In Morrowind, is the Census & Excise office also supposed to be where the couriers send and receive mail and letters? We know there is mail delivery in TES, especially in TESII Daggerfall. In TESIII, would there be a courier or two in each village, town or city that was assigned to deliver mail from one town to another? This is a "lore" question, not an in-game question, hence why I'm asking in the Lore section.

I was gonna crack a joke. Something about lunar brainwaves and Talosian modifications of physics. However, while, like all other people who are not that small 1% of professional comedians who don't svck, I am not funny, unlike the rest of the human species I know that I am not funny.

Probably couriers, almost certainly run by the government who very likely open and examine mail for signs of treason and/or unrest.

Courier and, if you are rich or important enough, servant. In Daggerfall almost every letter you receive is sebt by one or the other. There is one other method of course; magic. a couple of letters appear in amusing manners with no delivery man. Such as floating into you pocket.

That sounds awful that the Empire would read people's letters but that is definitely not something unheard of. I mean, Imperials are the people in charge; they can do what they want. I'm guessing if regular citizens wanted to send a letter to somebody in a different town or city in Morrowind, they'd hire one of the Imperial couriers to do it. Couriers wouldn't necessarily have to be Imperial. But I'm agreeing with you that mail would, for the most part, be handled by the Empire so as they can see what is being traded and who is saying what. Although mail delivery in a medieval fantasy world also wouldn't be as rigid as ours on Earth. I'm guessing lots of people wrote letters and then paid someone they knew personally to deliver it if they didn't want it handled by the Empire.

Well, I'm working on Pelagiad Expanded, as probably nobody knows, and I'm wanting to know how an Imperial Fort town would handle their mail. Since there is nothing official on it, my guess is that couriers would report to the fort and there would be a specific person in charge of all outbound and inbound mail and packages. Then from there, the letters and packages and barrels would be dispersed throughout the town accordingly. Otherwise, you could just have a guar caravan enter town and go right to its destination and drop off 50 kilograms of moonsugar and nobody would ever know. So I think Fort Pelagiad would have some type of Imperial mail service, for protection of the town as well as the Empire, and to keep things organized and accounted for.

What do you guys think?

isn't the pelagiad expanded mod turning pelagiad into a walled town? If that's the case, the more likely option would be to perform a contraband check at the gate. It's cheaper.

Vivec would probably have its own seperate courier service for delivering letters within the city, for letters between other settlements there may be a few couriers but freelance adventurers would probably also get paid as well as travelling merchants.

It'd make sense for there to be no organized mail system throughout Vvardenfell in general; the average dunmer muck-farmer sending a letter to his lover in Balmora would probably just give it to a traveler or merchant heading that way and hope for the best.

Pelegiad, being a fort town, probably would have a more established courier system for the delivery of military messages and whatnot; communication of information is vital for an organization like the Legion.
It's not too far of a stretch to say that might be available to the Imperial citizens of the town, especially as the Empire is known for being enterprising. The specifics of how it might work are beyond me, though.

The legions would have their own courier going from outpost to outpost so its logical many people would entrust their letters to them. I assume larger towns would have their own independant courier service as well. Small settlements and tribal villages would probably rely on merchants, travelers, and anyone willing to make the trip for their delivery.

Also, its not unlikely that at the greatest height of the Empire, it provided a postal service of some kind.

Maybe a reason to have so many cystal balls, maybe the rich can have a mage transport a message via scrying.