Our episode this week begins, really, in the year 368 of the Third Era, at the death of Pelagius IV. Upon his death, his son Uriel VII assumes the throne, and he will unwittingly become one of the major characters in our episode this week. We might remember that Pelagius IV, during his reign, the Empire was still in the process of unifying itself, which continues for the most part throughout the reign of his son. It is said that Uriel VII has the diligence of his grand-aunt Morahatha, the political skill of his grand-uncle, Uriel VI, and the military prowess of his great-grandfather, Uriel V.
Under Uriel VII's watchful eye, the Empire would prosper, again, for the most part. His life was not without incident. In fact, two of the most major crises that takes place in Tamriel's history occur, with him being kind of an unwitting member of the story. So, in 389, Uriel VII, along with Talon, the leader of his Imperial Guard at the time, is summoned by Jagar Tharn amidst rumors of treachery at court.
Jagar Tharn is, of course, Uriel VII's Imperial battle page. Little do they know, of course, that this treachery that Jagar Tharn speaks of is much closer than they can imagine. This is the Elder Lore Podcast, and in our episode this week, we are talking about the Imperial Simulacrum. Our entire episode will basically be spoilers for the game Arena.
Arena, as you may or may not know, is the first entry in the Elder Scrolls series. I believe it came out in 1994. Although you can go back and play it, it's based on a DOS operating system, but you can find installers that make it all very easy to use. And it is, of course, free to download at Bethesda's website.
So if you are planning on going back and playing it, you might not want to listen to this episode. But if you want to know what happens over the course of the game, without going through the hassle of installing it, which isn't really much of a hassle at all, then this episode is for you. Back to our story. Jagar Tharn, the Imperial battle mage to Uriel VII's court, he has summoned Uriel VII, along with the leader of his Imperial Guard, Talon, to court, under the pretense that he will be exposing some kind of plot.
Of course, when they arrive, Jagar Tharn uses the fabled Staff of Chaos to whisk the Emperor and the leader of his Guard to an unspecified realm within Oblivion, and uses his mastery of illusion magic to disguise himself as the Emperor. The nefarious plan works remarkably well, and it would in fact be ten years before anybody would notice that he was not in fact Uriel VII. During this time, the Empire falls apart. All of the unification that Pelagius IV had worked for and his son Uriel VII just all comes crumbling down.
Morrowind and Blackmarsh descend into violence in what would later be called the Arnisian War. The War of the Bendermach sees fighting between Skyrim, High Rock, and Hammerfell, and elsewhere takes up arms against Valenwood in the Five Years' War. Somerset Isle marches against Valenwood and takes some of their land into conflict that would be known as the War of the Blue Divide. As is commonly believed nowadays, at least, Jagar Tharn had been none other than the Bard known as Nightingale, who sings at Berenziah's court in Mornhold.
Supposedly, he does so so that he may charm his way into not only Berenziah's bed, but also Mornhold's basements, where he finds and steals the Staff of Chaos, the staff he would later use to whisk away the Emperor into Oblivion. Rhea Silmein, who was the apprentice to Jagar Tharn, tries to go immediately to the Elder Council to expose Jagar Tharn's plot, but is quickly overpowered by Tharn himself and imprisoned. Eventually, again using the power of the Staff of Chaos, he decides that she needs to be disposed of. After the deed is done, Tharn decides that the only way he will be safe is that he has to destroy the Staff.
This is basically impossible as he eventually finds out. The Staff, which is also called Balak Thurm, was created by Loreth, apprentice to the powerful enchanter Dalak, way back in the first era. The only way Tharn can be rid of it is to segment it into eight parts and scatter them around Tamriel, leaving the pieces in some of the most forgotten and dangerous places he can find. Despite being dead, Rhea Silmein is a powerful enough mage that she can keep her consciousness intact for long enough to seek out help by visiting our hero in his dreams.
And this is how the game begins. Of course, as is what we know now as usual behavior in the Elder Scrolls universe, she finds her unlikely hero in a deep and dark dungeon. She appears to them in a dream and provides them with a means to escape, a key to the door. It is the first, but certainly not the last time, Silmein appears to our hero in a dream.
In fact, she will be the primary guiding voice in the hero's life, helping him to find his way to rescue the Emperor and to thwart Jagar Tharn. The first step in this quest is to reforge the broken Staff of Chaos. Staff is the key to Uriel VII's imprisonment, and as a result, of course, is the key to rescuing him. Upon escaping the dungeon, aided again by Rhea Silmein when she opens up a shift gate for our hero to pass through, the quest begins in earnest.
The first location that the deceased sorceress sends our hero to is Fang Lair, an abandoned drummer ruin in Hammerfell near the city of Rahad. The hero descends into the ruins, battling back all manner of beasts, and recovers the first piece of the Staff. Upon finding it, however, our hero receives a vision not from Rhea Silmein, but from Jagar Tharn himself, who says, I do not know who you are, but you have made a fatal mistake. I have sent my minions, ones worthy of the attention you deserve, to relieve you of the burden of the Staff you now hold.
Give it to them, and I will order your death painless and quick. Resist, and I shall see you in such suffering that you will grovel for the sweet release of death. And of course, at the end of the vision, our hero is joined by Tharn's minions, who try to put an end to him, or her, for that matter. Finding the second piece of the Staff will take us to a location which may be familiar to those of us who have played Skyrim, Labyrinthian.
For those of us who have not played Skyrim, or maybe haven't found the location yet, Labyrinthian is an ancient Nordic ruin in the Hjalmarch. It used to be a kind of mecca for members of the Dragon Cult, having once been the city of Bromunar. So it is that Tharn uses it as a hiding place for another piece of the Staff, and Rhea Silmein directs our hero to its caverns to recover it. The mages in the Skyrim Mages Guildhall in Winterhold, which has not yet been replaced by the College of Winterhold, point us in the right direction.
Our hero again fights their way through enemies, and recovers the second piece of the Staff. Upon exiting the city, Tharn interrupts again, saying, You have survived the Labyrinthian, a place most dire. Continue along this path, however, and you will face such things as to make your very heart freeze. I will save you the ordeal for my servants approach you even now.
From your mangled corpse, they will take what is mine. End quote. From Skyrim, our hero heads to Valingwood, again at the advice of Rhea Silmein to the Elden Grove. The Elden Grove is a place sacred to the Wood Elms, the Bosner.
The environment of the Elden Grove is indicative of much of Valingwood, barely navigable dense rainforest. At some point, in fact, our hero has to travel by rivety boat in order to better get around, for there are few roads. Again, upon finding a piece of the Staff and exiting the Wood, Tharn jumps in to threaten our hero and send his minions to kill them. Tharn says, Why do you choose to align against me when it is obvious that I will destroy you?
Even as a piece of the Staff comes into your possession, it becomes easier to find you, and I have done just that. Face my creatures if you dare. I am through coins. The fourth piece of the Staff is located eastward and neighboring elsewhere, in the Halls of the Colossus.
Rhea Silmein says, I have divined the location of the fourth piece of the Staff. It lies in the Halls of Colossus, a structure built to honor a race of giants, though none have been seen in the land for ages. It is said that the Halls of Colossus sat perched on a cliff overlooking the Great Divide, which is along the southern edge of Tamriel. Again, our hero braves monsters and the undead, and again our hero recovers a straight piece of the Staff.
Tharn says, It is obvious, whoever you are, that you are a cunning and worthy foe. I will not insult your intelligence with further digression. My minions soon approach, but I will not consign you to the Dark Door of Death. You have proven your worth.
Once you are killed, I will raise you to fight for me as one of my servants. Give in to me now, and I offer you everlasting life. We know, of course, that Jagar Tharn is a powerful mage. We know this because A, he is the Imperial Battlemage to Uriel VII, B, because he had the ability and the know-how to teleport Uriel VII away into another realm and maintain the illusion spell that disguises him as the Emperor for ten years.
We see now, in the form of this threat, that he is no novice at necromancy as well. The next time that Rhea Silmain contacts our hero, the message is dire indeed. She says, You have recovered the fourth piece. I honor your bravery.
Listen closely now, my friend, for Tharn has begun in earnest to look for you. Do not fear. He does not know your true identity, but he can sense the staff's power. With four of the eight pieces, you stand out like a lantern at night.
I urge you to caution. The fifth piece of the staff lies in an ancient stronghold of sorcery called the Crystal Tower. As our hero soon finds out, the Crystal Tower is an ancient seat of magical power built by the Aldmer in Somerset Isle. Constructed long before the Arcane University, it served as Tamriel's pinnacle of magical learning.
Supposedly, the tower did not only exist in Tamriel, but stretched far into other planes of existence as well. It held a great library, a cemetery, and even a menagerie of Tamriel's various creatures. Basically, a zoo. Despite the trolls, who were tamed by the Aldmer to use as guards of the tower, the hero does, in fact, find and retrieve the fragment of the staff.
From the Crystal Tower in Somerset Isle, our story next takes us to High Rock, the so-called Crypt of Hearts. In order to find the Crypt of Hearts, our hero will first have to find a map to the location. In the process, they will have to help out the Brotherhood of Seth. You find out from the Brotherhood that one of their brothers, Brother Barnabas, recently went a little crazy and went off into the wilderness with the map to find the Staff of Chaos.
Brother Barnabas, apparently, was raving about the kidnap of the Emperor and how the staff was needed to free him. But the other brothers, seeing no problem with the Emperor, the quote-unquote Emperor, obviously thought that he had gone mad. Our hero finds the map along with the remains of Brother Barnabas and you head for the crypts. Needless to say, of course, you may be beginning to see a pattern here.
Our hero finds and escapes with a fragment. He now has six pieces, two more to go. There are only two more provinces in which fragments might be hidden and, of course, it corresponds very nicely to the two remaining fragments. Our hero has yet to travel to Morrowind or Black Marsh.
So, our hero's next move is to head to Stormhold in the province of Black Marsh. The fragment is found in the hazy and almost impenetrable forest of Mirkwood, the legendary forest that ever moves. I do also want to mention that Mirkwood, in this case, is spelled M-U-R-K rather than the more Tolkien-esque Mirkwood of M-I-R-K. When it comes to finding the forest, the Conclave of Baal is there to help, but in order to divine the forest's location, they must first read an Elder Scroll.
Upon finding the piece, Jagar Tharn, in one of his ubiquitous communications with our hero, gives them the location of the final piece, saying, You amaze me with your tenacity. It boots nothing to avoid my snares, for this game is at an end. The final piece of the staff is in Dagoth-er, in the province of Morrowind. The information is useless to you, for none know the entrance to the volcano, and even if you survive the creatures I have sent against you now, you will not survive its deaths.
When Tharn refers to Dagoth-er here, he is referring to the structure, the facility, and not the person itself. Our hero needs to find an entrance to the facility, which is very much secret, which lies hidden at the heart of Red Mountain. When our hero finally finds it, they retrieve the piece of the staff from the center of a lake of lava deep within the volcano, and Tharn appears to drop a bomb on you. He says, Have you discovered, however, what I have known all along?
The staff is drained of all magical potential. I did it myself, before scattering the pieces across the realm. It is a useless stick, good for churning butter or rowing a boat, but not for saving the Emperor. Come find me if you dare, and I will relieve you of any further burdens you may think to face.
My legions await. There is, theoretically, a final message from Ria Selmy, although, due to a bug, it does not appear in many versions of the game. But, it is interesting nonetheless. This final communique reads, I had expected that with all eight pieces together, the staff of Chaos would activate and free the Emperor.
None of this has occurred, and I finally know why. Held by Tharn is a gem of the rarest qualities. Legend has that it is a star falling from the sky, for it glows with an inner flame. This is the jewel of fire and the crucible of Tharn's life force.
It is also the thing in which Tharn has suffused all of the energy of the staff. If you can touch the staff to this jewel, the release of that combined energy may be enough to destroy the staff and open the gate between worlds. If you are successful, Tharn will no doubt be destroyed as well. There is only one way to get this jewel.
You must make your way to the Imperial. palace and find wherever tharn has hidden it be warned once inside tharn will throw the full might of the palace guards and those creatures made to resemble the imperial guard against you they are but puppets of tharn's machinations have mercy on them for they know not what they serve with tharn however such care need not be taken if you are successful a dimensional door should open free the emperor with the jewel drained of energy tharn should also perish and so at long last our hero finds their way to the imperial palace at the heart of cyrodiil at the center of the wheel of the imperial city tharn's expertise as a necromancer takes form here as our hero carves their way through legions of undead and other liches tharn will throw everything he has to stop our hero from joining the staff with the jewel but in the end of course he is unsuccessful the interdimensional portal opens draining the jewel of its power and killing jaguar tharn and freeing the emperor uriel the seventh and the head of his imperial guard talon who is very excited to not be stuck in oblivion any longer whether or not jaguar tharn is actually dead is a bit of a matter that is up for debate but at long last the imperial simulacrum has ended the imperial simulacrum itself the phrase refers to the period of time in which jaguar tharn was posing was playing the part of a simulacrum of the emperor himself and of course any of us who have played any of the later generations of elder scrolls games know that this is not the last time uriel the seventh plays an integral part in a major crisis all goes well of course uriel the seventh lives an unnaturally long life due to the fact that he was imprisoned in oblivion for 10 years until of course uriel the seventh is assassinated along with all of his true-born heirs by the mythic be bilinsten thanks for listening . . .
. . . Thank you.