WotC Vecna Eve of Ruin: Everything You Need To Know

WotC has posted a 19-minute video telling you 'everything you need to know' about Vecna: Eve Of Ruin.

• Starts at 10th level, goes to 20th.
• Classic villains and setting, famous characters, D&D's legacy.
• Vecna wants to become the supreme being of the multiverse.
• Vecna is a god of secrets and secrets and the power of secrets are a theme throughout the book.
• A mechanical subsystem for using the power of secrets during combat.
• Going back to Ravenloft, the Nine Hells, places where 5th Edition has been in the last 10 years.
• It would be a fun 'meta experience' for players to visit locations they remember lore about.
• Finding pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, pieces throughout the multiverse.
• Each piece in one of seven distinct planes or settings.
• Allustriel Silverhand has noticed something is wrong, puts call out to Tasha and Mordenkainen, who come to her sanctum in Sigil.
• The (10th level) PCs are fated to confront Vecna.
• Lord Soth and Strahd show up. Tiamat is mentioned but doesn't appear 'on screen'.
• Twists, turns, spoilers.
• It's a 'love letter to D&D'.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Time is so irrelevant in Curse of Strahd that Chris Perkins decided to give us a specific calendar date for the adventure despite it contradicting everything written before about that adventure, stuffing up several characters' personal timelines yet being utterly pointless in the context of the adventure.

You could just ignore it. As you say it has no impact on anything else.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

He was already 88 in the last published 3.X adventure but looked a lot younger.

5E has really screwed with the timeline's of everything non-FR, though, so it's impossible to gage if the 5E Mordenkainen is younger or older than the one in 3.X. Mordenkainen appears in CoS, which is explictly set in the same period as 2E's black box (ie, 100+ years prior to current 5E FR). But the novel Death Masks, which is set in 4E/5E Forgotten Realms explictly mentions Mordenkainen being there post CoS.

Safe to say, WotC just doesn't care about any of this working in a coherent sense which is a big change from how these settings functioned in 2E and 3E. (You actually could make a giant coherent multiverse timeline back then). Settings got advanced (FR), frozen (Eberron), wound back (Dragonlance, 4E Dark Sun) or completely destroyed (Ravenloft)/abandoned (5E Dark Sun).

Mordenkainen spends a lot of time on the Astral Plane.

Nothing can age on the Astral Plane. This is also why the Githyanki have their crèches on the Prime Material Plane.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I wonder what these beasts are? Those ones in the bottom right look like barlguras to me, but the big ones, I have no idea!
View attachment 348980

The one of the left is probably a Goristro.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not sure it empowers GMs, it's just another metaplot. But the way it's worded - "Rumors spread" and "stories circulated" - certainly lets GMs take it or leave it.

Is it confirmed Vecna did it? Or do we have to wait and see? (Maybe the end of the Sundering did it?)

The Spell Weavets have gone in and out if existing from Edition to Edition, and the set-up for this campaign is that Vecna defeated them in a time war: that suggests all Edition inconsistencies can be explained with "A wizard did it"

 

[TravDoc42]

The one of the left is probably a Goristro.

Good point! Thank you!

 

[UVAtom]

What is that city sitting on top of the lava?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

You could just ignore it. As you say it has no impact on anything else.

Yes, so one wonders why it was put in at all.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Mordenkainen spends a lot of time on the Astral Plane.

Nothing can age on the Astral Plane. This is also why the Githyanki have their crèches on the Prime Material Plane.

For most of published history Mordenkainen really didn't concern himself with much beyond Oerth. It wasn't until 5E and the era of random name-drops did he suddenly become all concerned about things like the Blood War etc.

 

[Xethreau]

Nit sure why theybwould start doing thst now, with an Adventure that goes to 20. Milestone Leveling is how they write books.

That's pretty telling.

 

[vecna00]

Yeah, and probably the fact the character was marketable was also a factor? I mean, it can be both.

Maybe, maybe not, it could have been incidental or a part of long-term planning by the creatives.

Just seems like a weird thing to latch onto and focus on. "I don't like this, so it must be a marketing decision."