Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: An expert from a book detailing a small incident, involving a hostile visitor from elsewhere in the cosmos. Some Other are just animals, but unbound by conventional physics and biology, they can be quite a bit more dangerous than anything you can find out in the wild.
Russia. I hate incidents in Russia. It’s not that I have anything against the people of that country, it’s just that whenever we get summoned there, it’s bad — Black-4 to Black-5 bad. It was indeed Black-5 bad.
~ Kazimierz Piotrowski, leader of Choir 884
The events of this report took place on ██.██.████, ██km from ████████, where one of the Russian atomic lighthouses stands. That very artefact is what led the first victims into the area. ██████ █████████, ██████████ ███████████ and ██████ ████████ were thrill-seekers, intending to explore the tower, despite the hazard they pose, with the likely intention of uploading the footage to WeView. They never got to the lighthouse.
Two of the bodies were discovered the next day, and with them, the camera the group was using to record their excursion. The camera and the files stored on it were the two primary objects of interest for Choir 884, the creature seen on the recording was a tertiary objective. To be identified and, if needed, neutralised.
Transcript of video footage recovered from the camera belonging to ██████████ ███████████.
██.██.████ ██:██:35
Panning shot of terrain surrounding lighthouse, moving left to right, ██████ █████████ (██) can be seen walking towards the structure. The audio captures the sound of waves crashing against the rocky outcrops the tower stands on.
██.██.████ ██:██:42
A strange noise can be heard for a moment, similar to the scream of a bird of prey, but distorted.
██████████ ███████████ (██): What was that, bitch?
██████ ████████ (██): Bitch knows, some kind of bird, damn it.
██: A bird, bitch, you shithead?
██: Fuck, what’s that?
██: What’s what, bitch? Fuck!
██.██.████ ██:██:17
The camera registers the creature barrelling downhill towards ██. He attempts to run but has no chance.
██.██.████ ██:██:48
A single strike from the creature throws ██ to the ground, he doesn’t move. ██, currently holding the camera turns it to ██. His eyes are already rolling back into his skull as his mind shuts down from observing a hostile 4-dimensional being.
██.██.████ ██:██:22
██ turns the camera towards the creature once more, the being can be seen slowly consuming ██ by drawing the man’s corpse into an orifice whole, clothing and all. The man behind the camera can be heard hyperventilating.
██.██.████ ██:██:49
██ falls over, the camera falls against some rocks and into a puddle of mud, but continues recording sound.
██.██.████ ██:██:11
The cry is heard once more, closer and louder than before.
██.██.████ ██:██:26
The creature cries out a final time. Shortly after the feed becomes corrupted before cutting out.
I’ve heard of that kind of creature before, yes. The interesting thing about it, is that you can find references to encounters with them all around the world. They seem to naturally slip through dimensional boundaries. And some number of them came to Earth. We’re not sure how many exactly or where they can from. But ah, all these references to them, you’d be surprised how many names I’ve seen them under. Let’s see, these are names you should know… Ghoul, wendigo, bunyip. Yeah, all those names, but none of them really belong to this creature. That’s what makes this kind of incident Black. What’s bad about them is the misinformation. It’s why you can’t trust what people say, sometimes it’s best not to, even when the incident is assumed to be White.
I asked an Elb once if it knows of these creatures. It said that they encounter them from time to time too and that they also don’t know where they come from, but they worm and wiggle their way through dimensions and…
You know what they call them? Meat-that-kills. A bit like the Elb word for human, in their own language, is meat-that-thinks. I find that flattering, more than anything else.
You had the three dead WeViewers, the two dead townspeople and then you had us, the Choir, prancing about like we were some kind of clandestine government organisation. There was no chance people wouldn’t start talking. And of course, the lighthouse got the blame. Or somewhat inside the tower, whatever, it was just the monster stories they usually make up. Really it’s better for them to make up their buka than to know what we ended up killing in that cave. A buka is a safe, familiar monster. Sometimes they make up their own rules that protect them from a buka.
You think they could have done anything to protect themselves from that? In a way, they got lucky that those kids went there and got themselves killed. It was still building its nest, and of course, that was territorial aggression. It wasn’t hunting yet. If it got to that part, we’d have a much bigger incident on our hands. There’d be a lot more dead — both from directly getting mauled by that thing and people bugging out due to seeing it. And believe me, that monster was a thing to behold. Just remembering the way it moves, makes my hair stand on end.
Well, it’s a shame they died, in any case. But in a way, those three ended up being heroes. Shame they’ll never be seen as such. They’ll just be doomed to being the victims of some lighthouse buka.
Esoteric Musings... 