Yep. May 1st 2002. You came and looked upon the Heart and Akulakahn for the first time. You brought Wraithguard, because the nice guy in the mask and loincloth had need of it. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind came out. It’s now raised a glass of sujamma to salute its 24th anniversary. If you’re looking for ways to celebrate, a fresh Morrowind modathon’s just kicked off on Nexus Mods, and one of its early entries adds more tax-adjacent missions than the average accountant tackles on a yearly basis.

The mod’s called Death and Taxes. Its creator, a modder going by MollyAvast has decided to take the Imperial Offices of Census and Excise – the Empire’s bureaucratic body for census counting for tax purposes among Vvardenfell’s Imperial citizens – into a joinable and fully fleshed-out faction. They’ve taken this task very seriously.

“Every Census and Excise Office present in Morrowind & Tamriel Rebuilt has had its staff fleshed out and has been given its own questline in addition to having coworker-sourced ‘odd jobs’ available to be picked up as faction quests. Not only that, but an Office of Imperial Bounties has been opened inside the Helnim Office, providing a new form of work even to non-Census personnel with any Imperial guild affiliation,” the description reads, adding that there are over 100 new quests in total.

To put that in context, judging by the ever-reliable Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages since it’s been a little while since I fired up Morrowind, the vanilla version of the faction is only recorded as having three members. Two of them can be found in Seyda Neen, with one being Socucius Ergalla, the guy who prompts you to pick your class and birthsign at the start of a playthrough. With Death and Taxes installed, he’s also now the best guy to talk to about joining the faction and getting going on those many, many missions. If you end up stuck at any point from there, MollyAvast’s put together a 35 page Google doc to serve as a quest guide.

You’ll want to at least read the intro page of that before you get started, as it notes useful info such as the fact that “Census and Excise is pretty unforgiving as far as factions go”, with MollyAvast specifying that “being expelled twice will permanently end the questline, and buying a replacement after losing your badge will result in a forced demotion”. I assume if you get kicked out, you’re greeted with a notification informing you that the thread of taxes has been severed, so you must persist in the levyless world you have created.

Now, the fun part. Death and Taxes is an OpenMW mod, meaning you’ll need the engine reimplementation that swaps the RPG’s innards for something more modern, cross-platform and open source. Fan-made expansion Tamriel Rebuilt is also needed, as are OAAB_Data and Tamriel_Data. MollyAvast also reccomends Script Effect Resource, Merits of Service, Follower Detection Util, and Friendlier Fire. As for non-mod requirements, the base game with its Bloodmoon and Tribunal DLCs are a must, as is a fresh playthrough.