The Moonclaw Woods earned their infamous name from the curse that once stalked their borders: an infestation of werewolves and their half-wild kin, the Feralborn.

Legend tells that in the brutal dawn of the Orc Wars, Templars of Midgard captured an orcish scout named Vargr—a quiet, watchful warrior whose blood carried an older, darker curse. The Templars saw no monster to be cured, only a weapon to be handled. They chained him in a cave, broke him with iron and holy fire, and forced transformation upon him with cruel illusions of a full moon.

When they finally unleashed him, he tore into his own people with a fury that was not entirely his. Then, following the pull of the magic silver tracking-collar locked around his throat, the Templars recaptured their living weapon and prepared to use him again.

But one winter morning, Vargr awoke alone in a mist-filled glen, the collar shattered in the moss beside him. Whether he broke it through sheer, desperate rage or some remorseful Templar unlocked it in secret is still whispered over campfires—but no one claims to know for certain.

Vargr fled north, disappearing into the deep woods at the feet of the Brunnbarak Mountains. Travelers vanished soon after. Hunters found shredded camps, blood trails that sank into thickets, and claw marks that stripped bark clean to the heartwood. Before long, a pack had formed around him—Moonclaw’s first brood—and their midnight raids obliterated the village of Briarwell.

Stormhold, with its veins of silver ore, and Port Elias, with its veteran hunters, combined forces to drive the beasts back into the mountains. They reclaimed Briarwell, though the old stones still bear gouges that no mason has quite managed to smooth away.

The pack fragmented, thinning but never dying out. Folks say that deeper in the high passes, where pine grows twisted and the wind howls a little too much like speech, the last Moonclaws still prowl. The Feralborn—those trapped between man and beast, never fully either—cling to that wild heritage even now.

As for Vargr? Not a bone nor hair was ever recovered. Some swear he crossed the ice floes to Northfang Isle during a particularly bad winter, vanishing into its bitter forests. Among the Feralborn, he has become a myth: Vargr Moon-Hunger, The Alpha of Alphas, first father of the Moonclaw line. They leave offerings upon the frozen shore of the Shiverdeep Sea—fangs, pelts, moon-marked stones—hoping his spirit still watches.

And some whisper, with equal dread and longing, that one day a new Alpha will rise as he once did… and unite the scattered clans under a single, hungry moon.

Vargr "Moon-Hunger"