Solution to Foundation's Collection

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Answer: HEADLESS HORSEMAN

by Dai Yang

The information in this puzzle is presented as a set of twenty articles written in the style of the SCP Wiki. Whereas the original SCP Foundation has a mission to Secure, Contain, and Protect its large collection of entities that defy understanding, the Foundation in this puzzle has a mission to Shelter, Care for, and Protect its collection of entities instead. Every article is about a fictional character, and contains the following common sections:

  • Item #: A redacted number used to refer to the character, with at most four digits.
  • Object class: A single word related to the character’s franchise of origin.
  • Special Care Procedures: Instructions on how to care for the character, i.e. shielding them from canonical threats and assisting them with goal realization.
  • Description: An account of the character’s physical appearance, date found (more on this later), abilities, and history; contains several redacted keywords each with a highlighted letter.
  • Tags: Aggregatable properties of characters such as object class, gender, and combat characteristics, usually a rehash of information from Special Care Procedures and Description.

By combining the information provided, solvers can identify the characters and fill in the redacted data. The characters are in sorted order by first name. Once the highlighted letters within the data are identified, they spell out a keyword related to the character, but with one letter missing.

Character Franchise Expunged Data Keyword
GENJI OVERWATCH
  • SPARROW
  • SHURIKENS
  • BLACKWATCH
  • RYUJIN NO KEN WO KURAE
AGILE
HANA UZAKI UZAKI-CHAN WANTS TO HANG OUT
  • UPPERCLASSMAN
  • SHINICHI
  • MEOWCRAFT
  • FLAG SEMAPHORES
LONER
HATSUNE MIKU VOCALOID
  • NECKTIE
  • RESTORATION
  • YAMAHA
  • AMPELOPRASUM
  • CATUS
  • EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI
CRYPTON
HOMURA AKEMI PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA
  • CONTRACT
  • SOUL GEM
  • REMINGTON M870
REDO
JUDY HOPPS ZOOTOPIA
  • NIGHT HOWLERS
  • LEODORE LIONHEART
  • SAVAGE
  • CARROT PEN
SHEEP
KAWORU NAGISA NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
  • THIRD IMPACT
  • ABSOLUTE TERROR FIELD
  • GENDO
  • TABRIS THE 17TH ANGEL
DOGMA
KONGO KANTAI COLLECTION
  • IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY
  • AUTOCANNON
  • KAI
  • SCONES
  • ADMIRAL
  • ABYSSALS
VICKERS
LEONE ABBACCHIO JOJO’S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: GOLDEN WIND
  • PASSIONE
  • ILLUSO
  • THOMAS
  • TRISH UNA
  • IRON
PISTOL
LEVI ACKERMAN ATTACK ON TITAN
  • WINGS OF FREEDOM
  • ANTI-PERSONNEL CONTROL SQUAD
  • ACKERMAN CLAN
  • VERTICAL MANEUVERING
  • YMIR
SURVEY
LIGHT YAGAMI DEATH NOTE
  • LIND L TAILOR
  • SHINIGAMI EYES
  • RYUK
  • ERALDO COIL
  • JUST AS PLANNED
DEDUCE
MIKURU ASAHINA THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA
  • TIME PLANE DESTRUCTION DEVICE
  • SOS BRIGADE
  • ENDLESS EIGHT
MAID
PHICHIT CHULANONT YURI!!! ON ICE
  • CIALDINI
  • BANGKOK
  • QUAD TOE LOOP
  • SURAYUD CHULANONT
  • DETROIT
FIGURE
REIMU HAKUREI TOUHOU PROJECT
  • SCARLET MIST
  • SAIGYOU AYAKASHI
  • HEART-SHAPED
  • BEAST SPIRITS
FLOAT
RYUJI SAKAMOTO PERSONA 5
  • SKULL
  • PHANTOM THIEVES
  • HEARTS
  • CHARIOT
  • CAPTAIN KIDD
  • TARUKAJA
  • JOURNEY TO THE WEST
SPRINTER
SAKURA FIRE EMBLEM FATES
  • MIKOTO
  • GANGLARI
  • SUBAKI
  • FALCON KNIGHT
  • RALLYING CRY
  • QUIET STRENGTH
MIRACLE
SHINNOSUKE NOHARA CRAYON SHIN-CHAN
  • MISAE
  • MASAO
  • SUNFLOWER
  • GENTARO KISARAGI
  • KAMEN RIDER DEN-O
MASKED
THANOS AVENGERS
  • STORMBREAKER
  • VORMIR
  • SPACE STONE
  • PERFECTLY BALANCED AS ALL THINGS SHOULD BE
TITAN
TOMURA SHIGARAKI MY HERO ACADEMIA
  • ERASER HEAD
  • TENKO SHIMURA
  • LEAGUE OF VILLAINS
  • QUIRK-DESTROYING DRUG
DECAY
WHITE BLOOD CELL CELLS AT WORK
  • HEMOGLOBIN
  • THROMBOCYTES
  • HEMOSTASIS
GERM
YOKO TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN
  • PINK
  • DAI-GURREN BRIGADE
  • BARRETT-M82
  • BEASTMAN WAR
  • LORDGENOME
SPIRAL

Together, the missing letters in the keywords spell GOOD SMILE DIFFERENCES. Good Smile is a company that produces figurines, in particular the Nendoroid series wherein every figurine is given a chronological ID number with at most four digits. This points to the fact that the Item # is simply the character’s Nendoroid ID, and the Foundation’s collection in this puzzle is actually a Nendoroid collection. Some characters are re-released as variants with different Nendoroid IDs, hence the articles for Hatsune Miku and Levi Ackerman have an Addendum section to clue which variant’s ID to use. Furthermore, the many dates and non-redacted Item #'s throughout the puzzle now make sense, and can be used to accelerate or double-check the identification process.

The next step is to figure out which differences to take. When sorting the Nendoroid IDs, solvers can notice that the IDs come in pairs that differ by a small number, which is always less than 26; meanwhile IDs in different pairs always differ by more than 26. This suggests that for each pair, the smaller ID should be subtracted from the larger ID.

Character Nendoroid ID Character Nendoroid ID Difference Letter
MIKURU ASAHINA 16 LIGHT YAGAMI 12 4 D
REIMU HAKUREI 74 YOKO 53 21 U
HOMURA AKEMI 182 HATSUNE MIKU: CHEERFUL VER. (2011 EDITION) 170 12 L
LEVI: CLEANING VER. 417 KONGO 405 12 L
GENJI 838 SAKURA 837 1 A
WHITE BLOOD CELL 979 PHICHIT CHULANONT 971 8 H
TOMURA SHIGARAKI 1163 RYUJI SAKAMOTO 1162 1 A
KAWORU NAGISA 1261 THANOS 1247 14 N
SHINNOSUKE NOHARA 1317 JUDY HOPPS 1312 5 E
HANA UZAKI 1454 LEONE ABBACCHIO 1447 7 G

Hence we get the clue phrase DULLAHAN E.G., which we can combine with the enumeration (8,8) given by the redaction boxes at the bottom to get the answer HEADLESS HORSEMAN.

Author’s Notes

This puzzle took me the longest time to write by far. Originally I had an idea to write Secure, Contain, Protect articles about anime characters with Nendoroids, but it became too hard to come up with containment procedures and more importantly containment justifications for most characters. Such procedures would make sense for characters with villain attributes like Light Yagami, but they are relatively rare in the Nendoroid line-up. So I changed the motto of this parallel Foundation to Shelter, Care for, Protect, and I think you will agree that these actions are fitting for such cute figurines.

I had little exposure to the SCP Wiki prior to this puzzle, so I binge-read SCP's in preparation for the writing process, in hopes of maintaining a somewhat consistent writing style. The articles for Homura, Light, and White Blood Cell were especially fun to write. I also enjoyed drafting articles for Kaguya Shinomiya and Luna Lovegood, but ultimately they had to be discarded from the final version to make the last step work out.