Why House Dagoth called the sixth house when it's only the fourth one? Were there two other houses I somehow missed when I played the game? O_o

The houses you will find reference to in the game are Indoril, Hlaalu, Redoran, Telvanni, Dres, Dwemer and Dagoth. The House Dagoth is the sixth house. You can only join three of them.

Dwemer aren't Dunmer though. I thought the great houses were only of dunmer.

This is more for the lore forum, they can answer your questions.

When Morrowind was still Redsayn, there were the Dwemer, the Ashlanders, and the Settled (known as the Houses).

Nope but they shared a equivalent position on the Grand Council. The Dunmer and Dwemer co-existed for a good while afterall.

They were Chimer at this point though, correct?

They are still Chimer, and they were already Dunmer.

Chimer means they have changed because they are no longer like the Altmer. Dunmer means they have a gloomy disposition. The "Chimer turning into Dunmer when their skin darkened" is an oversimplification because both terms are really equivalent.

It was before Azura's curse and the apotheosis of the Tribunal though. Around that time the Dwemer disappeared.

The Dwemer were there before the Chimer arrived. It was General Nerevar who made peace with General Dumac(dwarf king), in order to defend Resdayn(Vvardenfell) from the Nords of Skyrim, who had invaded their lands. It was during this time that the Dwemer designed a House, so as to rule alongside the Chimer in peace. Of course, thanks to Kagrenac, war broke out, and Nerevar argued with Dumac. Read the book, "The War of the First Council"

You can find it in the Imperial Library.

Nicely put in Morrowind/Nerevarine end of 3rd age terms.

However I keep running into vague references to other Houses. One thing that a lot of people have said is that Hlaalu were a minor clan of parvenues who only expanded from an area in the southern regions alongside Indoril to their current pre-eminence comparatively recently - and that is interesting because it appears to contradict in-game positions.

At first glance yeh, but you need to remember that A: "Recently" for a 500-year old elf is not recently for us and B: The Empire supports it's freinds, and that Hlaalu is.

It would be nice to have more detail on the rise of Hlaalu and who they absorbed and expunged in their rise to power.

Might shed a bit more light on Dagoth's place in things too

There arent "Dwarf" in Elder Scrolls, this is not LOTR; Dumac was Dwemer not dwarf; and Dwemer are Mer too, meaning they share ancestrality with all elvens.

Dumac, however, was called "Dwarf-king" or "Dwarf-Orc" (much as Pepin, king of the Franks, was known in real life as "Pepin the Short").

Dwemer almost were dwarves rather than Dwemer - but the Devs decided that they wanted to give them a common ancestry with mer - and as a matter of semantics are there actually elvens?

What's important is that we understand that they have certain dwarven characteristics and do not have others , right?

Brilliant as Professor Tolkien was he took his dwarves and elves from the works of previous authors and the tradition in which he followed had very different natures for many differeing kinds of dwarves and elves than Lotr.

Ofc Dogsbody - it might be that Dumac was called the Dwarf king because he was exceptionally short, fat and bearded fo ra Dwemer? The Dwarf-Orc thing is fascinating though, isn't it?

Dwarves the way WE know them = small bearded men
Dwarves the way the peoples of Tamriel know them = Dwemer.

Does the word "Dwarf" in ANY way imply that the race is small? No. It's just a word. And Tamriel never had any other dwarves in their mythology or history that are described as small beings, so people of Tamriel wouldn't know the we, the people of Earth, have a different meaning for that word.
You know, maybe they were named after the sounds their machines made? DwarfdwarfdwarfdwarfCHOOOOOTdwarfdwarf....

On the other hand, isn't there an assumption that the giants named them dwarves because they were in comparison to giants very small? If that's the case, then the name is absolutely correct, even by Earth standards.

On topic: I'd really like to know more about those other houses :huh:

That was some tongue-in-cheek weaseling by the devs. Someone else tried to slow its spread by pointing out that the word 'stunted' can refer to more than size. So maybe it's an Aldmeri insult. Dwemer is an Aldmeri word, after all.

As for the other houses, Vivec's MQ dialog has a few useful details.

Hahaha what machines were you listening to? Peter Framptons steam centurian?

And

Yes that is absolutely where they got their nickname.

Right - I recon your last bit makes more sense? No one in Tamriel would recognise any of our earth-languages would they? We just use our words in translation of their sense. So Describing Dumac as a Dwarf is like saying he is small ... ummm ... wonder what Dwe means? Small?

Not KooKooKaChoo? Mick Jagger will be devastated.

i thought that was john lennon...

Dwe means "deep," which could mean small i guess, but i afaik the giants dont speak aldmeri.

The Houses we know:
House Hlaalu: Merchants, mostly. As such, they have a reputation of being dishonest, cowardly opportunists. Their capital city is Narsis, in the deep south. On Vvardenfell, it is Balmora.
House Redoran: Warriors, mostly. They hold honor, valor and bravery as the highest ideals, and are quite devout. Their capital city was Blacklight, on the north-west, but it was moved to Ald'ruhn by Bolvyn Venym.
House Telvanni: Mages only. Personal power, both magical and political, is all that matter in this highly individualistic house. Their capital city is Port Telvannis, on an island to the east of Northern Morrowind. On Vvardenfell, it is Sadrith Mora.
Those three houses have participated in the re-colonization of Vvardenfell, where they already had ancient holdings anyway.

The House we don't know much:
House Indoril: Priests, mostly. House Indoril is highly prestigious and closely tied to the Temple -- it is the House of Saint Nerevar and the Goddess Almalexia. So many of the Ordinators come from House Indoril that "Ordinator" and "Indoril" have become nearly synonymous; hence the "Indoril Armor" for Ordinator Armor. (Actual Indoril armor is different. As you know, all Great Houses have their own bonemold style that is worn by their guards, and a mere guard would never be allowed to wear an Ordinator's armor.) Its lands are in the east of Morrowind. Their capital city is Almalexia/Mournhold.

The House we know the least:
House Dres: Another house of traders like the Hlaalu, House Dres is mostly known for taking and selling slaves to all Morrowind. Its lands are in the south-east of Morrowind, bordering Black Marsh. Perceived as one of the most traditional-minded houses, many wild rumors circulate about them -- that they're ruled by vampires, that they still practice forbidden Daedric cults, and so on. It is probably mostly nincompoop, though.

The House that is no more:
House Dagoth: the Sixth House, whose ancestral holdings were on what is now Vvardenfell. House Dagoth was apparently a magic-oriented house, like the Telvanni, and they were the closest geographically to the Dwemer.

The House that was not a House:
House Dwemer: Since the Chimer had a political structure based on Great Houses, during the relatively short time in which they were allied with the Dwemer, the Dwemer nation was considered as being its own Great House, so some ancient texts will refer to House Dwemer. This was just for the Chimer's convenience.

About the Giants and Dwemer. YR mentions in the PGE that any theories about Dwemer being called "short" by Giants, are an human obsession with physical appearance even if these Giants were the Elhenofey.

So I'd go with Deep Thought People.

A-ha, so Dumac is responsible for that, because he was very small? When he became king, all books were rewritten, I guess: "Forget what you know about those steampunk-elves, their king is very small, so let's call them 'small elves', it's much more accurate!"

Concerning translation to our earth-languages: The one thing most characteristic about dwarves in Norse mythology is that they live inside the mountains. Wikipedia even says the original dwarves were of the same size as humans...
To make a long argumentation short, there are a lot of possibilities for what the sense of the Aldmeri word that's been translated as "dwarf" is, simply because "dwarf" is not a detailed description. Of course, if we go with LotR, D&D, DSA and other modern fantasy, we do get a clear picture, but that one is completely contradictory to what we see in TES, so why should that be the definition we'd want to use?
Personally, I'm really glad about the developers' decision not to make the dwarves shorter than the other races. It makes them and the whole game more interesting. And TES already has the Bosmer for the small funny idiots anyway.

Oh, and Gez, thank you for that summary! However, I was talking about the other houses. Somebody in this thread mentioned there were more than the 6 houses and the Dwemer. I've never heard about that, and it seems many people here didn't either, so maybe it was just mixed up memories or something.