Why is Ebony an ore?

[Arthur]

I thought ebony was a kind of tree?

[John]

because ebony is something completely different in the elder scrolls?

[alexander_dougherty]

It's a metal named after the colour Ebony not the wood.

[ShelLuser]

^ What John said.

Why bother comparing Elder Scrolls to the real world in the first place? No offense intended, but if you follow that reasoning then you could also argue that there shouldn't be any dragons in the game; surely those don't exist for real?

Still, making ebony an ore isn't as far fetched as you might think. What would happen if those ebony trees existed thousands of years ago (within Tamriel), so long ago that they eventually got buried into the ground where they slowly "melted" into what you have now?

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

^ What John said.

Why bother comparing Elder Scrolls to the real world in the first place? No offense intended, but if you follow that reasoning then you could also argue that there shouldn't be any dragons in the game; surely those don't exist for real?

Still, making ebony an ore isn't as far fetched as you might think. What would happen if those ebony trees existed thousands of years ago (within Tamriel), so long ago that they eventually got buried into the ground where they slowly "melted" into what you have now?

The ore is named after the COLOUR not the wood, it's an Ebony coloured metal.

[Grumpy]

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ebony

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ebony

Thank you.

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

^ What John said.

Why bother comparing Elder Scrolls to the real world in the first place? No offense intended, but if you follow that reasoning then you could also argue that there shouldn't be any dragons in the game; surely those don't exist for real?

Still, making ebony an ore isn't as far fetched as you might think. What would happen if those ebony trees existed thousands of years ago (within Tamriel), so long ago that they eventually got buried into the ground where they slowly "melted" into what you have now?

That's different, because dragons aren't named like something in the real world like "chickens" or "dogs", the name "dragon" is exclusively related to something fictional (also, they're wyverns). Still, it was just a simple doubt.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Vecchio:

the name "dragon" is exclusively related to something fictional

Komodo Dragon!

[Arthur]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Originally posted by Vecchio:

the name "dragon" is exclusively related to something fictional

Komodo Dragon!

[Valden21]

The TES games do stuff like this a lot. Take malachite and corundum, for example. In Skyrim, they're both two basic metals. IRL, they're both crystalline minerals that happen to have metal as part of their makeup, aluminum for corundum and copper for malachite. Ebony's the same way, as both Skyrim and Morrowind have it as a metallic ore. Bottom line, it's just a game, so don't let it confuse you.