Tamriel Rebuilt is a large community modding project that aims to add the missing mainland of the Morrowind province to TES III: Morrowind. The mod is developed and released as a series of fully realized expansions that are seamlessly integrated into the vanilla Morrowind worldspace and with each other. Currently, players can download and enjoy roughly half of the mainland, which comes fully equipped with thousands of interior locations, NPCs, dialogue, and more than 600 added quests – many more than the original game and expansions combined.

Happy holidays, readers! Despite the release of our last expansion, Andaram, only a short while ago, progress on new expansions to the Morrowind mainland is ongoing, as those following the much-more-frequently-updated #progress-updates channel on our Discord server well know.

Now, as the year is drawing to a close, it is high time we update you on what our prolific artists and asset developers have been doing for most of this year. We last tallied this progress in early March, so we will be covering almost a years worth of assets progress – prepare for a long read. Some brief highlights of what that includes:

• Reams of new concept art on the Mournhold and Velothis districts, and on innumerable other topics.
• An entire new, alien culture for the Dreugh including eerie citadels, new enemies, and innumerable clutter items.
• Tons of new ships from all across Tamriel to fill our harbors with.
• An entire new architecture set modeled on the Old Mournhold ruins.
• Lots of progress on assets needed for Indoril region overhauls, most especially in the Mephalan Vales region.
• Many new armors, creatures, clutter sets, and more.

The below post will walk you through the fruits of what are essentially the first two legs of our development pipeline – conceptualization and asset creation. Only when concepts are set in stone and unique assets created can new regions and cultures be called to life by our level and quest designers.

Warning! This post contains spoilers for our newest expansion, Andaram, especially as regards the Almas Thirr Mages Guild questline. If you wish to go into the content unspoiled, it’s best to leave this news post for later. Furthermore, bear in mind that all content here is work-in-progress and subject to change – especially information on the linked asset browser pages, which is in many cases outdated already.

Now, without further ado…

Velothis District

It’s been a while since Tamriel Rebuilt was last focused on Redoran lands and northwestern Morrowind (most prior effort in that area ceased by 2013). Soon it will be time to steer our development northwards again, and our concept artists were happy to help bring fresh ideas to these lands.

The Velothi Mountains are to be given a unique asset palette and extended northwards into the lands of the Malahk orcs, which be-a-stranger, Aldergo, and Pickles hoped to depict:

Regarding the southern, already released part of the Velothis District, be-a-stranger, Ateiggaer, and athcliath97 provided some ideas on improved assets for Roth-Roryn and on how to make the Armun Ashlands a little more distinct from vanilla Ashlands.

athcliath97 and be-a-stranger helped visualise newer lands further to the north: the Clambering Moor, Julan-Shar, and Great Valley regions.

House Redoran

House Redoran, the rulers of the Velothis, got some rather nice clothing concepts from faunadoll.

Derse provided a lot of ideas for new Redoran architecture.

Dwemer

The towers of the long-disappeared dwarves still dot the Velothis, and to make these dungeons more worth visiting, Ateiggaer, Mike123, DuX, and athcliath97 provided some fresh ideas.

Nords

Contesting the Velothis are the Nords, whose ancient settlement in northwestern Morrowind chafes against Redoran rule. To aid them resist Dunmer oppression, Aldergo and Ateiggaer proposed they be given a ton of armor and weapons.

MammaHyena, meanwhile, drew up several ancient Nord rock carvings to decorate long-lost barrows.

Narsis District

But before we can shift focus to the snowy Redoran lands, there is still much to be done in the sweltering Narsis District. For one, Vincenzo Pisano visualized the flora needed for the eventual expansion of the Shipal-Shin region to the south, across the Argonian border de-jure.

be-a-stranger and Pickles drew some miscellaneous character and armor designs needed in the region.

House Hlaalu

Rulers of the Narsis District and much beyond, the Hlaalu are our current focus and many utility concepts were needed. athcliath97 came through with a bunch of architecture designs with some help from Deenday.

Agadzagadza (schwerthelm) and be-a-stranger drew up some cool artifacts steeped in Hlaalu history.

Argonia

Argonia is just across the border from Narsis, and its influence is often felt in southern Morrowind. Hence, Mike123 and Tammilisäke drew some clutter that may be traded across the border.

be-a-stranger and Nirva (Nirvayn) created some creature, flora, and Imperial technology designs for regions further south in Black Marsh.

Dreugh

Much development emphasis this past half-year was put on fleshing out dreugh material culture, needed for content in the bottoms of lakes Andaram and Coronati.

Fluxbender, Tammilisäke, and Ateiggaer contributed some valuable clutter and “furniture” designs.

be-a-stranger drew a wonderful rendition of a dreugh citadel and Fluxbender contributed several concepts for underwater flora that the dreugh rely upon.

be-a-stranger and Ateiggaer contributed concepts for some lootable dreugh equipment.

Finally, higher-level dreugh enemy designs were explored by be-a-stranger and Tammilisäke.

Morrowind Nedes

Hidden away in a few caves in southwestern Morrowind are faded remains of the primordial men, i.e. the Nedes, of Morrowind. Aylinerik, Shadowhawk, Mike123, and Tammilisäke drew up some ideas for their material culture.

Mournhold District

Now shifting back to the east, to Indoril lands – athcliath97 and Deenday joined be-a-stranger in fleshing out a redone Mephalan Vales region.

be-a-stranger, with help from Tammilisäke, also drew their beautiful vision of the Amber Forest, which transitions the lush Orethan to the salty Deshaan plains.

be-a-stranger, Agadzagadza, and Ateiggaer fleshed out the redesign of the Orethan Heartlands region, the highly cultivated breadbasket that will replace both the Alt Orethan and Lan Orethan regions around Almalexia.

be-a-stranger couldn’t resist drawing a few scenes of the Sundered Scar region, which is currently in the process of being overhauled.

They continued on to the Sacred Lands, which is to become a coastline of grasslands and mudflats surrounding Necrom.

Finally, be-a-stranger offered a vision of the remade Nedothril coast, a tangle of porous rocks rising up from Padomaic muds.

House Indoril

The would-be hegemons of Morrowind, the Indoril, need all the pizzazz they can get. Luckily, athcliath97 and Nirva helped shivatheo design just what was needed for their chapel architecture, based on the Old Mournhold tileset in TES III: Tribunal.

be-a-stranger and Nirva, meanwhile, continued conceptualizing the city of Almalexia itself.

faunadoll, Dharma PR, and athcliath97 then made new designs for Indoril characters and equipment.

Necrom

Hanging on to a peninsula in the Sacred Lands is Necrom, a beautiful city already, but one which we eventually hope to make even more impressive. To that end, athcliath97 contributed some gazebo designs.

Tammilisäke, Ateiggaer, and Shadowhawk also did quite a lot of conceptualization for the last assets needed for the Foul Murder questline, which will be set in Necrom.

Deshaan District

Moving southeast into the swampy Deshaan district, which still remains far in terms of development priorities, Feivelyn came out with a stunning vision of the lost city of Sotha Sil, deep in the Arnesian Jungle.

We also have a couple of new flora and creature designs for the Arnesian Jungle and Deshaan Plains by Tammilisäke, jezchrist, and Pickles.

be-a-stranger and Tammilisäke also drew up some disturbing designs for the sload near Tear in Suba Lathla – this is after all one of the few ports in Tamriel which tolerates the presence of the creatures.

House Dres

Ruling this corner of Morrowind is the brutal House Dres. Tamriel Rebuilt has a troubled history with the House – we have had decades of failed attempts in making a useable Dres architecture set. After the last attempt fizzled last year, athcliath97 got back to the drawing board to produce a simplified take on the architecture, which will now hopefully bear fruit.

Pickles, athcliath97, and Tammilisäke added to our compendium of Dres clothing and equipment concepts.

Finally, jezchrist made a number of lovely snapshots of life in Dres lands.

Telvannis District

Some few aspects of Telvanni lands to the northeast were explored, too, by be-a-stranger, Feivelyn, and Nirva.

Daedra

igor~, Tammilisäke, and be-a-stranger drew us some unique depictions of Daedric princes.

Tammilisäke and be-a-stranger also created a number of lesser daedric servants.

Dharma PR updated their helmet concept for Malacath:

Other Equipment

Several new Dunmer weapon and armor designs were made by Tammilisäke, Ateiggaer, Chryson Keras, and Aidan.

Mike123, Ateiggaer, and MammaHyena also contributed armor and weapon designs from other provinces.

Miscellaneous

Lastly, a grab-bag of items that don’t fit elsewhere. First, a ton of music instrument designs for Dunmer and other northern Tamriel inhabitants by insicht (Bastian Kalkbrenner).

Aylinerik and Ateiggaer worked on designs for Imperial magi-tech gizmos, inspired by AESA: Battlespire.

Finally, Tammilisäke contributed a set of new cave flora and igor~ drew some wonderfully weird character designs.

We now move on to in-game assets – realizations of prior concepts in 3D space that form the backbone of our mod.

Dreugh Citadels

Deserving a whole section on its own is the effort made across this Summer and Fall to bring to life our long-conceptualized dreugh citadel tileset. Creating a whole new tileset from scratch is always a tough task, this time made trickier by having to invent an alien culture from scratch and needing to optimize for underwater gameplay.

• Our idea for these Dreugh citadels was likely inspired by Beyond Skyrim: Iliac Bay, but was translated and transformed to Tamriel Rebuilt originally by Gnomey. Over the years, many artists contributed concept art to flesh out this new culture, including Gnomey, HypenoticTR, Lleyawynn, Fluxbender, Feivelyn, Tammilisäke, Ateiggaer, be-a-stranger, DONlimon, Phenoix12, and others.

• Mostly over this Summer and Fall, Sandaron (Lamb Shark), Kynesifnar, shivatheo, VenuSprout, and Feivelyn (1, 2, 3) labored long hours to create the main structural pieces and textures of the winding, labyrinthine interior set (reviewed by Kynesifnar and Cicero). beninate also added unique sounds for the membrane doors separating different rooms.

• Then Kynesifnar, Feivelyn, Fluxbender, and DarkKnightComes (S’wit) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) descended to the clutter mines to create a motherlode of weird-shaped paraphernalia to fill all these new halls with:
  • “Basins,” “chairs,” “desks,” “beds,” “tables,” “tapestries,” “altars,” pylons, spikes, racks, shelves – essentially numerous inhospitable-shaped items intended to fill the level-design role of normal furniture, while leaving their function obscure to the player.
  • A throne for the dreugh queen.
  • Misshapen lamps and glowing sacks to provide eerie light.
  • Hooks of various kinds to anchor floating items.
  • Coral beads and bead curtains.
  • Fleshy sacks for external pre-digestion of fish or bigger prey and smaller sacks for liquids.
  • Various odd fleshy containers for players to loot (including leveled variants by CdoubleOK).
  • Cages and pens for fish farming.
  • Little fish skeletons.
  • Red coral farmed by the dreugh.
  • Smear algae, another crop farmed in dreugh citadels, but which ill also be present in the Thirr waterways outside the citadel.

• VenuSprout made the gruesome Scepter of Violation, an artifact meant as a reward to the daring player that visits these depths. This is one of a set of artifacts from the long-lost dreugh civilization, conceptualized by be-a-stranger (reviewed by Cicero).

• The crowning jewel of all this effort is the eldritch dreugh queen Paruddma. The model was created just in the nick of time by Feivelyn, then wonderfully animated by joanasc and tweaked by shivatheo (reviewed by Chef). Lake Andaram will eventually not be the only place where you can see a dreugh queen, as there will be a number present in waters off of other provinces.

• Feivelyn and shivatheo also created bespoke models and textures for the dreugh man o’war, a tougher-than-usual dreugh enemy, and the trident king, a boss only slightly below the queen in stature. Both of these still need animations, and will hence be featured in future versions of the mod.

Almost all of the aforementioned pieces can now be found in Paruddma’s Maw, the first location built in this set, which forms the centrepiece of our new Andaram expansion. More of such citadels will one day be found in the Inner Sea, Lake Coronati, and Padomaic Ocean, as well as in our sister projects.

Mephalan Vales and the Indoril

shivatheo, lately one of our most productive asset developers, is fascinated with Indoril lands and concocted a devious plot to bring forward our eventual rework of east-central Morrowind – simply by creating a ton of assets required for the purpose.

The first of these stunning Machiavellian moves was to model from scratch an entire new upkept Old Mournhold architecture set. The team had long been debating whether to use the clunky greenish Mournhold set (i.e. TES III: Tribunal’s and Tamriel Rebuilt’s “Indoril” architecture of choice for decades) for our many Indoril chapels, or to use the more Dunmer-looking Old Mournhold set for these. The lack of any willing modelers meant that the former camp had the upper hand.

The materialization of shivatheo’s new tileset, however, instantly changed the game. From now, all of our reworked Indoril chapels shall use this new tileset, with the green Mournhold set becoming reserved for the city of Almalexia only. The first use this architecture will be on the new island of Gorne, to be released in the ongoing Sundered Scar revamp. Although much is finished and reviewed by Chef already, interiors and some exterior pieces still remain works in progress.

The second move was no less ambitious. For about a year now, be-a-stranger and athcliath97 have been drawing reams of concept art on what a reworked Mephalan Vales would look like. This is a mountainous region forming the northern border of Indoril lands. Currently a mess of resized and cobbled rock assets with an interesting base concept buried somewhere within, the region is slated to become a series of deep forested valleys full of various spiders and webs, intersected by sharp cliffs and ridges of purple rock.

Rather unceremoniously, shivatheo claimed nearly all of the environmental assets needed for initial exterior level design and knocked them off one after the other, as if they were no big deal at all:

• A number of moody land textures.
• Spiky rocks and cliffs for all uses.
• Tall trees, which will provide deep canopy for the valleys.
• Spiderwebs for placement all over the landscape.
• Madcane, a parasitic mushroom that infects the spiders of the region and produces an addictive drug.
• Funneler’s friend, a lattice-like mushroom that has formed a symbiosis with the region’s small silk-producing spiders.

Most of these assets remain formally unreviewed, but a test cell featuring them has already been created by Cicero.

Helping in the drive to rework the old Indoril lands have also been other developers. For Mephalan Vales:

• DarkKnightComes finished the pilgrim’s pillar, an inconspicuous plant based on art by 10Kaziem, which will be found around sacred locations in the Mephalan Vales and elsewhere in Mournhold District (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

• The talented creature-modeler Sandaron returned to contribute preliminary meshes for the formidable fog tyrant, an apex predator of the Mephalan Vales, based on art by be-a-stranger.

For the ongoing Sundered Scar rework:

• Melchior Dahrk donated a set of lovely geysers from the voluminous OAAB_Data asset repository (tweaked by Ronik, reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• revenorror ported over another OAAB mesh to use as an extra sulfur pool (reviewed by worsas, merged).

• Cicero tweaked the region ambiance (merged).

For the Sacred Lands region surrounding Necrom:

• Kynesifnar fixed some technical issues with Feivelyn’s Sacred Lands shrooms. These are based on TES IV: Shivering Isles concept art by Adam Adamowicz (still requires work).

• QueenOfBees made a start on Kaziem10’s old ancestor mushroom concept, which will grow alongside paths (still in development).

• beninate mixed a set of unique region sounds, based on earlier work by Falasmaryon (still in development).

For the Orethan Heartlands (a region slated to replace both Alt and Lan Orethan) and Aanthirin regions:

• Chef and Kynesifnar put together a set of landscape textures to support soon-to-begin exterior design work (reviewed by Chef, merged)

• LilianaUnfolded is working on the lotus poppy, a water flower for the Orethan heartlands, based on art by be-a-stranger.

• Prior to the last mod update, Cicero also finalized the new Aanthirin trees, which already replace the old Ascadian Isles ones in the region (merged).

Environmental Assets

Aside from the Mephalan Vales, tons more environmental assets for various mainland regions saw light. First, a variety of much-needed seafloor clutter as been finished by the prolific Fluxbender for the Padomaic Isles project (but useful in Tamriel Rebuilt, too):

• Numerous generic clams, oysters, and coloured pearls based on models by Asylum (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
• Two varieties of starfish, based on models by Mwgek and Remiros (reviewed by Chef, merged).
• Sea urchins (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
• Brannon the Ilk is continuing work on Fluxbender’s generic shell clutter, which will add many more types of seashells for use across the oceans.
• See also the smear algae from the dreugh citadel section above.

Many other contributors also helped with undersea stuff:

• Tons of corals for the Padomaic Ocean, made originally by Auridon, were finalized by DarkKnightComes (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

• shivatheo and Kynesifnar greatly improved our ancient Eyestar undersea plant/creature, originally by Vorrheis (reviewed by revenorror). The optimizations included should hopefully help performance in seaside settlements.

• Mwgek has made some incredibly useful driftwood pieces primarily for Padomaic Isles, but also for Tamriel. He still wants to add a couple more variants.

The asset palette for the Clambering Moor region continues crawling toward finalization, as the opening of our first new Redoran exterior claims looms closer and closer:

• VenuSprout created the long-awaited boneshroom tree based on art by Leyawynn and Gnomey (reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Chef finally mixed up a preliminary, but useable set of ground textures for the region (reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Chef also drafted preliminary variants of regional ground grass (reviewed by Chef, merged).

Closely parallel with the above, the neighboring Velothi Mountains has almost received its full set of unique assets to make the region no longer a Solstheim clone:

• Thanks to a bunch of finicky work of Cicero, EP1CN3SS2, Chef, and VenuSprout (1, 2, 3), the Velothi Mountains finally received its full set of unique ground and rock textures (reviewed by Chef and Cicero, merged).

• VenuSprout created a set of beautiful “asparagus trees,” based on art by 10Kaziem, to replace some of the Solstheim trees used previously (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Cicero tweaked the region ambiance here, too (and also in the Armun Ashlands; merged).

A couple of late-stage additions got in for the quickly-progressing Othreleth Woods region:

• Fluxbender finished Hemaris’ mushroom bush, based on Gnomey’s concept art. These ones were needed as an eye-level sight blocker to make the woods appear larger and more dense for the player (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• DarkKnightComes almost finished up a set of carnivorous fungi, based on 10Kaziem’s concept art, that populate Othreleth Woods caves (in development).

In the Shipal-Shin region, the main focus was on the cave set, made relatively recently by Stripes, DarkKnightComes, and Kynesifnar. This was probably Tamriel Rebuilt’s first fully custom cave tileset, and as it turned out, the set had quite a few teething issues. This meant that corresponding interior level design claims kept getting delayed. Luckily, other developers came to help:

• Revenorror (1, 2) contributed variations with no sand on the cave floors (primarily for Othreleth Woods caves), a lot of geometry, UV, and collision fixes to existing pieces, tons of new rooms, and a new rock mesh (reviewed by Kynesifnar and Chef, merged).

• Stele, a recently arrived contributor (1, 2), picked up the mantle by smoothing out the cave floors, fixing mesh origin, seam, UV, and collision issues, and adding connector pieces with many other tilesets (partly reviewed by Chef and merged, some work still remains).

Even the Sea of Ghosts to the north of Morrowind got some special additions:

• Taniquetil ported over Melchior Dahrk’s icebergs from his mod Search for the White Wave, to be used in a few secret northern places in the Sea of Ghosts (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Taniquetil also mixed new, far harsher region settings for the aforementioned places (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Chef added a new, snowy purple rock texture to be used throughout the Sea of Ghosts (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

Some added assets were useful all across the mainland:

• Cicero made a couple special burnt tree assets needed for a burnt-out ashlander camp in the Foul Murder questline (merged).

• Snailsting retextured many natural cave exits from Skyrim: Home of the Nords to be used in the various cave types of Morrowind – meaning we don’t have to put doors on natural cave entrances anymore (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Snailsting also retextured a special cave room made by heavenlee for Bthalag-Zturamz, so that it can be used more widely (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

Ships

One of the pet wishes of a few of our developers has been to increase diversity of ships available to us. Morrowind has many waterways and ports, so seeing the same couple of boats over and over again gets quite repetitive, especially since we know how diverse the continent ought to be. Thankfully, in the past year or so, this wish has largely come to pass:

• The most widely useful of our new ships is the common Imperial trade ship made by Taniquetil’s brother and worsas off of Shadowhawk’s concept art. This rather large cargo freighter is the workhorse of the Tamrielic economy and can be found in ports all across the continent. Several will replace placeholder Dunmer ships and Imperial Navy galleons in Tamriel Rebuilt – you can already see one in Old Ebonheart (reviewed by Kynesifnar and revenorror, merged). A matching shipwreck and new interior pieces were later added by Kynesifnar (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Brannon the Ilk and worsas created the stocky Kaagh, a Nord trade ship that is a mainstay in the ports of northern Tamriel, based on concept art by Shadowhawk (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged). You can also see this one docked in Old Ebonheart.

• Melchior Dahrk’s Small Dunmer Ship, made originally for OAAB and based on Gnomey’s concepts, was reviewed by Kynesifnar and merged earlier in the year. Kynesifnar very recently also added a shipwrecked variant of the same vessel (reviewed by Cicero).

• A new asset developer, Tartaros, recently started work on a small Dunmer cargo barge, based on Gnomey’s concept art, befitting the many small towns along the Thirr.

• Although not many will be found in Morrowind, we should absolutely mention AJbaj’s and worsas’ wonderfully realized Altmer trade ship (1, 2), made primarily with Province: Cyrodiil in mind (concept art by heavenlee, reviewed Chef, merged). Perhaps one will feature in Tear in the distant future.

• Okay, I’m stretching the limits of what I should include in this Tamriel-Rebuilt-focused news post, as there’s very little chance we’ll ever see it in Morrowind, but joanasc’s Bosmer trade ship is simply too cool to leave unmentioned. Namely, the ship is made entirely out of whale by Green-Pact-adhering Bosmer of Valenwood who have to desist from harming plants, lest they break their pact with Yffre (based on art by Ateiggaer, reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Mals, a new contributor, is now finally working on a ship for the elusive Maormer, conceptualized by Pickles. Known mainly as pirates and looters, the Sea Elves are at best infrequent guests in Tamrielic ports, but a ship of theirs will feature prominently in an upcoming quest on the island of Olanar.

Architecture

Given that much of our current work focuses on Hlaalu lands and the city of Narsis in particular, a plethora of generic and bespoke Hlaalu architecture pieces were made to aid in exterior and interior level design:

• shivatheo was most prolific in this category, taking on or finishing many assets requested by other developers for the next expansion (all reviewed by Cicero and Chef, merged):
  • Bespoke interior and exterior meshes for the Narsis Arena (exterior mesh originally made by Mwgek).
  • Giant interior dome for Taniquetil’s Narsis Imperial Consulate.
  • Unique, painted ceiling for the Hlaalu Measurehall, made in collaboration with athcliath97.
  • Many new Hlaalu sewer pieces for Mwgek’s original tileset, made on the request of Aveno, to allow building more “grandiose” rooms in Narsis’ Council Quarter sewers (1, 2).

• Our exterior level designers use our modular Hlaalu building set to create unique buildings throughout the Narsis District. Chef combined many of these into bespoke, optimized models:

  • Shipal-Sharai and Narusa Manor buildings,
  • Hlerynhul buildings (both of the above reviewed by Cicero, merged),
  • Narsis Measurehall,
  • Adavrin Manor,
  • various Kragenmoor buildings (all three above still in development).

• DarkKnightComes contributed two interior shell pieces useful for Fremennik’s grand Hlaalu Measurehall interior (1, 2; both reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Stele created a special interior dome for RyanS’ Narsis Fighters Guild and a new ledge piece needed in Bero’s Narsis Council Quarter spire (both reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Galrom added a special platform for the Measurehall (reviewed by Cicero, merged) and made progress on a fancy Hlaalu fountain for the Narsis Council Quarter.

• Overseer made a new version of a Hlaalu Gazebo, based on athcliath97’s concept art, as a replacement for Prometheus’ ancient 2004 mesh that he first used in his legendary and long-lost Narsis (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• janusz.kolosowski is nearly done with a new bespoke bridge across the Kanit river in Hlerynhul, based on a sketch by be-a-stranger.

• athcliath97 made some progress on Hlaalu iron railings and decorations for the more outlander-influenced Kragenmoor.

The Hlaalu are, of course, not the only Morrowind faction that architecture was made for. As we begin to turn our attention back towards the Velothis district, we will need more and more Redoran building assets:

• Kynesifnar reviewed the many exterior shells for new Redoran buildings that shivatheo created last year (merged).

• shivatheo also contributed a large, bespoke council hall for the Redoran settlement of Ald Iuval (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

(As a side note, if you are aspiring to help us with 3D models, we’d be very glad to have someone work on a set of ruined Redoran buildings for the many abandoned Redoran settlements around the river Kanit in our upcoming expansion.)

A couple pieces were added to the versatile Velothi architecture set, used mostly by the Indoril, Telvanni, and Temple-affiliated locales.

• shivatheo contributed various new generic buildings for the set, useful in the upcoming Sundered Scar rework and beyond (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

• The same author is close to finishing bespoke meshes for the palace of the sload-boss of the Ja-Natta crime syndicate, headquartered in the Shipal-Shin wilderness.

• athcliath97 is working on a bespoke mesh for the Monastery of St. Felms, just in time for our restarted Roth-Roryn exterior level design update.

• The OAAB team contributed a couple new Velothi interior and exterior tileset pieces (tweaked by revenorror, reviewed by worsas, merged).

Other Morrowind cultures, such as the Indoril, Dres, and Imperials, received smaller additions:

• For Almalexia itself, EndoranWest made a set of green Mournhold-style docks, needed for the city’s many ports and canalways (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• athcliath97 is now dipping toes into making a new version of House Dres architecture – sigh, that’s right, a new attempt among countless ones before it. Given endless difficulties in making a good-looking and playable modular Dres canton set – the last such being Kynesifnar’s attempt – we have now done a lot of soul-seeking and re-conceptualized how most Dres settlements should look. This ought to make finishing the set actually possible.

• A bunch of new Imperial fortress lighthouses were contributed by Mwgek and Taniquetil (reviewed and merged by Chef), originally made for Mwgek’s Ebonheart Lighthouse mod. Not yet featured anywhere in the mod, we may add one or two in the future.

• Deserving a special mention here is Stele’s work in fixing the major collision issues in the Imperial sewer tileset (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged), which will finally allow us to create the sewers of Firewatch.

Many items useful for constructing cave shells were added:

• Extended vanilla mine rail set by Stele, allowing for much more believable rail systems (reviewed by kynesifnar, merged).

• A new variant of cavern beams by Stele (reviewed by Cicero, merged)

• A new cave platform piece by Snailsting (pending review).

Smaller architecture pieces have also been made for various miscellaneous uses:

• A fresco variant of Michael Kirkbride’s Foul Murder drawing was made by RandomPal (reviewed by Cicero, merged) and will feature in our still-to-be-released Foul Murder questline.

• Kynesifnar finished a set of market tents originally created by Asylum (pending review).

• shivatheo has all but finished a giant carneval tent for the Old Ebonheart knightly tournament, a quest complex that remains in development by Marhaus.

• Mwgek is working on a completely new, general-use castaway shack primarily for the Padomaic Isles project, but the shack may find use all across Tamriel.

• Mwgek and Kynesifnar ported over a small harbor crane made by Melchior Dahrk for OAAB (merged).

Furniture and decor

Furniture and decor fill the thousands of interiors in the mod and any additions help make our locations more memorable and varied. In terms of furniture proper:

• Melchior Dahrk over at OAAB generously helped to fill out the furniture and fixture selection for the Imperials and Dunmer:
  • Wealthy Imperial chairs, benches, boxes and chests (reviewed by Chef, merged).
  • Many variations of Imperial beds (reviewed by worsas, merged).
  • An Imperial-built forge (reviewed by Kynesifnar and Cicero, merged).
  • Double-tall, rich-looking Dunmer bookshelves for libraries (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

• Rats made a bespoke pedestal for holding an artifact in the main Narsis temple (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• The incipient Project: Hammerfell really got its act together, modeling and compiling three full sets of Redguard furniture that may find some use in a couple of expat locations in Morrowind:
  • Poor- and middle-class Redguard furniture by EJRS and worsas (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).
  • Rich Redguard furniture by joanasc (reviewed by worsas, merged).
• A shout out to the Padomaic Isles project – DarkKnightComes has finished a beautiful set of middle-class furniture for the archipelago of Yneslea, based on art by Pickles (pending review).

Closely related are containers, often used as fillers:

• In times past, our sister project Province: Cyrodiil made many varieties of boxes with useful new geometries. Unfortunately, they were using separate textures meant for the light-coloured Gold Coast in Cyrodiil. Thankfully, Melchior Dahrk had ported the boxes over to use vanilla-like textures for OAAB, which Cicero now repurposed in order to make the models useful across all provinces (merged).

• Cyprinus did the same as above with a small open crate, which previously used non-Morrowind textures (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

• Fluxbender then retextured some of the above box types for the East Empire Company (pending review).

• Snailsting made a new, useful open chest variant (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

As for other kinds of decor fixtures:

• Galrom and Feivelyn created glass and gold pillars and chandeliers for those ludicruously rich Hlaalu locales (reviewed by Chef, merged). Feivelyn continued with some progress on a set of ostentatious golden ivy.

• AnrohaNexus made two statues:
  • A statue of Namira for a hidden temple in our next release (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
  • Cicero made some tweaks to a Daedroth statue modeled originally by AnrohaNexus for a third-party mod. This will be useful for generic daedric cultists in smaller locations (reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Kynesifnar and athcliath97 collaborated on a set of new, general-use Talos tapestries, which already adorn the Old Ebonheart Talos chapel (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Cicero added a heraldic Imperial wall decoration from TESA: Redguard (reviewed by Chef, merged).

• joanasc and Taniquetil made small name plaques (reviewed by Cicero, merged). Taniquetil, being our resident navy buff, has been gleefully adding these to every Navy galleon found throughout the TES III province mods.

Clutter

Clutter pieces add the final layer of interest to our exteriors and interiors and help level designers tell their little stories. As such, variety in clutter is in constant demand and asset developers are quick to help. Take, for example, tableware:

• A set of wonderfully wonky wooden clutter for Argonians was finished by Overseer (pending review) – useful given Narsis’ proximity to Argonia. This set was based on concepts by Casey Fogwell (Sigil) over at Beyond Skyrim.

• joanasc, in turn, is working on Argonian ceramic tableware, based on concept art by Tammilisäke.

• Kaiel produced a set of expensive-looking Imperial carved wood tableware for Project Tamriel, but which will be useful everywhere (reviewed by worsas, merged).

• OAAB donated a variety of additional pieces of tableware to round out existing ceramic, glass, and ebony sets (1, 2, 3) These were tweaked by revenorror, shivatheo, and Taniquetil to conform to our standards (reviewed by worsas, Cicero, and Kynesifnar, merged).

• Worth a shoutout are three full tableware sets for the Padomaic Isles by Fluxbender, all based on Pickles’ concepts, some of which which may show up in expat locations throughout eastern Morrowind (reviewed by Cicero, merged):
  • Cathnoquey palmwood,
  • Cathnoquey bronze,
  • Yneslea clay.
• Other new sets for Project Tamriel were completed, too:
  • Rich-looking Breton gilded glassware by Vidi_Aquam (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
  • Boney Bosmer kitchenware by Steppenwolf, based on art by Pickles (reviewed by worsas, merged).
  • Cheap Redguard wood tableware by joanasc, based on art by Tammilisäke (reviewed by worsas, merged).

Worth highlighting on their own are several drugs and beverages produced for the Padomaic Isles, Project Tamriel, and even the Gallimaufry mods – common enough trade goods to be found in Morrowind, occasionally:

• Palm wine from the archipelago of Cathnoquey by Fluxbender, based on concept art by Pickles (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Ngopta, a creamy liquor made from ngopta roots on Cathnoquey, by Fluxbender (concept art by Pickles, reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Aegrotat by Kynesifnar, based on art by Pickles. This waxy opium-like substance is smoked in specially crafted lamps by the Cyrodiilic upper class (reviewed by worsas, merged).

• Indulcet, by Kynesifnar, based on art by Pickles. A phosphorescent drug harvested from algae in the Ruma Floodlands of Nibenay, it is often used by artists and Dibellan cultists (pending review).

• Blackdrake by PulcharmSolis and Taniquetil, a rare amphetamine produced only by the now-isolated Imperial colonies on the red moon Masser (reviewed by worsas, merged).

• Isquel by Kynesifnar, a Summerset wine made from the altachi pear (pending review).

• Hautoma by Kynesifnar, a low-class Summerset beer (pending review).

• Jinevere by Kynesifnar, based on art by Tammilisäke. This is a High Rock gin typically consumed by the Ostern and Boullard Bretons (pending review).

• A general-use Breton beer by Kynesifnar, based on art by Tammilisäke (pending review).

A bunch more miscellaneous clutter was added, of course:

• A new asset developer Bodz has made a great start on Morrowind Nede clutter – the few items left behind as burial goods by the engimatic, long-lost men of Morrowind.

• The wonderful OAAB team, as they often do, donated a ton of miscellaneous clutter items (1, 2, 3) to Tamriel Rebuilt, which were tweaked and reviewed by Revenorror, shivatheo, Kynesifnar, Taniquetil, and worsas to conform to our standards (all merged):

  • four new Dunmer music instruments: Takuratum, Sudahk, Adun, and a pan flute,
  • ball-and-chain shackles to replace our old model,
  • a wrapped corpse,
  • scribe clutter like an abacus, ink vials, pens, and a letter seal,
  • tools like a flint and steel, scales, clamps, a fishnet, and a pincushion,
  • larger utility items like buckets, planters, and some basket varieties,
  • frivolities like display cushions, silk pillows, incense burners, and a scuttle pie,
  • kitchen equipment like canteens, pans, and teapots.

• Kynesifnar, as always, finished up and reviewed several assets that had been sitting on the browser for ages:

  • skulls of several Morrowind creatures, originally by Sandman and Vidi_Aquam, partially based on concepts by Yncke (merged).
  • snappable material piles for filling minecarts, originally by Wolli (merged).

• Revenorror made many small miscellaneous items (reviewed by Chef, merged):

  • lotte and cinnamon – alchemical ingredients from Summerset,
  • missing pieces from Argonian and Khajiit skeletons,
  • small clutter, such as red bottles, gold thread, colored papers,
  • a plant pot.

• Stele completed a set of small wooden animal carvings to replace our old silly guar toys (pending review).

• DarkKnightComes added detached versions of vanilla guar packs (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Cicero added a couple of gruesome blood assets for Sanguine’s hidden shrine (merged).

• Peter and Cicero worked on open comberry wine barrels and baskets for use in wineyards (still in development).

• Fluxbender added missing variants of Dunmer candleholders (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Snailsting made additional color variants for common lamps (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

Creatures

Creature artists were truly busy this year; in addition to the dreugh talked about above, many other weird critters were finished.

• One of the coolest new creatures added in the past year must surely be the plainstrider, wonderfully animated and textured by Kynesifnar and Feivelyn based on older work by Axebeard, Petethegoat, and Bisty, and original art by Gnomey. This is a relative of the vanilla silt strider that will feature mainly in the southern-central Deshaan region of Morrowind (reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Cicero converted for our use a perfectly fitting female Dwemer spectre made by Melchior Dahrk over at the OAAB team (merged).

• Revenorror added an Argonian skeleton both as a hostile undead creature and as bone clutter (reviewed by worsas and Kynesifnar, merged).

Many of our older creatures also received big improvements:

• Cicero, AnrohaNexus, and Kynesifnar replaced our old Greater Bonelord, which was just a rescale of the vanilla model, with a unique version derived from Svartmerll’s mod, in turn based on Michael Kirkbride’s art (reviewed by Cicero, merged). It now also features a collectable dagger!

• Stele fixed many of the more prominent technical issues in our old goofy Riverstrider model, originally created in 2003-2004, probably by Noirgrim (reviewed by Cicero, merged). Eventually, though, the model will be replaced entirely with a cute waterstrider-based look. Cameron2023, a new asset contributor, is currently working on this, based on concept art by sosnitskiy86.

• Long-time players of Tamriel Rebuilt may remember vibrant butterfly creatures featured throughout Telvannis. Made by LadyEternity, a prolific modeler from the Wild West of Morrowind’s early-2000s modding scene, these meshes were really showing their age and had long become a meme among our developers. Thankfully, revenorror, Kynesifnar, Ateiggaer, and worsas remade the creatures from scratch and expanded them into a wide variety of butterflies and moths for many different provinces of Tamriel – including the famed Ancestor Moth of Cyrodiil. These will only appear at certain times of day and also have the neat ability to be picked up and harvested (reviewed by worsas and Kynesifnar, merged).

• Alongside the riverstrider above, Cameron2023 is working to recreate the spider-like Perthan daedra from AESL: Battlespire, following new concept art by heavenlee. This will replace our ancient Dridrea spider-daedra created near the dawn of time (2003-2004) by Vorrheis, which feature prominently in the current Mephalan Vales.

• Beninate, a rare but welcome sound composer, created a number of lovely little critter sounds for existing creatures:

  • Alfiq Khajiit sub-type sounds (reviewed by Chef, merged), made just in time for a new Old Ebonheart quest featuring an Alfiq character (with some help by Fluxbender).
  • Sounds for the swamp troll, also featured in the latest expansion (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• The ranks of our sound designs were soon bolstered by tkurza, who contributed sounds for the “Redoran hunting hound,” the trusty (as-of-yet unnamed) side-kick reptile seen in Tamriel Rebuilt’s Redoran settlements (pending review).

Making creatures is a long a tricky process, however, and many exciting new beasts still remain in the works.

• Kynesifnar recently got into making animations and has taken upon himself to finalize a ton of creature assets:
  • The trickiest item here must be the Tsaesci NPC race of snake-people. Meant mainly for the Padomaic Isles and Province: Cyrodiil, one or two undead variants may still terrorize the old Reman Imperial fort ruins on Morrowind’s western border. While joanasc made an earlier variant of the creatures, Sandaron started an improved rendition, but was unable to finish its development. Kynesifnar recently took over and has laid a ton of groundwork to get Sandaron’s beautiful but complex work properly rigged and animated. It now “only” needs more animations to be finished.
  • Kynesifnar created lovely little animations for ThomasRuz’s and DarkKnightComes’ passive Cuttlefish creature, which will liven up the seas around Morrowind. Some final bits still remain to be done, however, like the textures, alchemical ingredients, and in-game implementation.
  • The bonewalker “Proxy Dog,” based on a concept by Michael Kirkbride, also saw some preliminary progress.

• Feivelyn went on a bit of a spree, creating tons of new creature models and textures. Most of these still need to be converted to Morrowind’s file types, rigged, animated, and so forth.

  • Salthopper, based on art by Tammilisäke – a little creature for the Deshaan plains.
  • “Shrimp seal”, based on art by be-a-stranger – a to-be-named shoreline creature that will feature in an eventual revamp of the Sacred Lands. beninate then went ahead and created a set of lovely sounds for the same creature.
  • A variety of fish for various regions of Morrowind and beyond.
  • Ash-Fowl, based on art by VenuSprout – a little critter mentioned briefly in vanilla Morrowind, meant for the Armun Ashlands. This one, again, comes with specially-made sounds by beninate.

• The sand kwoom, a domesticated creature mentioned in the Skeleton Man interview and central to the lifestyle of our homebrew Shinathi clans, has been sculpted and UV-d by Kinezis, a new asset contributor, faithfully following 10Kaziem’s concept art. Texture work and animation remains.

• Kaitou, another new contributor, made a formidable model for the horned butcher, the apex predator of the same Shipal-Shin region, based on concept art by Maelan. It only needs animations, even the rig is ready.

• Kaiel made progress on getting Asylum’s old rat skeleton working in game, but texture edits are still needed.

• The “firefly netch,” a small, as-of-yet unnamed passive creature for the Clambering Moor, received new sounds from tkurza (pending review).

• An Arnesian swamp bullfrog conceptualized by Feivelyn also received sounds by beninate, although the model itself does not exist yet (pending review).

NPCs

We had a relatively smaller haul of NPC additions, but one which still includes some highly impressive stuff.

• The biggest item here has to be the wonderful Dagi-Raht Khajiit form by Rats (reviewed by Cicero, merged, with a later small script fix by Ronik). These small, agile, and wonderfully quirky creatures were based on drawings done in the dawn days (2004) by Spider. Rats’ work on this new NPC race prompted a full rethink of our current and future selection of Khajiit sub-types, which we hope will one day be just as full of character as this one.

• We must also highlight the Ynesai NPC race crated by PulcharmSolis for the Padomaic Isles (reviewed by Cicero, merged). Inhabitants of the distant Padomaic archipelago of Yneslea, the Ynesai are exceedingly rare in Morrowind, but with luck you may find one or two in the future.

• Kynesifnar contributed to a number of NPC-related assets:
  • Created a female head and hair variant for the Chimeri-Quey, based on drawings by heavenlee. These are the inhabitants of the seas around the Padomaic archipelago of Cathnoquey, and occasional traders in Morrowind’s ports (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
  • Finalized a unique NPC “hair” asset for a Dunmer jeweler, originally made by Svartmerll and based on concept art by Michael Kirkbride (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
  • Reviewed and merged Aleister’s old animation files allowing our new Khajiit sub-types to have animated tails without requiring that the player install third-party addons.
  • Finalized Ashstaar’s and sirrah’s old Khajiit hair variants that had been sitting on our browser since 2014 (pending review).

• Rats also made a great start on the mysterious Hill Giant race, mostly to be seen in Skyrim: Home of the Nords, but at least one of whom will feature in the northern Velothis district (still requires work).

• Finally, Cicero, MAJ-12 MEDIA, and beninate collaborated on creating a set of great voice lines for some upcoming daedric content, which I won’t spoil just yet…

Armor

A number of NPC factions in the game benefited from a slew of new armors created in the past few months.

• The Hlaalu received Vidi_Aquam’s and VenuSprout’s wonderful Iuvan-Thir armor, based on concepts by Ateiggaer, Pickles, and Dharma PR. This armor is now used in Hlaalu holdings up and down the Thirr River (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).

• Used almost exlusively by the very richest among the Hlaalu will be Feivelyn’s and Kynesifnar’s opulent gilded glass armor (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Very soon after the last art and assets update, Cicero reviewed Sandaron’s update for the Bal-Darum armor that the Redoran of the Stones March wear, seen currently in the settlements of Bodrum and Uman, among other locales (merged).

• Worsas recently reviewed AnrohaNexus’ guarskin armor from last year, a new low-tier medium armor for smugglers, bandits, and various other riff-raff (merged). This one was based on art by Gnomey and Pickles.

• AnrohaNexus also made several one-off pieces:

  • A closed dreugh helm based on Ateiggaer’s concept art, to replace our earlier variant (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
  • A new variant of the Nordic ringmail closed helmet based on Aldergo’s concept art (reviewed by Cicero, merged).
  • Kynesifnar finished Anroha’s older spiked iron helmet based on Michael Kirkbride’s art (reviewed by Cicero, merged)

• A ton of other armor assets received some progress, but are not yet ready:
  • Kinezis’ Waters March guard armor (name pending), based on art by Michael Kirkbride and Pickles, for the ever-shrinking Redoran domains along the Thirr.
  • Kaitou’s Orethan guard armor (name pending), based on art by Pickles and Dharma PR, for the green heartlands of the Indoril.
  • Alexander_7070’s Sacred Lands armor (name pending), based on art by Michael Kirkbride and Pickles, for the area around Necrom (pending review).
  • Marhaus’ and Feivelyn’s beautifully painted Breton-style heater shields for the upcoming Old Ebonheart knightly tourney (pending review).
  • AJbaj’s Altmer steel armor for Project Tamriel, based on concept art by heavenlee and Tammilisäke. This will replace the armor worn by Altmer guards in the Summerset mission in Old Ebonheart, making the location more attuned with our new art direction for Summerset Isles.
  • EndoranWest’s Golden Saint armour, seen on the vanilla daedric enemies, now to become a very rare wearable set.
  • Feivelyn’s real Dwemer armor, as opposed to the scavanged Dwemer scrap set known from vanilla, based on Gnomey’s concept art.
  • athcliath97’s bonemold Dres guard shield.
  • Cicero put the finishing touches on Shadow_Mimicry’s Wraith Mail, the mythical helmet worn by Alandro Sul prior to his death, which will feature in the Foul Murder questline (pending review). He also created a mesh for a single ringlet (merged), which you will need to search for during the questline.

Clothes & Accessories

A not unsubstantial amount of clothes got added, too.

• Kynesifnar and Feivelyn finalized a couple of fancy Nibenese Robes that are already worn by a few wealthy Imperials in Morrowind (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Several common Colovian Shoes were made by Matt Andrews, based on concept art by MammaHyena (reviewed by Chef, merged).

• Four new Bosmer dresses and puttees were added by worsas (reviewed by Chef, merged)

• DarkKnightComes made a full set of lovely walking canes for all provinces actively developed between Tamriel Rebuilt, Project Tamriel, and Padomaic Isles (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Melchior Dahrk donated a couple of fancy pearl necklaces from the Lustrous Pearls mod to be used as expensive Imperial jewelry. Kynesifnar fixed them up to be compatible with Tamriel_Data style (merged).

• Feivelyn finished the models for two new clothing items, but those still await skinning to NPCs and players:
  • robes for Shinathi nomads,
  • ostentatious Dunmer garb for the richest Dunmer nobles. Stele is currently trying to get the latter skinned and ready.
• Finally, DarkKnightComes is working on a simple Chef’s hat for those trusty side-kick Chef characters. You know the type.

Weapons

Once again, you can’t spell weapon without AnrohaNexus, who contributed another ton of beautifully vanilla-looking equipment (all below reviewed by Cicero, merged):

• A whole set of rawglass weapons for use by ashlanders and smugglers.
• An iron shortbow.
• A new, much sleeker ebony crossbow based on art by Ateiggaer.
• A redone silver longbow.
• Daedric crossbow, bolt and reworked scimitar, the crossbow after concept art by Ateiggaer and the scimitar with modifications from Cicero.

• AnrohaNexus also made three sets of weapons for Padomaic Isles, some of which may find their way over to Morrowind’s ports (reviewed by Cicero and Kynesifnar, merged):
  • Chimeri-Quey shellmold, based on art by Pickles.
  • Chimeri-Quey chitin, based on art by Drathar.
  • Keptu-Quey obsidian, based on art by Pickles.
• Finally, Anroha gave us a “scamp iron” set consisting of lower-level daedra-made weapons, which will mostly be found in Cyrodiil, although originally conceptualized for Tamriel Rebuilt by Pickles and Ateiggaer (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Cicero, too, was quite busy:
  • Added the Sword of Dibella, a reward for the upcoming Hlerynhul Imperial Cult questline (reviewed by Kynesifnar, merged).
  • Reworked several artifact weapons (1, 2) like the Ebony Blade, Ethos Knife, Bloodrust, and Goujian blades, along with slight edits to several other artifacts (merged).
  • Added the area of effect arrows from Bethesda’s “official” old mod into Tamriel_Data, for use across the mainland (merged).

• Aveno integrated enchanted glass arrows and bolts into our leveled lists. (reviewed by Cicero, merged).

• Finally, as another shout out to the Padomaic Isles, DuX is hard at work on the cool iron weapon set for the archipelago of Yneslea, based on art made by Dharma PR.

Literature

Given that Tamriel_Data is chock full of books already (though often with dubious quality), we have the luxury of being picky and perfectionist with what new literature we include. This does, however, mean that new books may often sit unreviewed on our asset browser for years. So, it’s great that many new tomes were merged this time around:

• pralec contributed two new books (both reviewed by Taniquetil, merged):

  • The highly useful Guide to Almas Thirr, which comes with a wonderful new map.
  • Fall of the House of Mora, a lament possibly written during the Red Year or thereabouts.

• Mark set in stone several aspects of recent lore planning:

  • Vampires of Telvannis, formalizing two new clans in the region (reviewed by Taniquetil).
  • Seven Families of Clan Hlaalu, detailing the history and sprawling internal structure of the namesake family in this Great House (reviewed by Jackimoff Wackimoff).
  • Narsis: A History, focusing on the Hlaalu’s main city (reviewed by Jackimoff Wackimoff).
  • The Million Lessons of Shor, a heavily edited version of nwo_viper’s old text, being a Nord satire on Dunmer religion.

• With Douglas Goodall’s blessing (an original developer of TES III: Morrowind), we added several books from his recent mod AFFresh (reviewed by Taniquetil):

  • House of the Big Walker, a Khajiiti myth on their dealings with the Tsaesci.
  • Books of Sand volume 1, containing Khajiiti poetry from the time of Tiber.
  • Mixed Unit Tactics volumes 3 to 5, a follow-on to the vanilla series detailing a war between the Khajiit and the Bosmer.
  • Cunning, Contempt, Confusion, a set of traditional Dres teachings.
  • Various new magic scrolls.

• Evil Eye rewrote an ancient 2005 book by SirCabbage, A Study on Guars, to be much more concise (reviewed by Jackimoff Wackimoff).

• Fremennik added a ton of generic Hlaalu documents and placeholder books as a clutter aid (reviewed by Jackimoff Wackimoff).

• Taniquetil edited the vanilla Mages and Fighters guild charters to include information on all new guildhalls added in Tamriel Rebuilt (reviewed by FlinSunset).

• Cicero made an addition to the Compendium of Artifacts.

Much of the new literature merged recently was made for Province: Cyrodiil, but is general enough to be circulated in Morrowind, too:

• Three tomes on astrology by Lucevar (all reviewed by Taniquetil):

  • Harvesting By The Heavens: Farmer’s Almanac
  • Aetherial Ephemeris and Astrological Almanac
  • The Importance of Knowing Your Place

• A ton of various literature by Infragris (all reviewed by Taniquetil):

  • A big update for the Lex Imperii, a magnificent set of tomes on Imperial law.
  • The Pilgrim and the Soldier, a set of poems.
  • Iniquities of the Current Era, a socio-political pamphlet.
  • Temple Zero - A Warning, a scholarly screed.
  • The Secret Throne of Vampires, a conspiracy theory.
  • Tales of the Woven City, two popular stories from Nibenese folklore and mythology.
  • The Image and the Divine, an Imperial religious text.
  • Divine Sacrifice, a text used in rituals of the Imperial Cult.
  • Sayings of the Church-Mothers, a rare old text of the Alessian cult.
  • Arcturianism For Beginners, a scholarly introduction to the Arcturian Heresy.
  • Memories of the Western Highlands, a Nibenean’s philosophical musings on Colovian life and piety.

A similar volume of new literature still awaits review:

• Delemis wrote the Practition of Fire, a Tribunal Temple religious text for the layman.
• Donnerino contributed several new texts:
  • The Deflection of Troubles, a Redoran moral telling.
  • The Legionnaire, a four-volume biography (1, 2, 3, 4).
• Taniquetil made a new round of edits to her full text of The Armistice, the notorious contract that is the foundation of Imperial rule in Morrowind.
• Exovian wrote A Practical Guide to Netch Butchering, which we may or may not include.
• Cicero ported over from AESA: Battlespire The Kendhall Book of Riddles, to be used in a unique location.

Lastly, a couple remain in progress:

• Vern recently updated – and is close to finishing – our edited version of the vanilla Yellow Book of 3E 426, which details House Hlaalu councilors.
• Mark has otherwise finished the Guide to Narsis, detailing its many districts, but it still needs a new map.

Miscellaneous

We are left with a grab-bag of other, smaller assets that didn’t quite fit elsewhere and a ton of tweaks and fixes to older content in Tamriel_Data.

• Taniquetil (1, 2, 3) and Evil Eye added several new class and faction records to Tamriel_Data, which are needed to make NPCs more varied.

• Much work went into tweaking and fixing issues with existing models and textures in Tamriel_Data. Here, we must highlight Kynesifnar, who has been flooding the Tamriel_Data Github with an insane amount of model fixes for many months now (1, 2, 3). Others that helped a lot were revenorror, Fluxbender (1, 2, 3), Stele (1, 2), Ronik, Cicero (1, 2), Jackimoff Wackimoff, and Chef (reviews by Cicero, Chef, Kynesifnar).

• Many of the edits to Tamriel_Data were to rebalance existing items and creatures. These were made by Ronik (1, 2, 3), Mortimer, Cicero, Jackimoff Wackimoff, Evil Eye, and Chef (reviews by Chef and Kynesifnar).

• Dozens of new and tweaked leveled lists and container variants were made to distribute new items, very useful in making interior locations. These were authored by Aveno (1, 2, 3, 4), Ronik (1, 2, 3), LilianaUnfolded, Paramelia, Cicero, and Chef (reviews by Cicero, Chef, worsas, and Kynesifnar).

• Numerous language fixes, tweaks, and additions were done in Tamriel_Data, e.g. in book text and item information, by Ronik (1, 2, 3), Cicero (1, 2), Kynesifnar, Revane, Jackimoff Wackimoff, and Evil Eye (reviews by Cicero and Kynesifnar).

• New scripts, fixes to old scripts, and changes in Construction Set implementation details were contributed by Evil Eye, Ronik (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), Exovian (1, 2), Kynesifnar, and Chef (reviewed by FlinSunset, among others).

• A massive job in itself was simply merging all of the above new assets into Tamriel_Data and dealing with other administrative tasks like deprecating items; this work was largely done by the tireless Chef and Evil Eye, with help from Kynesifnar, Jackimoff Wackimoff, and others.

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And with that, we’ve just about covered what concept artists and asset developers have been up to for the past ten months or so. And what a massive year for assets it has been! Still, many more assets remain to be worked on for our upcoming content, if we hope to make the mainland just as unique as Vvardenfell – if you are at all interested in helping us achieve, consider joining us. Becoming an asset developers and learning 3D modelling is becoming easier and easier, as Blender UI improves and tutorials proliferate. In fact, we now have a whole dedicated section for asset creation on our wiki, compiling many tips and resources. We must also highlight the crucial work that Kynesifnar has been doing on creating a modern guide to Morrowind animations, helping unlock what probably remains the most obscure, yet sorely needed part of Morrowind asset creation.

Keep also in mind that while asset developers are perhaps highest in demand, there are also many other developer roles that are much easier to get started in. Most of our developers didn’t have an ounce of modding experience before joining the project, so the barrier to entry really is low! Otherwise, if you wish to follow our doings more closely, be sure to come say hello on our Discord server, where we develop the mod in the open.

Now, have a happy end-of-year, and until next time!