war. Premodernity would be known as the Law of Blood, modernity as the Law of Concrete, and the conflict between the two as the Law of the Howling which would define the real nature of the King.

During the British colonization of Asia, the British began documenting and classifying the Asians' lifestyle and traditions, causing the latter to become angry at this and fought back against the colonizers which led to further development of the idea of the Scarlet King. The Scarlet King became a proper entity when the SCP Foundation began doing the same with the anomalous world, making the Foundation partly responsible for the creation of the Scarlet King. Because of his nature as a living idea created by human thought, several mythical legends about the Scarlet King (which includes the other origins) caused the entity to be placed in the ancient times, rewriting history and garner a number of unwilling followers and plan to return humanity to antiquity and render both premodernity and modernity meaningless.

Eventually, the Scarlet King and his followers began rising in the land of Iran, but were opposed by some local Turkmen tribes known as the Children of the Urn. The King's armies fought against the tribes, but despite delivering grave damage to their enemies, the tribes were able to defeat the Scarlet King by using their seven urns to lock the King away while being scattered throughout time and becoming the time travelling anomalies that would be known collectively as SCP-3838. This battle became known as the "Battle of the Ghemelleth" and was possibly seen by SCP-3514-3, Ismail I, when he briefly looked into through time. Eventually the Scarlet King's army from the future, designated SCP-3838-8, were able to destroy six of the seven tribes along with their urns, leaving the SCP-3838-4 to try to unite the power of the other tribes before their demise.

After learning the truth about the Scarlet King, the O5 Council would classify him as Safe, in hopes of making personnel believe that the King was harmless and therefore weaken him, but it was remarked that this attempt was in fact futile.

Channeling Flows[]

The Scarlet King was once an ancient denizen of Alagadda. He was monstrous abomination who wrecked havoc alongside others. Eventually, the Scarlet King and the other terrible monsters were sealed away into another dimension behind the Great Seal by numerous alchemists, some of which would die during the process. However, this is generally considered a myth by most alchemical scholars.

SCP-6765[]

The Scarlet King was originally one of the many citizens of the city of Audapaupadopolis ruled over by the First Man Adam el Asem. There the King used his own blood to write a chronicle known as the Codex Archaic for his descendants the Daevites. Following Asem's defeat and the destruction of Audapaupadopolis, the King became worshipped by the Daevite civilization, with the matriarchs and other monarchs believing themselves to be his direct descendants. However, his worship began to diminish and soon Queen Cynewise of Azidahaka started her own cult known as the Many Hands of the Serpent which worshipped the Paragon of All Knowledge, the Serpent. This caused the King to become jealous and wage war on those who betrayed him, summoning his seven wives to assist him. Thankfully, Cynewise was joined by other Daevite monarchs, Rafenild, Agatha and Moros, but it was the heroine Stella who struck the King down with her hammer and burying him alive while Moros sealed his tomb with his magic. In the aftermath, the King became separated from his body which remained buried underneath Moros' palace, while awaiting for his sons to be born and wreck havoc on the world.

SCP-231[]

Eventually in the modern world either the Children of the Scarlet King or Lilly kidnapped several young girls and performed a ritual on them that involved horrible torture in order to turn them into effigies of the Scarlet King's brides causing the girls to become pregnant with the king's abominations. After Lilly/SCP-231-1 gave birth to the first child this caused a catastrophe that would become known as the Cornwall Incident that alarmed both the Global Occult Coalition and the SCP Foundation. The Foundation was able to detain the remaining six brides, but eventually each gave birth to their respective monsters which resulted in further great catastrophes. SCP-231-7 was the only one that was left and was prevented from giving birth by using Procedure 110-Montuak, developed by Robert Montauk, a scientist who became angry at the evil god for possibly taking away his younger brother.

What the procedure actually involved was unknown, but it is heavily implied that it involves brutal acts of violence, such as rape and torture, in order to keep the Leviathan away. Another source claimed that the Scarlet King and his Leviathans cannot see reality the same way that humans could, meaning that concept of brutal acts of violence against SCP-231-7 could keep them away, allowing the Foundation to discontinue the procedure once they realized this, simply making the Scarlet King believe they were still using the procedure which was just telling the horrible bedtime story to her.

However, the O5 Council became suspicious after realizing that the Children of the Scarlet King had devised the ritual, leading them to suspect that they were playing into the Scarlet King's hands. Following research, they discovered that the seventh bride of the Scarlet King was not like the others: she had given birth to great heroes who fought to stop the Scarlet King, and his Children had deliberately allowed them to discover the ritual in order to stop the greatest one from being born. With this in mind, the Foundation stopped Procedure 110-Montauk, leading to the birth of SCP-999, now believed to be the only thing to be able to defeat its father/grandfather.

SCP-2317[]

Iteration 5 of SCP-2317 claimed that the Scarlet King is the untold horror imprisoned inside SCP-2317-Prime, a salt desert-dimension locked behind a 19th-century wooden door. In Iteration 6, it was revealed that the entity designated SCP-2317-K was actually an entity known as the Devourer of Worlds or Dread Devourer, a Keter-level Devourer entity that would enter the Foundation's reality within thirty years.

The O5 Council were surprisingly apathetic to the Devourer's inevitable attack, as several other SCP entities were projected to destroy the world in the meantime, and consider maintaining staff morale to be more important than fruitless attempts to re-imprison the Devourer. Thus, the myth of the Scarlet King was created, alongside a fake ritual, Procedure 220-Calabasas, which can supposedly "appease" the entity.Whether the Scarlet King truly exists and whether SCP-2317 is worthy of that title is left as an exercise for the reader, as the universe of the SCP Foundation has no true canon. Some writers treat them as one in the same, while others claim the Dread Devourer is even more powerful than the Scarlet King. In the SCP-001 Proposal it was stated that SCP-2317-K originally had nothing to do with the Scarlet King, but because most Foundation personnel believed that the two were the same, the living idea of the Scarlet King absorbed SCP-2317-K and became one and the same. In SCP-5641, it is stated that 2317-K is simply a false decoy created after the King's image in order to seal away the truth about the King's existence. In SCP-6462, SCP-2317-K was stated to actually be one of his children.

Possible Endings[]

When We Came Home[]

The Scarlet King was summoned by the revived Daevites and rose from the Pit of Megiddo with his armies to destroy creation. He destroyed most of creation and casted down all the other gods in his fury. The dead were revived and marched to kill the King, but were destroyed by his hordes. However, he was greatly weakened by the assault.

Finally, the only remaining resistance to the King were the Tzadikim Nistarim gathered on the mountaintop. With their power combined, they dissolved the King's seals that protected him, allowing the seven warriors, equipped with the King's spears, to finally strike him down. The first six warriors attack the King with spears and impaled him through the eye, heart and other areas. The final warrior, Isabel Wondertainment V, then killed him by driving her spear through his skull, leaving the youngest of the Brothers Death to claim his soul while his corpse sank back into the Abyss.

Old Kansas Sector ~ 11: Intermission[]

As the entire world was slowly being destroyed, the Scarlet King was mentioned to be running for president against Ronald Reagan.

Starch and Cream[]

One day, the Foundation lost control of SCP-871, leading to the cakes multiplying so much that they quickly covered the entire world. During the calamity, the Scarlet King was finally reborn into the world after SCP-231-7 gave birth to him, but was left buried beneath endless amount of cake.

SCP-5317[]

Eventually, SCP-2747 fought the Scarlet King and imprisoned him inside a tower located in the Atacama Desert, Chile, which was made out imagery of several groups of interest. However, the Scarlet King simply laughed as he broke the seals of each floor, but this proved be in vain, because 2747 manipulated the narrative in a way that he would never be freed. The king realized his defeat and remained trapped with the tower for eternity which allowed 2747 to use him as its pawn to destroy everything, with the Scarlet King destroying worlds while 2747 destroyed universes.

SCP-6140[]

When the Children of the Scarlet King performed a ritual on SCP-140 in order to bring the Daevites to the modern times, the ritual instead destroyed 140. Because SCP-140 was a false history created by SCP-140-A who used occult magic to turn it into reality and rewriting the real Daevites, its destruction resulted with the Daevites reverting to a normal civilization with all of the related anomalies ceasing to exist. Since the Scarlet King was completely made up by 140-A as part of 140, the Scarlet King and his anomalies also ceased to exist since they never actually existed.

SCP-001 (Ihp/Locke proposal)[]

As a result of Site-100's manipulation, SCP-001 (Tufto's proposal) was cross-tested with SCP-001 (I.H. Pickman's Proposal), the living narrative causality established by the authors of the SCP wiki from higher narrative. This resulted in the Scarlet King and his children trying to destroy everything, but their efforts not mattering as the narrative of reality would always remain in the aftermath of their destruction.

SCP-6765[]

After the Flood destroyed Moros' House of Malidraug, burying his palace underground, only the last sovereign, Lord Relivine and his two companions Ogier of the House of Apollyon and Javert of the Children of the Night, remained while the other Daevites exsanguinated themselves in order to store their blood which contained their memories. When Foundation discovered the now buried palace and became acquainted with the last inhabitants, Relivine revealed to everyone that the King's body, which had been designated SCP-6765-E, was awakened and was preparing to free itself, but was being prevented by the efforts of his lover. Relivine instructed Ogier to use his divine power to maintain the seal put on the King in order to keep him trapped and protect the world. With the assistance of a few Foundation personnel Ogier went to the tomb where they encountered Relivine's lover who had been keeping the King's corpse at bay. She became distracted by their presence which allowed the King to struck and kill her. Ogier then faced against the Scarlet King and with all his powers linked to Asem he was able to defeat the rotting corpse and imprison him once again. Ogier then began dedicating all of his time maintaining the magic binding the living corpse while being monitored by the Foundation.

SCP-001 (ROUNDERHOUSE's Jade Proposal)[]

Background[]

The entity known only as the Scarlet was one of the old gods created near the beginning of time and embodied the violent survival of the fittest. He soon came into conflict with three other gods, Mekhane, Yaldabaoth and the Black Moon. After casting the Black Moon aside, the fight ended with no winner as all of the gods were left severely weakened and fell into different parts of the Earth, with the Scarlet crash landing in an island in the Indian Ocean. There his body eroded but as he laid unconscious he began dreaming of a vast population inhabiting a great city. His dreams manifested in the Astral Plane, creating the race of the Daeva and the city of Korar who came to worship the Scarlet as their king and protector.

As years passed, the island became inhabited by some tribes which were unable to withstand the catastrophes that the climate brought onto them. One day, a man from one of these tribes while resting near a tree, found the Scarlet's gem-like eye knotted in the roots. After getting his hands on it, the Scarlet spoke to the man, offering him great power and salvation for his people and in exchange they would become one with the Daevas. The man eagerly accepted, allowing the gem to get embedded into his chest and becoming the host for the Scarlet. Soon the Daevas descended from the Astral Plane and took possession of the tribal humans, merging into a new being and gaining great magical powers over plant life. The Daevites constructed the city of Mamjul which mirrored Korar and the two cities became the center of their great empire. The man became known as the Scarlet Maharaja, the prophet of the Scarlet and the Chakravarti of the Daevic Covenant, but because Korar could only be sustained through the Scarlet's dreams, the Maharaja was forced to remain asleep for eternity, leaving his imperial cult, the Scarlet Brides lead by his most favorite wife the Rajmata, to govern the empire.

The Daevites would go on to conquer many surrounding lands as they prophesied that if they were successful in conquering all of Asia then the Scarlet wouldn't need to be asleep anymore and would awake and rise again. Over the years, the Scarlet Maharaja would have seven Rajmatas which included Varsylmittabya, Sodibiarat, Saudivalatra, Rapplataray and lastly Vaslirasirraj-Shirat with whom he had seven sons. However, their empire was threatened by the Mekhanite and the Sarkic Empires which were formed around the other gods that had fought the Scarlet. The empires entered into a massive war against each other, but similar to the fight the gods had fought, there was no winner. This allowed for the Black Moon's own empire, the Three-Pronged Army to strike and annihilate all of the weakened empires with ease. The Daevites did their best to fight against the army, but its leader BLACKSTAR used his immense power to sunk the entire island of Mamjul into the Indian Ocean and erased all history retaining to the Daevites. This left Korar stranded and isolated in the Astral Plane and because the Scarlet Maharaja was also killed during the destruction, the Scarlet's own dreams wouldn't be enough to sustain the city, meaning that it would eventually be destroyed in the distant future.

Modern Times[]

In early 21st century, the SCP Foundation discovered both Mamjul and Korar, and with the assistance of the Mobile Task Force Omicron-Rho were able to establish contact with the Daevas who became joyous at their arrival. However, their arrival into Korar didn't sit well with the Scarlet as his dreams were disrupted, accelerating Korar's destruction. To make matters worse, a fleet from the newly formed Church of the Broken God went to attack the research base onboard of Foundation ships floating above the ruins of Mamjul. During this chaos, Rajmata Vaslirasirraj-Shirat brought both Dr. Pandora Galanis, the lead of the Mamjul/Korar Initiative, and Lt. Lucian Greaves of MTF Alpha-1 to the chamber of the Scarlet. She explained to the Foundation personnel that a new Scarlet Maharaja was needed and believed that Greaves was the most ideal candidate to take the position.

Not wanting Korar and his own men to die, Greaves entered the chamber and came face-to-face with the Scarlet. The Scarlet asked him what he was willing to sacrifice for power to protect the world, and Greaves immediately replied that he would give everything he had. The Scarlet accepted and merged with Greaves' astral form, becoming one being. Greaves as the new Scarlet Maharaja manifested himself in Mamjul's sunken ruins and flew above the ships where he used his newfound powers to easily massacre almost all of the attackers, saving the Foundation personnel. He then allowed the personnel to contain him in a chamber inside one of the ships and was given the temporary designation of SCP-001-KING. Galanis as soon as they returned to their body interviewed the now transformed Greaves. He explained to Galanis that the choice he took was necessary for the Foundation's survival and offered a deal to the Foundation to join forces with the Daeva, and even proposed to Galanis to become his new Rajmata. Galanis refused to join him, leaving him to return to Korar in disappointment, but they did tell the O5 Council the deal he had offered. The Council accepted the deal in which the Daevas would possess some of the personnel to grant them great powers and in exchange the Foundation would restore their history and undo BLACKSTAR's damage by creating SCP-140. Meanwhile, Greaves went to slumber with the Daevas in order to ensure Korar's existence.

Despite being asleep, Greaves as the Scarlet King was able to get into contact with his estranged daughter Lucy via her dreams as she was told that her father had died in action. He kept haunting her dreams during her life up until her employment in the Foundation, comforting and encouraging Lucy to be brave in her activities.