The Moon of Winter

Long ago, when the kingdoms of men were still young, a bitter and unrelenting winter descended upon the land. Crops withered under frost, rivers froze solid, and entire villages succumbed to the cold. The common people whispered of a curse cast by a lesser god, enraged by humanity. Desperate for salvation, the High King of the realm turned to the Grand Temple of Divines.

The priests, steeped in forbidden knowledge, revealed that a god named Vyel had been rebuffed by his one-time paramour - a half-mortal woman named Irenee, daughter of the Goddess of Night. Because Irenee would not continue to give herself to Vyel, he cursed all the land with perpetual Winter. 

The priests sent an emissary to convince Irenee to give herself again to Vyel, but Irenee fled far to the North to avoid such a fate. There she died atop a frost-bound glacier.  Before breathing her last, a single tear is said to have fallen from her cheek, and fell into a deep chasm becoming a precious gem -- the Moon of Winter. 

The stone was said to be like a piece of the moon itself, encased in flawless crystal. The priests of the Grand Temple claimed that giving this last tear of Irenee to Vyel would turn aside his wrath and release the curse of perpetual Winter upon the Eight Kingdoms.

The High King dispatched a company of knights to retrieve the Moon of Winter from its resting place in the frozen wastes of the north. After months of perilous travel, battling frost giants and evading packs of ravenous wolves, the knights found the gem guarded by a ghostly spirit—an avatar of the demi-goddess.

The knights, driven by loyalty to their king and the desperation of their people, deceived the goddess, seized the gem and began their return journey. The knights never reached Peakshadow. On the eve of their return, their camp was attacked in the Silverlode Mountains by a warband of orcs, led by a shaman named Gragrith Frostwalker. The orcs overwhelmed the knights in a brutal ambush.

Gragrith claimed the Moon of Winter as a prize, dedicating its moon-like glow to Gruumsh, the one-eyed god of orcs. When Vyel learned that his intended gift had been dedicated to Gruumsh, he forgot his wrath against humanity and went to war against Gruumsh. But the orc's god emerged the victor and Vyel was banished for 100 years from the mortal realm. The stone passed to Magrul Sharpfang and with him it remained -- a sign of his horde and a symbol of divine favor upon his line.