In MW smuggling these items in their raw forms was ILLEGAL...in OB it is as legal as carrying an iron dagger...

How do you mean?

Apologies for being Oblivion ignorant...

In MW if you got arrested with these items they were confiscated, in OB its all good, you can keep it.

Aaah. Not surprised though. Probably just gameplay. From what I've heard and seen myself, OB screwed a lot of lore up.

It might have been illegal in Morrowind but I don't recall them actually enforcing it. They might have confiscated them if they were stolen, apart from that I don't think anything happened.

Maybe in MW, they wanted to ruin all the fun, unlike OB?

From UESP

It was illegal to carry them because Emperor Septim declared that it all belonged to him, although it didn't seem to extend to weapons and armor. In Oblivion, either way, with the Emperor dead, the ban was no longer valid.

Edit: Well, there was the exception of skooma, but the stuff was much rarer in Cyrodiil than in Morrowind, and wasn't considered as serious of a problem.

It would seem to me that the Elder Council's (or just Ocato's) failure to uphold such trade laws in the absence of a Septim would violate their expressed desire for both themselves and their citizenry to maitain a semblance of normalcy and calm in their day-to-day affairs. The limitations on Dwemer trading (IIRC) had been around since Tiber's search for the Numidium, and the council, with that goal in mind, is just going to toss it aside?

Naturally, enforcement would prove difficult during the Oblivion crisis, but to have no in-world mention of the official policy or in-world consequences even amongst the more law-abiding of the merchants is pretty unfathomable.

But why would they continue enforcing it if there was no longer any rationale for the trade bans?

Profit? If an Emperor declares, "All your goods are belong to me," and then said Emperor gets offed and you're left with the reins, greed could easily kick in. And even in the midst of a crisis, greed still thrives.

Regulation? When you are scrambling to uncover the identities of the organization who just killed your governing monarch, it might be wise to retain the bans on trade of things that could range from mundane dangerous (i.e. regular Dwemer arms and armor) to mythically dangerous (no doubt the council has been made aware of such artifacts as Keening, Sunder, and Wraithguard; who wants things of that nature, lesser or no, to be floating around), lest those things fall into the hands of those you're trying to track down.

Alliances? The Mages Guild thrives off of protective monopolies and defends them ruthlessly, and one of the near-monopolies they are currently enjoying is Imperial-sponsored access to anything Dwemer. Why would the council stick a thorn in the side of the guild when they need all hands on deck in a time of crisis?

And most importantly, to maintain the attempt at illusion that everything is going to be okay, that no-one need panic in the immediacy of Uriel's assassination. Nothing reeks of doublespeak like saying, "go about business as usual for the sake of Uriel VII," and then rendering null and void that trade ban that's been around for the past 433+ years.

well technically... in OB it is Dwarven and not Dwemer, because Beth forgot what they were doing ;]

In Morrowind, most merchants also refused to trade if you had skooma, however, they didn't care about ebony, Dwemer, or glass items. Maybe they would be confiscated if you were arrested. In Oblivion, no mention is made regarding trade in these being illegal, at least for Dwemer, ebony and glass items, but we can still assume the ban is in effect, since it isn't stated otherwise. In game dialog indicates that the skooma trade is illegal (Like the talks about it in the NPC conversations and the quest where that guard outside Leyawiin sends you to kill a skooma trader.) gameplay probably simply doesn't reflect this.



It's completely the same thing, Dwemer is their proper elven name, while Dwarves are what Imperials call them, so it fits.

Maybe in Cyrodil they aren't too concerned with the proper name of a dead race who apparently have no ruins in that part of tamriel, but in morrowind the authorities are more aware of the Dwemer due to history and ancient landmarks that they name them properly.

Yeah. They were referred to as dwarves in Arena/Daggerfall. Hell, back then there were probably referring to the generic short, bearded, alcoholic, Scottish type. But then Morrowind added in "proper" dwarves and they just retconned previous games, so that "dwarf" was the standard term the Imperials gave the Dwemer. Those Imperials do that all the time anyway, uncultured fools.

Perhaps its because Vvardenfell is a new Imperial aquistion and so they want to keep all the high valued resources in the Imperial monopoly.

Morrowind has its own legal system, and the Houses can also apply their own rules, and the laws regarding the sale of Dwemer artifacts was outdated and has probably been abandoned. No-one was arrested because of it, and trying to enforce it was a waste of money.

If I remember right, the East Empire company had been granted a trade monopoly on several Morrowind product, including raw ebony and glass. Which made trading them out of the Company licensed channels was illegal - at least in the Morrowind province where the Company has it's charter.

If the Company has been disbanded between MLorrowinf and Oblivion, the monoploy would drop.

Not having illegal items such as those was one of Oblivion's flaws, although it was a flaw of Morrowind's that it didn't carry it through very well, other than skooma.

Most shopkeepers should have refused to buy dwemer artifacts or raw ebony/glass, unless they liked you or were immoral people, collectors, etc.

Ocato was probably more concerned with other matters like holding the Empire together, he might have even forgotten about the whole trade bans in the midst of the crisis.


It also could have strained relations between the Empire and Morrowind, to keep the ban despite the Emperor's death. And with the disappearance of Vivec and the Empire's future uncertain, it could also prompt many more Dunmer to seek secession from the Empire.

Or what's probably more likely is that the enforcement of it took a second seat at the Legionaire level to killing roaming Daedra. People way up on the scale of Governmental authority do not really actively enforce policy. They simply shift policy and attention around in order to stress one thing over another at a given time. It's the mid-level bureaucrats and (in this case) the Legions that enforce policy.

Actually, I seem to recall community speculation that part of the reason for the change was to explain how armor designed (and therefore fitted) for dwarves (as in the short kind) were somehow being easily worn by human/elf sized people. This was a LONG time ago (possibly before Morrowind was even out), so I'm not sure.

That's also true, a lot of the less generic aspects of lore were only added later in the series. At the start, it was pure generic high fantasy, after some retconning and fleshing out of the lore it developed into what it is now.



In Morrowind the name "dwarf" often crops up too, but the Dunmer, of course, tend to use the elven name, and the scholars and collectors who would be interested in Dwemer artifacts probably do their research, so they'd know the name.



I'm pretty sure of at least one peace of evidence of it being enforced, namely the Thieves Guild quest where you were supposed to free a Thieves Guild member in Pelagiad, you did this by stealing a Dwemer artifact from the local trader, and threatening to reveal the fact that one of the legion members takes bribes to overlook the fact that he sells such things unless she frees your guild mate. I think that bribing someone to overlook trading in illegal items would be rather pointless if it isn't enforced anyway.



The way skooma and moon sugar were enforced was flawed in Morrowind too, most merchants would not only refuse to buy them, but wouldn't do business with you at all if you had hem, this might seem alright, until you consider the fact that all you had to do was to drop your skooma and moon sugar on the floor to trade with them again to work around it (you'd still need to find a merchant who doesn't mind it to sell the illegal items, of course, but that's not hard. Why they didn't care about other goods in which trade is illegal I don't know.



I could believe that one, since armor designed for your typical dwarves that fit the name fitting on human or elf sized characters does have questionable logic, and it's certainly easier to believe than Bethesda doing it just to be original.