A colossal figure towered over all creation. He dwarfed all the life, the homes of the gods and even the entirety of the flat plain of dirt that Rizzleritchensteineonizziism had created one day ago. His rocky arms were like mountains and his flowing waterfall beard would put the Niagra Falls to shame. His name was Loma, the God of Geography and he had grown himself to an enormous size to look down over creation. Because he was going to shape a country.

With mighty hands outstretched, what he willed became true and land began to unfurl beneath him, springing up out of one of the six corners of the dirt expanse. Immediately, several infinitesimal beings poured into these new lands, eager to see new sights. These were the immortals, the first beings born of this universe.

Soon, springing up around them came lush grass, bushes and trees, the work of Naturum, Goddess of Nature. Loma had no doubt that she was not the only deity down below. He expected Scientia, the ibis-headed God of Knowledge, would be meticulously studying the work of the other gods, to record all the lore of this new land, and perhaps Damon, the angelic, silver god would also be there, monitoring the other gods and checking their work for flaws.

Aomy, Goddess of Civilisation may also be there, although, considering how late she was to the meeting and how long it took her to make her form, maybe she wasn’t. She’s consistently been the last to do anything, including creating her floating island, which held upon it a city of resplendent white brick, accented by blue roofs and gold patterns. In the centre was a huge domed temple, presumably her home. Rich, the God of Magic could be anywhere. He was a wildcard.

It was next to Aomy’s home that Loma was shaping this new landmass. Damon had instructed him that the dirt plains and the homes of the gods must be in the centre of existence, so each country he made must look like slice of the total pie of creation. Loma thought this was a bit limiting and thought that all these thin countries placed next to each other may look a little unnatural. But, well, Damon was the boss, so Loma made do.

Still, as vast as Rich’s slapdash landmass seemed to be at mortal size, it wasn’t nearly large enough to support several, even small countries sticking out of it. So, Loma made sure to start thin, then slowly expand the land as he moved away from the centre of Damon’s pie.

Loma was quite adept at maths, which turned out to be a blessing. Using some paper, pencils and other miscellaneous maths equipment he sketched out a rough draft of what the finished shape of what this pie continent would be, ensuring he left enough space for six countries. That seemed about right to Loma, 6 countries per continent, one for each god.

And then, once he was done with this continent Loma would ask Damon if he could make a more interestingly shaped continent. Even Australia and Antarctica, the two roundest continents from Earth are more interesting than the vaguely lumpy circle his continent would most likely become. Although Loma vowed to never make a continent like Europe. Seriously, what the fuck is up with the shape of Europe?

As he mused on the relative aesthetic strengths and weaknesses of continent shapes, Loma continued to work, willing new landmasses into existence with waves of his colossal rocky hands and before too long, he really got in the rhythm of it. With one powerful hand, a range of rolling hills assembled, with another, a mighty river flowed forth.

Loma looked down at his work so far, the country of his own design, built meticulously by his own hand and smiled. Okay, so it was basically just England, which took away a bit from his sense of accomplishment, its hard to feel like the world has been built to your cosmic whims when you were just copying the work of nature, but still, no matter what doubts he had about how involved he actually was in the process, it was hard not to feel incredible. He was shaping countries!

But also, it was very clearly England. It was planned to have about the same surface area, the bits to what he arbitrarily declared the south he’d created relatively flat, while the north he planned to be mountainous, although never as impressively mountainous as Scotland or Wales, and the various rivers and lakes were designed to hold the iconic British amount of rain.

Even what he saw of Naturum’s plants reminded him of the kinds of things that grew in the English countryside. He wondered if Aomy would create a society of snobbish upper-class folk and lower-class cockney folk. Probably not, considering the gods were doing the whole England thing because they were making what they were familiar with, and Loma expected Aomy probably hasn’t met a living English stereotype, but he would have found it funny if she had done that.

Also taking away from his still considerable sense of achievement was the fact that he wasn’t literally sculpting an entire country by hand. To be fair, the time and effort that would require would be enormous, so instead he willed into existence large swathes of land that would be shaped in accordance with what he deemed appropriate for that area.

It was like having a code that procedurally generated a random landmass based on his geographical desires except without all the actual fiddly bits of coding which Loma could never get the hang of, instead, will what you want into existence, and it shall be made.

This by no means made the country sculpting an easy task, at least in the eyes of Loma. Before even beginning to make land, he had to know what to code, and this was a lot harder than simply ensuring there were fewer hills down south and more hills up north. He had to ensure that ore was correctly distributed, so the humans weren’t stuck out the iron age forever and he had to ensure that rocks near rivers were porous enough for flooding to not get too severe and unduly damage human settlements, et cetera, et cetera.

And then, once the land had been made, he had to, keeping the coding analogy alive, ensure there were no bugs. Loma had played enough games with procedurally generated landscapes to know that often enough, terrain generation messed up, especially if the code was complicated. And this code was just about the most conceivably complicated code devised by man. Although Loma supposed it wasn’t devised by man. He was god now.

And so, Loma spent much of his time willing himself back to human size and inspecting his work by eye, or by willing certain bits of geographical information into his mind. Were these hills an appropriate size and shape in his eyes? In a draught, does the world contain enough water for most humans to survive? How would snow affect the landscape?

All these questions and more, Loma asked himself as he surveyed his creation, checking it for faults and… Wait. Snow, draught, flooding, iconic British amount of rain. Something clicked together in Loma’s mind. He looked up and saw a perfectly clear day, not even a single cloud in the sky. No one had made the weather.

Loma groaned an inhumanly deep rumbling moan as he searched his mind for anyone who would be able to make the weather. But out of civilisation, nature, magic, knowledge, geography and leader, geography clearly was the best suited to the job. Hell, he’d even undergone a fairly in-depth study of how rain worked during his geography A-level but… Well, Loma just really didn’t want to make the weather.

He’d signed up to be a geography god to shape worlds, essentially being a god of landscapes and the weather just wasn’t that. Making landscapes made him feel powerful and gave him great satisfaction, making the fiddliness worth it. Making the weather just sounded fiddly with no upsides.

Besides… He looked up at the sun above him to check the time. Huh, by its position in the sky it was still earlyish in the morning, around nine, meaning he would have time to get both weather and landscape done. But he was sure that when he’d woken up it was also around nine. Had no one made the sun move? But last night there was, well, a night and a moon. Maybe the sun just moved slower? Whatever, he’d ask the others at the next meeting of the gods, in the meantime, he conjured his phone back into existence to get a reliable source of timekeeping.

It really was a blessing to be able to conjure technology from their world into existence, Loma really didn’t know if he’d be able to live without it. Not that there weren’t limitations, of course. Whenever he’d try to use the internet to get any information past when he’d been brought to this new world nothing would come up, presumably a limitation placed on them by God. And that hurt. He’d really wanted to see how his family and friends were doing. Did they miss him? Had he been reported missing on the news? And just, what had been happening on Earth since he left?

But whenever he tried to check it was as if the internet had just stopped updating past a certain point and he was left unable to do little more than stare at old posts and pictures of his old home and reminisce. Wait, what was he thinking? He shook his head to clear those thoughts from his mind. He’d only been gone a day, he shouldn’t be thinking like this. Yes, his family was worried, yes that sucked and yes, he wanted to return, but he had a job to do. Besides… He looked back at the already considerable amount of land he had conjured from nothing, and his heart swelled with pride once more. It wasn’t as if there was nothing for him in this new world.

Fortunately, one of the features of his phone that hadn’t been limited was its ability to tell the time far more accurately than any physical clock and so he looked down at its home page. About three-thirty. He looked back at the land he’d made so far in deep contemplation. He’d made good progress, sure, but getting the amount of land he planned to get made done would still be a challenge, especially if he wanted to get a good bit of rest done tonight, which to Loma was non-negotiable, meaning… Yes! He would have to dump the problem of making the weather onto someone else.

But who? Loma thought for a moment before settling on Naturum. The weather is a natural thing after all and if geography includes weather because you learn about it in a geography course then nature should include weather because its natural. And so, temporarily leaving his creation behind he willed himself to appear next to Naturum.

The rolling hills of his England inspired country vanished and Loma found himself inside a room carved out from a tree. It had been furnished since Aomy visited, complete now with sofa, modest kitchen, table and chairs and a ladder leading up to what would presumably be the bedroom. Also within the room was a classroom sized whiteboard, scrawled upon which was a convoluted series of lines running between the names of animals and various random notes had been scribbled in between these lines.

Outside, Loma could hear cheerful birdsong as Naturum had gotten around to filling her floating island home with its own ecosystem and inside, he could a very loud scream as Naturum, who had a moments prior been staring intently at her whiteboard, fell off her chair in shock.

“Jesus Christ Loma, you gave me a heart attack!” she cried. “Or would it be son of me? This whole replacing god with me thing is really starting to fall apart. Not gonna stop doing it though! How have you been?”

“Good, good. And uh, sorry about the shock” he apologised.

Naturum got up and began to pick up the chair she had been sitting on. “Nah, don’t worry, its fine. I presume you have a good reason for visiting my humble abode. Without knocking.”

Loma’s look of guilt intensified. “Ahhh, yeah, sorry again” he apologised again. “In my defence I thought you’d be outside.”

Naturum had sat down at this point and conjured up a new seat behind Loma. “Ahhhhhh, makes sense. I have been outside most of today but-“ Naturum was interrupted by the sound of splintering as the chair Loma sat down upon shattered under the weight of what was essentially mountain made man. She giggled and cried “HA HA, revenge!” Loma gave her a reproachful look and she continued by saying “Okay, I’m sorry, couldn’t help it. Here, have a better chair.”

As she spoke, she conjured another chair behind Loma and once he’d properly tested his weight against it he sat down. “Okay, so where was I?” asked Naturum to herself. “Ah, right. Yeah, I’ve been outside most of today making sure all the plants look good but once it came to animals everything got a bit tricky.”

Loma nodded. “Being a god is surprisingly finnicky.”

“Oh my me, yeah it is.” Agreed Naturum. “Except I didn’t realise how fiddly it’d be at first, so I was just throwing animals into the ecosystem as I thought of them, cos y’know that worked for plants. So, I threw some birds into the trees and moved on and decided to create some worms. The birds, having nothing else to eat immediately swooped down and BAM! Worm population was just devastated.”

“Ah”

“Yeah. Poor things.” Naturum looked down for a second before brightening. “Still at least they didn’t suffer much. I don’t give a shit about what Damon said about not making this world a utopia, I’m making shit as nice as possible for my animals. They have increased happiness levels compared to animals from our world which I’ve heard are surprisingly depressed, but they still act how an Earth animal would. Plus, I did a thing where animals brains shut down moments before they enter the painful part of dying, y’know being attacked or like, entering the final moments of disease. Its like a mercy thing, the kind of thing that wouldn’t be possible without the presence of gods who can install rules that take being able to know the future into account.”

“I see, that’s nice” mumbled Loma, who, truth be told, was starting to feel increasingly out of place in what was quickly becoming Naturum’s passionate nature monologue.

And she was showing no signs of slowing down just yet. “Yeah. Anyway, I froze those birds and all the other animal life I’ve made so far in time, so nothing can interact with them while I build a proper food chain. That’s what this whiteboard is for. I’m sticking every animal I can think of that would work well in an England style environment onto the board, connecting them by what they all eat, adding any complications in notes around it and once I think its complete, I’m gonna will them all into existence, in the numbers that my god powers will have calculated that they would reach given say, 1000 years of existing within this ecosystem and then BAM! Ecosystem numero uno complete!”

Loma really hoped that this was the end of her speech but couldn’t help asking one more question that might prolong it. “So, are you just going with animals that actually come from England, right? No fantasy ones?”

Naturum looked surprisingly dejected for a moment. “Okay, so I really wanted to go in, guns blazing and just make a shit ton of dragons but like, that’d probably have a really big effect on the ecosystem, so I’m saving fantasy creatures until last, cos then it will be easier to assess how well they fit. I’m really hoping that I can add some today but it all really depends on how quickly I can get the regular, Earth-y ecosystem done. Also, probably won’t be able to make dragons here. They’d be too ecosystem warping. If I don’t add any today, I’ll probably retroactively add some later. Definitely gonna make a ton of fantasy creatures for all the other countries we’re gonna make over the course of however long we’re stuck here in this shitty universe.”

Loma nodded. “And errr, how busy are you?” he asked.

“Oh my me, so busy” she cried. “Why do you ask?”

“I was hoping you’d be willing to make the weather for me. I’d do it, but I don’t have much time left to build the rest of this country. I made notes.”

Naturum looked thoughtful for a moment before looking out her window to check the time. She quickly realised her mistake and willed the knowledge into her mind. “Ugghhh, I’m sorry” she said, looking genuinely apologetic. “But I’m not confident I’ve got much time left to complete this ecosystem myself. There’s a lot to research and a lot of making sure that introducing X animal won’t fuck everything up for Y animal and so on. It turns out that a lot of things live in the UK. Who knew?”

Loma smiled, albeit slightly worriedly. “Nah, don’t worry, I’m sure I can find someone else” he lied. “And I presume you? And I guess me, although I couldn’t tell you any specifics.”

“Oh I could tell you SO many specifics” replied Naturum. “Did you know we have scorpions? Not many of them but we do. Also, wallabies.”

“What? No way does England have wallabies.”

Naturum laughed. “Think again, Loma. There’s a colony of them in the Isle of Man. Also, there’s some in Scotland but, y’know, that’s not England. Both times they were introduced to Britian by humans, they’re not native, so I’m not adding them to this ecosystem probably. They’re just gonna have to wait if they wanna exist, until we make an Australia equivalent country.” She looked thoughtful again. “Or I suppose, if we make an Australia equivalent country. I hope we won’t.”

Loma smile went from worried to confused. “You don’t?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing against Australia!” Naturum cried in response. “Just, I hope sooner rather than later we get really good at this whole worldbuilding thing and start making really fantastical landscapes, the likes of which we could never see on Earth. Making ecosystems for places like that would just really be a good creative outlet for me. Plus it would mean I’d have to think about Earth less…” Naturum’s voice trailed off as she began to stare into space.

“Errr, well, okay, I’ll leave you to this then” said Loma somewhat awkwardly. “See you later.”

“Huh? Oh, right, bye” replied Naturum as Loma winked out of existence.

Instantly he was back, standing on his earthen hills, breathing in the fresh (in more than one meaning of the word) mountain air and he sighed. Who next? Scientia, he was the god of knowledge, he probably knew how weather worked, and he probably wasn’t very busy because his job was one of the least important ones. Loma willed himself to appear by him but found he could not. Strange.

Maybe Damon then? He also probably wasn’t very busy, and Loma thought he could probably ask him for a favour. But when he tried to will himself to him, he found that also wouldn’t work. Very strange. And that just left Aomy and Rich. Hmm. The weather was kind of like magic, right?

Wrong. But Loma was quickly running out of options, so he decided to will himself to wherever Rich was. Although, maybe to prevent another panic attack, he should message ahead first?

“Hey Rich” called out Loma, projecting his thoughts straight into the god of magics mind. “Do you mind if I teleport over to you? I’ve got some stuff I want to talk about.”

“SURE!” came Rich’s deafening reply, the thought boomed into Loma’s mind like a million fireworks exploding at once. Loma decided to immediately will himself to Rich before he decided to send anymore thoughts his way.

This turned out to be a bad idea because upon arrival Loma was deafened anyway by the sheer noise of Rizzleritchensteineonizziism the first ever’s home. Well, presumably his home. Judging by the view out the window Loma was in the chaotic vortex that encircled what was presumably Rich’s floating island. There was a bunk bed, beneath which was a computer, a desk and piles upon piles of strewn about bits of paper, which all seemed to point towards the fact this was his home.

But Loma wasn’t thinking about any of these things, all his thoughts had turned to the sheer sensory overload of the lights and the sounds of this place. The whole room flashed with light, alternating between bright colours, the type you’d expect at a party except cranked up to eleven and the music was deafening, and sounded to Loma like a confusing mashup of classic late nineties songs.

“RICH!” shouted Loma.

The god in question was lying in his bed, fiddling with some kind of… glowing rock? He leaned down to look at Loma. “YEAH?!” he yelled back.

“TURN THAT MUSIC OFF. PLEASE!” cried Loma.

“NO!!!” yelled Rizzleritchensteineonizziism. But he did turn the sound down a considerable amount.

“Thank you.” Loma was clearly shaken by the experience of just existing in Rizzlerich’s room for mere moments. “How do you think in those conditions?”

Rizzleritchensteineonizziism grinned. “I think very loud thoughts!” he exclaimed. “What did you wanna talk to me about?”

“Right, right” panted Loma, still needing to take a breather after the assault on his senses moments prior. “I need someone to make the weather for me because I don’t have the time. I have my A-level geography notes on how it all works here. Could you do it for me, everyone else is busy.”

Rizzle looked hurt by this comment. “Are you implying I’m not busy? I got magic to make.”

“I mean, everyone else’s jobs are somewhat time sensitive. You can implement magic whenever, right?”

Rich looked thoughtful for a moment. “New problem. Making the weather sounds boorrrinnngg.”

Loma agreed completely but he had to sell Rich on this or else this new England he was making would be a great deal smaller and he would have to be the one to make the weather. “It can be quite interesting” he mumbled unconvincingly.

As he spoke the mashup faded out and was replaced by what Loma didn’t know was a nightcore remix of a pop song he equally hadn’t heard of.

Rizzleritchensteineonizziism stared incredulously down at the mountainous god. “If a rando was given the option between making magic or the weather” he spat the word weather out with clear disdain. “Which do you think they would pick?”

Loma would pale if he had human skin. “Well, maybe they would choose to make the weather out of a sense of responsibility?”

Rizzleritchensteineonizziism laughed a single mocking laugh. “Responsibility!” he cried. “Responsibility is a lie made up to guilt people into doing something that the person telling the lie should have already done! Responsibility isn’t reealll.”

That cut surprisingly deep. Desperately Loma exclaimed “Look, please, this has got to be done. You have my permission to make the weather as interesting as you like, take liberties with my notes, do whatever!”

Rizzleritchensteineonizziism’s eyes gleamed with a somewhat manic light. “Done! One condition though.”

All tension immediately loosed from Loma’s body. “Anything.”

“Say. My. Name.” The grin on Rizzleritchensteineonizziism’s face had once more stretched off his face.

Loma immediately re-tensed. “Rizzle-ritchen-stein-eo-nizzi-ism?” He stumbled hopelessly over the half-remembered syllables.

“The weather shall be made, you have my word!” cried the chaotic god.

“Thank god!” cried Loma in response before immediately teleporting back to his comforting simple landscape. He really hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. He did not like that gleam in Rich’s eyes.