As Anticipated, Vecna Is Here And I’m Not Disappointed

Welcome to the table,

It was on page 43 of a ratty zine-like book with a woman draped over an altar in a state of dress my conservative parents would have sent me away to camp for looking at. One of the most intriguing magical items for pen and paper roleplaying games that I had ever seen.

Beneath the big bolt text that read The Hand Of Vecna, a landscape of possibilities began to unfold that my young teenage mind had never considered. The passage read…

“The Hand of Vecna appears to be a dried, shriveled and blackened hand, such as could have been caused by having been burned. The hand (and it is also rumored in dark passageways, an eye) is the sole remains of an ancient lich who was so powerful that he was able to imbue his hand with wondrous/horrible powers and to enable it to survive even after his long-undead body had ceased to exist. If the hand is pressed against the stump of an arm, the “wearer” is able to use its various powers, although he must determine them by trial and error. The hand causes the user to become totally evil, but even a “detect evil” spell will not reveal this. Once the hand is pressed to the stump of an arm. it affixes itself to the arm, and can only be removed under certain conditions.”

As a kid with legs that did not function, the thought of being able to remove them and place magical lich legs on my own body consumed me. I fully understood the lines between reality and fantasy. Much like my disillusion with tent preachers laying their hands on me to somehow fix a degenerative neurological condition, I knew this was not something that could happen within the bounds of our reality.

However, as a kid with a big imagination and a love for swords, sorcery, and dungeons full of dragons, this narrative thread of an undead lich whose body parts could somehow replace missing body parts became a core piece of the fantasy landscape for me to this day.

The lore of Vecna also consumed my friends. Most notably, when I was first starting on my journey in the TTRPG space and trying to find my voice. I remember sitting behind a makeshift storyteller screen at the lunch table in middle school while two of my friends got into a heated debate over which of their characters was going to be able to graft this hand onto their body.

Both of their characters chopped off their hands in preparation for the ritual of binding only to discover that while they were bickering, a Brown Jenkin-like rat creature had snuck in and swiped the hand, running off with it. They were both really upset with me. I was happy I had not brought up Vecna’s eye, because who knows what kind of nonsense that would have resulted in.

Between an old copy of Vecna Lives! and the lore shared by the “elder nerds” who protected me and taught me their ways in the backroom of the comic shop I rolled dice in, we learned about the cult of Vecna and swapped stories with other players and storytellers about the various ways they had clashed with the Lord of the Rotting Tower.

In 2022 I wrote about how Vecna got a glow-up, and that something was seemingly coming, because he went from looking like a grumpy skeleton with ratty clothing to some kind of handsome undead man with glided adornments, and the book of vile darkness tucked under his ribs. Even in his FUNKO Pop! form, he looks adorable sitting atop my 3rd edition Deities & Demigods book, a heck of an upgrade from his appearance on the cover of Die Vecna Die.

I speculated something was coming. Between his mention in Netflix’s Stranger Things and the fine folks over at Wizards of the Coast putting a ton of work into upgrading Vecna’s appearance. Some solid foundational work over the last six months or so suggested Vecna Eve of Ruin was coming.

I’ve honestly been worried. It’s a hard thing being so well-versed in the landscape and lore of a thing and having knowledge that something big is coming. That thing may or may not live up to the hype you have built in your mind.

My pals over at WizKids have been showcasing a bunch of amazing minis for their Icons of the Realm line. Each time they update me, I find out about ghostly red dragons, spider dragons, and of course Vecna himself, now with a wild new crown and even more developed armor.

So much has been built up over the last few years about whatever was coming. When I arrived home to find a box from Wizards of the Coast on my porch, I knew what was inside. As I set it on my lap and rolled into the door, the anticipation in the air was tangible. I think my hands shook a little bit as I opened the box and unwrapped them.

Sitting in my office I took a deep breath, looked back on a lifetime of thinking about this absolute icon of a villain, and smiled. I took a deep breath and opened the book.

This book is fantastic. If you are a fan of Dungeons & Dragons lore and some of the biggest key NPCs and Icons from the history of the hobby, this book is going to make you really happy. If you love a really fun high-level adventure constructed in a way that does not feel like an old-school meat grinder mega dungeon, this book is going to make you really happy. If you’re looking for a tale that feels like it was built to serve old players and new alike with  tons of opportunity for big RP moments, fun fights, iconic item discoveries, and a really balanced combat flow… this book is going to make you really happy.

Even if you don’t play D&D currently, and are just a fan of the lore and narrative threads in the world, this is going to be a great read for you. There is so much going on and none of it ever feels boring.

Now, this book is out officially on May 21, 2024, and if you pre-ordered you can start to get early access to things on May 7th, 2024. I can promise you a full review is coming once this drops to the public. I don’t want to be accidentally responsible for spoilers to a book that made me so happy, page turn after page turn.

<Spoilers: Kinda>

From this point forward there are not exactly spoilers, but there are thoughts based on other articles I have written and public knowledge, to give you a taste of what is coming. 

I have kept really quiet about the internal content of this book to everyone, even the players at my weekly D&D table and I tell those people everything. But I’m going to tell something that is, sort of, public knowledge right now that I addressed in other articles.

When WizKids dropped the image of Miska the Wolf-Spider I spent the better part of three hours in a group chat explaining why I was so excited about this reveal and how important the Rod of Seven parts is to the landscape of D&D. I don’t know if there has been anything in pop culture that has made me as giddy as explaining what I thought the importance of Miska the Wolf-Spider was. I, the guy who has not theory-crafted in ages, was giddy over the prospect of what was coming. I can say with zero hyperbole, that I was not disappointed in the slightest about the way this was covered in the book.

I am so stoked that WotC came back to Miska the Wolf-Spider the way they did, and the ramifications of what this may mean for future content in whatever brilliant machinations D&D has planned.

Until next time, I hope those of you who still love the hobby and the lore grab a copy and join me at the table. I hope this makes you smile as much as it makes me smile. I can’t wait to run this for my players and I honestly hope that those of you who have been waiting to see what comes next are just as stoked as I was to read this offering. It feels like another solid chapter in a lore that I have been following, and in a small way been a part of, my entire life.