I'm sorry, whose lore is this? Oh right, Bethesda's. So they can say whatever they please, and it's a TES fact

Um, Skyrims a game, not reallife.

You could find both raw glass and ebony in mines in Morrowind. Pretty sure you could munch it as an alchemical ingredient too (along with diamonds and other gems).

Both were a sort of volcanic ore (seeing as how Morrowind sports Tamriel's biggest volcano), but I recall that Ebony was somehow infused with the blood of Lorkhan or somesuch...

Actually, Corundum is an aluminum oxide mineral that comes in various forms/colors. A few of the more well-known ones are rubies, sapphires and hematite, depending on which impurities got into the mix. Orcanium is, as far as I know, unique to Tamriel. [Edit: hematite is an iron oxide - if someone sees my brain out there, please send it back; it's too tiny to wander on its own)

Ebony certainly is rarer in Skryim mines than in Morrowind ones.
As for explaining why ebony turns up in small quantities at vendors, well, theyll get some from trading with the Orcs that have mines in Skyrim, and likely also some from trade with Morrowind.
While we dont know who rules Vvardenfell at this point, I think its logical to assume that either the Dunmer, the Argonians or an independant company would have exploited the fresh veins of ebony that the eruption of Red Mountain would have brought to the surface 200 or so years ago.
Its probably not as rare as it used to be.

I did not know the connection with a real life mythical metal of Atlantis.
I assumed it was because of the similarity between the names. malachite for Malacath and orchichalcum for Orcs. Interesting though

No, good old Steel Blade Swords & Skyforge swords only. Besides only the best will do for my characters.

A sad reminder of how skyrim has an insane endless supply of ebony for sale all over

I figured malachite sounded like malacath, but ... the irl relation and the fact malachite makes Glass doesn't really connect. I'unno. Both are green!

Ori-whatsit and its numerous variations in many videogames are totally Atlantis-references like someone said earlier. Unknown metal; reminds me of the "Damascus steel" from few centuries before. It either was a certain type of pre-formed alloy or a lost method of production. Most likely some degree of both.

There are basicly three kinds of glass.

Soft glass, windows etc.

Borosilicate glass, Pyrex really and both my kids make their living blowing this stuff. Pipes etc are very strong and hard to break. Your glass cookware.

Quartz glass. It is very strong and resilient but still not nearly as useful as steel for weapons. You can fill a quartz glass container with liquid nitrogen then play a torch on the outside, no problem. It may be what you mean by milky-white as it does look like that.

There are also ceramics which put all of the above to shame when it comes to toughness and hardness. These I would equate, to some extent, with ebony in the game.

I don't get why anyone would complain about this. Ebony as a metal, just like almost all the materials in game, is made up.
So is corundum. In real life it's the mineral that sapphires and rubies are made of. Saying "well, corundum is real!" is a stupid argument because you cant smelt rubies into armor, and even if you could it would be some very, very horrible armor..Same with malachite, their physical and chemical properties would make them useless armor and weapons.

Its a game. The ebony, corundum, malachite, etc are unrelated to ours.

Skyrim has some very good ebony mines. One in particular must make one group of Orsimer very rich as they don't seem to use it much themselves.

And then there is "Moonstone"? I thought it was established that one could not travel through space in the TES canon.

Well actually..
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336234-altmer-warriors/
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/kinmune

.

I think they still might be in production, I have some specially made glass plates, bowls and mugs that I have never seen break... they are supposed to be shock resistant. I have dropped a plate from about 5 feet up onto a concrete slab on multiple occassions, the first time I dropped it the plate bounced 4 feet back up into the air but I was too surprised to try and catch it. Still no chips.

As for the possibilities of finding Ebony outside Morrowind, I don't think it's too impossible. I mean, the heart breaks into arteries and veins and then smaller vessels and capillaries. Lorkhan's must do the same 8D

Something like this. I figure Glass armor is some sort of elven fantasy variant of today's hi-tech industrial stuffs.



And I chuckled :> Oh how quickly scifi jumps in from nowhere

Yeah, but how cool is:

"As the barely-there Hist blink-root-ship armada fired an artillery barrage of 16th-dimensional mathematics at their Jilian enemies, impossipoint detonations stippled across the Ix-Egg and its clutch-satellites like some garish TalOSian hologram, only without the irony."

Hist blink-root-ship?

Should be possible, however expensive, you can make an house of gold in real world.

At least khajiit are still real... right?... RIGHT?!

They cant both be volcanic glass. And we already know that Glass is effectivly Obsidion, so what does that make Ebony?

Last I checked, Ebony armor was metalic, not amorphous

Well that's ebony and glass sorted, or not. What, however, happened to all the adamantium?

Sure they can, rubies and diamonds are different kinds of gemstones too, arent they?
'Glass' has obsidian like qualities, but it has different properties from obsidian. It appears to be more viscous and have greater structural strength, it can be molded and does not shatter when impacted.
Lore-wise, 'ebony' is a volcanic glass with magical properties. It is just called 'ebony' because of the mystical undertones of that word, same with 'glass'.
Who knows what processes are used, how much metal and leather actually holds the ebony plates together, or its exact properties.
I tend to think of it as a space-age ceramic only naturally occuring.