On an expedition into the Murkmire Marshlands, Doctor Cassee Dannel and an archaeolical team from the Whiteharbour Academy unearthed a strange object. Light green, opaque, and with a gemstone-like sheen, this ovoid stone was covered in strange furrows. The stone seemed ritualistic in nature, but it matched no recorded historical practices, and no one could identify its composition. The more Doctor Dannel studied it, the more she became convinced this object, which the archaeologists dubbed the Murkmire Stone, was not created by any known civilization.
Doctor Dannel tried to convince the dig's archaeologists to isolate the Murkmire Stone until she could learn more about it, but word of the discovery spread quickly. When the Cliffsunder Museum of Natural History offered a generous price for the stone, it was soon whisked from the dig site to the museum.
Doctor Dannel continued to research the strange stone. Her concern turned to dread when she found descriptions of similar objects in her occult tomes. These objects were, in fact, the eggs of eldritch creatures. She learned that such Abberations lay dormant for generations, but once the eggs are unearthed, the creatures within rapidly developed and hatched. The resulting creatures were ravenous for raw meat and grow exponentially as they feed, eventually overwhelming entire villages. The eggs were nearly indestructible, but the tomes claimed encasing them in crystal could neutralize them.
According to Dannel's research, the Murkmire Stone was due to hatch in a matter of days. She frantically presented her findings to the university's administrators, who deemed her work pseudoscience and refused to interfere with the upcoming exhibition of the Murkmire Stone. Desperate, Doctor Dannel snuck into the museum after hours and tried to steal the stone, but she was caught. The Academy disavowed her actions and fired her.
With mere hours left in the Murkmire Stone's gestation period, she reached out to Golden Vault to reclaim the stone.