I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Tamriel Rebuilt is one of the most impressive mod projects of all time. Its quest is to build every part of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’s titular province that Bethesda didn’t get to, and it’s been doing that for literal decades. Earlier this year it released its ninth expansion, Grasping Fortune, and now it’s gearing up for number 10: Poison Song.
This is a big one. Well, they’re all big ones, but this is a big one for a new reason. Poison Song means players are finally getting “one of the holy grails that TR players [have] been waiting for more than twenty years—the ability to join House Indoril.”
This is either the most hype-inducing sentence you’ve ever heard, or completely meaningless (if you are normal), so let me try to break it down.
Base Morrowind let you join any of three different Houses—Morrowind-native political factions that, conveniently, pretty much mapped to each corner of the Fighter-Mage-Thief triad. There was Hlaalu, the Empire-sympathetic merchant guild; Redoran, the traditionalist fighter sect; and Telvanni, dickhead wizards who live in mushrooms.
Missing from this lineup were House Indoril—the house of the legendary Indoril Nerevar himself—and House Dres, whose whole thing is somehow loving slavery even more than the Telvanni. So with Poison Song, it means we finally get a chance to sign up to Nerevar’s own house, which is a pretty big deal considering a lot of Morrowind’s main quest revolves around people proclaiming you the guy’s literal reincarnation.
What makes this actually exciting, rather than merely a neat curiosity, is that Tamriel Rebuilt’s writing quality is genuinely pretty stellar. The project’s whole aim is to create the province of Morrowind in the same way that Bethesda of the early 2000s would have done it—full of esoteric lore and mythopoeia. I don’t doubt for a second that when I do get to sign up to House Indoril in Poison Song it’ll feel of a piece with the rest of the game. 23 years on, and we’re still getting more Morrowind.
“Overall, the pace is good on all fronts,” say Tamriel Rebuilt’s leads “and finalization of the expansion is expected to be a matter of months away.” I can’t wait.
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