Moonstone

**The Moonstone** is a translucent, milky-colored, flat ovoid gemstone that was described as being approximately "the size of a hockey puck." However, it resembled milk quartz more so than true moonstone.

It was initially believed to be necessary as a power source of the so-called "Sun and Moon Curse," which was a curse placed on both vampires and werewolves by an Aztec shaman. However, it was ultimately revealed to be the mystical object which bound the Hybrid Curse that was placed on Niklaus Mikaelson after he triggered his werewolf curse and revealed his true hybrid nature. The curse bound his werewolf aspect and essentially made him solely an Original vampire until which time that he could break the curse and attain his true identity.

## Description

The stone was first mentioned, seemingly in passing, by Mason Lockwood in *Brave New World*, when he told his nephew Tyler that it was a Lockwood family heirloom that only had sentimental (rather than financial) value. Tyler, obviously suspicious, located the stone in one of his father's hiding spots and took it for himself, not believing Mason's claims about why he wanted it.

He initially intended to keep it away from Mason, but after learning of his werewolf curse, and nearly killing a girl on accident after fighting over the stone in *Kill Or Be Killed*, he turned it over to Mason and insisted he had no interest in curses or legends. Mason reported his success in obtaining the moonstone to Katherine, who had apparently sent Mason after it for reasons she did not share with him. Mason, who didn't fully trust Katherine despite how much he loved her, hid the moonstone in a well on the Lockwood property that was filled with vervain to ensure that she couldn't take it for herself.

## Throughout The Vampire Diaries Series

In *Plan B*, Jeremy, who had seen the moonstone in Tyler's possession prior to Tyler giving it to Mason, informed Damon about the stone and Mason's interest in it, so the two called Alaric to get more information. Alaric brought over some of Isobel's research, which claimed that the moonstone was important in the werewolf part of the Sun and Moon curse, which was said to make vampires slaves to the sun and werewolves servants of the moon. When Tyler explained to Jeremy that he had given the moonstone to his uncle, Damon and Bonnie kidnapped Mason so Bonnie could magically extract the stone's location from his mind. Bonnie then went off with Caroline to find Stefan and Elena, who managed to acquire the moonstone before Katherine could, though they ran into difficulties as a result of the vervain-laced water surrounding it.

Katherine responded to the Mystic Falls Gang interfering in her plan by compelling Elena's aunt Jenna to stab herself with a knife, and threatened to kill everyone in Mystic Falls until they finally handed over the moonstone at the Lockwoods' Masquerade Ball. In *Masquerade*, Stefan correctly guessed at the party that Katherine originally stole the moonstone from someone else, and that the original owner was the reason why she faked her death in 1864, and why she bartered the moonstone to George Lockwood in exchange for her freedom. Katherine did eventually regain possession of the moonstone, but not without consequences; the Bennett witch, Lucy, who she had convinced to back her up at the party, hexed the moonstone so that it incapacitated her when she touched it, allowing Damon to trap her in the tomb under Fell's Church.

Unfortunately for them, they trapped Katherine in the tomb with the moonstone, not knowing how important the object would prove to be in the future. In *The Sacrifice*, Jeremy managed to get inside the tomb long enough to throw the stone outside for the rest of the gang to find, but he ended up being extremely injured by Katherine for his trouble. In *By the Light of the Moon*, Bonnie, having retrieved the moonstone, brought it to her new friend, a witch named Luka, who agreed to help her magically destroy it so the stone became useless in breaking the curse. However, unbeknownst to Bonnie and her friends, Luka and his father were working with Klaus' brother Elijah, and only pretended to destroy the stone so they could obtain it for him.

In *Crying Wolf*, the stone was briefly seen when Elijah showed it to a group of werewolves who were torturing Damon for information about it. When Elijah seemingly offered the stone to the wolves, one of them tried to take it, only for all of the wolves but one to have their hearts ripped out of their chests. This suggested that Elijah had taken to carrying the stone with him at all times to ensure it wouldn't be stolen by the many other interested parties.

In *The Dinner Party*, after daggering Elijah, Damon found the stone in the pocket of his suit. The moonstone was then hidden in the Salvatore Boarding House (specifically the dish of specialty soaps in Damon's bathroom) until Katherine stole it in *Know Thy Enemy* with the intention of handing it over to Klaus, along with Elena (the doppelgänger), Tyler (a werewolf), Caroline (a vampire) and Bonnie (a witch) in hopes that being given all the ingredients to break the curse would earn Katherine her freedom. However, unbeknownst to Katherine, Klaus had been planning to capture Katherine and the moonstone by compelling her friend Isobel to help them. In the episode *Klaus*, Elijah revealed to Elena that while the moonstone was necessary to breaking a curse, that it wasn't actually the Sun and Moon Curse; in reality, the Sun and Moon Curse was a fake legend created by himself and Klaus in order to ensure that the two warring species (vampires and werewolves) would be seeking out the rare ingredients necessary to break the real curse, which bound Klaus' werewolf aspect and kept him from being able to embrace his true identity. Once the moonstone was stolen from the boarding house, it remained in Klaus' possession until *The Sun Also Rises*, when Klaus used the moonstone in the sacrifice ritual. A witch in the employ of Klaus, Luka's sister Greta, cast a spell that unbound the Hybrid Curse that was sealed in the moonstone, breaking the curse so that Klaus could finally be a true hybrid.

## Throughout The Originals Series

In *Don't It Just Break Your Heart*, Freya uses the moonstone in the attempt to bind Hope with the same curse that bound her father. Hope was a willing participant for Freya to perform the spell as she believed it was the only way for her to get her mother, Hayley, back. Before Freya was able to perform the spell, however, Klaus appeared and interrupted the ritual.

In *What, Will, I, Have, Left*, an unnamed witch working with Roman and Greta Sienna successfully used the moonstone and performed the binding curse on Hayley. The curse suppressed her werewolf nature, leaving her as nothing more than a non-Original vampire.

## History

The moonstone was originally thought to be used some time in the 15th century by an Aztec shaman, as the power source of a curse cast upon both vampires and werewolves. The effects of the curse made vampires vulnerable to the sun, and tied the werewolves' transformation to the full moon. As a key part of their curse, the stone is considered immensely valuable to both vampires and werewolves who know of its history. With the correct combination of blood (from a werewolf, a vampire, and a doppelgänger of the Petrova bloodline), and the stone, a witch could reverse the curse. It is believed that moonstone's owner could control how the curse was removed; for example, a werewolf could leave the vampires' curse of the sun in place while removing the werewolves' curse of the moon.

It was later revealed that the Sun and Moon Curse was actually made up by Klaus. The moonstone was used to bind a curse that was placed on him by his mother, who was a witch, to suppress his werewolf side and to keep him from being the world's first vampire-werewolf hybrid. He and his brother Elijah made up the Sun and Moon curse to motivate werewolves and vampires all over the world to look for the two keys to breaking the curse: the moonstone, and a human Petrova doppelgänger in order to sacrifice. The first Petrova doppelgänger to be discovered since the Hybrid Curse was cast in the 11th century, Katerina Petrova (also known as Katherine Pierce), was introduced to Klaus by his friend Trevor in 1492. Upon realizing what she was, he charmed her into staying with him with the intent to eventually sacrifice her to break his curse. When she finally figured out what he was planning, she was taken captive by him until she managed to escape with the moonstone just prior to the sacrifice. Trevor sent her to his friend Rose, whom Katerina manipulated into turning her into a vampire, making her blood useless in the ritual. This transformation gave her the abilities she needed to flee for her life, but also resulted in Klaus killing Katherine's entire family in Bulgaria in retribution for her betrayal and forcing her to go on the run for the next 500+ years.

In 1864, Katerina had changed her name to Katherine Pierce and was living as a vampire in Mystic Falls, Virginia during the Civil War. During that time, many people were being murdered and drained of blood, and there was mass hysteria about vampires running rampant in the town. It was later revealed that it wasn't just vampires killing the people, but werewolves. Katherine somehow knew this while the rest of the town did not, and knew that the particular werewolf in question was George Lockwood, one of the Founding Families of Mystic Falls. Katherine made a bargain with him; she would give him the moonstone and keep his secret, and in return, he would expose the other vampires in Mystic Falls and make it appear as though she was killed in the same manner. After the Founder's Council carried out its plan of massacring of all of the vampires in the town at George's behest, both Katherine and George mutually honored their bargain. George passed the moonstone down through his descendants, until it ultimately ended up in the possession of Richard Lockwood at the start of the series. In 2009, it became part of a power struggle between the vampires and the werewolves, and once the werewolves were defeated, the fight became specifically between the Mystic Falls Gang and Klaus. Finally, in the episode *The Sun Also Rises*, Klaus used the stone to break the curse, and the stone is now believed to have been destroyed when the curse was released from within it.

## Trivia

* In the episode *Plan B*, Alaric mentioned that the portion of the werewolves on the curse is sealed in moonstone but in the episode *By the Light of the Moon*, Bonnie said that the moonstone contained the Curse of the Sun and the Moon.
* The moonstone is a very pale white color in the show, but in real life the moonstone is more similar to the color of milky quartz.
* In *True Lies*, Katherine Pierce referred to herself as the "freaking Moonstone" due to her mortal status being wanted by everybody as leverage for Silas.