Hello,

I'm new to Tamriel Rebuilt (both playing and posting about it), but I really like the scope of the project and was hoping I could find some way to help.

I had a thought (not fully fleshed out) about Moon Sugar cultivation that I thought I'd share and see what people thought about it. There's a lot of missing pieces to the Moon Sugar economy in the base game, and I thought you could make a storywise interesting (and mechanically simple) questline about it. I thought it could create some interesting ways to explore the factions of the world, although since I'm new to the project, I'm not sure if it conflicts with existing lore.

So, Moon Sugar and Skooma are extremely common items for smugglers to move because they're so dang profitable, and are primarily (but not exclusively) consumed by Khajiit. We know that Moon Sugar takes on religious significance for Khajiit (again, I do not know how much this religion has been fleshed out in TR beyond what exists already in Morrowind).

But despite such a large black market economy, giving rise to smuggler dens placed all over Morrowind, and creating ample space to interact with the various in-game factions (Thieves' Guild, Camonna Tong, Imperial Legion, any of the great houses but particularly Hlaalu, Khajiit life, including on slave plantations...), it is not given much space in the Main Game (especially when compared with other taboos, like Necromancy, Vampirism, or even smuggling Dwarven artifacts, all of which appear in the Main Questline to some extent).

So, here's roughly my idea: There's a small plot of land where Moon Sugar is cultivated under the auspices of a certain Great House - I think Hlaalu makes the most sense. It is largely cultivated by free Khajiit. The existence of this plot makes members of House Dres uneasy, who fear that the free Khajiit working the land are a) smuggling Moon Sugar to their own slaves (which they are), and b) could foment rebellion among enslaved Khajiit (which they very much would like to). Because of this, they put pressure on the Empire to root out these plots of land and arrest the Khajiit cultivators, but because they have the patronage of nobles of a Great House (Hlaalu?), members of the Imperial Legion are hesitant to act and constrained by politics from intervening.

My initial thought for how you could interact with this plot was that it would make for a good Thieves' Guild quest, where you're sent to secure a smuggling contract with the local cultivators, and receive the opportunity to hear their grievances and eliminate the competing smugglers in the Camonna Tong - could create a neat branching story, where you have options to kill off the competition, get the competition arrested, secure favor as a preferred smuggling organization by a local noble, secure the favor of the Khajiit cultivators by addressing some of their grievances.

However, looking through the quest pages on UESP, it seems like there's a good amount of Thieves' Guild content in Old Ebonheart already, but a dearth of Imperial Legion quests. I think it could make for a great Imperial Legion questline of the type the Legion never got in base Morrowing - one with dirty cops, and hard moral decisions. A rogue lieutenant tells you to go enforce the law and dismantle the Moon Sugar plot - his commander explicitly forbids it, as it would jeopardize their relationship with the Hlaalu nobility. When you go to the plantation, you witness the mean circumstances of the Khajiit, sandwiched between the hard law of the Empire, the overbearing taxation and "protection money" of House Hlaalu and the Camonna Tong, and the cruelty and impunity of the smugglers who come by to pick up their shipments each week. Do you enforce the law of the Empire? Do you leave the Khajiit alone but arrest/kill the smugglers, ending impunity, but leaving the Khajiit deprived of their sole source of income? Do you start your own protection racket, marginalizing the rogue Lieutenant and extorting a Hlaalu noble for a bribe to allow the Moon Sugar cultivation to continue (and, do you then deal with the fallout of this bribe, when that Hlaalu noble purchase a Writ of Execution with your name on it?)?

Obviously, this idea isn't fully fleshed out, but I always thought the real problem with the Imperial Legion questline in base Morrowind was that it wasn't close enough to the hit HBO show "The Wire." So is this the type of thing this project would be interested in? Does it conflict with existing lore? The main problem I see with implementing this quest is 1) it requires the creation of Moon Sugar plant assets, as well as allocation of space in the real game world for a clandestine Moon Sugar plot, and 2) it has serious consequences for the character of the NPCs who would participate in the quest, including major in-world characters in the Legion and House Hlaalu. I don't know if this would conflict with any already written personalities of any Imperial Legion characters.

So, is this the sort of quest this project is interested in? Should I work on firming up and fleshing out its details? Is this the type of support this project needs?

Best,

SonOfKrampus