Perhaps someone playing ESO can help me ...

At first mention of Ayleid Archmage/King Anumaril, I assumed that the text was referring to Umaril the Unfeathered. Reading the rest of the books I can find on him, it appears that they must have been separate but contemporary sorcerer kings who happened to have similar names.

Anumaril was apparently the ruler of the Molag-Bal worshiping city of Abagarlas, which was destroyed in a conflict with the Meridia-worshipping Delodiil. The disappearance of Delodiil and destruction of Abagarlas is probably just one of several conflicts in the civil-war period just before Alessia's slave rebellion, which allowed her to take power without much resistance.

Anumaril and his family are said to have been killed by Delodiil's super-weapon, but the King himself must have survived since he resurfaces again at the fall of White-Gold.

Here he appears to construct the Staff of Chaos, and breaks it into eight pieces, sending each with a group of Ayleid refugees in eight different directions in order to create a new symbolic wheel to replace white gold.

Potentially, one of these fragments was "The Remnant of Light", which Anumaril sends to Skyrim with Lord Filestis. This individual seems to use it to hijack Snow-Throat and make the surrounding land fertile. Meanwhile, Anumaril takes another piece to Green-Sap and likewise hijacks it, hoping to convert it into a replacement for WGT. To this end, he uses tonal architecture to form his own body into an orrey around the staff piece - replicating white-gold's model of the heavens.

This is all fascinating - is anyone playing quests surrounding Delodiil, Filestis, the Osseous Orrey, or anything else relating to Anumaril able to shed more light on the subject? It seems the Ayleids had a surprising amount in common with the Dwemer.

You're referencing "http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Aurbic_Enigma_4:_The_Elden_Tree", right? Because that mentions a "Staff of Towers" which is pretty damn similar to the Staff of Chaos from the sounds of things (and fits with the theory that the Marukhati http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Vindication_for_the_Dragon_Break in their Dragon Break ritual)

The only problem is, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Final_Lesson (which they even included in ESO), says the Staff of Chaos was made by Loreth.

I'm more inclined to side with Bethesda's writers over Zenimax's in this, but damn it I've always wanted to believe the Marukhati danced on the Staff of Chaos. I'm just gonna blame the Dragon Break and call it a day, I think.

I assume that you already know this, but the AD main quest in Grahtwood touches upon Anumaril and the Ayleids.

Strange thought: What if the Staff of Towers is not the Staff of Chaos, but rather the Staff of Magnus? One piece ended up in Elsweyr and was found by the Eternal Champion, another in the Iliac Bay by the Agent, one was retrieved by the Nerevarine from Dreveni Hlaren in Morrowind, one piece was kept within Labyrinthian by Morokei and one piece was recovered in Grahtwood by the Vestige and given to Queen Ayrenn.