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Hello all!

tl;dr: Is it ever possible to trigger the NPC dialogue options that tell you where the Morag Tong headquarters is, so you can join?

I started playing Morrowind for the first time ever a couple of months ago. I'm at level 31, part way through the main quest, and I've completely finished a few of the guild quests. Earlier today, I decided to join the Morag Tong.

The wiki page says, in part,"When asking about the Morag Tong, you will be able to find out that their HQ is in...", and then describes where it is. So I started asking people.

Several people in Vivec had "Morag Tong" as a dialogue option, but when I asked them about it, all I'd get was this reply; they'd never come up with a "join the Morag Tong" option. I tried getting their disposition to 100, with no change.

I also got Huleeya to give me this line, but he wouldn't tell me anything else about joining them.

I dug around in cslist and found this and this, which I think are telling me that Savants in Vivec should be able to give me those lines, under some set of conditions. So I talked to every Savant in Vivec, and I couldn't get any of them to give me that line. For a few of them, I tried raising their dispositions to 80-100, and they still wouldn't do it.

This line makes it sound like the Ordinators in a certain area should tell you, so I went to that area, talked to a couple of Ordinators, and they didn't have a "join the Morag Tong" option.

I ended up just going to the headquarters location mentioned in the wiki, finding the boss, and asking him to join. I got what I wanted, but it felt like cheating, a little bit.

I'm not sure if finishing some of the other guild questlines (including Thieves Guild and House Hlaalu) changed my disposition enough with some factions that they won't tell me about it anymore, or what. I never tried asking about joining when I was at a lower level.

I am playing on OpenMW 0.45, with all of the official DLCs installed, but no other mods. I bought Morrowind, including the DLCs, from GOG dot com in March 2022.

Thanks!

Drazeel

tl;dr: There is virtually no way to get the "join the Morag Tong" dialogue topic without finding their headquarters first. The best you can do is get a vague hint as to their whereabouts.

There are actually quite a few NPCs who have legitimate responses if you ask them about the topic "join the Morag Tong". Unfortunately, the way dialogue works in Morrowind makes it impossible to ever get this topic from anyone but the Morag Tong members in the secret headquarters (unless you either (a) use Command Humanoid on a Morag Tong member and drag them to Vivec, or (b) use the "addtopic" command in the console), so their responses are basically useless.

In order to get a dialogue topic, the relevant phrase must be present in the dialogue response of an NPC who has a legitimate response for that topic. In other words, in order to get the "join the Morag Tong" topic, you must speak with an NPC who both uses that phrase in a response and has something to say about joining the Morag Tong.

And therein lies the problem. The only place the phrase "join the Morag Tong" appears (aside from Eno Hlaalu's dialogue) is in a single response "spoken" by Morag Tong members themselves when asked about their organization:

"The Morag Tong is the ancient traditional assassins guild of the Dunmer. We provide three varieties of execution: public, private, and House War. We only recruit candidates of proven skill and honor, and only Grandmaster Eno Hlaalu in Vivec can authorize new members to join the Morag Tong."

In order for the phrase to trigger the dialogue topic, the Morag Tong member you are speaking to must have a response for it. And the only Morag Tong members who have a response for "join the Morag Tong" are ones located in Vivec (it's a condition attached to the response). And the only Morag Tong members in Vivec are the ones in the secret headquarters (aside from Huleeya, but he doesn't give you the above response and never uses the the phrase "join the Morag Tong", and so can't give you the topic). Which means, by the time you find someone who will tell you how to "join the Morag Tong", you've already found their headquarters, thus rendering all the hints in the other NPCs' responses for the topic rather pointless.

Not sure why it ended up this way; perhaps the developers originally intended to have (or thought there were) Morag Tong members elsewhere in Vivec, perhaps they intended to add a "join the Morag Tong" response for members outside of Vivec... who knows? Whatever the case, the best you can do now is get a vague hint. If you ask a certain Khajiit trader in Vivec for the latest rumors, she will tell you: "This one overheard two cloaked characters whispering about a room underneath the Arena in Vivec." Not much to go on, but it's about all you're going to get.

Good, I'm not crazy. I thought maybe I was asking the wrong people, or had annoyed everyone in Vivec, or something.

Bugs? In my Elder Scrolls game? It's more likely than you think!

My guess would be that they intended some of the Morag Tong members outside of Vivec to give you those lines - kind of like when you ask at the forts about joining the Imperial Legion, you get told to go to Gnisis.

So the second sentence here ("If you are lucky enough, you might be able to find someone...") probably isn't accurate? The first sentence is presumably OK, because the one Khajiit you mentioned can give you that information.

Thanks!

Drazeel

Oh, c'mon. Morrowind's pretty much bug-free, isn't it?


That, and I figure they intended to have Morag Tong agents in Vivec who aren't in the secret headquarters. They would be able to give you the topic and would have the response: "By tradition, the Grandmaster of the Morag Tong lives in the Arena Canton here in Vivec." Having the topic, you could then get the information you need from the Ordinators in the Arena Canalworks.


Yeah, that section could use some editing. Might give it a go if I (a) remember and (b) have some time to clean it up.