Azura’s Star is a Daedric artifact created by the Daedric Prince Azura. In appearance it looks like a large, intricately designed throwing star or gemstone, with eight star-like prongs. In the right hands, Azura’s Star acts as a reusable soul gem of almost unlimited capacity. This makes it highly sought by mages and assassins. It can only capture white souls, but was once corrupted by mortals to trap black souls instead, becoming the Black Star. The Star is often used as a symbol of Azura.
An unknown agent of the Blades received the Star from the previous owner, a worshipper of Azura, in return for killing a healer in the Iliac Bay area who had insulted the Prince. Between 3E 411 and 3E 412, two friends named Charwich and Koniinge searched for the Star. It was discovered that a man named Hadwaf Neithwyr had summoned Azura in the town of Tel Aruhn in Morrowind and had accepted the Star. He then returned to High Rock, where he and his sister Peryra attempted to kill the lycanthropic caretaker of their family graveyard to power the Star. They failed, and the caretaker hid their remains in one of the crypts. Charwich found the Star, and tricked Koniinge into thinking he was dead by sending misleading letters. Charwich and his fiancée Lady Elysbetta Moorling ran away with the Star, using it to become wealthy and powerful. Eventually the Star vanished, and Koniinge caught up with both of them and killed them.
The Star was returned to the mortal realm when the Nerevarine did a service for Azura in 3E 427. In 3E 433 the star was again given as a reward to an adventurer who visited Azura’s shrine in the Jerall Mountains of Cyrodiil.
Sometime in the second century of the Fourth Era, one Malyn Varen, a teacher at the College of Winterhold, began to study it along with a few colleagues and students. Unknown to the others, Varen was dying and was trying to find a way to trap his own soul in the Star, becoming immortal. This research drove him insane, and he eventually succeeded in corrupting Azura’s artifact to accept black souls, renaming it as the Black Star.
Azura’s Star is a Grand Soul Gem that is capable of being re-used: it is not destroyed when used to create Enchanted items, instead it is simply emptied of all its Soul Energy. The Black Star is a corrupted incarnation of Azura’s Star that is capable of trapping Black Souls.