Found this one out during testing. After receiving the first vision from Ria Silmane, I purchaced a cheap Non Target spell and Levitate, and headed to Rihad. After learning the location of Stonekeep from the Queen. I went through Stonekeep straight to the parchment she requests, and returned it to her. However, I then went back to Stonekeep. The Parchment was still there, but when picking it up it told me I had acquired the first of the Staff of Chaos, without doing Fang Lair! I then rested, and received another vision from Ria, and Jagar Tharn sent Goblins to kill me when I left the Inn, as expected. I went to Stonekeep one more time, and got the parchment, telling me the Tablet had been recovered for the Mage in the Mages Guild at Winterhold in Skyrim. I gave it to him and he rewarded me with the location of the Labyrinthian. However, returning and picking up the parchment again resulted in nothing. However this is a very quick and easy way to skip Fang Lair and Fortress of Ice.

Just an update. If you complete the quests in order, but instead of picking up the quest item, you pick up the parchment instead, you can progress to the end of the game this way.

I feel like i"m posting super late but I wanted to try this run. I was unable to get the parchment to respawn. Is there a different version that this trick doesn't work on?

I currently play from the Anthology collection.

It probably doesn't work on the anthology disc collection; probably because 1. it isn't updated to 1.106 (the latest version you can get from the site) 2. the disc version has a special version that fixes the bug (which I wouldn't doubt Bethesda would do).

You can get the free version (which contains the bug for sure) from here: http://elderscrolls.com/arena

You have to install DOSbox on your own and install it using the guide that comes with it.

Or, you can get it from puri_puri here: http://3fg-inc.com/SpeedrunStuff/TES/Arena/TES%20Arena%201.07.zip

Aparently this is version 1.07, which I didn't even know existed.