Foreword

Time to revisit and update the Agent guide I did almost 2 years ago, adding new mods that work great with the Agent as well as some RP suggestions. Enjoy!

Skills, Race, and Birthsign

Previously, I recommended a Khajiit if you wanted to rely on quick-paced combat rather than use guile and deceit.
For this RP challenge, let's go with the Female Thalmor Agent. She will make use of illusion and conjuration better than most races and have decent (40) agility, personality and speed, the three most important attributes for an Agent.

As for birthsigns, The Lady is great (admittedly one of the best birthsigns regardless of class) with a nice boost to Personality. Keep in mind that the 10 points of Endurance doesn’t go towards your starting health. The Lover is a good choice as well, especially since we are playing as a female, The Lover's Kiss is just the thing for a lady-spy.

With additional mods

The face replacer of you choice:

Keep it vanilla with Intelligent Textures or Facelift
Go for a more alien look with MacKom's races in Galleo Races Redone Pluginless
Go pretty with Westly's Master Head Pack X
Class Abilities. You can of course choose the Agent, which gives you a couple sneaky powers, +10 Sneak, as well as a Jinksword, a Lockpick, and a Probe but I'd pick the Shadowmage, closer to the magic afficity of the Altmer. The Shadowmage gives a +10 Illusion, so that you can start charming, calming, and blending into the shadows straight away.
Vituvian Guar has released a very cool mod called Class Starting Spells that I highly recommend.
Instead of the moderately useless spell you normally get at level 1, you get useful spell that also make sens for your class. Acrobats for exemple, have Alteration as a main skill. A spell like fire shield does not make much sense, but a jump, or slowfall spell really does. The only downside is that you need MWSE to run this mod.
With Merlord's Character Backgrounds and IsNaN's addon, pick either the Starchild (somewhat generic) or the Court's Mage Apprentice background: the illusion buff and couple of spells are nice but it also explains your haughty manners and taste for luxurious things.

Gameplay

The Dominion, still reeling from their defeat at the hand of Tiber Septim, is not yet ready to take on the Empire but is scheming, nonetheless. They need to know what is happening in Morrowind: anything that might weaken the Empire is good for the Dominion. People of interest are Blades, of course (Blades will later on be systematically hunted down), as well as high ranking Imperial Guild leaders.

Be a Thalmor Agent, just before the rise of the Third Dominion and the Thalmor rule!

Faction mods

Your goal is to join the following factions, learn as much as possible while trying to get the least favourable outcome for the faction but more importantly for the Empire..

Joining an existing Great House won't make sense for a Thalmor Agent, but joining ALL of them (possibly eliminating members) could work!
The trick here will be to select which missions you'll complete (a number of Great House quests clash directly) AND to eliminate or silence npcs without getting caught (and expelled).
Join all (3 Great) Houses
Be sure to infiltrate the Imperial Legion (your ticket to the only Talos related quest!): Imperial Legion Expansion. Once again, as a Thalmor Agent, you will make sure to eliminate Imperial ranking officers, and infiltrating the faction is the best way to ferret them all out.
Talos Cult Revised - G93's Version gives the shrine a facelift without TR dependency (both mods by Gavrilo).

Speechcraft mods:

Silver Tongue by Vituvian Guar: your speechcraft determines how much you can tell about an npc: how much they like you, how likely they are to fight or flee. In addition your speech craft skill is key to unlocking admire, taunt and intimadate.
Talking Matters by Sofiaaq: simply talking with npcs will slightly improve your speechcraft, HOWEVER, npcs are not willing to stand and talk to you for hours on. Taunting and Intimadation is limited to 3 attempts. More features but those are the most important ones.
Give a gift by NullCascade: otherwise known as, the art of bribing!
Advanced Persuasion by Danjib: beg and threaten using your Speechcraft. Well, you'll most likely want to threaten ;)
Visible Persuasion chance if you want to know the odds of successfully bribing, taunting and admiring.

Other mods:

Take Notes by qqqbbb: to write down those coded messages (I can see Arille being your handler, just drop the notes behind his counter).
Get that special hood for missions from Ninja Outfits in Molag Maar.
Assassin's creed armour by Weslty, for sale in Caldera (the black one is somewhat reminiscent of the Thalmor robe in Skyrim) if you want a whole outfit, both mysterious and comfortable for stealth missions.

Handicaps

Don't get caught, or worse, expelled

A good Agent is one that doesn't get caught. To make this an actual challenge (we all know how dumb guards can be) either go for insta-arrest by King Feraligatr where guards will force-greet you as soon as you approach them while you have a bounty, or for a greater challenge, try Sveng's Pursuit Revisited where guards will actually come from nearby cells as soon as someone reports your crime. Warning, this mods is quite a challenge as npcs/enemies will follow you through doors! Oh, it also lets you lock doors with lockpicks...

Restricted Illusion:

Charm, Chameleon, Sanctuary, and Paralyze are great in the Agent's arsenal. Hurling fireballs… not so much :)

Restricted conjuration

The Agent dabbles into Conjuration: stick to the Summon Dagger spell: the ultimate concealed weapon is the one you are not carrying! The ability to command npcs might come in handy as well... to get they away from praying eyes.

Don't talk to animals

... unless they are your slave. To have them in chains and following you, use Live Free.

Only the finest

You do NOT wear peasants' garbs, you do NOT sleep rough, and you do not toil over your armour to repair it, etc.

Goals

Kill all 8 Blades members
Kill leaders of Imperial Guilds (Imperial Legion, Imperial Cult, Fighters Guild, Mages' Guild)
You are after information: be sure to steal all notes, ledgers, and reports you see. There are 130+ notes in the game, find 50 of them.
Install Living Cities of Vvardenfell to let npcs change locations: npcs will go out for a drink, wander around the guild hall, etc. Follow prominent npcs to discover their routine and possibly plan where to ambush/interrogate/kill them.

About me

I am an avid Morrowinder and modder.. You can find my mods on the Morrowind Nexus, my modding articles on my blog, let’s plays, tutorials and reviews on my YouTube and livestream on Twitch.