The Courtyard
You dream about walking through a vast library, a library the size of countries, of continents, or maybe just the size of a very large library. Perhaps it depends on your perspective. Your perspective now is that of a dreamer walking the stacks. This is a place for wanderers, and now you are wandering. What price did you pay to come here, even in a dream? Do you already know about the Ways? Do you even know what a Way is? Have you heard about this library before, or do you simply have the small knowledge that comes easily in a dream? However you got here, now you are here.
You stand in a courtyard, filled with stone tables. Hooded figures — librarians — drift here and there, picking up abandoned books.
You become aware of others with you, passing around you, ghostlike. Some meet your eyes, some do not. Perhaps some are patrons, who you cannot see any more than they can see you. Perhaps some are other dreamers.
Yet some of the figures in the courtyard are solid. They greet some of the ghosts — the other ghosts — as they pass. You can go with one of them, you understand, though only one, for now. They will walk with you, and guide you, after their own fashion, if for a short while. Which guide will you choose?
Follow the Sylph. She looks open and friendly. Very unlikely to tear off your limbs. You get the idea she likes the newcomers the best; those who are desperate for knowledge yet possess very little. She knows and loves the Library and the Ways around it. What better guide than this, for one who is new and confused and frightened?
[Maybe written by Moose. Duality: Within/without — stacks/Ways]
Follow the Satyr. Goat-horned and shaggy. You've heard stories about beings like this, but you've never seen one in person. There is something wild about him, a scent of sweat and fertile soil, of death and life. And he's, uh, not wearing pants. From what's swinging between his legs, he really should be wearing pants. He notices you looking and winks. …Wait. Did he just… What? You're not quite certain what you just saw, but you are certain that was an incredibly lewd gesture. Perhaps this isn't such a good idea. Or perhaps it is the best idea.
[Gonna try to get Troy to write this if he's amenable. Duality: Life/death — graveyard/festival.]
Follow the Friendly Man. He looks so ordinary, so human. Perhaps that's what you want. And he does have a very nice mustache.
[This should be written by Mann, and present a more human-oriented angle of the Library & the Hand. Duality: To be determined.]
Follow the Willow-Bark Golem. The least human of the guides. Perhaps the most knowing. Speak of the ways of the world. Speak of the forests of trees and the forests of granite, of redwoods and skyscrapers, of the ant-hills of humans and the cities of ants.
[Gonna try to get Troy to write this if he's amenable. Duality: civilization/nature — city/forest]
Follow the Silver Woman. She is human, or was. You're not sure why you think 'was'. She still looks human, but there's something off about her, something silver; she shines when you look away and see her only in the corner of your eye. Her smile isn't lewd like the Satyr's, but there's something about it that gives you a feeling that is both unpleasant and welcoming. There is the spark of revolution in her eyes, of endings and beginnings. Should you be frightened?
[Maybe written by Moose. This will involve the more revolutionary aspects of the Hand, Library & paranormal world. Duality: Perhaps meeting L.S. & someone else. Could be peace/war, even.]
Follow the Ancient One. This one remembers. She remember the Day of Flowers, when her kind were brought low. She remembers the Re-Foldings. She remembers all that happened and all that was undone. She remembers the ends of the world. She remembers the Garden. She remembers Cain, the Wanderer, and his brother, and his children. She walked the roots of the Library in the inbetween-times. How do you know all this? She looks like just a hairy ape. She looks like Bigfoot — she is a Bigfoot. How very silly. So why are you afraid? Did you read a file in a database, or perhaps a very old book? Did you hear rumors from your stranger friends? Or whispers in a dream? She — how do you know it's a she? — meets your eyes. Is this a challenge? Is she telling you to come closer, or to turn away?
[Definitely written by Moose. …Maybe? This will probably involve fantastical history. Duality: To be determined; perhaps past/future?]
Follow the Witch Child. She's probably about as confused as you are, but she's cool with that. This is, after all, why she's here — she's dreaming herself here, too. You might make a friend. Someday you may need friends. Perhaps someday soon.
[To be determined. Duality: To be determined.]
Follow the Lonely Serpent. L.S.? Can it be? Is that really him? …Or is that a 'her'?
[To be determined. Duality: To be determined. Could actually be between meeting Alison Chao & meeting someone who claims that L.S. is a fiction, both for varying thematic reasons? Or it could be just Alison, and addressing aspects of the Foundation? / Could be LS as a mysterious figure, and Alison Chao/The Black Queen, who tells the reader they will forget her after they enter the Library.]
Follow the Green-Eyed Horror. It follows your eyes with its own, even when you're not looking at it. It knows the secrets on the edge of things, the secret knowledge that you cannot know without madness. Are you quite certain this is a good idea?
[Emphasize the Foundation-y horror angle but from a more fantastical perspective. Duality: To be determined.]
Return to the waking world. There is something wrong here. You will find another way to understand the Library, and the Serpent's Hand. There is too much confusion, here, and confusion is dangerous, even in a dream. Wake up.
[This redirects the reader to the Out of Character Orientation. Duality: None.]
Return to the waking world, and to the Foundation. There is something wrong here. You need to get out before it's too late. Before they find you. Who are you? What is the SCP Foundation? You are a Foundation researcher. You secure, you contain, you protect. You walk in the dark so that others may walk in the light. But you may lose yourself if you go farther. And you are uncertain if you have done something wrong. Perhaps you have. Perhaps it's already too late. Wake up.
[This will direct the reader to a page that switches between iterations, giving a different result on each refresh.]
Result 1: You pull yourself awake. You struggle to remember the details, to write them down, perhaps to report them, but they drain away from your mind like sand through spread fingers. No matter. Some knowledge is best unknown. You have done the right thing. Haven't you? [Link to SCP Foundation]
Result 2: You dream of wanderers gone wandering. You dream of walking a road of still water. With every step, you may sink. You dream of lightning. You dream of a red right hand. You struggle to wake. There are eyes upon you. What do they see? What do you see? [Link to Library-hosted dream version of the SCP wiki database]
Welcome To The Serpent's Hand
You're not sure what you were expecting, but it probably wasn't this.
You became aware of the Serpent's Hand a little while ago, probably around the same time you first heard of the Library. When you heard about the Ways threaded throughout the world; the doors and passages that lead to somewhere else. By hook or crook, you found one of these Ways, and you came here: to the mythical Wanderers' Library, the place where you will find nearly every book that has ever been written, and some that will never be.
'Twas here in the Library that you heard more about the Serpent's Hand, and where you finally found us.
We aren't so hard to find, as you know now. We only seem that way from the outside.
We welcome all — scholars, fighters, witches, scientists, magicians, doctors, human, non-human. We will walk together, all of us, fighting to lead the way out of the dark. For humanity, and for everyone else too.
Oh no, no, no, I'm not a leader of the Hand. That isn't how we work. We have leaders, yes… and perhaps one day you will receive a gift from L.S., or wander into the Serpent's Nest, or meet the Old Gryphon… but forgive me, I am wandering. Let us talk of you.
Who were you, before?
Maybe you were a teenager hiding in the back of a library after hours, and you saw a glimmer of a door where there should have been no door. Maybe you had an online friend who one day told you they were something other than human — and proved it. Maybe you were a college student, a research assistant, who found something unexplainable in a not-so-old book you weren't supposed to find in a wing of the library closed for renovation. Maybe you were a professor at a university, and your colleagues disappeared one day after discussing some oddity, and came back not remembering a thing. Maybe you were a scientist, a researcher for the SCP Foundation, bound in secrecy, in fear of the dark, and you decided you had to finally seek the knowledge to serve as your guiding light. Maybe you woke up one day and realized you could see in ultraviolet and made friends with the things that lived under your bed.
Maybe you were an ordinary person, just like me.
Whoever you were before, now you are here. You know what we know, and you've come to join us.
You know that signs and wonders are returning to the world. You know that the Ways are reopening. You know there are long-silent creatures moving once more in the shadows of the world. You know there are more things on heaven and earth than dreamt of in the modern world's philosophy. You know that you don't have to be human, to be people.
You know that with us, you don't have to be afraid of the dark anymore.
No, there's no horrifying ritual or painful initiation. All you have to do is take our hand.
Whoever you were before, you are one of us now.
Welcome to the Serpent's Hand.
The Serpent's Hand
You were certain you were sleeping. Maybe you were dreaming. Maybe your dreams just walked a little too close to the edge of the somethingness outside the stacks. But the room that you're standing in now, whatever it might be, is unexpected. Seamless wooden walls that somehow join with metal beams crossing the ceiling without interrupting the flow. Perfectly clear fabrics hanging down like spiderwebs, only visible by the obfuscation of the light passing through them.
All of that you take in within a matter a seconds. The rest, though, is trickier, like staring at a photo that keeps changing as it develops.
A silver woman — no, you know instinctively that it is the silver woman, instead — listens to a grinning man with cloven hooves tell a bawdy story, her mouth twitching with a smile, her eyes closed. Nearby, the witch calmly taps the clawed fingers of her gloves against the surface of the table — there's a table? — while the sylph frowns, looking down into her duskfire coffee as if it should have answered back.
The man with cloven hooves leans back in his chair, long deer antlers curling over his head. He cackles and takes another drink of something crackling and orange from the half-filled tsinder in his hairy hand.
“And you really think that’s going to work?” he asks, chuckling again. “You don’t really think they’ll believe us, do you?”
“They may…” The other cervine — a large, bull moose — lowers her head and sniffs at the ground for a minute before looking up — directly at you. “One of them is here.”
The man with cloven hooves leans forward and looks over his shoulder with a chuckle. “Yes. Looks like one of them managed to find our little serpent’s nest.” He snickers softly and motions you closer.
In moments, you are there. You don't remember walking, and there was no feeling of movement. The logic of the dream.
"Yes, stay, little wanderer," the silver woman says, still without opening her eyes. "Stay, and be the first to hear."
The sylph smiles a private smile that says more than all the others have so far with their words. Volumes in twitching lips and crinkling eyes.
“We’re just waiting for a few more,” says the large moose. She shakes her head back and forth as a small statue holds up a cup of tease for her. She shivers at the taste, then chuckles. “Little minx,” she murmurs into the cup.
There is an awkward silence that stretches on for another minute, until a patchwork man is carried in on a throne. You can't quite make out what's carrying his throne, but once it's set down, you see the shadows of tiny things scuttling away. Moments later, a cloud of ashes suddenly congeals on a chair, and a cat jumps up out of nowhere onto a small seat, licking her paw and rubbing it over her ear.
The patchwork man nods to the others, then looks at you. “Shall we get started?”
Something is different. Time has passed, or a break has happened. You don't know what happened between, but your know you aren't hungry now. You might have been, but it passed.
"There we are. All ready," said the cat. Of course, the cat talks.
"You want to know who we are," the silver woman murmurs.
"It's a good question," the moose answers.
"Not like it's one we'll answer…" says the witch. "Names have power, after all."
"Not that it's one we can answer," the cloud of ashes says, its voice reverberating with surprising clarity.
"Hush, you," murmurs the cat. "Let her start."
The patchwork man sighs, then nods for the moose to begin.
"The Serpent's Hand," the moose says. "Where to begin? You may have heard that we have leaders—perhaps L.S., or the Council of Serpents in the Nest. Or the Violet, or the Association of Wanderers, or the Three Sisters, or even the Archivists! You may have heard that we created or control or took over the Wanderer's Library, probably for nefarious purposes."
The satyr chuckles softly. "Like anyone controls the Library… We're its puppets."
"Some of us will tell you that we protect the Library," the cat said simply.
The witch stirs in her seat. "As if the Library needs protectors."
Some nod in response, others make noises of disagreement, and someone sneezes somewhere. The moose waves them off with her hoof and continues. "You may have heard that we have a single goal, a unified ideology. And this ideology… such an ideology! Some say that we wish to destroy humanity. Others say that we wish to naively welcome eldritch horrors into the world as our new slave masters."
The hoard of ashes flashes with orange and yellow light for a moment. "Others say we are bringers of terror. That we are, to the last person, foolish and mad. That we want to drag the world back into the dark."
"None of these things are true," the moose says.
The silver woman smiles. "Or all of them," she counters quietly.
The patchwork man holds up his hand for silence after a long while of talking, most of which you cannot remember again, and after a moment, he speaks.
"Let me tell you a story. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. It doesn't matter.
"Hundreds of thousands of years ago, we were alone in the dark. Not just humanity. All of us. All the peoples of the many worlds. We cowered in the dark, in caves, in forests, in wildernesses. Vast things moved through the darkness, fae creatures danced through the wilds, and we hid in terror and wonder. Witches conjured fire from nowhere, small children changed their shape at will, and we drove them away from us, to die in the wilderness of prehistory. All out of fear.
"Then we began to reach out to one another. We began to comprehend the ways of the world.
"Those Others, who seemed alien to us before, now took our hands and stood with us in friendship. Against all who would harm, or imprison, or kill. Armed with our shared knowledge and strength, we stepped from the darkness of ignorance to walk in the light. Together.
"And even some of the vast things that moved through the darkness, those impossible, unknowable things that were once so frightening, reached out to take our hands too.
"Time wound on. As the eons passed, the worlds drifted away from each other. The Ways closed. A great many things vanished from our world. And humanity forgot what they had once learned. They still stood confident at the center stage of the world, but they forgot who had come there with them. History was lost, and humanity once more forgot the Others that they had once understood.
"So humanity began once more to be afraid."
"And there you are, dear," said the witch. Or was it the silver woman? When she said it, she smiled, but she had horns. The faces start to flow together.
"We've kept you too long," said the satyr. "You won't sleep for days." He grinned nastily, as if it was something naughty.
"They'll wake soon," said the cat and the bull moose, their voices somehow together but not overlapping, the timbre of them meshing into a new sound. "Does anyone have something they want to add?"
But it's too late.
Slumped over a book, you rub your eyes and lean back, running your hand over your eyes and mouth, finding acreted matter and crud of a long sleep there. The drowsiness flees your mind as quickly as the dream, but something hangs there in the air — a tension, like something pulled too tightly and getting ready to break. But then it softens, and you remember how hungry you are, and you push away the last vestiges of the dream in favor of a full belly.
You walk through the Library. There is an unusual commotion in the hallways. Someone murmurs something about L.S. You see the silver woman, standing atop a temporarily erected podium in one of the larger noise-allowed reading rooms. A large, murmuring group of people has gathered around her. They're ordinary Library folk — mostly human, but not all. You recognize that one cloud of luminescent gas that said hi to you the other day. You think her name was "Io" followed by a few bell sounds. You'll have to her ask her to remind you.
The way the patrons aren't behaving isn't ordinary, though. They way they're looking at the silver woman — their excited, hushed voices — it's as if she were some kind of celebrity speaker at a tiny college political rally. Some of the people are even filming her on their smartphones as she speaks. She is saying words you've heard before.
"Today, signs and wonders are returning to the world. The Ways are reopening, the Library rediscovered. Once more, witches conjure fire from nowhere, small children change their shape at will, and the long-forgotten loved ones show themselves from the shadows of the world.
"There are many who seek to keep humanity in the darkness, who harm or imprison or kill. Some of them are even humans themselves. The Madmen of the Chaos Insurgency, who seek to harm. The Jailors of the SCP Foundation, who seek to imprison. The Bookburners of the Global Occult Coalition, who seek to kill. There are many others.
"Who are we?
"We are those who stand against them.
"We are a loosely knit movement of individuals who believe that the supernatural should not be suppressed or kept secret.
"We are wanderers and scholars. We are witches and scientists, we are magicians and doctors.
"We are anarchists and ex-politicians. We are pacifists and warriors. We are anomalies cursed or gifted with extraordinary abilities. We are non-human creatures from inside or outside the world who just want acceptance. We are ordinary average people who just happen to know something about the world that others do not. We are the powerful, and the powerless.
"Some of us want to bring society down. Some of us just want to make the world we have a better place. Some of us want to take the fight to our enemies. Some of us want to wait in the wings until the time is right.
"We are not a unified, hierarchical organization. We are a collection of splinters. Yet we all walk together, fighting to lead humanity out of the dark.
"Walk with us. Join us. With you — together — we bring the light of knowledge back into the world.
"We are the Serpent's Hand."
A hand taps your shoulder, and you turn and look, seeing the sylph from the forgotten nest. She smiles for a moment, and everything comes rushing back. She nods to you, then turns walking away from you into the stacks. It all comes together again.
The pieces snap together. The words join. The books open. You remember it all. You find yourself repeating the silver woman's last few words, and you're not alone.
"We are the Serpent's Hand!"
-united by a common goal
-maybe one day you'll sit here and tell a story of your own
"Welcome to the Serpent's Hand."