The Cube appears in several minstrel’s tales coming from the Blackmoors. The unusual tales, sung and played in an almost maudlin funerary tone, tell of Dur Ahnce, a minor mage of unremarkable talents. According to the tales, Ahnce ventured into the Howling Hills, which were once known as the Gelid Haunts. The Gelid Haunts housed creatures of many ilks, but none quite so ruthless and pitiless as Ressil the Storm. Precisely who or what Ressil was has been lost to time, but the minstrel tales speak of a being “as tall as the winter-kissed oaks and colder than the deepest Black Ice.”

Ressil’s talents were a complete opposite of Dur Ahnce – where Ahnce struggled to do the simplest cantrip, Ressil could, and did, warp and twist the land into a blasted, icy wasteland. Ressil was ruthless in his magical experimentations: savage beasts of ice and fury tormented the natives, even at the height of summer. When the rivers began to freeze over in the middle of summer, that is when Dur Ahnce ventured into the Gelid Haunts with nothing more than the clothing on his back and a small cube of polished glass. The cube was unremarkable in appearance, about the size of a handball, except for its perfect clarity and razor-sharp edges.

The precise details of what happened in the Haunts isn’t known – what is known is that the ice suddenly vanished, and the mephits that had been plaguing the nearby hamlets and villages vanished in the blink of an eye. Where there had been cold glens of inhospitable trees, lush greenery suddenly sprung up, once again summer. Dur Ahnce was apparently successful, but this unremarkable mage, “the Dull” as he was called by his peers, walked out of the Gelid Haunts, alive and in one piece. The locals hailed him as a hero, but Ahnce shunned their adulation. When Ahnce left the region of the Haunts, he headed north, never to be seen again.
The lands of the Haunts gained a new name when Ahnce left – the Howling Hills. The Hills always sound as if someone is screaming in frustration or fury. The winters are always a bit colder, a bit sharper, and a bit harsher in the Hills.

Over tankards of beer, sages and bards alike theorize that the Cube was a device that imprisons or entraps a living creature. Ahnce was not called “the Dull” after that day, so the sages postulate that the Cube grants its holder the abilities of whatever creature is unfortunate to be trapped within. Where the Cube came from, or if Dur Ahnce was indeed the one who made it, is a subject that gets argued into the wee hours of the morning in many a tavern in the Blackmoor region.