The Nurglings
| The Nurglings | |
| |
| Abbreviation: | Nurglings |
| Group Numbers: | 11 as of 10/26/12. |
| Leadership: | Ephraim Pitman |
| Goals: | Barhah is the path to freedom. Barhah is the way of meaningfulness |
| Recruitment Policy: | Stand in line for the bathroom |
| Contact: | We'll call you |
History of the Nurglings
The Nurglins were called to action by Ephraim Pitman so that zombies who willingly embrace the spirit of barhah could come together and fight against the intolerance of humans who continue to infringe upon their rights.
Zombies responded to a passionate call to actions by Pitman whose speech remains one of the best examples of the spirit that drives this group:
Dear Friends:
You have known me as Ephraim Pitman, the dissolute and obsequious heir of the Pitman family fortune. In this persona, I have encouraged you all to stand up against the restless corpses writhing through the bowels of Malton. And from our earliest days together, you have risen to the bloodiest challenges. Nearly six months ago, we abandoned dull, secure Augarde Street in Quarlesbank for the eternal battleground of Chudleyton. For nearly six months, we've been up to our armpits in an endless, cyclic tide of rotting gore.
Has it been glorious? Hardly. Caiger Mall is one of the last bastions of balance in Malton. Life and death have struck an ageless bargain here. It wears on me, my brothers, and let me tell you why. This little island of clockwork stagnation is a sign of the times. The trouble is not that Zack shambles forth again and again. This balance here belies a greater imbalance. Look out across the city and you'll see safe, boarded-up neighborhoods abandoned by the living with nary a rotter to tear it apart. The sad truth is that the quick outnumber the dead almost 2-to-1 and yet Caiger is ruined time after time. We survivors have not forgotten how to fight. We have forgotten why.
So today, I won't speak to you as Ephraim Pitman but with an older voice, the voice of Issachar Ward. I was once a man of mercy, once a troubadour of the apocalypse, and am now fallen. But what I found in falling was how to rise. Perhaps you have heard a strange word whispered in the dark or glimpsed it in the blood-smeared graffiti: barhah. It is a word from the other side; Zack brought it back with him. How can I give you a taste of barhah? Many if not all of you have slept the restless sleep and yet you never knew barhah. You clung to the slippery warmth leaking from your brains and knew nothing of barhah or else forgot. But I have died so many times, following the drone of humming generators back to the world of the living until the weariness of it became crushing.
In the coiled depths of my moribund cortex, it occurred to me at last: what if I didn't go back? This was my first inkling of barhah. Perhaps some of you have been tested by this same doubt, felt it sitting like a lump of human flesh in the pit of your guilty stomach. Ask yourself -- where does this doubt come from? Malton is a ceaselessly turning wheel, spinning an illusion of change. Perched upon a spoke, we pretend to have direction and goals. But look down at the wheel from above: the motion blurs the spokes and the wheel becomes a smooth, forever-featureless disc. The barricades go up, the barricades go down. Supplies are found and spent. The people are born and die and rise again and again in this meaningless prison. But they do not truly rise.
What makes this slavery possible? It is such a simple thing, a thing you have spent so much time thinking about but really you have never thought about it at all. The needle. The needle pins us to the whirling illusion, the endless cycle of punishment. The needle will not let you die nor will it give you more than a fleeting whiff of life. The needle is hypodermic despair, a vaccination against choice. Revivification dissolves the consequences of our actions, reducing everything we do to dumb vanity.
Barhah is the path to freedom. Barhah is the way of meaningfulness. But I'll warn you, there are rotters who are just as much prisoners as those caught in the turning of the wheel. You cannot rise without falling. And you who have labored in Chudleyton, fighting on the spokes of the wheel of punishment, you are ripe for falling. There are some of you who can be free. Who has the courage to start down the road towards Barhah? Any of you who do, come to Ridleybank. That is your homeland and there is great work to be done there.
---Ephraim Pitman
