Really love the archetype of magical object that’s just a severed limb of something extremely ancient and powerful.

With so many Vecna body parts around is surprising that the Cult didn't try to gather them all and assemble them into a flesh golem, it could be an avatar for Vecna.

Vecna tries to become a god. Mortals: I'll take a souvenir

He made contract with others who were more powerful then him, and gathered enough power to destroy them. What a badass

What I like most about Vecna is that he's one of those badass wizard dudes that permeates D&D lore like Mordenkainen or Xanathar or what have you; He is very much like any sort of knowledge starved wizard who is willing to completely flaunt established rules that they dont agree with just because they can, or just to see what would happen. He feels human in his deeds and ambitions. Most wizards at some point in time have likely shared a thought or two. "Can I do this crazy magical feat?", "Could I outwit this being supposedly smarter than me?", "What's the answer to this cosmic enigma?" A wizard who has ever asked themselves these questions and then acted toward answering them is walking roads Vecna traveled. This can be especially eye opening (pun not intended) revelation when the party's resident wizard, who's insatiable curiosity and drive to improve themself as a mage is suddenly faced with how painfully similar they are to this dark wizard turned pseudo-god. Few wizards WANT to die. Through magic you can live a very long natural life, but its never really enough, is it? Some arcane secrets take decades to unveil and even if you get 200 years of life out of your magic imagine what discoveries you'll be missing out on when you're gone? This is especially true of human wizards who aren't as endowed with a naturally long lifespan like their elven or dwarvish peers. Vecna and his core motives are beyond relatable to any lover of magic and secret solver. He feels genuine, and that sort of thing is honestly rare to see in a fantasy villain. Like... Who can see Strahd's point of view? Who can be like "oh yeah, Orcus? His inexplicable evilness and drive to destroy is totally relatable"? They're these big, bad, evil dudes who do evil because they're evil and you don't want them doing the things they wanna do because even if you're also evil, they'll probably wanna kill you for the fun of it. Its hard to be immersed in that because the average player isn't playing a Demon God, or a super vampire and gets to expierence the things such a creature might want. We can play wizards though. We can find all the arcane secrets the cosmos forgot, we can expierence the power these things give us... Ultimately, Vecna feels like his infancy could be a Wizard you could have at your table or that you have played before. There's no greater villain than that.

The Phallus of Vecna gives a +4 bonus to intimidation checks...

You too, troll your players with the "head of Vecna"

The middle finger of Vecna gives the host the ability to vast booming voice, but only when the host is insulting another person. This voice is understood by all intelligent beings with in ear shot.

I remember hearing about a gag campaign (probably apocryphal, but funny nontheless) about a gag magic item called The Head of Vecna. It was the first trap for murder hobos and party killers I'd ever heard of. It was a mildly enchanted mummified head with semi-enchanted costume jewelry. The idea was that the party would murder each other to get ahold of this no doubt fabulous artifact, usable by having someone cut off your head and replace it with the head of Vecna. Edit: And that's what I sound like when I comment before watching the entire video.

One more fact left out about the hand and eye of Vecna is the magic items are based off the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn from Micheal Moorcock's Corum series. Much like how Blackrazor from the white plume mountain adventure is based off of Stormbringer in Moorcock's Elric series.

Vecna being trapped in Ravenloft while being a demigod says a lot about the ability of the Dark Powers

It's fascinating watching this after watching the first iteration of Critical Role and how much it featured Vecna. It really shows how a DM can use this information in a unique way and how little they need to tell/reveal to their players.

you know the head of veknar joke reminds me of the ancient Mayan and Incan myths of magicians that let themselves be killed for show or because they had jealous cousins that wouldn't leave them alone until they thought they were dead, anyways afterwards they bring themselves back to life and there audience or cousins realized what happened and wanted the experience such a thing for themselves, and thus asked to be killed.... The magicians did as requested, just choosing not to bring them back to life afterwards.

An Overgod wanting to speak with you must be a completely incomprehensible, yet impossible to misconstrue experience. I envision a few scenarios. 1. Reality falls away as if all of creation were theater setting and you are simply nowhere, yet in the presence of the Overgod. 2. One moment you are perceiving your surroundings and the next you can perceive nothing but the Overgod, regardless of language, sight, sound, distance or time which would be meaningless barriers to them. 3. The "conversation" is instant. No time passes between the moments the Overgod contacts you, regardless of how long the two of you "spoke." You understand everything that was said, as is the Overgod's will.

Vecna: “Oh, you don’t get it. I don’t want to rule. I don’t want to kill. I don’t exactly seek power or victory. All I want in this world is *research.”*

I love using Vecna, or at least aspects of him like the many relics of Vecna in some of my game. had one game that was basically a large game of fetch quests that lead back to a cult of Vecna that was wishing to obtain all of the many scattered body parts of Vecna. Though most would think the higher rank priests of Vecna were seeking the parts to use on themselves, but the group would find it was far worse as they uncover the cult had been also building a powerful steam-punk like flesh golem that they would install the various parts into. An that the cult were seeking to create a powerful avatar of Vecna with the literal body parts of Vecna as a base, since how better to create a vessel that could be filled with his power, but to use actual pieces of himself in it's creation.

I gave a Vecna thumps up for this review.

In one of the Living Greyhawk adventures, you meet a group of Kobolds praying to the bones of the World Serpent. You can chose to spend a Time unit and pray/meditate with them for a inherent/ permanent +1 buff to one of your stats it was a 1d6 roll for the buff. It also came with a DC 13 will save to keep from losing -1permanent to a stat as you fall under the sway of the world serpent and eventually came with a whole bunch more to the buffs/curses of the World serpent if you failed in following adventures in the story ark. The burial mound of the World serpent is visible on some of the maps of Oreth. It’s a Massive mountain range in the shape of a dragon.

By the power of Grayskull! Is that you Skeletor?^^

7:12 The final fight scene from Vox Machina's fight against Vecna in Critical Role. Nice.

I got a TPK by telling the party they had found "The Head of Vecna".

Player: "Arcana check?" DM: "You have the Head of Vecna. By replacing your own head with it, you gain perfect control of any undead within range, and can use their senses to perceive the area around them" Player: "Sweet! Let's do this" DM: 😈😄😂😂😂

Great video, AJ! I love Vecna. Baddies who wee pure liquid malevolence and drown puppies for giggles (looking at you, Orcus) are cool too, but I really enjoy a villain with coherent, perhaps even relatable motivations. The most deeply disturbing villains are the ones that you can identify with on some level.

A small part of me thought the whole video would be "shhh, its a secret"

A DM could tell the players "You have stumbled upon the ancient and wicked artifact - the Cock of Vecna!" See which one goes for it and cuts off his own, so as to replace it with the artifact. Then he discovers, too late, that it's just a mummified pepperoni....

the ancient brethren are above Ao. The Guide to Hell talks about how first were Ahriman, Jazirian (and a few others - which die vecna die, reveals is also Lady of Pain) forming out of the raw chaos of pure magic energy. the planes were forming at this time and then came all the gods...

Was just looking for vecna and found this complete video that just came out. Great job, thanks!!

I learned so much, watching this! Great video!

I can imagine someone with the middle finger of Vecna flipping someone the bird then pointing that finger at them and then shooting them in the eye with the nail

Havent played D&D in years but i love the stories about it, so much good lore

One of these important steps for immortality is the spell clone this means there could possibly be somewhere in the Multiverse a singular still living clone of Vec-na the living version of Vec-na anyways

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, love your vids my friend! Can’t wait to start my own campaign. Keep up the good work!!!

Your videos have seriously helped me get on my feet as a DM, thank you so much!

Interesting note about "Die Vecna, Die" - it's apparently the adventure where, at the very end after the characters defeat Vecna, the Lady of Pain uses her Ao-level powers to change reality so that the D&D multiverse starts operating under 3e rules.

Been waiting for this video good job man! 3 inspiration points for you

Do a video on Count Strahd please!

So this is an OLD, old video of yours but I want to submit my personal homebrew artifact. The Left Nut of Vecna. This artifact may be used to trade for any item that is for sale already (so no people or anything). You must only say, when entering or closing negotiations, the magic words. “Well, I’d give my left nut for that.”

“Ordinary Necromancy.” When you’re evil, but have fun with it. I imagine he writes it with the same cheerful language of a cookbook. “And now, just to spice things up, we’re going to add just a pinch of lizard tongue. It really livens up the zombies.”

I’m curious how much Vecna lore videos are about to get blown up by Stranger Things fans.

The perfect birthday gift, thanks AJ.

I am very new to DnD lore, thank you for making it engaging and enjoyable.

Love the vid! I love Vecna as a character.

first thing to see this morning is AJ video of Vecna, feels like my birthday :)

I came here because my dad told me a story of how a D&D group he was DM'ing managed to find the actual head of Vecna. Three characters died trying to use it.

The brain of Vecna should be pretty handy, then. An interesting campaign would be a battle against a Vecnite who has secured many of his parts...

Love so many of your videos and this in particular is one of my favorites.

Vecnate: make a Bard of Whispers with the Accolite background!

I remember when Vecna being just a Lich.

You make amazing videos sir. Keep up the awesome work.

I ran a campaign in the mid 80's with the eye of Vecna.

Thank you. I have always been fascinated by Vecna

What did the necromancer say to the Paladin that just decimated his undead army? Oh VEC NAH!

DnD 5e Steel Ball Run! This is awesome. Thanks for having an awesome channel AJ.

So the body parts give all of these wonderful magical bonuses, but I'm thinking about how Vecna has them all on his person. This is before his deity. How terrifying, but then I remembered how the D&D rules work, they probably don't stack. All those +1-3 bonuses against spells don't add up. Small blessings.

Hey look it’s Nagash: on a side note this is the most morbid scavenger hunt I’ve ever heard of

Yes, I’d be so so interested. Stuff like that is so helpful

Vecna,in our older campaign my friends top dog,Desolator utterly destroyed him....and the beauty of it was that he had no real desire to use the hand and eye afterwards,he considered them relativly weak from a players point of veiw! But then again he also slew Tiamat, and Lolth "twice"....the second time permanantly in the Abyss and Orcus as well,that was a very fast encounter and one of the best gaming sessions ive ever been involved with! Vecna over all was and is a great character though,thanks for the work you did on it AJ!

Vecna reminds me of a certain bumbling skeleton. Who wanted to get into a castle, named for a gray skull. So he could be a god. Hmmm.

It's been a good year for Vecna. First he cameos under his title of "The Whispered One" in "The Legend of Vox Machina" and then his name gets adopted for the main bad guy of "Stranger Things".

Playing through any of these scenarios sounds like it would be crazy fun

One would think that The Lady of Pain would have pretty strong feelings about Vecna entering her domain and would have promptly ended him in a hard glare.

dame this video is like 4y old already t.t i want more about Vecna... he is one of the "coolest" gods in dnd

one of my most favorite videos.

Thank you, I always wondered about Vecna.

I love this. Going to have to use this somewhere in my game

"Sir, that eye, and hand are university property, please do not wear them."

The taint of vecna allows the user to mount any steed once he or she sits on it and command it as his or her own. "Taint bad!"-asserak Hurts like heck for about 2 weeks after activating.

I kind of figured the conversation between him and the over God went down very similar to the episode of Southpark where Mickey Mouse beats the s*** out of the Jonas Brothers with him being the Jonas Brothers and the over God being Mickey Mouse

AJ, please lower the volume of your intro video. Your videos are great, good audio quality, great pictures, but that intro and outro are rough. Especially if you have headphones in. Thanks in advance man! Keep up the good work. Also, if anyone has the time to help a brotha out, I am looking at creating a homebrew. Mainly focused on river travel, ocean travel, port towns, things along that line. Probably even the underdark sea. I am thinking a Kraken makes a good keystone, campaign ending fight. However, I cant really come up with too many other "mini-bosses" for them to run into to build up levels. I know an aboleth fits great for second tier, and i can probably come up with pirates or something for first tier, but that third one is driving me nuts. Trying to figure out how it can all fit together.

It's funny that an anagram made for the perfect name for an evil wizard demi-God. It just sounds so evil.

Amazing video.

Suggestion: Revenants. I've been anticipating learning of how they're different from other undead.

Topic about Vecna? liked before listened to!

The most memorable moment I ever had with a Vecna cult was when the party's Barbarian, Wizard, and I (the Fighter), got trapped by a huge sect (about 50 members) when we were in Cormyr. They dragged us underground and wanted to sacrifice us in a ritual and use our bodies as puppets to capture Raedra Obarskyr so that they could turn her into their puppet as well. What they didn't count on was our party's Rogue and Bard. They had faked their own deaths (our characters thought they were 100% dead), infiltrated the cult, fucked up the ritual, sprung us, and collapsed the cave with gun powder they planted days before. Took the term "Hoodwinked" to another level 🤣👏

A mortal that duped Gods and became one himself. Very impressive and ambitious.

love seeing this after ST4

Will they ever use him again? Also did you make a bronze lich video? I would love to see that. I've watched this video a few times. Vecna is one of my favorites. I even bought one of your finest Vecna jackets!

This is super interesting rewatch after watching mr rhex's video on what they dont tell you about azmodeus.

I love how in the static shot is Vecna chilling.

Ty for all you do😀 wondering if you plan on doing one on bixby Mordenkainen aleminstar and volo type npc. Like the epic ones, I know you did wizards but I know you could teach me more. Ty again aj you do great work

Love the Vecna art! :)

Brings me back to when I first got the kids into DnD - makes me want to run that campaign again.

Wouldn't Vecna have a high priority of finding all his fragments and order his legions to search for them until they were all accounted for and then either reabsorb them all or have them destroyed?

Thank you for the info on Lesser liches. I can see a secretive merchant lord causing problems for future adventurers.

And that’s is why you follow instructions on the back of your medication

Is anyone going to mention that the Eye and Hand of Vecna sounds a lot like the Michael Moorcock stories of Corum?

Vecna... a footnote for decades for two mysterious artifacts nobody really wants to now, a greater AD&D god. What a journey.

Thank was great as alway

Waiting with baited breath for that Hellgate Keep vid!

Makes me wonder about his connection to the Vecna of Exandria. Perhaps he has seeded other worlds with echos of himself so that they might also gain godhood and become one with him, granting him multiple instances of the same divine power without having to take portfolios from other gods and entities

Great video, very informative, I now know who Vec na is. I remember as a teenager a group of gamers were going to run a game where Vec na returns to collect his missing parts.

Am I Evil? Yes I Is! Am I Evil? I Am Lich, Yes I Is!

Hey AJ, awesome video series you have. My son was wondering if you could make a sorcerer video. He is 9 and just recently started playing DnD and loves to watch your videos for info.

Having a Vecnate cult know a character's secret, or a quest giver's (mayor, minor noble, prelate, influential merchant, etc) secret, sounds like a great adventure hook!

Can you do videos on the lords of the nine, nice vid

Great video! (Still hoping for one about sarrukh :D)

The fact they sent him Ravenloft actually made me chuckle. " you like being a spooky butthole be one in spooky butthole land". Also there are multiple multiverses ? that hurts my head.

huh, THAT was quick. I just answered the poll earlier this day :O

Trying to make an "elder lich brain of Vecna" for a 3.5 campaign new to being a DM any tips? trying to take the idea of the mind-flyers as well as a mind-flyer lich and the cult of Vecna and create a meeting of minds ( no pun intended ) .

There is one body part of Vecna conspicuously absent…