Atrayonis suggested he and I write out our respective (and probably starkly divergent) ideas on the future of Morrowind after the events of TES: III (including TR events of course). I've decided to make a start at that, but will divide my write-up into at least two if not more parts, this being the first.
While I do incorporate some Bethesda lore of the later games into my account, though often with changes, that's more a matter of me finding it interesting to incorporate those ideas. My concept does diverge from later Bethesda lore quite heavily in areas, especially with Skyrim's Dragonborn expansion, which after all deals with Morrowind's later history. As all those divergences will not happen within TR's gameplay, though, that's pretty irrelevant, and this is really more of a thought exercise.
First thing is to establish the state of things at the end of Morrowind. This can vary a bit depending on what questlines the player completes, and perhaps how the player completes them. Also, it's possible plans for the questlines will change later, so this isn't really set in stone. In no particular order:
1. Two or all three of the Tribunal are dead, the dissident priests are no longer persecuted lending relevance to their message and to Ashlander belief -- all the more so with the appearance of a Nerevarine recognized by, at least, a majority of the houses and Ashlander tribes. While the Temple hasn't been overthrown, it's clearly only a matter of time until faith in it dies completely, and it is in disarray. It certainly has lost its ability to regulate and unite the activity of the great houses.
2. House Indoril has either succeeded in repelling House Hlaalu in the Thirr River Conflict, or has lost and is continuing to lose its western territory. Even at best, its 'victory' is pyrrhic, revealing deep divisions within a house that had prided itself in its unity and common mission. Much of its leadership is dead, and in the case of 'victory' an outlander upstart now sits as their helm.
3. House Redoran has managed to quell an uprising of local Nords, but the uprising has awoken slumbering tensions in a land that had never been able to maintain isolation from outlanders like the eastern houses did. The sovereignty of House Redoran is shaken by runaway Imperialization, Hlaalu are nipping at their heels, especially on Vvardenfell, and the other houses are too preoccupied or indifferent to provide any aid. Skyrim's High King Thian, who supported the uprising, is still going strong. Bolvyn Venim's suicide mission against Dagoth Ur ends with Venim dead at the hands of the Nerevarine, who kills Dagoth Ur rendering the mission irrelevant.
4. While House Hlaalu's expansion on Vvardenfell and across the Thirr has possibly been stalled by the activities of House Redoran and House Indoril respectively, they are still in a very strong position. After a tense moment facing the prospect of fighting a coalition of the other great houses (except Telvanni probably) unaided, Hlaalu emerge with an alliance with House Dres, arguably the next strongest house at that point, and the cooperation of King Hlaalu Helseth. (While a member of House Hlaalu, Helseth is a political outsider who was not by default aligned with his house). They appear to be unstoppable.
5. House Telvanni is continuing to take advantage of the political chaos in Morrowind to spread outwards, as upstarts repelled by the ancient wizards in the East build up power beyond their reach. Telvanni's claim to being a unified house has always been tenuous, but with the absent Archmagister Rilvin Dral and divisive de facto Archmagister Gothren replaced by an outlander Hortator and Nerevarine, House Telvanni seems poised to strike out in a new and unpredictable direction. At the same time, though, several of those ancient wizards die in the process, and while that provides fertile soil for new growth, it also carries uncertainty with it.
6. House Dres has been secretely struggling with creditors of major deals they made at the very beginning of Tribunal history. While managing to keep their secret struggle hidden from the other houses -- maintaining their strength for the moment as Morrowind's second strongest house and allying with the strongest, House Hlaalu -- internally House Dres has cracked. The secrets are beginning to leak, the Matriarchs who secured the deals, uniting the squabbling Dres clans in a confederacy and guiding them forward in the process, are either all or mostly dead. While the Sload have been dealt with, the Hist are still looming, and its unclear how much longer the Dres will keep supplying the Hist with Dunmer as their part of that deal, if they haven't already stopped.
7. While fortunes have largely favoured the endeavours of the Empire in Morrowind -- supportive House Hlaalu becoming the dominant local power in the province, the reformer Helseth exerting and expanding his power as king, the Tribunal weakened and possibly killed and the Temple on the way out with them, and one of the Empire's agents being recognized as Nerevarine and Hortator by the majority of local factions -- the Empire is not able to savour it due to internal instability. Garrisons in hostile eastern Morrowind have been abandoned in favour of stronger defences in the West, and the Empire's Legions are being recalled.
Comments
Lore
Please keep in mind that Oblivion and other official and quasi-official sources already provide significant information about what's going on in Morrowind (and Vvardenfell in particular) shortly after the close of TES3: Morrowind. The beginning of Oblivion is only about 6 years later.
Just off the top of my head, a few things come to mind:
Maybe also consider some other mods:
Yeah, while this blog post
Yeah, while this blog post was about how the end of TR's Morrowind might look, the next (which I'll probably write after TR's upcoming release) will look at the period between the games and maybe go beyond it. Your list is a really handy basis to work off of; the ramifications a ban on necromancy could have on Morrowind are something I hadn't really considered.
That said, while I generally find it interesting to try and incorporate Oblivion lore into our Morrowind framework, as noted at the start of this blog I also won't hesitate to diverge from later games' lore if I think it isn't interesting or consistent with the world we are trying to create. A good example is all the forts within Cyrodiil being ruined, and for that matter all (I think) mines being abandoned. While the fandom has come up with explanations for that, the reality of the matter is probably that Bethesda either didn't consider the issue, decided not to invest development time in implementing functioning forts and mines, felt that such locations would not have a suitable gameplay functionality to warrant representation in the game, or any other number of practical concerns.
On such matters I will orient myself more on how Provinces of Tamriel portrays the relevant province, in this case the Province: Cyrodiil project specifically. In that project, given its much larger scale and different gameplay focus to Oblivion (which tends to be more action-focused than Morrowind was, Morrowind itself being more action-focused than Daggerfall as far as I'm aware), Cyrodiil has both functioning forts and mines, and it would naturally be silly for all of them to become ruined and abandoned in a six year span.
Edit: another thing is the concept of Hlaalu picking apart the remains of House Indoril. In most cases -- especially if the player plays TR's Hlaalu questline -- that is probably what will happen. If the Nerevarine completes the Indoril questline, though, while greatly weakened, the house will have dodged the deathblow and will continue to stand for a while. In that case, the rumours would either be referring to the harm Hlaalu caused in the Thirr River Conflict featured within TR's timeframe, or how Hlaalu gobbled up Indoril land west of the Thirr right before our timeframe, and so would not be entirely accurate or current. They are rumours after all.
I'm actually going to address
I'm actually going to address some of your points directly here, as they are out of the scope of the blog series itself, which takes a rather broad view of developments.