"I didn't acquire it as a separate thing. Lorkhan seemed to believe we all simply had that capability, regardless of our lack of experience with actually doing anything of the sort. What we could actually contribute varied widely; some of us were powerful enough to carve our own small planes, while others had to pool the effort of hundreds or thousands for their own little corner."

"Where did you get the ability?"

"For the skill, I figured it out as I was going. I don't know where I got the actual technical power, or if I ever didn't have it."

"Huh. What does it mean to be an accidental pattern -"

"If there's enough random chaos, some of it can at least briefly form coherent patterns just on pure luck. Things in that world happened entirely randomly if there was no intelligence around to guide them - I was essentially the result of several trillion rolls of the cosmic dice turning up lucky, and I was intelligent enough then to form my own patterns and influence my surroundings, allowing me to sustain my own existence."

"...huh. Can you rephrase 'pattern'?"

"Discrete concept, object, shape, being, image... 'Pattern' is fairly generic. Somewhat - if you wove a tapestry by selecting threads at random, and you kept weaving for eternity, eventually you'd get an image in it that looked like at least the outline of a person. Every discrete thing you can identify in the tapestry is a pattern in the underlying threads."

"Okay, but the outline-looking thing in the pattern wouldn't then move around."

"And then if you arranged the fundamental pieces of the universe at random - and you did this for eternity - eventually you'd get an object, existing in three dimensions, that has a mind and a body and can move. Minds are an emergent property where I'm from; you could say something similar enough to something that has a mind will begin to think on its own."

"You'd need - not just the mind and the body - also the conditions for it to stay alive in - for every mind that randomly started existing, only a tiny fraction of those can have survived -"

"I think most minds were more self-sustaining, in that world, but - yes. I don't know how many were lost."

"Self-sustaining? How?"

"The world was morphic, and responded to thoughts, so you could create an environment suitable for you, and keep it from being subject to the chaos. While you were paying attention, at least."

"How would a new mind know what it needed?"

"I had some instinct for it, but I don't know that everyone did."

"Does your original universe still exist?"

"I think so, but I haven't interacted with it, even indirectly, in millennia."

"Wasn't there anything interesting there?"

"There was, but traveling between universes is difficult for me, especially if I want to keep attention on my Realm - and running the Realm often takes up the bulk of my time. It's not something I can easily take a vacation from."

"What's involved in running your Realm?"

"Keeping the borders with the rest of Oblivion stable. Countering moves that the Daedric Princes unfriendly to me make to intrude on my territory. Diplomacy with the Daedric Princes neutral to me. Answering the requests and prayers of adherents. Keeping an eye on events in the mortal realm, and passing on relevant information to my priests. Passing on scientific information to my priests, and ensuring that the educations given to adherents are scientifically accurate. Making sure that when my adherents die their souls come to my Realm as they should, rather than being stolen - which sometimes involves fighting other gods and requires fairly constant vigilance - and then reembodying those whose souls I have collected. Sometimes I need to work with someone who has become dissatisfied with their body to change it. Also, sometimes someone desecrates one of my shrines, and I need to coordinate a response to that, or I need to guide someone in the consecration of a new shrine."

"There's also some other assorted tasks - for instance, I forced a fort into the Realm of Molag Bal, one of my enemies who's prone to torturing the souls he collects or steals. Currently it's mostly meant as a safe place to flee to; I can move anyone who makes it to the fort into my Realm. Molag Bal sometimes attacks the fort, and then I usually have to send a piece of myself to defend it."

"Sounds busy. What does consecration do?"

"It makes it easier for me to act in an area outside of my Realm. I'm connected to all my consecrated places, and can view, listen, and speak there, though I have trouble manifesting physically."

"Like you can't or like it's hard or like it's costly?"

"It's hard. I don't believe those of us who have managed the trick find it costly."