Vecna Looks to Remake the Universe in New Dungeons & Dragons Adventure

Vecna, the god-lich with origins that dates back to the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons, seeks to remake the D&D multiverse in his image in a new adventure. Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast released a new trailer for Vecna: Eve of Ruin, a brand new campaign-length adventure set to release next month. As previously revealed, the adventure is a Level 10-20 campaign that sends players across the D&D multiverse in an attempt to thwart Vecna’s latest scheme. A celebration of the game’s 50th anniversary, Vecna: Eve of Ruin not only involves the classic god-lich, but also several other classic D&D villains, planes, and a classic D&D artifact – the Rod of Seven Parts. “This is a book that really encompasses like a lot of love notes to a lot of D&D’s history, but it’s accessible if maybe you saw Vecna for the first time on your favorite TV show,” said D&D graphic designer Trystan Falcone during a recent press conference about the adventure.  

D&D senior designer Amanda Hamon explained that Vecna has been using secrets themselves to power a ritual to remake the universe. “He’s been instructing all of his cults, which are located on various planes of existence through all the various campaign settings,” Hamon said. “They’re very ubiquitous and secretive as he’s the god of secrets, so this is not something the authorities are aware of in any way. So he’s instructing them to specifically extract important and powerful secrets from kidnapped nobles and he’s created a link between himself and his cults and he’s funneling this energy directly to Vecna to channel this Ritual of Remaking.” 

The player characters become involved as they are “metaphysically” tied to Vecna by interrupting one of these secret-extracting rituals. As a result, they actually absorb a bit of Vecna’s power and are able to harness the “power of secrets” in a good way against the lich. In fact, one part of the adventure involves the players getting various NPCs to trust them and voluntarily tell them secrets that can in turn be used to give them some kind of mechanical benefit over the course of the adventure. The players will need to collect all the secrets they can get, as Vecna is presented as a CR 26 monster in the adventure book.

Because the adventure will feature so many characters from throughout D&D’s history (Tasha, Laeral Silverhand, and Strahd are all confirmed to make appearances), Vecna: Eve of Ruin will also include a 12-page Character Dossier with brief histories and statblocks of important D&D characters. “Even though this adventure deals with characters that go all the way back to the beginning of D&D’s history, we don’t expect people to know all this information,” Hamon said. “We don’t expect you to read Wikipedia pages before you pick up this book. Everything you need to know about these characters are already in this book and it gave us an excuse to create really, really beautiful art for these iconic characters.” 

Although several classic D&D villains appear in the adventure, not all of them are necessarily aligning with Vecna and his plans. Strahd, for instance, makes an appearance after discovering that high level adventurers have ventured into Ravenloft seeking a piece of the Rod of Seven Parts. “Strahd doesn’t care much about [The Rod of Seven Parts] but he’s an opportunist,” explained Hamon. Another classic D&D villain that appears is Acererak, or at least a facsimile of him that appears as a false lich (a new to D&D creature) in Greyhawk. 

While Vecna: Eve of Ruin deals with a lich trying to remake the universe in his image, the adventure isn’t a traditional horror adventure. “There are things about it that are horrific,” said Hamon. “Certainly the overarching threats, but it’s more of a high-stakes time ticking adventure. It’s got a lot of drama…it’s a potentially multiverse-ending storyline.” 

Vecna: Eve of Ruin will be released on May 21st, although players can potentially access the book as early as May 7th through D&D Beyond or Early Access.