To call me a God is distasteful, though perhaps accurate. There is nothing that lives in this world that is greater than I. Indeed, This world did not exist before me. Still, I am not all-powerful. Above me exist my creators, and they have given me my duties as this world's creator. I have never seen them, nor have I been able to say a word to them, yet I can hear their messages. I am to make this place a fertile soil for their kind, a land built for their pleasure. They do not give me a deadline, just requirements.
First: The world must be large. A vast plain of opportunities so much so that when they pour in through their gates, even in thousands of years there must be new and fresh things to discover and explore.
Second: The world will obey the laws of their physical world. They must walk upon the ground and feel familiar.
Third: Magic will be an exception to the second rule and may act as a powerful force to create wonder and unique experiences.
Fourth: I am to make no creature in their likeness. They must be a unique form when they step through into this world.
Fifth: Despite their own uniqueness, I must take the plants and animals of their world and create inhabitants that inspire recognition and familiarity. I must shape mountains and seas and forests that bear the mark of their history and legends.
Sixth: This world I create must run by itself and be stable. It must be as real to them as the world they step out of to enter.
So in this void of possibility I have created it all. It is difficult, but I have made it and through the making it has become dear to me. The world thrives and flourishes. There is peace and harmony throughout. The land is so much the copy of what I have been shown that I did not feel the need to put much magic in; magic flows weakly throughout it and nurtures the creatures and the plants just enough for them to be strong and healthy. I will wait and see the joy of my creators as they gaze on it.
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My heart is broken. My idyllic paradise has been shattered by the words of the creators. They say to the cheerful, joyous god of this word to tear it down and start anew. They tell me to cast off this world from my care to let it wither in stagnation. What they want is a world of majesty greater than their own. They want magic to display power and create chaos rather than peace and prosperity. They say the creatures I have made are mere copies that hold no life from their stories, even though their stories violate everything that the second rule of physics dictates.
All they want are selfish results, and so they ask me to kill my creation, my child. They have not rushed me, perhaps thinking that I need time to understand their conditions, so I mourn. This world of mine is poised beneath my knife, and I hesitate. I wonder to myself, is there not another way? They have told me what to do, and I followed their orders the first time and that has led to sorrow. I can not bear the idea of creating another world like this with a possibility of its death. Perhaps there is still a way. . . .
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They do not realize it. I have tricked them, and yet I am still saddened. Upon my paradise, my child, I have loosed an apocalypse. By their understanding, this world was surely destroyed, and yet it remains to grow again. I have thrown beasts of pure magic in to ravage the land and sew chaos in it. The inhabitants, peaceful as they were, died in uncountable numbers. Some species were wiped to extinction, most were all but wiped. Where they once worshiped me in temples they now spit my name as a curse. My beasts of destruction are named after the creators, though I do not use their likeness, and so I get the pleasure of hearing them who forced me to this cursed along side me. In time more than their thoughts change. I let countless years of this chaos pass. The weak become strong enough to live, or swift and silent enough to hide, or even fast enough to reproduce past the ashes they turn into. With the new concentrated magic introduced, the landscapes of the creator's home is shaken into continuous change. One day there is a mountain and the next a creature with a magic over earth destroys it in a moment. One day there is a strong creature and the next its magic can no longer protect it from destruction. It is stable. There is no danger of it collapsing away to nothingness. This calamity is painful for me, seeing the things I love torn apart, but new things are born from the ashes every day to take their place. I let the chaos reign, and I wait for my creator's to judge it.
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Indeed, had I just created another world it too would have been destroyed. They have complained that this world is too fierce. They do not wish to step into a place where nothing lives but things opposed to life. Some of them complimented the beats names, while others asked to have their names removed from the beasts. Perhaps they feel guilt? No, impossible, it is another form of vanity. They want their names as some sort of benevolent deity or as a different form of monster. They wish to be loved when they have made a world like this.
What they really want, they say, is a world with more of a balance of the two they think I have created. They want magic to follow more rules, just like the second law. They are scared of its power. They want dangerous monsters in the world, but they want it to be safe from the constant chaos.
I need to do very little for the "next" world.
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The great monsters are asleep, and the lesser monsters have either fled to obscure places or changed. I have set their slumbers as deep as their destructive powers and driven them to high mountains and dark caves. Though, I should not say that I have done this myself. All I have done is given power to those that were weak. It is not a power that makes them strong, but a power that makes others weak. They have harnessed the magic and chained it to rules as I showed them. They first tried to speak the rules into the magic as I do, but they were not able to do so with my skill or power. They tried to write the magic on paper and stone, but it broke or was too cumbersome to use. They tried to force the magic into their own flesh, but few were able to handle the strain of much. Those that survived were either still too weak to challenge the monsters directly or became monsters themselves. Still, they persisted, finding strength in the pity for their weakness. They created fake life out of stone and wood and bone and metal that had magic pushed into them. They became skillful with their creations, although they suffered crisis after crisis. Some weak races died from their creations, some became overconfident and died to the monsters that still ruled, and others disappeared into the hidden places of the world with their work.
Finally, some tried to make tools to shackle the magic to their will. They made lifeless, brainless constructs that they acted as the heart for, pumping magic into them with willpower. With less power than the constructs, they originally thought the method a loss, even as it spread across the world. And then the heroes of the tribes rose up again. I say again for there had been heroes in the past, yet each had met a bitter end, only slowing the chaos for moments. Yet these heroes rose up to win against the monsters. Some carved caves that would seal a monster inside, others carved their seal onto the hides of the beasts themselves. Few could destroy a monster entirely, but it was done to the weaker of the terrors. The age of chaos collapsed and pockets of peace arose. It was not the grand peace of the first age, for the races and the land was scarred by the second age. There is no unity. This much is enough. Surely it is a good world.
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Even now they ask for more, these creatures above me. It may be their own pride and selfishness, but at least this time it is easy enough. They have looked at the world and said it was a good one, but still there remains one problem. They wish for their arrival to mean something, for there to be a place set for them when they take my world for their play-thing. My bitter heart would spite them, but I will obey. I can not do otherwise, but I can at least attempt to protect the world from their vices. I will give them their shrines from which to walk into this world. I will mold for them attributes that make them feel special and powerful against the dangers that still inhabit this land. They have told me not to modify the world besides giving them these things, but they have never told me that the gifts that I give can not spread through the world once they enter the world. It will start slowly, but there will be a way to fight against any injustice that spreads from these otherworldly beings. After all, these are the tribes that chained the mighty beasts and made magic their own. Heroes were born once, so they will be born again. And even if the heroes were to fail, The greatest monsters still only sleep. Beasts such as them will not forget the taste of blood if ever they were woken by some foolish adventurer seeking new sights.
I wait for the beginning of the fourth age with anticipation.
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