Chapter 1

Riverloom was a green and pleasant land. To the west lay the Golor mountains, an ancient range whose snow-graced peaks were occasionally lost in cloudly contemplation. To the south rolled the endless ocean, bountiful provider of not only fish but also gorgeous shells and strange glassine structures much valued by the folk of Riverloom for their intrinsic beauty. The Great Marsh lay both east and north, an expanse of fens and swamps, moors and forests, uninhabited by people from time immemorial.

Riverloom itself was a gently rolling land of fields and farmsteads, laced with rivers and dotted with freshwater lakes. Food grew in generous abundance, so that no one was ever hungry. Indeed, all one had to do was reach out her or his hand to bring it back filled with an apple or a pear; more often with a wedge of pie or sandwich, for the people of Riverloom were gracious beyond measure, almost anxious to share their bounty. The people who farmed did so out of love for the earth, for the good black soil and the golden fruit of their labor. The folk who tended cattle and sheep, those who fished the lakes and the ocean, those who tended the mills --- all the people of Riverloom --- performed their tasks gladly, joyously, secure in the love and respect of their neighbors and assured of everything they needed for full bellies and a warm hearth.

And the people of Riverloom had no god. They had no one to turn to in time of difficulty and strife because difficulty and strife were unknown. They had no one to blame for shortage, no one to appease or beg forgiveness of, because there was no shortage and no one had done anything that needed forgiving. And they had no one to praise or bless, no one to worship, because their love for each other and their own lives left no room for anything else.

Away up north, further north than the people of Riverloom could ever dream of, were the gods. There in icy boiling squalorous splendor dwelt the gods of all other peoples and nations of the world. There were pantheons and avatars, demigods and demons, deified heroes and hell-dwelling villains. Gods and goddesses of rain and sun, love and hate, life and death, pain and pleasure; gods and goddesses of every stripe and description, overseeing human affairs and basking in or shrugging off praises and curses as they saw fit. Heaven and Hell were crowded places indeed.

Now, there was one god who felt he had a particular destiny. The god’s name was Fowzop, and he was the god of a nomadic people who called themselves the Yopwise, or Children of Tribulation. Fowzop’s people worshipped Fowzop, and Fowzop ONLY. Fowzop was the one true god (the Yopwise insisted) and to him belonged all honor and glory, forever and ever. Fowzop, being their god, could not help but be influenced by this mode of thought. In his unfathomable mystical mind’s eye, he envisoned the day, far far in the future, when he WOULD be the One True God, worshipped by all the peoples of the world, with the Yopwise as the emissaries of his heavenly beneficence. To this end he was interested in other peoples, and he often stayed up late talking with other gods and goddesses about people and their behaviors. In this wise he became aware of a legend among the deities of a people with no gods. The legend existed in a variety of forms, but it was widespread enough to convince Fowzop of its basis in reality.

One True Godhood could not be achieved, Fowzop knew, if there were unbelievers. Anywhere. But Fowzop knew not where to look. He searched everywhere he knew of. Wherever men had built an altar, wherever men had fought and died and cried in anguish, wherever men had suffered at one another’s hands, wherever nature and the elements had risen invincibly up against man and beaten hin down, wherever children died, there walked Fowzop. Anywhere the powers of Heaven or Hell had been invoked, called upon, questioned, pleaded with; all these areas were open to Fowzop’s wanderings. And as his searches led him further and further afield with no success, he came to realize that the people with no god were inaccessible to him. Gods may be gods, but they need sustenance; they cannot exist in a vacuum.