Who Is Vecna? | Dungeons & Dragons

this is a very good opportunity to talk about one of the most famous liches in dnd we have vecna appearing in stranger things vecna has been a legend d for a very long time and today we're talking about the d d fekna tell me about the origin story for vechna vechna's been around forever um vechna showed up in the earliest books of d and d he started off really as just a pair of magic items let's put it that way uh there were in i believe eldritch wizardry um back in the 70s a pair of magic items called the eye and the hand of vecna this these are the sole living remains of a very powerful long dead lich it's hard to destroy a lich as it turns out and this particular lich uh basically left behind two powerful body parts that became uh two of the most famous artifacts in the d d game there are two the eye and the hand are separate items but they become more powerful if you have both of them and in order to use them you have to basically carve out your own eye and replace it with the ayavecno or chop off your own hand and replace it with vechna's hand and for those who are real lore nerds it was the left eye and the left hand you gotta be committed yes yes it is a commitment to sort of bond with these magic items if you want to channel some of vecna's great power vecna is a figure of great mystery in d d and has long been he has many different names goes by many different guises he's the dying king he's the undying king he's the you know he's the whispered one all of these different colorful names used to describe him um and he has evolved over the years from being an obscure entity of legend to an actual lich or demi lich uh he got elevated at one point to a demigod status officially in d d over the course of a series of adventures any like specific lore bits or has always been like really obscure when it comes to effect now like very kind of open vector like we don't do we know where becnus from do we know yeah i mean vechna originated as an entity on greyhawk the or rather orief or the world of greyhawk he he sort of started out there but then went cosmic uh like i said he's sort of been shunted to various planes at one point he was the dark lord of a ravenloft domain until that ceased to exist but we don't know much about vecna's sort of day-to-day life because it's so shrouded in mystery in the as an entity he's so profoundly evil that you just don't want to look under that rock because you won't like what you find that said there is some lore ty de vecna that has survived through multiple editions one of the best pieces of that is his lieutenant who um they had a falling out and it led this lieutenant named cass was actually responsible for mutilating vecna to the extent that he lost a hand and an eye that conflict consumed cos as well and all he left behind was a badass sword and so that that conflict of vechna versus kos is sort of etched in the minds of many old school d d players is kind of one of the earliest codified personal vendetta conflicts in the game's history and that's a magical item as well yes the sword of coss is a magic item which along with the eye and hand of vechna are they they all appear in the dungeon masters guide and that sort very much wants to hunt down hunt down vector yeah it's it's not a nice sword like everything surrounding vechna it's probably best left alone but it's an irresistible lure for many adventurers there's been a redesign of vecna and they've made it i mean if you can make a lich even more intimidating but weirdly utilitarian because vecna created the book of vile darkness and that now fits underneath becno's rib cage and just sits in there what is the book of vile darkness this has been around in the indian lore for some time but like you have lots of lists in fifth edition for what the book of wild darkness does but also like the worst of the worst secrets are in this correct yeah uh the book of vile darkness in dnd is the book of ultimate evil basically it is the worst of all possible books um and uh it has been around as long almost as long or as long as the hand and eye of ekna and the sword of coss it's also in the dungeon masters guide it is a bad book full of bad secrets now it was actually made manifest in third edition when we released a product called the book of vile darkness by monty cook where we just basically put a bunch of evil stuff you could basically jump in the pool of badness and flail around in there and uh enjoy it for a short time before you you know self-destructed your character and lichtstein is a real shady kind of thing right like to become a lich like vechna you have to do some bad yeah and the secret to lichten is uh closely guarded um wekna may have been the first to to uh to actually transform successfully into a lich folks like orcas guard that secret um and don't give it to mortals willy-nilly so you kind of have to earn it and the way a lot of wizards earn the knowledge or discover the knowledge to becoming a lich requires them to do bad things to find that knowledge often terrible terrible terrible things uh and the whole goal of becoming a lich of course is to avoid death to exist forever in a kind of an indestructible or nearly indestructible state and that's where the phylactery comes in the concept of the you know when you destroy the lich its essence gets transferred to a receptacle until such time as the lich can reform and the only way you can guarantee its destruction is to destroy that receptacle he'd have such a receptacle but who knows where in the cosmos it is it is almost surely not under his mattress what how do you recommend like running vector playing as vector because like because so many people have taken their their turn um you know matt mercer has run vechna like yeah very successfully i think i think uh there's a good good example or model to follow where vecna starts off as just you know not even announced by name his presence is just sort of felt there are villains in the story who have some sort of connection to this mysterious entity the whispered one and they're gaining secrets and power from it but what is it we don't know you might see uh descriptions in a book that allude to this ancient entity of secrets who discovered a whole bunch of evil lore and is basically sitting on it and feeding it out to people but to what end and you just sort of peel back the onion the vacuna onion and conquering cults and foes who are sort of tied to this entity and only then do you sort of provoke vecna's interest and he may glare down at you uh and meddle in your affairs more directly culminating in maybe some monumental event because one thing that vecna has always strove for is godhood it is sort of the narcissist's dream right and uh vecna has chased it throughout adventures that we have published featuring him and so even he has not achieved everything yet in some versions of this story and i think that's another way you can do is you're basically trying to stop this powerful evil from ascension to some higher uh more damaging you know form um another way to go is to just uh the way of fourth edition uh where he's part of a pantheon of gods albeit a secretive and evil one and you can have temples where which are like libraries that hide away um you know bits of vecna's lore and you're not fighting the god directly but you're basically dealing with all of its minions if you liked this interview and you'd like to see more go ahead and like the video subscribe to the channel and hit that little bell symbol so you're notified anytime a video like this comes out thank you so much for watching

Channel: Dungeons & Dragons

Views: 404,975

Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, gaming, roleplaying game, ttrpg, forgotten realms, eberron, Wizards of the Coast, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, tabletop, RPG, Todd Kenreck, dnd, Wildemount, Critical Role, Vecna

Id: MDvYCDmAIUw

Length: 8min 57sec (537 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Skiblack]

this might just be to tie in with the new season of stranger things

[u/RoboDonaldUpgrade]

Maybe the summer adventure is Vecna themed? We've seen this redesign in a Vecna Funko, now it looks like there's a highly detailed Vecna statue and a lot of the art shown in this video seems like art for a future book.

[u/Blades_Akimbo]

I disagree with everyone doubting this is leading up to content. If you follow the official D&D YouTube. They do this all the time. They did interviews with Matt Mercer before Call of the Netherdeep. They’re still doing interviews on Journey into the Radiant Citadel. Their next release. So the proof is in the pudding, they didn’t redesign one of D&Ds biggest villains and license merchandise of it just because of some Netflix show.

[u/belikehan]

I saw a post somewhere theorising the D&D movie will be a quest for the Hand of Veca or something along those lines.

Maybe he is the BBEG in the film, or films, and they are slowly seeding out info about him - I’m sure this will lead into a tie in with an adventure book down along the road somewhere.

[u/funktasticdog]

They fully redesigned Vecna. At the very least they were at one point considering putting him into an adventure. You don't produce this much art on a whim.

[u/[deleted]]

This isn't a leak, and it isn't information nor a preview about an upcoming D&D product

This sub used to be great and about actual genuine leaks or scraped information. Now it seems to be a dumping ground for anything WotC releases on the internet

[u/YellowMatteCustard]

I've noticed in a lot of these Vecna videos that they show real brief snapshots of what looks like a pdf version of the Vecna Dossier, even though it only exists in the form of a webpage and a monster entry

Was a pdf copy, like the Spelljammer compendium, planned at one point? Or is there going to be a print version at some point in the future?