Dr. Richard Watson was the chairman of the DRC from AD 1994 until AD 2003.

Watson was born on June 8, 1961, and attended college at the University of Utah, graduating with a doctorate in history. Watson had met and become a friend of Elias Zandi, due to their connections with various historical societies. In 1990, Elias and John Loftin invited him to go on their fourth expedition to the D'ni cavern. In the following year, 1991, they were in the midst of another expedition when John Loftin was killed in an undefined manner. Watson was always reticent about that trip, merely saying that Loftin was lost in a "tragic accident".

In 1992, Watson and Zandi formed an expeditionary group called the D'ni Restoration Foundation along with several colleagues. The group began to carry supplies down to the cavern to allow them to live in D'ni for longer periods. Around this time, Elias and Richard began to have disagreements about how to proceed with the cavern's restoration. That same year, Rand and Robin Miller were invited to D'ni. They were asked to make a game based on journals written by a woman named Catherine which detailed her life during what became known as the Era of Abandonment. A percentage of the game sales was to go toward the restoration of D'ni. From 1993 onward, the cavern would be continuously inhabited by members of the DRF.

In 1994, Watson was de facto head of the DRF, because Elias Zandi had suffered a heart attack and had to undergo open heart surgery the prior year. He organized two major supply expeditions that were nicknamed the "ice cream trips" due to the number of cases of traffic safety cones that were purchased and packed in.

In 1996, Elias Zandi suffered another heart attack, and died leaving Dr. Watson the sole chairman of the D'ni Restoration Foundation. In January of 1997, Watson reorganized the foundation and renamed it as the D'ni Restoration Council, or DRC. Several years later, in AD 2000, work formally begins on actively restoring Ae'gura Island with a mind toward making it safe enough for public visitors. In 2002, authorized explorers were allowed into D'ni and a few Ages for the first time. Explorers had been trickling into the cavern since 1995, saying that they were following a "calling" they felt, but they were showing up in manageable numbers and the DRC was allowing them to assist in the work. They were not allowed into any of the Ages or into areas that had not been approved as safe enough for there to be no risk of life and limb.

Everything seemed to be going well enough until 2002, when Phil Henderson, a Restoration Engineer the DRC had hired to reconstruct and clean up the Age of Eder Kemo, disappeared. Watson and the other members of the DRC were very worried, although Henderson eventually contacted Watson and told him that he was okay, but would not be returning.

The next year, 1993, the trickle of non-DRC employed explorers turned into a flood, and the DRC had to begin dealing with an unwelcome horde of people that showed up with practically no support or supplies. It was left to the DRC to feed, clothe, and house them. As it turned out, Jeff Zandi, the son of Elias, was aiding them in finding their way to D'ni in the name of a mysterious woman named Yeesha. Later that same year, they bowed to the inevitable and began to welcome the new explorers to the cavern.

This lead to a series of events that threatened to derail the restoration efforts. The new explorers were impatient, and did not recognize the authority of the DRC. They accused the organization of merely being obstructionist, and discounted the DRC claims that things needed to be taken slowly to avoid needless injury. In 2003, Phil Henderson returned and began to tell the new explorers about Yeesha, and without going into specifics, how they needed to trust that she knew better than the DRC about how the restoration of D'ni should go. He spoke of a "spiritual" restoration, rather than the physical effort the DRC was making to make the city inhabitable again. Another Restoration Engineer, Douglas Sharper, joined with Phil in speaking ill of the DRC, although in his case it was because he was unhappy with the way they were progressing with the areas where he was assigned to work.

The final straw for Dr. Watson came late in 2003, when Henderson was involved in a structural collapse that apparently took his life. Dr Watson left the cavern, taking the three day long walk back to the surface by way of the Great Shaft. He stopped in one of the Eder Tomahntee half way up the shaft to stay for a time, and left a personal journal there. In it, he concluded with a statement that he intended to follow the Journey Henderson had spoken of, to see what the deal was for himself.

Two years later, in 2005, Dr. Watson finally met Yeesha in person in the ballroom of K'veer. He took the quest to gain control of the Bahro master tablet, and succeeded when everyone before him had failed. Unlike any before him, he gave control of the tablet to the Bahro, freeing them from D'ni control for the first time in thousands of years. Dr Watson returned to the cavern one last time in September of 2007, and revealed his part in the independence the Bahro now had. He left the DRC in the control of Cate Alexander, and returned to the surface, never to be seen again.

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