D&D General An Iconic D&D Villain Features In Stranger Things’ New Seasom

Following on from Season 1's Demogorgon, the producers of Stranger Things have confirmed in an IGN interview that the villain in the upcoming 4th season of the show is named after the iconic D&D archlich Vecna!

Perhaps the juiciest part of this very juicy trailer was not one, but two shots of our new big bad, who, as the brothers revealed, is named Vecna. One comes in at the very beginning, with a shot of him opening his eyes as his creepy voiceover reads, “your suffering is almost at an end,” which Matt calls “our Hellraiser line.” Ever since Season 2, the Duffers say, they wanted to do a character that was similar to the horror figures that terrified them growing up, from Freddie Kruger to Pinhead to Pennywise.

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[LuisCarlos17f]

If Vecna is literally a deity, could he kick-ass Skeletor?

* I wonder about a Stranger-Things spin-off where the children are playing Dragonlance. And the enemies would be the "evil elemental eye".

* Before Vecna in Super Smash Bros Ultimate we should see a D&D mash-up version of Nintendo multiverse, I guess starting with Link&Zelda(Hyrule). Why not a licenced Hero-Quest pack based in Huryle franchise? And he could appear in Fortnite creating a lot of troubles, or at least an "incarnation", something like a "remote-controlled" nerferd clone.

* In my game Vecna is Aoskar the gods of portals who tried to "conquer" Sigil and theorically destroyed by the Lady of the Pain. Technically the god of the secrets was the responsable of the "reboot" of D&D multiverse when this changed from 2nd to 3rd.

 

[Bacon Bits]

We've seen the villain in the new trailer. So, this thread is about as spoilery as the trailer. We now know that at some point, the kids decide to call the villain "Vecna" . . . but this tells us nothing about the villain other than it is evil and scary. Just like the "demogorgon" was nothing like D&D's Demogorgon, and the "mind flayer" was nothing like D&D's mind flayer.

I didn't watch the trailer! I still haven't! All the ad images I've seen are just of a zombie guy!

Then I come to EN World and the title of the front page post is "Vecna is the S4 ST villain."

I would not have even entered the thread if not for the spoiler. I have not even read darjr's article! I just skimmed the posts expecting to find someone else with a similar complaint, and posted when I did not find it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, I'd say that the main monster of Season 3 was certainly D&D-inspired. It was never called a "Gibbering Mouther," but it was one for all intents and purposes.

Both of the creatures below are red-colored many mouthed and limbed monsters created by the bodies of dead people being absorbed into an ooze-like entity. They had quite a few notable differences, but the inspiration there is pretty obvious.
View attachment 155218
View attachment 155217

Both are basically shoggoths though.

 

[Morrus]

No worries. I've never gotten far into it because because I'm rewatching it with a friend I only see on weekends. It's been like a year and we're almost to where I was when we restarted!

This is just not the place I expected to see Stranger Things spoilers.

It’s not really a spoiler. These aren’t actually D&D monsters. It’s just a random nickname the kids give the bad guys because they’re D&D fans. The monster in the first one wasn’t really Demogorgon either.

So don’t worry. Vecna isn’t actually in Stranger Things. If anything that’s the exact opposite of a spoiler!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The monster has never been the main focus bad guy in the series so far. It has been a side effect of what ever the bad guys were up to.

 

[dave2008]

I understand they aren't literally those things. Yes I have seen every season. I just don't have as positive a reaction to Vecna being the basis for things as I do to the Demogorgon or a Mindflayer. Just my opinion. It just feels too specific. Like I said, it is more like bringing in something like Soth, or if you prefer Takhisis. Vecna is a very branded character in the setting. It just feels different than the prior season concepts. Hopefully they pull it off.

Ok, I don't see it, but I'm not going to tell you what bothers you!

 

[Jer]

Wikipedia tells me that they formed in 1998, meaning they had plenty of time to think of a different name.

I thought maybe they named their company after the lich lord (which seems odd for a healthcare company but there's a surveillance company out there named "Palantir" - IT people are weird). But wikipedia tells me that vecna is a variant of the Czech word vecny which means "eternal" (apologies to Czech speakers for the lack of diacritics on those words). Which is a weird coincidence since Vecna was supposedly named as an anagram for Vance after Jack Vance.

 

[doctorhook]

I thought maybe they named their company after the lich lord (which seems odd for a healthcare company but there's a surveillance company out there named "Palantir" - IT people are weird). But wikipedia tells me that vecna is a variant of the Czech word vecny which means "eternal" (apologies to Czech speakers for the lack of diacritics on those words). Which is a weird coincidence since Vecna was supposedly named as an anagram for Vance after Jack Vance.

I saw that bit too. But the company is American, and the 1990s are probably one of the low points in D&D’s popularity. My suspicion is these guys knew exactly who Vecna is, assumed he would be an obscure figure, and chose the name anyway. I have no proof of this though, it’s just a hunch.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

It is curious because in the begining of the 90's D&D arrived to Spain, but in the middle of the decade White Wolf with World of Darkness became its worst rival in popularity. Internet was a double edged sword, because it help to promote the brand, but also the pirated download was bad for the sales.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Now I want to come up with a futuristic D&D setting where all the technology works through some hybrid of magic and undead. Stuff like that Alexa in your house actually has a spirit tied to it.

In the real world, I worked for a while at Vecna Technologies, and had several meetings with the CEO...

...which means I may be the only one here to survive an encounter with the head of Vecna.

One thing I'm wondering about the monster codenamed Vecna is whether that might be Dr. Brenner, transformed and reanimated by the Upside Down.