Getting to Know the Nod Gods

These creatures known as Nod Gods began occupancy of my vision with my wholehearted consent. During the difficult time acclimatising to a harsh new school environment, I actively sought their presence and attempted - with much tentativeness at first - to inaugurate them into any schoolwork in which it would be practicable to carry off. Bringing Nod Gods into academic work was exhilarating; suddenly a depressingly dull assignment could be transformed into something amazing. The most exciting part was the devising of ways to legitimately introduce the Nod Gods into assignments without any overt incongruousness thus evading any reprobation from the teachers marking the work. Some subjects could be more potentially accommodating of Nod Gods than others. Work in 'Geography' and 'History' for example, would prove extremely averse to Nod God inclusion. The first subject where I chanced an appearance of the Nod Gods was in 'English'; the subject itself fosters creativity and the teacher, Mrs. D----, happened to be suitably enlightened. We were studying the famous Twelve Labours of Hercules, and our homework was to imagine oneself as Hercules writing a letter to Eurystheus describing in first person the enactment of one of the twelve labours. Labour number six involved "getting rid of the Symphalian birds" (and these birds bore metal feathers), so slipping two Nod Gods amongst the birds wouldn't be too discordant, would it? It is near impossible to read a Nod God's emotions to thereby ascertain whether it means well or ill well. Their hard-to-read mysteriousness (coupled with their minimalist features) can work in their favour when it comes to their 'cameos' in academic work, since they are not too strident to trigger any strong reaction. In this assignment, I considered these ambiguous, expendable Nods to be a sinister evil. I wrote:

"(...) Flying much lower than the birds were two heavy looking fleshy things about the size of big pigs. Nod Gods, they were. They were round like a sphere and shiny with sweat. They floated and wobbled through thin air, no support whatsoever. I slashed them with my sword and their guts were dark green. I then approached the birds with my sword drawn."

This tiny digression may not appear much, but it made me really nervous. Would the teacher notice anything unsound? Nod Gods, you may recall, were the result of 'slacking', i.e. doodling and extra-curricular activity. To bring them into a piece of actual academic work seemed very audacious, therefore to do it with earnestness, gravity and believability was of the utmost importance. Thankfully, the work was marked "v. good" by Mrs. D---- and this was an encouraging sign: it indicated that Nod Gods could be introduced literarily without any sense of wrongdoing. They appeared to be viable in an academic context! Also, there were no illustrations in this assignment, so the creative energies were wholly concentrated into the act of description - obviously demanding more dimensionality.

Meanwhile, in my spare time I started pondering more about the anatomy of the Nod Gods. Why were their guts dark green? Well, let's employ reasoning... Their weight and size immediately suggests that flying high above the ground is an unrealistic idea due to gravity, so the Nod God forages mostly along the ground and eats grassy vegetation - hence the greenness of their insides. But, as we shall see, not all Nods are herbivores. At home, I wrote a short document for my own personal records to get to grips with the physicality of the Nod Gods. Here is the full document (click the images to see the original):

About the Nod Gods and Poms

Nod God diagram:
(Paranthroptus)
The Nod God is sweaty because they can fly. The gluteus maximus muscles push out a jet of air at high pressure which enables these Nods to fly. However the sweat is caused by glands because the muscles have to work so hard to hover for a limited amount of time.

(Notice that the arms were added at a later date - about a year later (in 1995) when it became necessary to give the Nod Gods more self-sufficiency - no longer would they have to suffer the soreness that results from nodding oneself along the ground.)
Cross section [male and female Nod Gods]:

Nod Bud diagram:
(Cro-Magnonod)
As you can see the Nod Bud is more humanlike in appearance but is much stronger. The most fascinating ability of the Nod Bud is that it can morph into many simple shapes.

Pom God/Bud diagram:
(Rotheoptus-Maectnod Pom)
The Poms are very territorial. Their personality resembles early man yet they are able to adapt to the technological era. They can be very aggressive (look at their eyes). Basically the Pom God has exactly the same features as a Nod God except the eyes. The same goes for the Pom Bud; they appear exactly the same except the eyes. The Poms are a dying race. Usually the Poms are the older ones.

This brief anatomical study contains information on the variant species of Gods: Nod Bud - a humanesque capable of metamorphosis, and the Pom God - with inverted eyes signifying more clearly their general emotional state. The Pom Gods also had humanesque counterparts in the name of Pom Buds. Incidentally, none of these were new creations - all were devised simultaneously along with the original Gods back in 1992.
The existence of the Nod/Pom Bud humanesques explained how the Nod Gods' vehicles were built. They were possessed of stretchy necks. The Buds also waited upon the mobility-challenged spherical Gods.