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Small background... not 100% necessary:
When I played MW long ago, on my first character I felt inclined to try and steal anything I could, maybe because in most games it's typically good to get everything. I soon felt that I had too much gold and the experience felt cheapened because there was too much cool stuff that you could get without much time or effort. So now, I decided to make a new character and play more morally, and just never take anything unless I find it outside, get it from someone who attacks me, or in a hostile dungeon. But this leaves one question left:

1.) If I kill a "criminal" NPC who has a bounty on his head i.e. for a mission, in his home, and then I take his stuff - does that count as stealing to Morrowind? Are those items still flagged as "owned" items?

2.) If not, and it's safe to take his stuff, then out of curiosity, what if you just kill someone in their own home (by taunting them and getting them to attack you first), and then you take THEIR stuff? Like, let's say... Fine-Mouth in Seyda Neen. Does that count as stealing to Morrowind if the owner of the items attacked you first?
(I don't ask this question because I want to do this to everyone, I'm just wondering how it works)

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(I realize that if I sell items flagged as "stolen" I'll be fine, provided I didn't steal that same type of item from that shopkeeper's home, which I'm not doing anymore anyway.)

Thank you

1: Yes it is still stealing
2:Yes they are stolen.
If item ever belonget to person or organization you do not belong (or have not hight enough rank in it) it will be taget as stolen even if they attacked you first. But most items in caves do not belong to nobody as do some items outside in towns and cities. To be safe just use TFH command in console (as i always do) and you will see if item (or container ) belongs to somebody and it also shows if item is cursed or have script attached.If container belongs to somebody then all items in it will be marked as stolen if taken out even if it is you who put them in. So don't store your stuff in owned containers or they get stolen tag

Thank you

What's weird is that sometimes after you kill somebody, items which were originally marked "theirs" will lose that ownership tag and become un-stolen if you save, exit and restore.

And sometimes they won't. I honestly have not been able to work out what rules this goes by, since I've tested it with both loose items and items in owned containers.

Weirdly, some of my items are still marked as "owned" by someone who has (a) been dead for 100 days or more and (b) was an outlaw that the law would never care about: an Ashlander of no tribe, one of those small single-yurt groups that had abducted a pilgrim. Some of those items (alchemy ingredients of "food" types) were looted from sacks, others such as "paper" picked up from his table...

And yet, everything I looted from Delvam Andarys, the Necromancer of Mawia - and indeed Dura gra-Bol, the Orcish outlaw of Balmora, upon whose head there is a price - is now free of their ownership whether or not I looted it from free-standing items or from containers which were marked as owned by these people.

I recently also discovered that a whole load of my stuff also appears to have suddenly become owned by Balyn Omavel, whom you have to poison in Mephala's Daedric quest, and whose home I cleared and looted afterwards. But that was about 60 days ago, and he's long dead... but still marked as the "owner" of the items.

I think my Small Kwama eggs now have six owners, five of them dead, the sixth is one of the miners from the Shulk Egg Mine because I happened to pick up a couple of loose kwama eggs that belonged to Miner Kati... And a dozen or so of my items are owned by "A Shady Smuggler", a character I have never met or encountered...

Not that it matters, because I am a Strictly By The Book person, in the "never get caught" sense. I have never had a bounty on my head in this game - although I've stolen things (without detection), killed people (by Frenzying or taunting them into attacking me) plus, of course, swindled them with my Mercantile and Personality... So I've never had my stolen items disappear and be taken to an Evidence Chest.

I have never, even by accident, picked up an Imperial Shortsword that wasn't directly given to me, or stolen from a chest in an Imperial Legion fort, but all items of that type seem to be owned by the Imperial Legion faction (without qualification of rank) - resulting in the weirdness that if I *buy* the damaged one from Sirollus Saccus, repair it and sell it back to him (ironically the Master Armorer sells several items that are at less than their full durability) he tells me I'm selling a stolen item that is his own, and he then attacks me. Even though I am now the Knight of the Imperial Dragon, highest rank in the Legion.

It's weird!