Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-72.241.239.167-20140311020135/@comment-121511-20150317015941

Twilight Despair 5 wrote: Well we do know Magnus made the staff, even says so on the The Eye of Magnus in the Trivia section. And as the staff is the only weapon to control the Eye correctly, it stands to logic that the Eye has something to do with Magnus or at least the origin of Magicka on Nirn. And yes Magnus didn't willing stay on Nirn or get tricked, like the other Et'Ada that suffered their power to stabilize Nirn. However, one of the myths about the origin of magic is that when Magnus was leaving Nirn, he was all but destroy with magicka being all the remains of him on Nirn.

So if that myth is true, than it's almost poetic justice or irony. That wanting to leaving Nirn to avoid losing his divinity like the other Et'Ada were gonna he did leave some of his power on Nirn in the form of magic with his destruction. The Staff of Magnus is a metaphysical battery: it siphons magicka. When the Last Dragonborn used it on the Eye, it did what it was designed to do: it siphoned the excess magicka such that Ancano could not siphon it himself. This does not imply any connection between the two objects, it simply means that the Staff was functioning properly.

That said, magicka is what remains of his influence on Nirn, not what remains of him. He was among the most powerful of the et'Ada, and it speaks to his strength that millenia after his departure the energies he left behind in his exodus are still used to fuel spells.