This bugs me. A lot.

Arena set up the Staff of Chaos as if it would be the most powerful and significant magic artifact in the Elder Scrolls universe, the Elder Scrolls equivilent to the Legend of Zelda's Triforce or the Lord of the Rings's One Ring. And then the sequals come out and it just sort of falls off the face of the Earth.

Where is the Staff of Chaos now? What happened to it after the Emperor was freed? Was it destroyed? Was it locked up somewhere? Do we know?

I searched the Imperial Library on the subject, but all I could find was the Staff's backstory and its involvement in the main quest of Arena, nothing about what happened afterwards.

I think Arena tries to infer that the Staff of Chaos, along with the Jewel of Fire, were both destroyed, and the staff was absorbed back into the land.

However, as people here often are wont to say, it's Arena. It cannot be trusted.

Its never really said what happens to it. At the end of Arena it starts to spin and a portal opens that frees the Emperor, then we just don't see the staff anymore.

I hope we don't really see it again. All powerful objects tend to lead to all too simple plots.

Wasn't it made by the Marukhati Selective, when they danced on the tower?

The Staff of Chaos simply is.

You mean from the Complete WWYWTD? That's just a stray metaphor. The staff of Chaos was made by Loreth in the First Era.

When the Selectives danced, they tried to channel the Aurbis itself. As a metaphor the Staff of Chaos, being made of eight parts of the world, can be seen as the prototype for the Wheel and indeed When observed sideways the Wheel comes away as a Tower -or a Staff-, the Eternal I, that which the Selective attempted to channel.

Wait, so the Staff of Chaos is a Tower?

You mean like the Amulet of Kings? Or Kagrenac's Tools?

Think it got destroyed and Arena can be trusted it is the first game so it is relible and bethesda mucked up the lore in oblivion so the emporer might have been the 4th emporer just cos oblivion says so, oblivion is the one that cant be trusted

I was talking more about knowing exactly what you are doing from the very beginning. Amulet of Kings definitly falls into this catagory. In the case of Sunder and Keening we didn't hear about those till effectively the endgame of the main quest.

The entire main questline is based around Kagrenac's Tools, though. In fact, you can skip straight to the tools without doing anything that happens before hand.

The word you're both looking for is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin.

In Oblivion's plot, the amulet of king is clearly a MacGuffin.
But in Morrowind's plot, the Kagrenac's tools aren't. It's the Nerevarine himself that plays this role.

In the Real Baranziah, I think they mention some Horn of Summoning, and they were all like "phew, good thing he (Tharn) only has the Staff of Chaos and not the Horn", so maybe this Horn dealy is more powerful?

It's suppose to be trusted to Mournhold, right? Maybe Helseth knows what happened to it, and being Helseth, he wouldn't advertise it until the most advantageous moment. That's assuming it is still whole.

I believe that's the case, since both are nowhere to be seen after Uriel and General Warhaft are released from Oblivion. Perhaps even destroyed entirely in that surge of energy.

Of course, in Arena, everybody except Ria/Tharn spoke in Olde English. All in all though, what little lore Arena contributes is relatively solid and has yet to be contradicted. Much more than Oblivion can say for itself. :foodndrink:

Not to rain pieces of Indoril Brindisi Dorom on Mournhold (again), but they showed they were unworthy of holding the staff the first time. If I were the Empire, it'd be sealed in the Imperial Palace, which is (supposedly) impenetrable.

Nothing is impenetrable!

Not even Azura. :shifty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP4s4fWyoW0