Tamriel Rebuilt is a massive mod for TES III: Morrowind, which adds the missing mainland of the Morrowind province to the game world. You can download it here.

Greetings! In the last update we covered everything that you can expect from our next upcoming expansion, Grasping Fortune. But Morrowind is a massive province and Tamriel Rebuilt is developing on many fronts in parallel. The last time that we went over our full plans for the future – our development roadmap – was in late 2021. Hence, it’s high time we update you with how those plans have changed and give you a high-level overview of each of the new and exciting expansions that we’re currently tackling.

Remember, Tamriel Rebuilt is developed as a series of episodic releases or expansions, with new chunks of Morrowind’s mainland released every year (aspirationally, at least). Whenever an expansion is released, the new areas come with the full complement of interior locations, characters, and quests, all seamlessly tying into the base game and the prior expansions.

In order for all this to work, teams focusing on different fields of mod development are chipping away at different parts of the province. Asset developers bring the work of our concept artists to life, creating the 3D assets that our level designers need. Only once the asset palette for a new region is more-or-less finished, can exterior level designers create a new area of the overworld. Once that is done, a drove of interior level designers descends to fill out the (sometimes) hundreds of highly detailed interior locations – buildings, caves, dungeons – that each expansion needs. And only once the latter work is winding down can quest developers fill the lands with hundreds more memorable characters and quests.

Below, we will walk you through the different expansions we are currently working on, roughly in the order that we expect them to be released. All of this is, obviously, highly tentative and subject to change at any time. Furthermore, no dates are offered, as everything here is done by volunteer effort, the ebbs and floods of which are infamously hard to predict.

Covered in-depth in our last news post, Grasping Fortune is the next expansion in our pipeline and the one closest to completion.

Grasping Fortune will add a vast area of the mainland stretching south from Lake Andaram (the focus of our last expansion) all the way to the southwestern tip of Morrowind against Cyrodiil and Black Marsh. Its main focus will be the grand city of Narsis, the headquarters of House Hlaalu, home of the Imperial Proconsul, and the second-biggest and possibly richest city in Morrowind. Smaller towns in the release include Othmura, Ald Iuval, Ald Marak, Hlerynhul, Sadrathim, and Shipal-Sharai.

Included in the release will also be a huge chunk of countryside – both the cultivated Coronati Basin region and the wild canyons of Shipal-Shin. Search for monasteries, Shinathi nomad camps, a tower of the Barsaebic Ayleids, a Second Empire (Reman) ruin, the giant Velothi tower compound where the Ja-Natta Syndicate makes its lair, and the Stormgate and Septim’s Gate passes to Black Marsh and Cyrodiil, respectively. Just don’t get mauled by a horned butcher or stung by a skyrender!

You can expect questlines for almost every imaginable faction (often several of them), including ones for House Redoran, the Twin Lamps, and the brand-new Ja-Natta Syndicate criminal organization.

Currently, exteriors are finished aside from a few optional touch-ups and, possibly, a new slice of land bitten off from the later Wealth Beyond Measure expansion. Interiors are almost done, save for a few larger locations and the skyrender hives (which still need some new 3D assets). Addition of NPCs and general dialogue is finished for almost all of the towns, most of Narsis, and the Coronati Basin wilderness; some areas of Narsis and the Shipal-Shin wilderness still remain to be populated. More than a dozen miscellaneous quests and several questlines have already been merged and a similar number is finished pending review. But most of the questing load still lies ahead.

Should they be completed prior to when Grasping Fortune is released, several additions to the expansion’s core content also may be included, such as:

• Foul Murder – our short epilogue to Morrowind’s main quest, starting in Necrom. The questline is already merged into our main in-development plugin, but is currently disabled by default until we get a creature model which the questline sorely needs.

• Firemoth Rekindled – our revamp of the 2002 official mod “Siege of Firemoth,” which now includes an Imperial Legion questline to rebuild the fortress, in addition to an all-around overhaul and improvement of the original level and quest design. This revamp is now officially ready to go and you may, in fact, see it released even before Grasping Fortune.

• Telvannis Stopgap – finalization of our old 00s-era Telvanni content by the addition of new questlines to Master Vaerin, Mistress Rathra, and a final quest involving Master Dral – all now complete. A stretch goal is to include an endcap to the Ranyon-Ruhn Temple questline, for which two new interior locations were recently finished. Eventually, these new questlines may be significantly revamped or superseded, once our Grand Telvannis Redo starts in many years’ time. But in the meanwhile, they will hopefully tide Telvanni fans over.

• Leviathan Isles – a small archipelago to the north of Sheogorad host to a ruined Imperial fort, Nord barrow, and more. The archipelago is intended to play a small part in a couple of province-spanning questlines. The exterior and interior locations are finished, but quests still need to be added.

• Old Ebonheart Melee Tournament – a complex scripting marvel of a questline (made only with all-natural, non-GMO MWscript) that has you participating in a full-blown melee tournament steeped in inter-provincial politics. Marhaus has finished most of the scripting work, but much remains to be done, owing to the questline’s complexity.

• Northeastern Morrowind Dreugh Citadels – making use of the new dreugh tileset released with the Andaram expansion last year, three new dreugh citadels and several grottos will be added to fully flesh out the underwater portion of our 2022 Embers of Empire expansion. Exterior work on these is finished, pending review.

• Vounoura – a shrouded island to the north of Telvannis, related to the Morag Tong. The island, its interiors, and a brand-new Daedric lord quest has been finished (the latter complete with elusive new TES III voice acting!). Some more quests involving the location remain to be made, as does a follow-on to vanilla Morag Tong content.

• Olanar – an island far to the southeast of Port Telvannis host to a long-abandoned Telvanni tower and rumored to hide a legendary treasure. The island’s exterior and most interiors have been finished for a while, but we are waiting on some Maormer (!) assets to be finished, prior to quest work starting.

All of the above items are, again, not core parts of the expansion and may get bundled with following expansions, should they not materialize in time.

While our main effort remains focused on Grasping Fortune, we have in recent years kept going a side-effort to rework some of our oldest and least engaging areas, now called Poison Song.

Poison Song will revamp our old Sundered Scar region, but may tentatively also include some entirely new lands in the new Orethan region, including the town of Othrenis and the chapel of Nanaav, and, finally, our first three questlines for House Indoril.

This expansion is the second of our “redo” releases, where we touch up older areas of the mod that don’t quite hold up to our current worldbuilding vision and quality standards. (The first being 2022’s acclaimed Embers of Empire, which revamped Telvannis’ western seaboard and the Imperial cities and towns therein.)

The Sundered Scar region, the expansion’s main focus, lies directly east of Old Ebonheart on the mainland coast of the Inner Sea (roughly south of Molag Amur in the vanilla game). This region is currently a clone of the vanilla game’s Bitter Coast region with a grand total of three minor quests taking place there. Although originally released in 2012 as part of the Sacred East expansion, its landscapes largely date to 2003, when much of the area was explicitly made as “filler content.”

Seeking to make this area worthwhile, we have retooled the Sundered Scar into a dangerous wasteland of geysers, sulfuric hot springs, and weird tube-fauna, inspired by Bethesda’s scrapped concepts for a Great Scathes region on Vvardenfell, which was left largely unimplemented in the vanilla game.

Once the heartlands of House Mora, from which Nerevar hailed, the region was ripped asunder during the cataclysm that created the Inner Sea at the end of the War of the First Council, the ground underneath the land coming to a boil. Although ostensibly governed by the Indoril, this area has been left largely vacant in remembrance of the slain Hortator. Only small townsteads, the foremost of them being the trade town of Darvonis, dot the region. Most of it remains dangerous wilderness filled with the ruins of Morrowind’s past glories. An exception is the lush island of Gorne in Azura Bay (known from the vanilla Morrowind book “The Poison Song”), which hosts an isolated chapel of House Indoril.

Tentatively, we may also include a small-ish part of our new Orethan region in Poison Song, just to the south of Sundered Scar. Realizing we had most of the needed assets earlier this year, we decided to already kick off exterior development there. This fully new chunk of land surrounding the city of Almalexia would make Poison Song no longer just a “redo,” but a full-on “do.”

Our currently released mainland includes two old regions of the same name – the rather nondescript Alt Orethan and the lush forest of Lan Orethan – which were first released in 2012. Although the latter is quite lovely in its own way, our new concepts for House Indoril call for turning the area into a vast central breadbasket feeding the metropolis of Almalexia. After all, in Bethesda’s original 1996 concept, this part of Morrowind was host to the Central (Deshaan) Plains, of which the Orethan region would form a part of.

Building off of the few environmental assets shown in TES III: Tribunal’s Mournhold, the new Orethan region will be a subtropical garden where Almalexia’s influence has sculpted the very land into the most perfect expression of Indoril theocracy. Lush green vegetation is accented by many colorful flowers and fruit trees. Peaceful Velothi villages tend to bountiful fields irrigated by the meandering tributaries of the Orethan.

The central settlement in the particular slice of the Orethan coming with Poison Song is Othrenis. This is a wealthy trade town on Veloth’s Path that includes a popular pilgrimage temple in addition to saltrice depots and a bustling slave market frequented by House Dres traders. The town is ruled at a distance from Nanaav, the airy and lovingly cultivated chapel of Indoril Beroth, who despite being an anti-Hlaalu warhawk is at personal odds with the similarly warlike Indoril Ilvi of Roa Dyr to the north (this is in contrast to Beroth’s current depiction in the released mod, which shall change).

So, how far along is Poison Song? Well, all except two Sundered Scar exterior claims are finalized and most interior locations are either pending review or being worked on. The Orethan part, while smaller in scope, has only just started exterior development. Although enough assets are available for initial work, we still need the final ground textures and pink gorapple trees that will give the Orethan more color, as well as a variety of new flowers. Therefore, its possible that Sundered Scar will be done long before the Orethan; in that case, we will likely release the former separately.

Regardless, once we do release the new Orethan chunk, we will finally be able to offer our players the first three questlines for House Indoril. As for other quests, Poison Song won’t be rich in Imperial guilds, but expect at least Temple and Morag Tong questlines in Darvonis and Othrenis, as well as a ton of miscellaneous quests throughout the wilderness areas and the smaller settlements.

Finally, Poison Song will help us tie up some loose ends from our past releases. As is well-known, we weren’t quite 100% satisfied with the exterior and interior level design in our 2022’s Dominions of Dust expansion – much of the area had been in development since 2009, way before our current quality and consistency standards were in place. Therefore, a touch-up of the exterior landscaping in the Roth Roryn region is ongoing (which may also touch the Armun Ashlands region), and we are well on our way to revamping or remaking many of the corresponding interiors – work we hope to release together with Poison Song.

Coming right after Grasping Fortune in our main line of expansions is Wealth Beyond Measure, another massive release that will round out the remaining part of southwestern Morrowind.

The focus of this expansion will be the city of Kragenmoor, House Hlaalu’s second most important settlement and, certainly, the most imperialized native city of Morrowind. Stretching from Kragenmoor all the way to Lake Coronati is the bulk of the lush and alien Othreleth Woods region, much of it filled with Hlaalu towns, agriculture, and industry. Running parallel to it is the wild northern spur of the Shipal-Shin canyonlands, the border between Morrowind and Cyrodiil, which transition into the Velothi Mountains just west of Kragenmoor.

Kragenmoor is an up-and-coming power center for House Hlaalu, though not exactly one to rival Narsis. Built on the ruins of what was once the heartland of the Kragen dwarves, then later a Redoran stronghold, the city now sits astride the busiest trade route between Morrowind and Cyrodiil, and is full of Hlaalu and outlander nouveau riche with their ostentatious mega-mansions. Imperial influence runs strong here; it’s where we find one of the most important East Empire Company halls and the center of Morrowind’s Imperial Cult, complete with two different chapels to Imperial Divines. Still, the city remains just as important to the Tribunal Temple, as it’s where Veloth’s Path really starts.

Besides Kragenmoor, numerous other Hlaalu settlements dot the Othreleth Woods. The foremost among these is Andrethis, a bustling Balmora-sized industry town that is also one of the least imperialized Hlaalu settlements. Besides the other towns, villages, plantations, and mines, ruins of the once-great Redoran Waters March dot the region. Beyond them, in the deep woods await poisonous flora, carnivorous mushrooms, and dangerous predators – few dare venture far from roads in the Othreleth Woods.

Besides that, you will see more of the wild west of Shipal-Shin, where a couple more Shinathi clans make their nomadic living, rubbing shoulders with outcasts, smugglers, and the occasional Hlaalu outpost. To the west of Kragenmoor is the southernmost part of the Velothi Mountains, now sporting a brand-new asset palette (compared to the slightly northern part of the region released in 2022, which relied mostly on vanilla Morrowind assets, and which will get repainted in parallel). There you will find Shadowgate pass, Morrowind’s busiest crossing into Cyrodiil, as well as the remains of the once-great Kragen dwarves, the antecedents of the Rourken Dwemer who emigrated to Hammerfell and built up a civilization there, prior to their disappearance.

Wealth Beyond Measure will complete our House Hlaalu lands and will therefore allow us to implement our first full, end-game faction questline. This will be a high-stakes affair that involves locations and actors all across the mainland and Vvardenfell. In fact, we will aim to integrate the whole vanilla House Hlaalu quest cycle seamlessly into the larger questline – of course, this will mean substantial edits to the vanilla game, which likely means we’ll make it optional. Expect also a new House Hlaalu stronghold on the mainland! Otherwise, the questing scope is shaping up to be quite similar to Grasping Fortune, as we will need two questlines for a number of vanilla factions, along with innumerable miscellaneous quests.

Progress on this expansion is quite promising, as most parts of the exterior worldspace have been finished or are already far into development. In particular, the city of Kragenmoor is mostly built, but will get a small reduction from its previously bloated size. About a third of the landmass has also been reviewed, allowing interior work to proceed. Many dozens of such locations are already finished.

The newest area in Tamriel Rebuilt to come into active development is the southern part of Velothis District, i.e. the lands of House Redoran. This first, as-of-yet unnamed Redoran release will comprise the southern half of Redoran lands consisting of two wholly new, unique regions: the Clambering Moor and the Grey Meadows. In those regions lie the important March capitals of Veranis and Silgrad, but most of the surrounding lands are relatively sparsely inhabited, threatened by both Orc and Nord raids. A highlight of its own will be Malahk-Bazul, an isolated mountain valley home of the particularly nasty Malahk Orcs.

Long-time Tamriel Rebuilt fans may remember that we already completed most of the Redoran lands between 2010 and 2013; these were present in our old, now-deprecated TR_Preview plugin, which you may have played. However, while generally enjoyable, those exteriors mostly relied on vanilla assets and came with a whole host of subtle design issues common to our work in the early-to-mid 2010s. All-in-all, the experience of recent years (cough Dominions of Dust cough) makes it clear that it is much more fruitful to approach new lands as a clean slate with a strong starting concept and a fully unique asset palette – which is what we are now doing.

The Clambering Moor region directly abuts our released lands in the Roth Roryn. It is a crimson highland moor rolling down from the peaks of the Velothi Mountains towards the Inner Sea, dotted by sparse mushroom groves. The area is host to isolated Redoran farmsteads and outposts, Malahk Orc camps, Dwemer ruins, and even Nord ruins from the First Nord Empire.

The Clambering Moor forms the northern part of the Redoran Stones March, one of the five marches that comprise the territory of the House. Its capital is the well-fortified Veranis, sitting astride the Roryn river in a narrow valley and designed to deter and repel the Malahk Orcs. It, and by extension the whole March, is home to a proud stoneworking and mining tradition but also includes the full complement of vanilla Imperial guilds. Besides Veranis, several smaller villages eke out a living in the region, mostly relying on mining and ranching.

The Grey Meadows region to the north of the Clambering Moor is a much harsher place, an eerie bog subject to strong ashfall from Vvardenfell and full of strange webs and poisonous spores.

The Grey Meadows were the darling of 2010s Tamriel Rebuilt, being the first region built using mostly custom assets – and to great results. Although we aim to recreate its look and atmosphere almost 1-to-1, the technical execution of the landscape suffers from several deep-seated issues common for the time, making it more fruitful to recreate from scratch.

The city of Silgrad (called Kogotel in our former planning) lies in the west end of the Grey Meadows and is the capital of the smaller Ashes March that organizes the Redoran holdings of the region. Like Veranis, it is a fortified stronghold built to last attacks from the Nords of the Rift. Ancient mechanisms devised by Sotha Sil keep the city safe from flooding and the poisonous vapors of the hinterland. Although a couple other Redoran villages brave the region, only the Kushimmu ashlanders have really adapted to life in the deep marsh.

Lying within Morrowind’s borders only in the technical sense is Malahk-Bazul, a high mountain valley on the tri-point between Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim. This mountainous land is home to the eastern Malahk Orcs – those of the Changed Folk who, according to legend, pursued the Chimer all the way to Resdayn’s borders in revenge for Trinimac’s debasement by Boethiah. In any case, the Malahk Orcs are much larger, meaner, and more aggressive than the more common western Orcs; only fools dare enter their lands. Still, a high-level player may find many hidden treasures in this land seldom tread by civilized folk. Just beware, the Orcs are far from the worst thing hiding in the valley.

After a couple years spent slowly building up the asset base, we were able to open the first exterior claims both in the Clambering Moor and the new parts of the Velothi Mountains just earlier this year. Our exterior level designers dove right in: most claims already have substantial progress made and a couple ones are already finalized and awaiting review. As some required assets for the Grey Meadows don’t yet exist, we have not currently opened new exterior claims there. But, hopefully, that won’t be too far off either.

We are well aware that the landmass of this first Redoran release is rather huge. However, with Redoran lands being generally less-settled than Hlaalu ones, we suspect that the amount of work needed should be roughly comparable to that for our upcoming Hlaalu releases. Still, if the expansion becomes too big of a bite to swallow at once, we’ll likely split the Grey Meadows region into its own, later release.

The above Redoran work concludes the expansions that we are actively implementing. However, let’s go over some more mature plans for regions to be worked on in the future.

Following Poison Song, the next of our old regions up for redo is the Mephalan Vales, a tangle of fog-shrouded canyons that forms the northern border of Indoril lands. This was really the first wholly new, coordinated regional concept that Tamriel Rebuilt attempted to build starting in 2006. The core idea remains solid, but its over-reliance on cobbled-together rock objects at the expense of the landscape mesh introduces a lot of “moddiness” and poor navigability. Besides, we now have the opportunity to give the region a slate of unique environmental assets.

The new conception of the Mephalan Vales consists of labyrinthine ridges of sharp purple cliffs, this being implied to be the region from where the rock for Morrowind’s many Daedric ruins was quarried from. Between the cliffs lie deep, canopied valleys blanketed in perpetual fog and home to a variety of less and more dangerous native spiders. Several Velothi villages and the town of Akamora specialize in handicrafts, especially the lucrative spider silk trade.

Shivatheo recently completed most of the environmental assets – land textures, rocks, cliffs, trees, smaller flora – needed for an initial implementation of the exterior landscape. For implementation to begin, however, we still need to complete the new regional heightmap.

After Mephalan Vales, the remaining parts of the Indoril lands will also need revamps, although it is uncertain in which order that will happen. A new regional concept exists for the Nedothril coast, east of the Orethan region, which is to become a coastline of porous rock formations jutting out from the mudflats of eastern Morrowind. Nedothril will host a major city in the Velothi tileset, Mervayan, the Indorils’ main trade port on the Padomaic Ocean. Likewise, the Sacred Lands region surrounding Necrom will become a golden grassland full of ominous fungi. Necrom itself will also require a full overhaul, given its lack of quest content and dated architecture meshes.

The final boss of our Indoril content will, of course, be the city of Almalexia, the biggest in all of Morrowind. Although we have long stated that we seek to develop Almalexia dead last in the project, this was mainly a reaction to the previous failed attempt at creating the city in 2011-2014 – an event that nearly led to the demise of the entire mod project. Our volunteer developer-base is constantly rotating, however, and most of the people that lived through that particular trauma have moved on. With the experience of Narsis under our belts, we are newly confident that the project can take Almalexia on once again, in the sooner-rather-than-later future, especially now that pretty much everyone is happy with be-a-stranger’s new concept for the city. This will likely be a years-long background burner project.

Our main line of expansions will, in the meanwhile, continue finishing up Redoran lands. After the first, currently in-development expansion, the next one will hopefully round out the rest of our Redoran lands. Half of it will consist of the Julan-Shar region, a relatively lush, if frigid, conifer forest marked by hydrothermal activity. Travertine terraces, geysers, and smoke-billowing mushrooms are common. The focus of this region will be the city of Blacklight, capital of House Redoran. The city will be heavily inspired by Scamp’s legendary 2011 implementation that graced the old TR_Preview plugin, but much expanded in footprint and remade using purpose-built assets in order to alleviate the performance and stylistic concerns that the former suffered from.

Compared to the old TR_Preview depiction, Julan-Shar will also be expanded far towards the north and northwest to provide more content and bring the shape of Morrowind’s landmass closer to the depictions found in in-game books and Bethesda’s pre-release concept maps. This will eventually require us to move Solstheim to the northeast (as the popular mods Anthology Solstheim and Tomb of the Snow Prince already do), but this is years into the future.

The Great Valley region to the west of Blacklight will be a steep glacial valley cut into a spur of the Velothi Mountains. Agriculture is difficult in this snowy landscape, but the scarce herding grounds on the valley floor form the locus of conflict between the ancient Nord diaspora, for whom the area is properly called the Nordic hold of Uld Vraech, and the Redoran, to whom Tiber Septim granted control of the region.

Following the Redoran lands, our plan is to finally swing over to the southeastern Deshaan District, the lands of House Dres. A proper start on this front seems ever distant, but what has recently happened is a large-scale reconceptualization of House Dres. 2010s planning tended to make the Dres overly exceptional, having them be worshippers of the Anticipations instead of the Tribunal (in conflict with one of the few vanilla Morrowind dialogue lines on House Dres that states they are staunch Temple supporters) and suggesting that their material culture and social structure be wholly separate from that of the other Houses. Recently, we have toned this exceptionalism down a notch, ending up at a happy medium where we hope the faction will be easier to implement and integrate better into the TES III game world while still offering much that is novel. A new book by Douglas Goodall on the Dres has helped much in this regard.

A big change has occurred in the Deshaan District’s region setup, too. Previously, most Dres lands were to consist of a salt desert that was cultivated into a saltrice breadbasket only by virtue of slave-powered Dres engineering that brought up water from deep aquifers. While this was a cool concept, it did not really fit the spirit of the few TES-III-era in-game and out-of-game mentions and depictions of Dres lands. Hence, while the salt desert will be retained, it will form only the western portion of Dres lands against the Shipal-Shin region, with the Deshaan Plains proper becoming a more naturally bountiful grassland. A new volcanic highlands region will separate the plains from the unchanged Arnesian jungles to the south.

What’s very promising is that Athcliath97 continues to make great progress on our n-th attempt at a House Dres architecture set, something that countless asset developers have struggled with over more than two decades. Having abandoned the ever-troublesome modular canton concept for bespoke canton models made specifically for a couple cities, this latest iteration is certainly the best yet and has gotten the farthest in terms of completion – even the interior set is now being worked on!

For now, the final stretch goal of Tamriel Rebuilt will be an eventual rework of our House Telvanni lands. These were completed already in 2008, when we didn’t have the ability to create substantial amounts of new 3D assets. Hence, Telvannis is at once the most complete part of the mod, but also among the mod’s biggest let-downs, as it merely recycles vanilla Morrowind’s region concepts and assets. A great new concept for Telvannis exists, but is currently awaiting its turn until we complete the rework of our Indoril lands.

As you can see, quite a lot remains to be done in Morrowind, but many hands make light work! If you appreciate Tamriel Rebuilt and would like to help us realize our vision sooner, please consider joining the project as a developer. It’s famously easy to get started with TES III modding and our community guides and developer feedback provide all the help you need. Most of our developers had no modding or game development experience before deciding to join us.

Regardless, make sure to also come chat on our Discord server, where we develop the mod in the open and where we also host much more frequently updated progress reports. Til next time!