Shor, Why Not?: A Mining Overhaul For One Specific Mine Only, No Others, Do Not Ask For Others

This mod randomizes the items obtained when mining from ore veins inside of Redbelly Mine, the local mine at Shor's Stone. You can obtain any of the ores and gems that can be mined in the base game, as well as whatever soul gems (based on your level) are obtainable by mining in Blackreach; each strike of your pickaxe produces a random result. Additionally, each ore vein is animated.



Base Object Swapper, an SKSE plug-in, is used to convert the ore deposits inside of interior cell ShorsStoneRedbellyMine without needing to override the cell or its refs.

Why does this exist?

There's a great deal of ambiguity as to what ore Redbelly Mine should contain, so I've decided to throw my hat into the ring.

In the vanilla game, Redbelly Mine contains three ebony ore veins. However, multiple NPCs and in-game texts refer to Redbelly as an iron mine. In many of Skyrim's workplaces, one can find an NPC who is willing to pay the player for their labor (in the form of offering to buy whatever item the local environment produces); at Redbelly, miner Grogmar gro-Burzag buys iron ore from the player. Additionally, a sidequest involves taking a mysterious, newly-discovered ore to a local alchemist, and that ore uses the same inventory model as quicksilver ore. Complicating matters further, Elder Scrolls Online also features Redbelly Mine, and has loading screen text that describes it thusly (emphasis mine):

Sometimes called Redbelly Mine for reasons that can't be repeated in mixed company, the ebony mine at Shor's Stone is the foundation of the local economy, and generations of villagers have sent their young men and women down into the works, despite the dangers.

Multiple pieces of lore in the Elder Scrolls series state that ebony is sometimes called "godsblood," as it is believed to be the crystallized blood of gods -- Lorkhan in particular. Lorkhan is known in Nordic culture as "Shor," and so Shor's Stone would likely be named for its local ebony mine. The "godsblood" lore dates back, at its earliest, to Morrowind pre-release promotional material from 1999, and is also mentioned in NPC dialogue in Morrowind. Explicit references to Lorkhan were introduced with Elder Scrolls Online and Blades, though it's worth noting that in Morrowind, several ebony deposits can be found around Red Mountain, where Lorkhan's heart is said to have landed after he was slain.

There are a few different interpretations, then, as to what Redbelly Mine should contain:

• Theory 1: this is fine meme dog dot png: Redbelly Mine is built atop an ebony vein that curves in on itself. At some point after the mid-to-late Second Era, the local population mined through one "arm" of the ebony vein and struck iron, which then became the primary revenue source for the settlement. By the Fourth Era, the town had nearly entirely consumed that iron vein, mining through it and into the other "arm" of the ebony vein. The local populace was therefore still used to it being an iron mine, but was beginning to mine out ebony again. At around the same time, they stumbled into an adjacent quicksilver vein and, being unfamiliar with the metal, did not recognize it.
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• Theory 2: the mysterious ore is wrong: Redbelly Mine is built atop an ebony vein that curves in on itself. At some point after the mid-to-late Second Era, the local population mined through one "arm" of the ebony vein and struck iron, which then became the primary revenue source for the settlement. By the Fourth Era, the town had nearly entirely consumed that iron vein, mining through it and into the other "arm" of the ebony vein. The local populace uncovered much of this ebony but were unable to explore further due to a sudden Frostbite Spider infestation; they had time to retrieve only a brief sample of the ebony ore. By then, they were no longer familiar with ebony and so did not recognize the material; they wished to have it sent to a local alchemist for identification. However, Bethesda mistakenly assigned this ore the model for quicksilver rather than ebony by mistake.
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• Theory 3: the ebony is wrong: Redbelly Mine was built atop an ebony ore vein at some point prior to the mid-to-late Second Era. By the Fourth Era, the local populace had long ago mined through the ebony vein and uncovered an iron deposit, which became the primary revenue source for the settlement. They began to probe the edges of a previously undiscovered quicksilver vein, but were only able to retrieve a small sample of the material due to a sudden Frostbite Spider infestation; they were unfamiliar with the metal and wished to have it sent to a local alchemist for identification. However, Bethesda mistakenly used the wrong ore vein type throughout the mine.
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• Theory 4: the precise mistake is unknowable but is mitigated through newer lore: Some sort of internal miscommunications occurred during the design or implementation stages, or Bethesda didn't have a single design for Redbelly Mine in mind, resulting in the mine having multiple inconsistent ore types in Skyrim. The developers eventually decided that the mine should canonically contain the actual ore that is discoverable by the player in the vanilla game, and so committed to making Shor's Stone an ebony mine, introducing multiple pieces of lore to try and clarify the matter and justify the settlement's name on that basis. Notably, this does not preclude the presence of iron or quicksilver in the mine alongside the ebony (see Theory 1): many of Skyrim's locations are downscaled relative to their canonical sizes (to the point that many buildings are larger on the inside than they are on the outside), so it's conceivable that the mine could canonically contain multiple metals yet only represent the primary one in gameplay.
  

There's no explicit way to know which possibility is correct, though personally, my preference is Theory 1/Theory 4. However, multiple parties have made mods which attempt to rectify the discrepancy in various ways, including but not limited to:

• Swapping ore types between Redbelly Mine and nearby Northwind Mine, such that Redbelly becomes an iron mine and Northwind becomes an ebony mine. This approach predates ESO and its lore, and is motivated by the majority of evidence within Skyrim (as considered in isolation) pointing to Redbelly being a misconfigured iron mine (i.e. Theory 3, chosen in the absence of any information that explicitly supports Theory 4).
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• Converting Redbelly Mine into an iron mine, and adding a nearby cave loaded with ebony. The first instance of this approach I was made aware of was published after ESO and the changes ESO made to the franchise's lore; this approach thus regards Skyrim as existing within a vacuum while rejecting Bethesda's attempts at mitigating their own mistakes (i.e. Theory 3, chosen as a willful rejection of Theory 4).
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• Shor, Why Not? Embrace the chaos. Shor's Stone has whatever ore you think it should have. Shor's Stone has any ore. Shor's Stone has every ore. Shor's Stone has everything you need. Shor's Stone is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end; it will purify these tainted waters and restore life to this dying world. Shor's Stone has no explanation; it is acausal, a maddening blemish upon the flesh of this cold, bleak, causal-deterministic world. Shor's Stone is in your heart. We are all Shor's Stone.
  

FAQ
Q: How did you animate the Mystery Ore Veins like that?
You can use NiVisController blocks in NifSkope to toggle visibility of a mesh during a NetImmerse animation. Pretty neat! I set the animations up by hand mimicking the structure of some of the game's "multi-target" animations in mesh meshes\dungeons\dwemer\animated\observatory\fxdweobservatorymapbeam.nif. Simpler examples can also be seen in the animations for the Nordic puzzle doors' keyholes -- the ones that you open with jeweled claws.

Q: Why do I receive soul gems when mining Mystery Ore Veins?
Blackreach has soul gem ore veins, so this is one of the "ore" types I've made available.

Q: Does the ore I receive from a Mystery Ore Vein depend on what ore I can visibly see on the vein when I strike it with my pickaxe?
if i say yes will you believe me