Posts
Standard Introduction
I have been
writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course
of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge. As I have done those a couple times before it
seemed remiss not to jump on this one.
If you want
here is a link to my 30-day
challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day
challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day
challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).
Day 4- Favorite Deity
Back in
June of 2010 and then again in May of 2011 I wrote about my favorite villain in
the DnD franchise up to that point. I
had been playing the game for 10 years at that point and was looking for
something to write. Here is a link to that 2011 edition of that blog entry, feel free to not follow it as I am now
going to do an upgraded version of that upgraded version.
“I am not,
nor have I been, a cultist of the god of secrets,” *wink*
“Did you
just wink?”
“No,” *wink*
“You did it
again.”
“I don’t
know what you are talking about,” *wink*
“Stop it.”
My Favorite Deity: Vecna Undead Lord of Secrets
If you are
reading this, it is likely you have some idea who Vecna is. The general public, not so much, and it is
unlikely that they ever will. Dungeons
and Dragons is not a topic that has adapted well to live action or animated
presentations of its material. For some
reason the concepts within Dungeons and Dragons only work well when not under
their official banner (e.g. "Lord of the Rings", "The 13th Warrior",
"Conan: The Barbarian", etc.), so a good chunk of that lore will perhaps
never see the glow of a TV screen. Which
is just the way Vecna likes it.
In ages
past a great and terrible user and creator of the darkest and most evil of all
magic ruled nearly the whole of the mortal world. Crushing nations under the heels of his vaste
armies. His only enemy it seemed was
time, he was mortal then and doomed to befall the natural course of life. He would eventually die.
He decided
that would be inconvenient. To combat
this eventuality Vecna encaged his soul into a magical container called the
Heart of Vecna, and in doing so he animated himself as living death, a Lich. Some claim that he is the originator of this
process and the first recorded Lich, his genius allowing him to concoct a
perfect means to transform and all subsequent iterations are poor imitations,
flawed and imperfect. Or maybe not?
However
when confronted with the limitless time and resources he had as the undying king
of the world he decided to set to work making himself even more powerful. He was not one to rest on past
accomplishments, so he sought out the only promotion available to him at that
point, Godhood.
Vecna
turned over the administration of his kingdom to his lieutenant, the Vampire
Lord Kas. So great was Vecna’s trust in
Kas that he gifted him a weapon. The
Sword of Kas was made to be the greatest and most powerful handheld weapon ever,
and possessed a piece of Vecna’s own mind.
Some say the piece was Vecna’s mad ambition, whispering to Kas, some say
it was his sense of decency (so he could finally be rid of it), maybe it was
Vecna’s own Thanatos (his death instinct, the aspect within us all that drives
us to dangerous and risky behavior), and others say it wasn’t meant to be any
of these things, that the intellect guiding the blade was a flaw, the first of
Vecna’s long existence.
Vecna went to
work becoming a God.
At the cusp
of Divinity, Kas, once the most trusted of Vecna’s whole world, betrayed the
Lich Lord and attempted to take his place in the position of Godhood. This is the source of the conflicting accounts
of the intellect in Kas’ blade was it imbued with all of Vecna's own personal
Thanatos, and it wanted to kill him? Was
the blade filled with Vecna’s ambition and it wanted to usurp him? Regardless of the motivation, Kas cut off
Vecna's hand and smote out one of his eyes, but failed to stop Lich's
ascension.
Kas was
either banished from reality entirely, transformed into an abstract concept (becoming
part of the collective Thanatos aspect of the living world), or Kas escaped to
rule over his own domain in the world of shadows. Whatever happened to Kas, Vecna became the
God of secrets and living death. Vecna's
hand and eye, touched by the power of divine accession became magical talismans
sought by those who would emulate the Dark Lord's success.
Vecna as Metaphor
Dungeons
and Dragons is a high fantasy setting more often than not, and Vecna represents
the penultimate villain in such a world.
He is the lingering past that has been deified by the ill deeds he committed
back before anyone living walked the Earth.
He is what most would prefer to be forgotten, a world ruled by darkness
and despair unending.
At the same
time he embodies exactly what adventurers in Dungeons and Dragons wish to delve
into. The secrets of the old world buried
in Dungeons, tombs, tomes, and relics.
Vecna is the creator of and holder of wonders and secrets that sit in
ruins and broken shells of a once great and now dead civilization.
Vecna’s
powers were misused but could have been an instrument of great justice and
prosperity. Vecna is a perfect metaphor
for the lingering threats of the fantasy kingdoms that are gone but are
paradoxically envied and pillaged while at the same time being feared and
frequently inhabited by dangerous monsters.
 |
| Boy, this card is sort of perfect right here. The Flavor text even has "Vec" written on it. |
Vecna Permutations and Alterations
The Lich
God is my favorite antagonist to envision in various permutations. Sometimes I make Kas his spurned best friend
who didn't want to betray the Lich King, he just didn't want to be left behind. Or even that Kas and Vecna were husbands and
that Kas was supposed to be the god of hunger and darkness but something went
wrong with the ritual (or Vecna betrayed him because of a disagreement over how
to raise their children). Sometimes I
have it that Vecna cut out his own hand and eye to fashion weapons from them
for his own use or the use of his followers.
A cute
permutation that had less to do with motivation was when I said that “Vecna”
was never his name. It was a word that
meant “secret” or “arcane” and that when “Vecna” became god of secrets he
magically redacted his real name from all of history. So every time you see the word “Vecna” it
would be the equivalent of reading an intelligence briefing in a spy movie and
seeing a blacked-out name with the word “CLASSIFIED” stamped on the page. I have even taken it a step further, that all
of the instances of the language his people spoke in life has been erased and
jumbled like Yahweh and the builders of the Tower of Babel. The original language “Vecnese” or “Arcana”
has been all but lost.
I have also
made Vecna an anti-hero, out to keep secrets from those who would use dark
knowledge improperly to destroy the world, as he regretfully nearly did (you
don’t see his kingdom around do you? Maybe
his being a god was accidental and killed so many that he became warped by the
experience). Maybe he fosters his dark
image to serve as part cautionary tale, part fear mongering propaganda campaign,
all to keep people from repeating his mistakes, or just to keep them from
challenging him for his dreary and lonely position as undying keeper of the
world's secrets.
Then there
is the best Vecna, the one who likes the multiple-choice origin story and inscrutable
motives. Easier to keep your true goals
in the shadows that way.
 |
| I didn't even mention two of his bigger parts in the Lore. Once, he tried to rewrite reality with him as the only God. He is also a noted editor and contributor to the Book of Vile Darkness. |
Coming Tomorrow
Tomorrow I
am going to talk about my favorite playable race.
______________________________
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