Questions in the title! I noticed on a map of Tamriel, on mainland morrowind, south of Vivec. http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/minibigmaproadslore31gv.jpg Cheers in advance!

Its a city on the mainland.

It's a distinct city from Castle Ebonheart on Vvardenfel.

Thats a point, I always think of Ebonheart as a city, when its really a castle! Cheers!

But Ebonheart (the castle version) is also a city.
Old Ebonheart is just the a name used to make a distinction between the two Ebonhearts.

Old Ebonheart is also the ancestral home of the Ra'athim clan.

From "Madness of Pelagius'

Old Ebonheart was one of the largest Indoril city, a rival to Old Mournhold (please note that neither of them were called "Old" at the time, of course). When Dagon destroyed Mournhold in 1e2920, Almalexia and Sotha Sil rebuilt Mournhold as Almalexia (only the palace district keeping the name of Mournhold) and made it the capital of Morrowind. Ebonheart's status declined at that time.


When the Empire decided to open Vvardenfell to colonization, a fort/palace complex was built near the city of Vivec in order to host the administration for the newly-created Duchy of Vvardenfell. This was named, for some reason, Ebonheart (just like you have a Paris in Texas, sometimes people aren't very imaginative and prefer to give old names to new cities). The mainland Ebonheart is therefore called Old Ebonheart to avoid ambiguity. It would have been more logical to call the Vvardenfell Ebonheart "New Ebonheart" but it's called just "Ebonheart" in the game so it's simpler to rename the city that's not in the game.

Ok, it all makes sense. My question is answered! Thanks guys!!!

It's a retcon. Ebonheart appeared in Elder Scrolls I, and it was on the mainland. Then, Elder Scrolls III rolled around, and the dev's wanted to put Ebonheart in. But the game did not include the mainland. So, they came up with a new one.

It's not really a retcon, because the Ebonheart from TES III was New Ebonheart.

Old Ebonheart is still on the mainland.

Old Ebonheart and New Ebonheart are kind of like Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Except with a much larger body of water between them.

It IS a retcon. At some point late in development the devs realized that Ebonheart was on the mainland (they had falsely thought it was on Vvardenfel). They scrambled to fix this before realse, and thus created a retcon that there were TWO Ebonhearts. This mistake was about on par with the Sutch mistake in Oblivion.

I see Ebonheart on this proper place on http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/concept_morrowind.jpg, and no Ebonheart on http://www.imperial-library.info/maps/vvardenfell_map.jpg. The first dates back from when they planned to do the whole province, the second was the design document for when they decided to do just Vvardenfell.

Adding Ebonheart to Vvardenfell was a decision made after, and it is apparent that they were not thinking it was on Vvardenfell since it is on Vvardenfell on neither of these two maps.

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