Mission spoiler

Orvas Dren will throw you out if you kill the Camonna Tong members in the
Balmora Council Club, and attack you if you kill Nevena Ules or, in some cases,
the Ienith brothers or even his own brother. You can't "make amends", so the
best thing to do if you want that ring from Larrius Varro is to finish all the
Camonna Tong quests, then do Larro's quest and be kicked out, then get Orvas
Dren to support you as hortator (or join House Hlaalu and win control of the
Camonna Tong), after which you will automatically become member of the Camonna
Tong again, with the status of Kingpin.

The benefit of being member? Other members are less incivil to you, and may
offer you services. (And various other factions may like you less. A lot less.)

Updated benefits: not only can you save Ahnassi from the "bad person", you
can now also do this if you're female. (Except if you're expelled, but Daren
won't attack you for mentioning her again.) And Banor Seran will donate brandy
without protest.

There are two ways to join the syndicate and get the quests. The first is
through the Vassir-Didanat mine. The second and less rewarding is through the
quest to get debt money from Helviane. If you already won Orvas Dren's support
before doing either, and you are kicked out of the syndicate, there is no way of
getting back in. Apart from the console, but that is untested and might mess
quests up. Otherwise, I've tried to take into account the possibility of any
NPCs dying before or during the quest that involves them.

1. Vassir-Didanat.
Go to the Vassir-Didanat mine. Now, its name will be added as a topic. You can
mention it to Crassius Curio, Dram Bero, Omanda Velani, Nevena Ules and any
member of the Camonna Tong; the latter will refer you to Orvas Dren, who will
express his interest and send you to Nevena Ules. (If you tell Nevena where the
mine is before talking to Orvas, your chances are shot.) She will, of course,
promise great riches, and fail to deliver. Visit Orvas again. He says he will
send the Ienith brothers over to have a talk with her. Go back to Nevena. She
now has an adventurer's kit for you, and a letter and some things to give to
Orvas. You're not supposed to open it, but if you do and can't reseal it, you
can always take it to Crassius Curio. Make sure to have both the sealed letter
and Nevena's gifts in your inventory when you speak to Orvas, or you lose your
chance. If you deliver all items (the enchanted jewellery goes into his
inventory, so if you plan to kill him in the future, bring items to cure
paralysis) he will give you another errand.

1a. Helviane's debt.
This only becomes available if the Vassir-Didanat mine was already over and done
with before you could speak to Orvas about it. Join the Fighter's Guild and do
Eydis's missions up to collecting the debt money from Helviane Desele. Go to the
Dren Plantation and speak to Manos Othreleth, the Dunmer in Dwemer armour
standing in front of Dren's villa. He will thank you for getting the money and
refer you to Nevena Ules. She will give you a letter and some gifts for Orvas to
test your reliability, and some useful books, but it's much less than the
adventurer's kit she would have given otherwise. Again, you can read the letter
(which implies that your gentle, persuasive approach might be an asset to the
syndicate) and have Crassius reseal it. This time, you became a member the
moment you accepted the letter, which makes things easier with Gurak gro-Bagrat.

2. If Gurak gro-Bagrat is still alive, you are given the job of collecting a
huge debt from him which has stayed unpaid because he doesn't trust anyone to
carry that amount of money for him. You may safely venture into his
skooma-distilling lab now, if you can get the two locked, trapped doors open
(your security skill should be quite high for this), since neither he nor his
assistant will attack you. However, he will only give you the money if you are a
member of the Camonna Tong, or if your disposition or reputation is high enough.
After this, or straight away if Gurak gro-Bagrat was already dead, you will be
asked, if you were not already a member, to join. This is fairly safe as you are
under no obligation to finish the quests and there is no deadline for them, the
only side effect is Orvas nagging you about some quest whenever you greet him.

3. Now you are sent to collect membership fees from two interested people:
Arvama Rathri (yes, that one) and Sovali Uvayn. Sovali doesn't really care about
membership and has just been bullied into this by Arvama, so collect Arvama's
debt first or kill her, then ask Sovali: in the first case she won't dare
disobey Arvama, in the second case she won't dare to disobey you. Arvama doesn't
trust you, so you need to get her disposition up very high. If they are or
already were dead, you are expected to supply the missing membership fees to
Orvas.

4. Slave mules! Three paralyzed slaves have been left on an island near a
shrine. The quickest way to reach them is to waterwalk south from Gnaar Mok. Of
course nothing is going to attack them as long as they're frozen, but once
they're able to escort you, you may lose some to lesser Daedra and wildlife.
Orvas instructs you to take out the sugar they were carrying if they should die
along the way. Their paralysis is not real paralysis, as they will tell you;
it's the common disease that a certain witch used on Hisin Deep-Raed. First,
they need individual help: one is hungry, one is thirsty, one is wounded. Then,
they need a cure. After that, they trust you and will be happy to follow you.
They will even explain to you how to get the sugar out of their stomachs, after
which you can set the slaves free and just take the sugar back. Or you can kill
them and grab the sugar. Orvas doesn't mind as long as he gets the sugar. He
does mind if you set them free without getting the sugar first.

The slaves can be found near the Dwemer ruins that Gnaar Mok residents mention.
If you see Holmgeira, the slaves are very close. You might overhear them sighing
about moon sugar. Take the slaves back any route you like, but if you want them
to survive, beware of scamps.

Bring the sugar without the slaves, and you will get money; bring the slaves and
have Orvas kill them and you will get money (but the Twin Lamps will hate you);
bring the slaves and suggest getting the sugar out without killing them, and
Orvas will give you... the slaves! Even if some are dead: your fault for not
protecting them. In an unfinished plugin that will work only with Tribunal and
higher, the slaves will actually be useful as you can arm them and load up their
backpacks. For now, the best thing is to gather brownie points with the Twin
Lamps by setting them free, although dragging them along and watching them beat
rats and slaughterfish to death can be fun.

5. Go to Rotheran Stronghold ("a place of ill repute") and find Rols Ienith.
Trade the two bottles of skooma you're given for an invisibility ring and a
chameleon ring. Same family name as the Ienith brothers - coincidence? If you
ask the Ienith brothers, who are both un-invisible and non-hostile since you
became a member, they will imply that the skooma will be eagerly accepted. At
Rotheran Stronghold, go to the Communal Hut, talk to Rols Ienith and get the
rings. (If you are a member of the Imperial Cult, you will be sent on a mission
to free someone who is being held as a slave in the Arena to be pitted against
summoned Daedra. Lots of brownie points for the Twin Lamps to be had here, but
the opponents are strong, so if you're not prepared, do that later.)
Incidentally, while you're there, Rols doesn't mind you robbing everything in
sight.

6. Deliver 30 bottles of skooma to Balmora Council Club publican Banor Seran,
who at other times parrots the common shtick about not wanting anything to do
with skooma. Banor will reward you. If he's dead or you kill him before
delivering, talk to Orvas again about skooma and he will demand the bottles
back, and you don't get a reward.

7. Foreman Hlevala was giving a new slave a "disciplinary schooling", and,
unsurprisingly, the slave thought "*bleep* this" and ran off! Orvas wants you to
return Sheera. Various people on the plantation will say she went south, one
person will even mention abolitionists and Vivec. In fact, you will find her
south of Ebonheart, amongst trees, in a (swiped?) gondolier's shirt. Apparently
the abolitionists in Vivec didn't work out, as she would rather go to
Sterdecan's farm, even if she doesn't know his name. (She knows him because
she's heard Orvas grumbling about him.) Sterdecan's farm is north of lake Amaya,
at the most eastern point. You will have to bring Sheera all the way up to
Sterdecan, so she's practically looking him in the eye, before he will take her
in. She is moved to his house where, like Jo'Rendar, she waits for eternity
until someone will take her back to her homeland; but staying in a house alone
with a male Khajiit can't be all bad, can it? Rrrroww!

Go back to Orvas, who will be furious and demand that you pay compensation,
which happens to be twice as high as the price of an average slave. You can also
tell Sheera you'll take her to Sterdecan and instead take her to Dren's villa,
and hand her over (she will hate you for it). You can even take her to Dren's
villa and pretend to Orvas that you haven't found her yet, since slaves are not
allowed in the master's house, so he wouldn't recognize his slave if she stood
right in front of him. You can tell her she's going back to Orvas Dren, but
unless you have an unfinished future plugin that needs Tribunal/Bloodmoon and
potentially makes him just a little less inhuman towards slaves, so he promises
she won't be hurt if she comes back, she will attack you. If she ends up dead
for whatever reason, Orvas will shrug it off and reward you anyway.

If Sterdecan is dead, and Sheera can't be persuaded to return to the Dren
Plantation (normally, she will attack you at the suggestion) or made to follow
with a Command Humanoid spell, the only option to get to the next quest is to
kill her.

8. You know the kind of brats who sit behind you in class, pull your hair and
then when you turn round and punch them, start bawling "teacher teacher
so-and-so hit meeee!!!" which ends up in YOU being given detention? The Thieves
Guild has pulled something like this on savant Traldrisa Tervayn. Yes, this
educated, elderly lady is behind bars in Vivec's Hlaalu prison for public
brawling. Of course this is a bit strange, so she's going to be questioned.
Orvas does not like the idea of any member of the Camonna Tong being questioned
by the authorities, and wants you to free her. You don't have to brave the
Ordinators; she will ask for the key or a lockpick and a potion of Shadow, both
of a certain quality. All you need is in Nevena's adventuring kit; if you used
the items up or never got the kit, ask Arvama Rathri or some Camonna Tong member
about Traldrisa, and they may supply what you're missing. If instead you unlock
the door, she proposes to make a run for it (if you use the key from the far end
of the room, the Ordinator ignores you) and follows you to the No Name Club. If
she ends up dead, that's fine too, but you don't get a reward, and you won't be
able to raise Camonna Tong members' dispositions by bringing up Traldrisa later.

9. Orvas rants a bit about the Thieves Guild and the Empire in general before
asking you to subvert (that is: steal) ebony from the Vassir-Didanat Mine
(whether it went to Nevena Ules or not). The mine is empty, so stealing the ore
is a cinch, apart from the odd Daedra you may have to dispatch, and then there
is the question of how to carry thirty very heavy pieces of ore all the way to
Ules Manor, since Orvas doesn't want it delivered to his own house. Nevena has
to be alive for this, but Orvas would attack you if she was dead anyway.

10. The Thieves Guild has done something even more heinous this time: reported
the Camonna Tong's skooma trafficking to the authorities and landed the main
traffickers in jail. (If you know about Sottilde's Code Book and have seen its
decoded content, you will know who they are.) If alive, they will stay behind
bars (Moonmoth, Buckmoth, the Telvanni prison cells in Vivec) until you find
evidence that will get the three Thieves Guild bosses convicted. If at this time
the three Thieves Guild bosses are already dead, the quest is over and in ten
days the Camonna Tong traffickers will be free. Else, you have to look for proof
of illegal transactions. Members of both House Hlaalu and the Camonna Tong will
gladly explain what this proof would consist of. The Thieves Guild bosses all
have a log of transactions lying around and will be very cool about you picking
it up, although they will demand it back when you address them, after which it
enters their inventory and you have to pickpocket it.

You can kill the Thieves Guild bosses, and return to Orvas. If you were in the
Thieves Guild, you are now expelled, and if you go to Gentleman Jim Stacey, the
only member who could reinstate you if needed, he will attack you. Or you can
collect the logs and go to Orvas, with the same result. With the Thieves Guild
members out of the way, the other prisoners will be free in ten days. If you
approach Crassius Curio with the logs, he will have a different suggestion: the
Duke, who will make sure the Thieves Guild members are taken to a safe place to
stand trial. A third possibility is Larrius Varro, who, being annoyed at the
Camonna Tong's corruption, takes revenge by putting the Thieves Guild prisoners
in cells close to the Camonna Tong prisoners, so they can get on each other's
nerves. This also gets you expelled, but Jim Stacey won't kill you. If you go to
Varro or the Duke, all prisoners stay in jail for 30 days. They have nothing to
say to you while in jail, and you can't help them break out, so any Thieves
Guild quests will be on hold. A message will warn you when they're released.

As this implies, you can be member of the Thieves Guild and the Camonna Tong. In
fact, you'd better be, else your name will be mud with any Thieves Guild member,
and the next quest will be very difficult. If you are a member, then a peaceful
solution is to go to Jim Stacey with the logs and tell him how low the Thieves
Guild has sunk. If so, he will tell the masterminds to stay out of the skooma
trade, and the Camonna Tong members will be free in ten days. In return, he will
ask you to mention the Bal Molagmer to Orvas. You don't have to, but if you do,
he will react with his usual tact and charm. If you are not a Thieves Guild
member, you can only give a warning, which Stacey ignores, putting the logs back
where you found them. If you let him know your loyalty lies with Orvas Dren, he
will attack you. Which is convenient if you want to finish Sjoring Hard-heart's
quests.

The script that counts down the ten or thirty days in prison is a global script,
and as this plugin is meant to work in a Morrowind-only installation, and
doesn't change the main startup script or use startup scripts of its own, if you
save and exit while the script is running, and later reload the game, the script
won't restart by itself. To restart it, you'll have to talk to the people behind
bars (their greeting restarts the script), or Orvas if the Thieves Guild members
weren't killed (ask about "illegal transactions").

11. Orvas is convinced the Thieves Guild has planted moles at Dren Plantation.
(The four trainers at Dren Plantation are Thieves Guild. This little boo-boo has
been corrected in a plugin, but they could still be moles that are deep
undercover, right?) He has told them each a different story of where the next
sugar shipment will be brought in, and instructs you to question them and then
go to the nearest Thieves Guild hangout to check which stories have been leaked.
You will find that the four trainers, whose stories are all variations on a
"Bitter Coast" theme, are the moles. You will also find that Mathesa Helvi's
story is laughed off, while Hlevala blabbed to Arvama. For proving their
loyalty, Orvas says he will reward them, which means they will both like you
better.

After identifying the moles, you can do two things: confront and kill the moles,
or report them to Orvas to be killed (both of which will get you expelled if you
are a Thieves Guild member, or make you so hated that you will never be able to
join). Or you may promise not to give them away, which, when you report to
Orvas, will make a vein in his forehead bulge dangerously while he tells you
that not only are you expelled from the Camonna Tong, but you would do well to
get out of his face before something bad happens. If you guessed who they are
and killed them without asking what their story was and checking it, the Thieves
Guild won't see a connection between you and their deaths, and Orvas will say
that the problem mysteriously resolved itself. You can still kill them for the
same effect after you confronted them and promised them not to tell Orvas, but
before talking to Orvas himself - a bit nasty, but the only way to avoid being
expelled. If you really want to save their lives, improve the Duke's disposition
to the maximum and ask him about the Thieves Guild moles. He will then arrest
them for their own safety (and they disappear, and you won't get whatever cool
stuff they're carrying and wearing). In a future Tribunal/Bloodmoon plugin,
you'll also be able to refer them to a third party who will work out a peaceful
solution, which means it's not your problem any more, and you can get on with
the next and last quest.

If they end up killed, do loot their shacks and carried possessions; especially
Ivrosa Verethi has some nice weapons. Suvryn Doves has a slave in his shack who
will complain if you steal, but this won't raise your bounty. If you have the
right key, set her free and return for looting when she's gone.

12. This is your big, final mission: get a sugar shipment past the Duke, who, as
a certain note states, has been trying to stop his business. Normally, Orvas
will tell you to persuade or kill him. He can't be persuaded, in fact, if you
tell him up front that Orvas wants to smuggle via Tel Branora, he'll station a
guard there. Now you're *bleep*ed. Go back to Orvas who will tell you to either
kill him or get the sugar yourself; it's in three crates on the dock, near the
shipmaster who hopes that someone will soon take these cumbersome crates away.
(They will disappear when empty or after you tell Orvas that the Duke is dead.)
There are three ways of finishing the quest: go back to the Duke and kill him,
then report this to Orvas, so the guard will be recalled and the job finished
without you needing to do anything; somehow grab the sugar and evade the guard:
and, rather pointlessly, grab the sugar and then kill the Duke, but Orvas will
know you took the sugar, and demand that you hand it over.

The guard will automatically confiscate any sugar you're carrying; even if you
succesfully pickpocket him, he'll just take it back. (He won't confiscate
skooma, because that wasn't part of his orders.) So you have to grab the sugar
from the crates when he's wandered off the dock, kill him to get the sugar back,
or, an odd solution I ran into during testing: get yourself spotted by a
cliffracer (this will count as an attack even though it's too far away to hit
you yet), wait for the guard to come running to your aid, pickpocket the sugar
and run/teleport. This takes some quick keyboard action and I haven't been able
to do it a second time.

If instead you let out that Orvas has told you to persuade him or kill him, the
Duke regrettably has to take action. Don't bother reporting back to Orvas. He'll
be gone. (So you don't get his armour or that cool spear of his. Rats. You can
plunder the rack behind him when the guard is downstairs, though.)

With the planned Tribunal/Bloodmoon plugin that makes Orvas potentially slightly
less villainous, he may instead tell you to persuade his brother or just pick up
the sugar. You are then given the option of saying the shipment goes through Tel
Branora, or not specifying where it goes. In the first case the Duke reacts as
before, in the second case you can ask what his objection is, and he will
suggest he could turn a blind eye if there's nothing he can do to stop you
anyway. You heard about the Telvanni land grabs that he was practically
powerless to stop? That's because there's not a lot he can do on Telvanni
territory. Ditto for smuggling, so go grab that sugar. (If you take no for an
answer the first time, Orvas will tell you to go back and ask him what his
objections are. When you have your answer, Orvas will let you know that you've
just been given permission to smuggle.) There is no reason for you to kill the
Duke now, and if you do, Orvas will attack you. If you bring the sugar he's
waiting for, and you were diplomatic enough to stop the Duke from sending a
guard, Orvas makes you Kingpin, which can come in handy if you need his support
later for the main quest. In any case, you get a whopping financial reward.