I've never been able to figure this out. It's status as something coming only from Red Mountain and being the "blood of Lorkhan" sounds very much like a volcanic glass. But it can be used in heavy armor and isn't see-through, so it should be a metal. But TES is weird and volcanic glass makes effective armor, so it could go either way. So tell me, Lore forum, is ebony a volcanic glass, or a special metal?


And as someone who has a personal hobby interest in carpentry, I'd like to say that the fact that the best basic Tamrielic armor is named after a hardwood never ceases to irk me.

It's a volcanic glass, but it has properties of both glass and metals. The green glass armor they call malachite also has these properties. Traits like this are seen in real life in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal.
The two seem to be somewhat related and they are described as being similar. Maybe Glass forms from regular lava and it only becomes Ebony if exposed to the blood of Lorkhan.

It irks me that they gave malachite and moonstone the names of real stones that are nothing like what they are ingame instead of simply making something up. I feel your pain about ebony.

It's blood.

Ebony is a metal, Glass is basically like Obsidian. If ebony were a volcanic glass then it wouldn't be classed as a heavy armor.

At least thats how it was before Skyrim changed it.