Tamriel Rebuilt

I don't really have time to make this all nice and loresy so this is very much a bare-bones type of document, meant for basic in-game stuff and overarching sentiments only.

Also see Adanorcil's follow-up post down below.

Indoril is a very traditional and pious house. Their decisions and positions are always motivated by their interpretation of Tribunal doctrine. This does not mean that they always agree with each other - interpretations differ between individuals, and the Hierographa are often times vague or contradictory. The councilors in the Lan Orethan see the other houses as fellow children of Almsivi, while the Indoril at the borders see Hlaalu and Telvanni encroachment on their territory as a violation of ancient/sacred pacts/traditions.

General notes on their relationship with other factions:
Imperials - Perception ranges from inferior outlanders to unlawful oppressors. No open hostility due to Armistice treaty and stable geopolitical situation, but remember, half the House's nobles killed themselves over the treaty, so the general sentiment is that everything was better before the Imperials came to Morrowind. The degree of acceptance of Imperial presence probably differs from region to region. I can imagine the people of Almalexia being used to outlanders a bit more than the secluded nobles of the Lan Orethan.
FG - Regarded as useful mercenaries on one hand, and an untrustworthy Imperial institution on the other. Can really go either way. Should probably have an easier time in Almalexia than they do in Akamora.
MG - The Indoril are no strangers to magic, but have no use for the profane scholarly endeavours of the Guild. As long as they keep out of Indoril business and don't blatantly break Temple law, they don't bother the Indoril too much.
TG - Thieves like wealth, and the Indoril have a lot of it. The love is not mutual.
Legion - generally disliked, but they don't have too much of a presence in the area.
Cult - heretics protected by the establishment. Aren't really all that welcome in Indoril territory, but the cult knows this and doesn't really seek the confrontation, I think. If a priest started preaching the glory of Zenithar in town square he'd probably be asked to leave rather than be decapitated though. For all their worship of the wrong gods, the Indoril can at least respect the piety of the cult.
King - Helseth is pretty much just a puppet to them, who can be easily dismissed. The Indoril are unhappy that the position moved to House Hlaalu, but in the end the Monarch has little power. Helseth is a minor player on the political landscape, at least right now - this is all written from a pre-Tribunal point of view. The Monarch only really begins to consolidate his power after/during the events of the game. For more information see http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=21531

Temple - This relationship is obviously very good. Indoril frequent the Temples and often times ask their priests for guidance on important matters. Through this relation the Temple has a great deal of power in Indoril territory. Adanorcil mentioned that the Alma Rula (the Temple's head of daily affairs) might be the brother of the Grand Ascendant. I like that idea, but even if that doesn't end up happening, the two factions are very close and entwined.
Redoran - Indoril has fought alongside the Redoran in every major battle since the formation of the Houses. The two houses are very much alike and get along well. For a more detailed post on the differences between the two houses, see http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?p=289442#289442
Telvanni - Disliked, especially in the Akamora area, but that's already done so it isn't too relevant right now. Basically seen as straying from the ways of Almsivi.
Hlaalu - Disliked for their intimate relationship with Imperial power, geopolitical disputes at the Thirr river, and their gradual abandoning of traditional Dunmer values. Still respected as a fellow House, obviously, but they're not on good terms.
Dres - Indoril and Dres get along well. They have longstanding trade arrangements, and while the Dres aren't as focused on Almsivi, instead practicing a lot of ancestor worship, the Indoril respect them for it. The Dres don't necessarily feel the same way, and are probably a bit more ambivalent towards the Indoril, but all things considered they're good neighbors.
Morag Tong - The MT generally operates in the shadows, and as such they don't really have much of a direct relationship with Indoril. Indoril accepts and respects them as agents of Mephala/Vivec and acting for the good of Morrowind. That obviously doesn't mean they're overjoyed whenever one of their Nobles dies, but it's part of the traditional Dunmer culture they hold in high regard.

Ugh, this post is so ugly. Anything I missed? Feel free to post questions / request clarifications / mock me.

Also maybe worth recording their attitude to the Morag Tong, and to the Good and Bad Daedra and their cults. As well as their perspective on Helseth and the institution of the king of Morrowind- a bit more of a relevant issue in this region than in others.

Good points - you posted just as I was editing in a bit about the MT, but our current understanding of the MT is quite lacking unfortunately. We'll have to have a good discussion about them some time.

Nothing much to add. I'll make some additions where I think they might be useful.

This has been stated before, but since it's pertinent to the discussion, I think I will quickly reiterate it. The story of House Indoril in the Third Era is one of identity. The Indoril are Morrowind. More than any other House, the Indoril derive their social narrative from the idea of a vibrant, strong nation of Dunmer ("Resdayn", more so than "Morrowind"), of diverse people united under three divine, but kind rulers, and free from the corrupting influence of transient western Empires. The great tragedy, of course, is that at the current time, every of these pillars is crumbling rapidly. Morrowind had to subject itself to the Cyrodiil empire, while Hlaalu is opening up lucrative trade with the Empire

Imperials - Also important to note that the Imperials represent one of the major factors in the crumbling identity of the Indoril as the obvious, hereditary rulers of Morrowind. Like Why indicated, this doesn't invite open hostility, if only because that would be unwise from a political and military point of view, but there's a lot of bitterness.

FG - Right, good enough for dirty work.

TG - Typical example of Imperial tolerance for immoral activities that don't pose an immediate threat to the political status quo.

Temple - The two are strongly intertwined. The Indoril derive a lot of their legitimacy from (purported) genealogical ties to saints, scholars and sometimes even Nerevar or the Triunes themselves.

Hlaalu - Another of those factors that is threatening the social narrative of the Indoril. The Hlaalu are inviting Imperials trade and customs into Morrowind.

Morag Tong - An ancient and honorable institution for discreetly resolving disputes. A crucial tool for the prevention of large-scale clan conflicts, thus preserving the stability of the nation.

Good Daedra - Respectable, but outmoded ancestral models for the Triunes. Seen as wilder, more primitive spirits from a bygone age. Worship is discouraged, but not persecuted either.

Bad Daedra - Same powerful ancestral spirits as the Good Daedra, only without the redeeming aspects. Enemies of the Tribunal, but also trials for the Dunmer people.

The king - Imperial attempt to jam a square peg into a round hole. Naturally of Hlaalu descent, because the Indoril would find the notion of a king superfluous and rather absurd. Tolerated for the sake of keeping the peace, but largely ignored otherwise.

Making this a sticky so it can remind future generations of the importance of eloquence.

Question: Where do they stand on the issue of slavery as opposed to the other houses?

Slavery is lawful and in the interest of both the slave and the master. After all, from the Dunmer point of view, the slave races are inferior to the Dunmer, so by incorporating them in Dunmer society they're essentially doing them a favor. That's the official explanation, anyway. The Dunmer aren't exactly all that interested in what their slaves think about the issue and you won't hear many slaves agreeing with that point of view. According to dialog in vanilla Indoril is actually more into slavery than Hlaalu and Redoran and I like that idea.

I did a quick sketch of a table describing the reactions of NPCs of different factions. The table should be read by finding the source faction on the left hand column, and matching it with a faction from the top row. I have only included reactions by TR factions.

The information is from the UESPWiki, which basically corresponds with what has been stated in this thread. Please feel free to comment with suggestions for adjustments or to fill in the blanks. I may be pushing it by mentioning that the original MW factions will also need reactions on TR factions, but thought I'd mention it anyway.

To get the discussion going I'd like to point out two things I have noticed in the info at UESP:
The Imperial Knights either miss information regarding a reaction towards their own, or this reaction is neutral.
The Mainland Fighters Guild reacts to their own with +2 while all other factions react to their own with +3.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Quoting below the legend used at UESP:
-3 = Hated Enemy
-2 = Enemy
-1 = Hostile
0 = Neutral
+1 = Friendly
+2 = Ally
+3 = Beloved Ally

Under the new direction of TR the Mainland and Vvardenfell versions of factions will be merged together.

Is it then safe to assume that the current Mainland reactions will apply?

EDIT: I have updated the table in my previous post according to my assumption. What do you think? There are still some blanks that I feel could be filled in, but I'd like some opinion on the table as is.

Please don't lynch me for this, but I think it might be a good idea to rework the vanilla house relations from scratch, to accomodate the larger selection.

In vanilla, all factions had to dislike each other equally, because otherwise one faction would be clearly superior. For example, if Hlaalu and Redoran were to like each other, but not Telvanni, than Hlaalu and Redoran would both have 2 likes, but Telvanni only 1, making it the inferior choice.

Now that we have 5 choices however, we can make the inter-house relations more complex while keeping it relatively balanced.

My personal proposal would be along the lines of this, but I'm not a lore expert, so feel free to change whatever your like.

[spoiler][img]http://i.imgur.com/uoxA0CO.png[/img][/spoiler]
I didn't use -3 in this graph because I think all the Houses would band together against some kind of outlander threat, regardless of how much they might dislike each other.

Also, I'm really not sure what to do with Hlaalu, mainly because I don't know how to best incorporate their secret in this. Is how others view them based on their public, imperial-loving stance, while Hlaalu's views on others are based around their hidden agenda? I don't know, and I'll leave that to someone who is more involved in the planning.

Again, I'm mainly posting this to propose allowing changes to vanilla house relations, and the actual numbers can be changed however you see fit.

Think House Indoril should have a -4 disposition penalty against the Nerevarine faction if House Redoran has one. They would be equally intolerant of such heretical prophecy.

I believe House Telvanni and House Dres are supposed to be on relatively decent terms. They're both staunch supporters of slavery and pretty isolationist.

I agree with Yeti on the Dres-Telvanni friendship. They have similar thoughts on slavery, are both indeed quite isolated/impenetrable and because of the distance between their territories I don't see much reason for any dispute between the two. They aren't beloved allies, but definitely respect eachother.

I also agree with Dreadnautilus. Indoril is related to the Temple in such way that they would despise the Nerevarine. The Temple has an extreme -8 towards the Nerevarine, which should say something.

Theminimanx I don't see how you make Telvanni friendly towards Hlaalu as their view on the Imperials are most definitely not similar. On IRC you mentioned you had found a source on Dres-Telvanni. Could you elaborate on this?

Again, I'm not even remotely an expert on the lore, and if Yeti thinks Telvanni and Dres would be friends, I'll defer to him.

As for the source, I found [url=http://uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:Tamriel_Rebuilt/Great_House_Dres]this UESP page[/url], but I don't know where they got their numbers from.

I personally think that we don't have to be worried too much about gameplay here, and just go with whatever seems to make sense. (Or in gameplay terms try to appeal to roleplaying rather than to min-maxing). While Bethesda made an effort to balance House presence on Vvardenfell, and as such it also made sense to balance House relations, I think we should specifically avoid such balance on the mainland.
For example, it would for the most part be fairly inconsequential to be disliked by House Indoril or House Telvanni, because neither House has a lot of members. And the amount of content in TR is so vast that being disliked in one part of it isn't necessarily a big deal for the player anyway.
I agree with Theminimanx that Houses shouldn't have [-3] relation with other Houses, and a side-effect of that is to make being disliked by another House even less of a big deal.
As such, my suggestions are as follows:
In short, joining House Dres would appear to be the most advantageous choice, and House Hlaalu the least advantageous, but through other factors that would somewhat balance out. (For instance the player would be able to get good deals or even simply be able to do business with a lot of merchants through joining House Hlaalu, while Dres NPCs would probably have really low base disposition, which means their opinion of Dres players would still not be especially high).

My reasoning for the above values:

Dres: don't have as low of an opinion of House members as they have of everyone else, but not buddy-buddy with any Houses either. The other Houses are all 'ok', but ultimately are competition like everyone else, to be exploited like everyone else.
The Dres do have individual reasons for having a decent impression of the other Houses: House Indoril shares the Dres appreciation of faith, even if they do not revere the ancestors as the Dres do. House Redoran shares the Dres appreciation of duty, though they're pretty much useless as trade partners and as such fairly inconsequential. House Telvanni shares the Dres appreciation of tradition and isolationism, even if they are profane. They also supply Dres with a lot of business. House Hlaalu shares the Dres appreciation of business; the Houses understand each other rather well, and make for good trade partners. If the Lake Andaram conflict were already underway, their relation to Hlaalu should be [-1], but to my understanding, at the start of the game, that conflict has yet to break out.

Hlaalu: Hlaalu is the black sheep of the Houses, (a rebellious youth to Telvanni's estranged uncle, or wherever you want to go with the metaphor), and for the most part holds no love for the other Houses. They may dislike Indoril because they're proving to be a real stick in the mud, though they could just as well be indifferent to that House, and they somewhat like Dres because they are similarly unscrupulous, and as such make good trade partners.

Indoril: Telvanni and Hlaalu are wayward family members, continuing the above metaphor, and Indoril really just wants everyone to get along. But for the time being, they're strange, and not nice, and as such disliked. Dres and Redoran aren't perfect either, but they come to all of the family gatherings (I should probably stop with that metaphor) and have the proper respect for Dunmer tradition and culture. They would band together at the slightest hint of trouble. So they're good.

Redoran: Indoril shares Redoran's appreciation of the Tribunal and the Houses are allies, but Redoran may still be nursing some old wounds from when Indoril basically left them to die when Tiber Septim invaded. That being said, they're getting along well at the moment. Telvanni and Redoran never got along, but rarely fight, and, except on Vvardenfell, don't run into each other much, so Redoran mostly just vaguely dislike them. House Dres proved more willing to fight alongside House Redoran than House Indoril, but they're too distant to be of any help to House Redoran, and have very different values from House Redoran. They're ok.
Hlaalu not only let Tiber Septim march his army through what were then Redoran lands, they went on to grab those lands for themselves, and make no secret of wanting to eat up the rest of House Redoran. At the time of the game, the hostility between the Houses is not quite at the point of outright fighting, which is the only reason their opinion of House Hlaalu is not [-3].

Telvanni: House Dres doesn't bother House Telvanni and provides the House with slaves. They're alright. The rest are tedious and in the way. (Their opinion of Hlaalu could just as well be [0], but as Hlaalu is contesting Telvanni's expansion on Vvardenfell just like House Redoran is I figured it might as well be [-1] as well).
Note that Telvanni aren't as thrilled to see fellow Telvanni as the other Houses are to see their own. They have no reason to be thrilled; fellow Telvanni mostly don't have the silly scruples of the other Houses, and mostly don't get in the way, which is why they're alright, but there's no camaraderie among the Telvanni as there is in other Houses. Other Telvanni are still 'the other'.

Gnomey continues to prove why he's a lead developer while I'm not, by saying everything I wanted to say, except better.

Well I used a lot of space to say it, so I'm assuming the difference is that I have more free time.

I have tried my best to disagree with you Gnomey, but it seems I can't. Though I feel Redoran is slightly overrated, I don't see any way to adjust this. I have updated the table with your suggestions and it's starting to look great.

I feel we can elaborate more on some of the factions

I haven't yet much knowledge about the East Empire Company so can't suggest much on this. However, I feel that too many factions are neutral towards them.

The Hands of Almalexia are still kind of vague and I don't know how big their role will be in Almalexia so I can't offer much of an opinion here either.

The Imperial Knights seem to be on very good terms with many other factions. I would think that at least Indoril, Dres, Telvanni and possibly the Temple would not have much sympathy for them.

The Twin Lamps most definitely need more enemies for obvious reasons.

I am also curious about Dres and Indoril views on the Ashlanders. Any opinions here?

Why wrote:TG - Thieves like wealth, and the Indoril have a lot of it. The love is not mutual.

In the current table Indoril and the TG have a love-factor of -2 towards eachother. Does Why's comment imply that the TG should be (slightly) more fond of Indoril?

What about the King? I don't have a clue and I seem to have overlooked it entirely in the table.

What's going on with the Imperial Archaeological Society? Are they still in TR?

If we're going to ignore gameplay concerns in our faction balance, I might be worth considering re-balancing the Morag Tong as well. In vanilla, Bethesda made sure the Morag Tong wasn't disliked so they could let you commit some consequence free murders. But realistically, the Empire wouldn't approve of assassins running around freely. At least of one their targets (Larrius Varro) is a member of the Legion, yet simply by showing a piece of paper, his murderer gets to walk away without punishment.

I also think the Nerevarine faction is extremely underutilized. In vanilla, it's only used to have traditionalists hinder you during a portion of the main quest. But it could be much more than that. I'm thinking about having two different stages of 'Nerevarine-hood', with different disposition modifiers. (The specific modifier values are up for debate of course.)
The first is after you complete the third trial. Azura acknowledges you as Nerevarine, and you prove your connection to him by wearing his enchanted ring. At this point, the Ashlanders think you'll restore them to glory (+2), while the Dunmer Houses (Hlaalu and Telvanni aside) think you're a heretic (-1 to -6, depending on the house), with the temple hating your guts (-8, ordinators attack on sight). Meanwhile, Imperial factions don't really know what to make of this foreign religious strife, and remain neutral.
The second stage is reached after your conversation with Vivec, at which point you're legitimised as the Nerevarine. The Ashlanders still like you, and the Houses/Temple have come around, and now also support you as Nerevarine (+1 to +4, depending on the faction, Hlaalu and Telvanni still don't care). It might also be interesting to have the Imperial military factions feel slightly threatened by a Morrowind that's recently been unified under a single Hortator (-1), but I'm not sure if this fits with the lore.

As for general faction opinions, I'll try sharing some more of my non-expertise. I'm mainly extrapolating this based on the already existing relations in the table, so someone with more knowledge of TR lore could probably make massive improvements to this.

Let's take it from the top:
Ashlanders: I think they've got a good thing going with their 'we hate everyone' attitude. Assume a -1 attitude if not otherwise specified. For some specifics: -3 for Indoril, as they represent everything wrong with the 'civilized' Dunmer (Tribunal worship in particular); ditto for the Hands of Almalexia. -1 for Dres, they'd be disliked much like the other Houses, but their ancestor worship gets them a few points. I'm not sure about their views on slavery, but since they don't have any in their camps I'll assume they're neutral to Twin Lamps. The fact that Twins Lamps are not affiliated with any partical faction means they're not actively disliked by the Ashlanders, but they don't try to free slaves either. This is the culture that later spawned House Dres after all.

Blades: From what I can tell, their part in the Imperial law enforcement makes them approve of any military based Imperial factions, so adding a +2 to the Imperial Knights seems to make sense. Aside from that, they don't seem to care as long as you're not a direct threat to the Empire (vampires, criminals and Dagoth Ur), and I don't any new factions of that type have been added. Although I'm not sure how their dislike of the Tribunal Temple fits into this.

Camonna Tong: I really don't know what TR is doing with the CT. I think they're part of Hlaalu now? (Much as I dislike that idea.) Either way, I know too little to offer an opinion.

Vampire Clans: They seem to dislike anyone who isn't a part of their Clan (Camonna Tong aside), so the same should probably apply to all new factions.

Twin Lamps: Since Twin Lamps is a 100% undercover faction, it might be interesting to reflect that in the disposition modifier. Nobody knows you're a member of Twin Lamps, so nobody has a worse disposition towards you because of your membership. Obviously Twin Lamps members would still be liked by other Twin Lamps members. As for Twin Lamps views of others: due to them not being a proper faction, they don't really care about the views of other factions, and are therefore neutral by default. The only thing they care about are your views on slavery, and this singular drive is reflected in their views of others. If you engage in the slave trade (Dres, Telvanni, ?Camonna Tong?), you have -3. If you help free slaves, you have +3 (though as far as I know, no factions have quests that involve freeing slaves).

Aside from that, I don't have much to add, mostly because I don't trust my limited lore-knowledge to be compatible with new TR lore.

Theminimanx wrote:If we're going to ignore gameplay concerns in our faction balance, I might be worth considering re-balancing the Morag Tong as well. In vanilla, Bethesda made sure the Morag Tong wasn't disliked so they could let you commit some consequence free murders. But realistically, the Empire wouldn't approve of assassins running around freely. At least of one their targets (Larrius Varro) is a member of the Legion, yet simply by showing a piece of paper, his murderer gets to walk away without punishment.

I think the Imperial Cult wouldn't really approve of the Morag Tong due to their Mephala worship and the fact that murder is presumably a grave sin.

First of all thanks for your thinking and thorough explanations. Gives a man something to think about.

Theminimanx wrote:If we're going to ignore gameplay concerns in our faction balance, I might be worth considering re-balancing the Morag Tong as well. In vanilla, Bethesda made sure the Morag Tong wasn't disliked so they could let you commit some consequence free murders. But realistically, the Empire wouldn't approve of assassins running around freely. At least of one their targets (Larrius Varro) is a member of the Legion, yet simply by showing a piece of paper, his murderer gets to walk away without punishment.

In my opinion the Morag Tong is perfectly balanced as is. Though it basically is a legalised band of murderers, they do contribute to keeping Morrowind a relatively quite place without too much dispute. The Imperials must appreciate this fact as well. And concerning the Imperial Cult, I imagine that initially they wouldn't approve of MT, but all things considered any faction would allow some hypocritical corruption "for the greater good".

Theminimanx wrote:I also think the Nerevarine faction is extremely underutilized.... I'm thinking about having two different stages of 'Nerevarine-hood', with different disposition modifiers...

I very much like this idea. But, it does require some thinking by lore-pro's, which I am not.

Theminimanx wrote:Ashlanders: I think they've got a good thing going with their 'we hate everyone' attitude. Assume a -1 attitude if not otherwise specified. For some specifics: -3 for Indoril, as they represent everything wrong with the 'civilized' Dunmer (Tribunal worship in particular); ditto for the Hands of Almalexia. -1 for Dres, they'd be disliked much like the other Houses, but their ancestor worship gets them a few points. I'm not sure about their views on slavery, but since they don't have any in their camps I'll assume they're neutral to Twin Lamps. The fact that Twins Lamps are not affiliated with any partical faction means they're not actively disliked by the Ashlanders, but they don't try to free slaves either. This is the culture that later spawned House Dres after all.

I feel where you're coming from. The Ashlanders indeed do not like either of the Great Houses and your proposal for their relationships towards Indoril and Dres make sense. They should also have a -1 towards the Imperial Knights.
The Hands of Almalexia, however, I see more as a neutral party. They act as an army. They follow orders for the greater good without asking questions or getting emotionally involved. Other factions may not like Her Hands, but they don't give a shit.

Theminimanx wrote:Blades:...

+2 towards the Imperial Knights seems correct indeed. As the Blades are basically an invention to draw the player into the Vvardenfell main quest, whatever they think of other factions is not very relevant and I think this is why they were kept relatively neutral in MW, with some fluctuation here and there to comply with lore.

Theminimanx wrote:Camonna Tong:

I lack the knowledge to comment on CT.

Theminimanx wrote:Vampire Clans: They seem to dislike anyone who isn't a part of their Clan (Camonna Tong aside), so the same should probably apply to all new factions.

I agree.

Theminimanx wrote:Twin Lamps: Since Twin Lamps is a 100% undercover faction, it might be interesting to reflect that in the disposition modifier. Nobody knows you're a member of Twin Lamps, so nobody has a worse disposition towards you because of your membership. Obviously Twin Lamps members would still be liked by other Twin Lamps members. As for Twin Lamps views of others: due to them not being a proper faction, they don't really care about the views of other factions, and are therefore neutral by default. The only thing they care about are your views on slavery, and this singular drive is reflected in their views of others. If you engage in the slave trade (Dres, Telvanni, ?Camonna Tong?), you have -3. If you help free slaves, you have +3 (though as far as I know, no factions have quests that involve freeing slaves).

The Twin lamps hate slavery, and therefore all factions that contribute to it so -3 towards these factions is inevitable. I also like the idea of their secrecy, which would mean that Dres should also have a neutral reaction to Twin Lamps members. I'd like to add to this that the Imperial factions are against slavery, but because (by Imperial approved) law allows slavery in Morrowind, the Twin Lamps are officially criminals, therefore their relationship should remain neutral.

Regarding the Imperial Cult's opinion on the Morag Tong,

For my Gods and Emperor wrote:The Imperial cults have the greatest respect for the high moral principles of House Redoran and the Morag Tong, and honors their different but noble conceptions of Divine Inspiration.

klep wrote: In my opinion the Morag Tong is perfectly balanced as is. Though it basically is a legalised band of murderers, they do contribute to keeping Morrowind a relatively quite place without too much dispute. The Imperials must appreciate this fact as well. And concerning the Imperial Cult, I imagine that initially they wouldn't approve of MT, but all things considered any faction would allow some hypocritical corruption "for the greater good".

Oh yeah, I forgot about the whole Morag-Tong-instead-of-House-armies thing the Imperials did. Still, the fact they also get to target non-Dunmer makes me think it would be more of a bitter acceptance (-1), rather than them actually being okay with it(0).

Nice find on the Cult btw, Daedric.

On a completely unrelated note: would it be possible to change to quote formatting? The massive text makes conversations hard to read compared to the textboxes I see on other forums.

Here's my only issue with the Morag Tong in general in Morrowind.

They are supposed to be a secret cult, involved with the Webspinner and Plots. But every NPC seems to know they exist. So then what, exactly, is the point? I thought it was supposed to be more of a contract to kill a political figure by means of a Writ because NO ONE KNOWS WHO KILLED THEM.

If everyone knows the Morag Tong exists then as soon as a political figurehead dies, it's just another obvious finger-pointing at the Tong and it does no good. I get it that the Writs are still secret, so no one knows exactly WHICH House or person called for the Writ, but with the way politics is set up in MW it's not hard to tell which guild or House hates one another. So it kind of removes the whole point of the Tong. Like, ok, the House Dres leader was killed. We know someone from House Hlallu just contracted the Tong to kill them.

I think that the best course of action to take is to have the Morag Tong be waaaaaay lesser known, like...only the people in the position of being able to contract a Writ and MAYBE some veeeery specific NPC's would know they exist. This problem appears in vanilla MW as well though, where any random NPC can tell you how the House politics goes down.

I don't think this is a very good way of handling the secrecy of the Tong. But that may just be me being difficult. However the execution of the game play mechanics of the Morag Tong is a little too 'out in the open' for my liking.

A few quick points:

First of all, in those graphs, I think the vertical columns are really the most important. They show how the opinions of members of factions change upon the player joining a certain faction.
Always remember that faction relations are inherently player-centric. The player will probably never join Her Hands, for instance, so figuring out what other factions would think of Her Hands would mostly be a waste of time. Figuring out what Her Hands thinks (if anything) of other factions is, however, very important.
Truth be told, I think it might be more reasonable to just figure out the vertical columns in the individual faction threads. This would split the task into bite-sized portions, allowing for proper discussion, and it would be rather easy to then go through the faction threads and gather the results.
That being said, I'm not saying there's a problem with continuing in this thread.

Secondly, keep in mind that the earlier posts in this thread were written before we came up with the current identity for House Indoril, and as such take them with a pinch of salt.

As far as the Morag Tong is concerned, first of all the players' membership is supposed to be secret, as with the Twin Lamps and Blades. I personally think none of them should be represented in other factions' relations; instead, if you reveal your affiliation to certain faction members, for example when presenting a writ to a guard, there could be a specific disposition change for that NPC and only that NPC.
That being said, in theory it would not surprise me if Imperial factions had a slightly favourable opinion of the Morag Tong, though a slightly negative impression would work just as well. I thought I remembered a source stating that writs on outlanders are, in fact, illegal as a term of the Armistice, but the Morag Tong does them secretly. However, I assume that's a holdover from older planning that made it into the final product, like a lot of dialogue in Morrowind. (Read the entries for Dunmer architecture).
Finally, the Morag Tong is not a secret organization, and never was a secret organization. Their members are secret, (sure the player reveals himself when showing a writ to a guard, but technically Morag Tong members are probably supposed to/tend to wear masks), their headquarters are secret, how to join them is secret, but do keep in mind that they have very visible guildhalls in all major cities. They are not inherently secretive, they just keep a lot of secrets. Occasionally they like to take very visible action, whenever that pleases Mephala more, though that was probably more common pre-Tribunal.

Edit: post-Tribunal, the main purpose of the Morag Tong is to do all of the 'fighting' in House Wars, aside from duels. It is probably generally not a big secret who hired the Morag Tong for a hit, as most families would have only so many deadly fueds going at any one time. However, there are specific rules in place to avoid those fueds being drawn out. That's pretty much the point in using the Morag Tong.
For the times in which the contractor is not known, however, it's even less of a deal. Sure, the target's family might know that the Morag Tong killed the victim, but the Morag Tong is a tool, not an actor, and for the most part the victims' family would not take any action against the Tong. And would be stupid if they tried. If a House were to take action, they'd be attacking an important pillar of Tribunal politics and, to a lesser extent, society, which would create far more enemies than it's worth. The Morag Tong is useful, so it is tolerated, or even appreciated.

I can see your points, and I agree with them, and they make sense in both a logistical and political way; however just HOW known the workings of House wars should be is something I am kind of worried about. There are various texts in-game that allude and even outright expose the dirty workings of higher-up House politics, but is it a concept that someone in a backwater shack village would understand? Like you said, the Tong is kind of in a position to make outright murders to please Mephala; so is it that they are truly just pawns to Mephala? Or do they operate on a profit-end margin as well?

The reason I ask is because I am wanting to heed caution of what is going to be done with Almalexia in the future, as well as any major Temples in Indoral lands; is there some type of anti-Temple hierarchy that goes along with the Morag Tong? It's something that isn't really touched upon in Vvardenfell but there are a few different ways to interpret one of the Anticipations and 'Good Daedra' operating in the economy and within the political parties the way they do. Just something to keep in mind I suppose.