Ria Silmane was a powerful enchantress, one of the Elders of the Imperial Council, and a worthy successor to the Imperial Battlemage when Jagar Tharn elected to retire. She was also a friend of yours, your first tutor in the Imperial City. When she disappeared, you were the first person to notice and begin an investigation. You must have been getting close, for you were ambushed by agents of the Emperor and thrown into a cell deep within the sewers, with no food or water. It was there that Ria Silmane found you. Ria appeared to you as a spectre, for she too had been betrayed by the man who now, with the ultimate gall, dared to impersonate the Emperor: Jagar Tharn, her former master. The true Emperor was imprisoned by Tharn's magic. Only you would be able to find the flaw in Jagar Tharn's spell, free the Emperor, and expose the traitorous Battlemage. With Ria's help, you escaped from your cell, and under her direction, you began the quest for the Staff of Chaos. Tharn had used the Staff to imprison the true Emperor and had then broken it, scattering it in secure locations throughout the Empire. Nearly ten years passed while Tharn consolidated his power and Ria's spectral form slowly dissolved, but at last you found all the pieces of the Staff of Chaos and combined them to form the key to the prison of the true Emperor. The final piece of the staff was a gem hidden in the Imperial Palace itself. Jagar Tharn had surrounded himself with a host of guards, human and otherwise. When you at last reached the gem, you discovered why they had fought so furiously. The gem not only freed the Emperor, but it destroyed Tharn, for the Imperial Battlemage had used his own lifeforce to empower the Staff. When the true Emperor once again assumed the throne, he considered himself greatly in your debt. You were often called upon to investigate evidence of Tharn's aborted master plan, and though you discovered little of great relevance, you were well rewarded. Still, you were not often at court. The Emperor almost considered you a rare and valued weapon, to be drawn only away from others' eyes. When the Emperor told you of the haunting of King Lysandus, your instinct told you that the Emperor was not telling you the entire story. Nevertheless, even if he did consider you a friend, the Emperor's word was law, and you boarded a ship that very night for Daggerfall.