The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind has lots of houses. Some of those houses house houses. House Indoril is one of those housed houses, more specifically the one to which Indoril Nevevar, the bloke Morrowind’s protagonist is a reincarnation of, belonged. After about two decades of waiting, the modders behind massive project Tamriel Rebuilt are set to start dishing out Indoril membership cards with their next expansion.
Damn, shout the three great houses you can join in base Morrowind, the salespeople of Hlaalu, the grizzled warriors of Redoran, and the spoiled shroom-dwelling sorcerers of Telvanni. There goes our very long window to convince Vvardenfell’s most capable magic gauntlet deliverer to join up with us and improve our Sotha street creed.
This next expansion to the ever-growing modding project is set to add in a heartlands section of an all new Orethan region which surrounds the city of Almalexia (AKA Mournhold) on the mainland section of the province, as outlined by the devs in a teaser blog post.
“Adding the slice of Orethan Heartlands to the release unlocked one of the holy grails that TR players had been waiting for more than twenty years – the ability to join House Indoril,” wrote the wonderfully-named Sultan of Rum. “Much effort had already been spent in the mid-2010s to create a unique character for House Indoril, resulting in the wonderful interactions seen in Roa Dyr in 2019’s Aanthirin expansion. A couple of years ago, however, we consolidated and largely transformed this characterization into a comprehensive design document, including a plan for a full Indoril questline.”
“The addition of the Gorne and Nanaav chapels to the already extant Roa Dyr gives us three major Indoril power centers, which is enough for the first part of their overarching questline,” they continued. “All three chapels will have separate relatively low-level questlines introducing you to local issues and the personalities of the ruling Indorils. Indoril Sandil of Gorne – the most forward-thinking and adaptable of the three – may agree to become your patron for real advancement in the venerable House, should you humor his fascination with the legacy of Nerevar in a series of higher-level quests.”
As for what you can expect of the faction more generally, the modder specifies that the short answer is a battle to turn around the fortunes of Morrowind’s former most powerful party, who’ve been left shellshocked by a deal that pesky Vivec’s struck with the Empire’s Tiber Septim. “Seeing the surrender of Morrowind to an outlander warlord as a cataclysm, the surviving Indoril lords have been gripped in doubt and misfunction ever since – mirroring what is happening to their patron, the goddess Almalexia,” Sultan of Rum explained. “In their nihilism, they have proven unable to unite in the face of serious challenges to their hegemony, much less effectively counteract the increasingly brazen encroachment by houses Hlaalu and Telvanni.”
And here I thought Poison Song, whose creators say they’re aiming to be in the process of finalising it in “a matter of months”, was gonna be all about belting out that one Alice Cooper tune with your Indoril mates. It’s almost as if I should have known that theory was doomed the moment the modders reminded me in their post that Poison Song is the name of a history book in the original Morrowind.
