The Righteous Horde

2009-03-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

The first outbreak that we became involved in was during the height of the Roman Empire. No one knows where the “disease” came from or why it spread so quickly. All we really know is that four champions came forward from the four corners of the eastern world to destroy those infected by any means necessary. On a mission from God, they would not rest until the diseased land burned from the might of their awesomeness. These warriors came together and formed the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. They and their followers then came to be known as the Righteous Horde, and this is their genesis tale.
Around the height of the Roman Empire, most of the common people lived a life of extreme decadence. With the creation of the coliseum and the frequency of mass orgies, Roman culture had degraded into one filled to the brim with violence and sex. Some people say that this lifestyle was the cause of the accursed disease. The pandemic was a punishment from the gods against their wicked ways. The first case went by unnoticed. A man stumbled out of a tavern into the back allies of Rome. He still held on to his cup even though it had been emptied long before. As he leaned up against the wall to take a leak, he noticed a shadow out of the corner of his eye. He dismissed it at first, but then he heard a shuffling sound that was coming towards him. He turned around and stood face to face with a being that belonged in the grave. The being looked human but only in shape. Its skin was grey and drawn tight over its bones. Flaps of skin hung off its face showing rotting muscle underneath. The man stepped back in horror as the beast took a swing at him with a gnarled hand. Stepping back had saved the man’s life. The hand, which had fingernails long enough to be called claws, was only able to graze his skin. The man reared back and smashed the cup that he had been holding into the creature’s temple. This made the being stagger back a few steps. The man decided to take this chance and run. He ran all the way back to his house where his wife and his newborn child were waiting for him. As soon as he entered the house he doubled over and vomited. He attributed this to the heavy amount of drinking he had partaken in and from the excursion of running all the way to his house. His wife made this assumption too. She ushered him to bed and she noticed the scratches he had received. They had turned black and oozed an unsightly black fluid that smelled of death. She dressed this wound and muttered something about taking him to a cleric in the morning. She put him to bed and went to clean up the mess made earlier. The man died during the night. And he rose in the morning. It is reported that he attacked his wife but she was able to escape with only a few cuts and scrapes. The child was never seen again.
From that point on, the infection started to spread rather quickly. Nobody in the Roman Empire could figure out how to stop these abominations. The soldiers would cut off limbs and even cut off their heads but nothing would stop them. The prayers to their gods went unanswered and more and more of the population were turned. It was at this time that the emperor decided to send 4 emissaries to the farthest reaches of the world to find people to combat the diseased. One went to the Eastern Europe, one to Western Europe, one to the barbaric lands to the east and one to the nomadic tribes in Africa. They told people of their plight and begged for assistance. They were turned down countless times and when each one lost all hope, a champion from each realm appeared to them—knights from Heaven. In eastern Europe, Khan, the great leader of a Slavic tribe, found the emissary and said that he would aid Rome in its fight; his great height matched the abundance of wisdom spewing from his mouth. A fierce and cunning warrior from western Europe named Odin came to the Roman emissary and pledged his aid,.. His long flowing red hair left the emissary in awe. The third emissary had given up on the east and was returning to Rome empty handed when he ran into a barbaric tribe ruled over by Isore, a beast of a man covered in hair. The emissary told Isore of the plight of Rome and Isore agreed to help. The last emissary had gotten lost in Africa's great desert. He was facing starvation and dehydration when a nomadic group of tribes men happened upon him. They nursed him back to health and took him to see Anansi, the leader of the tribe. He told the leader of Rome and how it was being over run and Anansi agreed to help.
Each of these leaders gathered up a group of their best warriors and they traveled back to Rome with the emissaries. The city of Rome was up in flames, so the emissaries led the warriors to a secret passage that led directly to the palace where the emperor was waiting. Once all of the emissaries had returned with their help, the emperor explained the situation to the four of them. In the time that the emissaries had left to find help, the number of undead had risen considerably. The emperor had called all of the soldiers from the farthest reaches of his empire to come and protect Rome. It did little but give the abominations more food. Luckily they had been able to keep the masses of living dead from infecting anyone outside of the city. However, they were unable to keep the rotting stench of decaying flesh from flooding all of the Mediterranean. The emperor then sent the four warriors with their followers to four different parts of the city where they started to destroy the masses of zombies. But after a while the four warriors discovered that no matter how badly you mutilate the body of an undead it would still rise up to look for food. The warriors and their men started to tire and each of the four lost many men and women to the undead. The four where loosing ground and the zombies were trying to get out of the city. The four could not let that happen. If even one zombie got out, the whole world would become infected. It was around this time when the four were shown a vision.
A child was being chased by one of the undead that had just eaten his older brother. He ran into a building with the zombie chasing him. The building suddenly collapsed around the both of them. The zombie was trapped under a slab of rock while the child suffered from a broken leg. Unable to move, the child just stared at the zombie in horror. He stayed there staring until the next day when he noticed that the zombie became more and more frantic. Eventually the zombie gave a horrible shriek, a shudder and then it died. It had been exactly a day since the zombie had last eaten. After the vision ended, a voice spoke to them and said “You know what you must do.”
This vision changed the beliefs and the tactics of the four. They decided that the only way to protect the rest of the world would be to destroy Rome completely, killing every living being inside its walls, and then seal it off until the zombies die of hunger. The four enacted their plan immediately, without telling the emperor. After going through the city and systematically killing all of the residents, they converged upon the palace. The emperor, who had learned of their plan, was there waiting for them. As the four advanced upon the emperor, weapons drawn, he tried to plead with them, to tell them that the mass killing of innocents was not necessary. He kneeled on the floor, begging for his life and lamenting over the lives of the people the four had killed. One of the four said, “After you, Emperor, Rome will be free of all living beings, and that will be the death of these abominations.” Still the emperor tried to get the four and their followers to stop. These lamentations did nothing to delay his death.
After the deed was done, the four and their followers set fire to all of Rome. They left the city and surrounded it, making sure that no zombies escaped. They stood there for a full day and watched the city burn. After the 24 hours were up the four called a meeting of all of their followers. They decided to create a religious order headed by the four of them called the Righteous Horde. They would stay behind the scenes and only come out of the shadows to fight again should there be another zombie infestation. The Righteous Horde would be led by The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, which is made up of Khan, Isore, Odin, and Anansi. Their positions were only to be taken up by their blood descendants and only in a time of need. The four and the Horde agreed upon this and the left Rome to rebuild for itself. And thus the conquering heroes stood: The Conqueror (Isore), The Bringer of War (Odin), The Reaper (Anansi), and The Bringer of Death (Khan).
Rome began to bebuild, but it was never able to reach its former glory. The instability the zombies had caused had shaken the Roman Empire's government to the core, and because of this, it split in two. While all of this happened, The Righteous Horde faded into the background only to come back in times of zombie infestation, using any method available to them to destroy the zombies. Throughout history many disasters have been attributed to the Righteous Horde and to the Four Horsemen. The fires of London in 1666. The Horsemen' way of keeping the food population down just like The great Chicago Fires in 1871. And now, at PC in South Carolina, there is word of a new zombie outbreak. The time has come for the decedents of the horsemen to bear the burden of their forefathers, to once again ride into the fray, rallying humanity under a single banner in order to unleash the fury of the Righteous Horde eradicate the zombie menace.

Meanderings

The Righteous Horde