Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-12481512-20130717104617/@comment-73.147.111.26-20170127005144

Whatever the Dwemer metal is, it has to be made from something very plentiful because there is so much of it; almost everything in dwarven ruins is either made of stone or the metal. indeed, of all the smithing materials in Skyrim  it is the easiest to obtain large amounts of because of the huge quantity of scraps. The metal may be an alloy of iron, which is plentiful and possibly moonstone because it has a golden color like elven weapons and armor. Also the Dwemer are related to the Elves and moonstone ore can be sometimes be found in their robots.

Another possibility is that it is a pure metal whose ore occurs in massive veins which the dwarves would excavate. They would then build their cities in the resulting cavities using the metal smelted from the ore they dug. In doing this they mined all of the easily found ore of this metal or only they had the technology needed to process or perhaps even identify the ore.



If the dwarven metal is made from condensed souls, that might explain the complete absence of of smithing equipment in Dwemer ruins