The Trial of Nurgle
The laughter had stopped.
When Joker awoke for his final trial, it was not to the scent of spice or the clang of steel, but to the suffocating stench of wet rot. Every breath was thick—like breathing through boiled corpses.
The air squelched. The sky above him was a seething wound, bruised green and yellow, dripping pus-light onto a fetid swamp below. Trees twisted in agony. Bloating flies big as skulls buzzed across bubbling lakes of filth. Insects nested in rotting cadavers that
whispered prayers in reverse.
This was the Garden of Nurgle.
And Joker had entered its heart.
"No jokes here," he muttered, eyes watering. "This place smells like Arkham's janitor closet after chili night."
A voice rumbled—like an obese thunderclap choked on syrup.
"You have come to the Garden, little thing."
"You laugh in the face of fear. You dance through death. But can you embrace forever?"
A Greater Daemon emerged—massive, diseased, impossibly bloated. A Great Unclean One, dragging a rusted bell by its gut. It reeked of love and plague in equal measure. Its smile was genuine, paternal.
"I am Gral'bub, Grand-Speaker of Papa Nurgle."
"He wishes to know… will you be his child?"
The Test of Decay
With a wave of its hand, the swamp shifted.
Joker now stood in a house—his old house—some twisted approximation of his life before the madness. Before the acid. Before Superman.
He looked down.
Harleen Quinzel sat on the floor, broken and smiling. "You can come back," she whispered. "We can forget it all. No more games."
He blinked.
In a corner, his dead parents sat in armchairs, sipping tea. Their faces sagged like melting wax.
"We forgive you, son," they said in unison. "We can be whole again."
The walls bled yellow light. Mold crept up his legs. The past coiled like a serpent.
"This is not funny," Joker hissed. "This is cruel."
The daemon appeared again, chuckling with mucus.
"No tricks. Just healing."
"We take the pain and make it quiet."
"We take the madness and turn it into… family."
The Temptation of Stagnation
The room dissolved into a hospital. Joker stood at the edge of a clean bed.
Inside it: Himself.
Or rather… who he might have been. A man. A father. No makeup. No blood. No scars. Just a man with peace in his eyes and no laughter in his soul.
"You can be this," whispered Nurgle's voice. "No more screams. No more blood. No more being alone in the crowd."
Joker stared.
And for a moment… he wavered.
"I could… stop."
"I could end the punchline."
But then something flickered—like static behind his eyes.
A scream.
A memory.
Superman's hand through his chest.
The Joker in the hospital bed opened his eyes—blue and empty—and said:
"You were never meant to be sane."
The image shattered.
The Joke That Killed
Joker fell backward, gasping, laughing hysterically through cracked lips.
"Oh Nurgle, you almost had me."
He rose on shaking legs, covered in mold, bleeding from the gums.
"You're not a god. You're a bad therapist with a fetish for fungus."
Gral'bub roared. "You reject peace? You reject the gift?"
Joker spit pus onto the moss.
"I reject everything. That's the joke, lardface."
"There's no cure. There's no home. There's no end. There's only me—and the laugh track echoing into eternity."
The Final Verdict
The Garden sighed.
The air shifted. The daemon receded into shadow.
A final voice echoed—not from the daemon, but from Nurgle himself.
"You are not mine."
"You have no stillness. No patience. You are decay in motion, but not my bloom."
"Yet… you carry the rot of meaning. The plague of irony."
"Speak, then. Let the galaxy fester in your shadow."
"But you are no child of mine."
A single fly landed on Joker's tongue.
He swallowed it.
"Bitter."
Return to the Void
And then, silence.
All four trials had ended.
He had stood before gods of change, desire, rage, and rot—and none had broken him. Two had marked him. Two had denied him. All had acknowledged him.
In the cold void between realities, Joker sat again, legs swinging.
Eyes sharper now. Laughter thinner. Smile deeper.
"I get it now," he murmured. "They think they tested me."
"But they only showed me their cards."
"Tzeentch plays chess. Slaanesh plays seduction. Khorne just punches the table. And Nurgle wants everyone to hug."
"But me?"
"I'm writing a new game. The rules don't exist yet. And the prize is the whole galaxy."
His fingers sparked with raw Warp energy—twisting into magic not even the gods could name. A mix of illusions, corruption, and weaponized irony.
Joker smiled.
"Time to find the first domino."