But why did he need to do that? The plotline suggests that the Eyes of the Falmer alone would set anyone up for life--Mercer could easily have gone after them 25 years ago. (I'm not even going to try and figure out how he managed to steal the entire treasure of the Guild when the only way out is through a brightly lit room that's always occupied and up a ladder, or why he even bothered). I just don't know why the writers of the questline felt the need to insert this 25-year gap in there when everything would have made a whole lot more sense without it, or at least a much shorter one.