CW: Discussion of chattel slavery, implied SA aspects.

(This is more of a random, sleepy rant and not any sort of proofread analysis or deep-dive into the game. Spoilers in my rant are kept vague, save for this one short quest. Here is a link to the quest on the UESP wiki, with very heavy spoilers.)

Morrowind is incredible and I could talk for days about it. Probably many on Hexbear could. If I had more time, I’d write an entire essay on the way it uses religion, culture, and materialism to make a narrative that is way more interesting than just about every other Western Role-Playing game. However, every time I replay it, there’s always a quest that very much creeps me out and ruins my enjoyment for a bit.

See, Morrowind’s game world, the district of Vvardenfell, allows slavery.

In my opinion, it’s very much treated appropriately by the game: as a cultural discussion, and a narrative twist on the objective of the imperialist Empire, which outlaws slavery as a means of keeping order in the diverse continent of Tamriel. For the most part, being pro-slavery is treated as backwards, disgusting, and is mostly used by the rich landowning class for exploitation. In fact, the game’s villain intentionally uses class conflict to gather supporters among the enslaved and lower-classes in order to fight the ruling Temple religion.

Now, I would obviously prefer that the game went way more with it and let me exterminate slavers to the last with gleeful cheers from the proletariat. But at the very least, the game only ever rewards you for freeing slaves.

…Except in one key instance.

During the main plot, you are tasked with gathering the support of the local Ashlander tribes. The tribes have a unique and interesting culture, and the player is forced to learn their customs in order to progress. The leader of one of these tribes, the Zainab, tasks you with finding him a bride from the local mage faction (the stuck-up rich wizards). However, the way you go about accomplishing this mission is my single most hated section in the game.

So, your character is given the plan of… purchasing a slave to fool the tribal chief.

You have no other options of completing the quest. The player is forced to pay money to a greedy slave-trader, whose dialogue is smugly gleeful about “enjoying your purchases” and “putting the slaves to work”. (Not even gonna get into the abhorrent SA implications behind plenty of the lines, which were clearly intentional).

So once you pay, you are instructed to dress the living person that you now own as property in a nice, pretty outfit for delivery to the tribal leader. The lines here just get worse and worse:

“Yes, sera. Falura Llervu… pleased to make your acquaintance. See? Savile Imayn [the Slave-trader] has taught me well.” -Ewwww.

“I am a little anxious about marrying an Ashlander, even an Ashlander chief, but anything is better than being a slave” -implying that purchasing this woman to sell her to a random man from a foreign culture is somehow a favor to her.

“I’m sure she said you had some presents for me.” -I hate the way the game dresses up giving her clothes so that she may be a better “bride” as “presents for her”.

And then: “Oh, sera! These clothes! They are divine! Such a perfume! Only the very rich can afford this! I shall do everything I can to please you and my new master… that is, my gracious lord and husband-to-be. Come! I am so excited, I cannot wait!”

Yeah, so there are ten trillion ways of describing how disgusted this quest and the dialogue involved makes me. There is no legitimate way of skipping this quest (there are ways of skipping this entire part of the game, but they are alternate routes and are more of an obscure Easter-egg). Like, the quest itself sucks complete ass gameplay-wise. It’s not fun. This tribe is framed as the “trickster tribe” that you must “outsmart”, but this plan is just dull and uninteresting on top of the actual problems with it. You are given no freedom and no options.

Like, the game has an abolitionist faction! You can pretty easily play out your wildest John Brown fantasies and free the enslaved people of Vvardenfell in just about every other spot. Slaver factions can be freely ignored or destroyed, there’s no requirement to join them. All except this one quest. Which is a Main Quest!!!

In the end, it’s very hard for me to reconcile being “the savior of the land” and all that fantasy prophecy nonsense while being forced to engage in literal chattel slavery. There’s no Main Quest that forces you to free slaves, so why is there one to purchase them and sell them into some kind of sexual servitude? Fuck whoever wrote this quest and fuck Bethesda for not scrapping it. Death to Gamers, death to the idea of “role-playing” this shit, and death to all the white Maryland programmer suburbanites that created it.

TLDR:

Edit: Before I forget, it’s worth mentioning that there’s other instances of creepy shit, misogyny, harassment, and all that in the game. It’s a game made by white male nerds in 2000, after all. But this is the most blatant example I can think of. I also found this mod that removes all this stuff, thankfully. I will certainly be downloading it next time.