Vecna
On countless worlds, his name evokes tales of terror and cruelty. Vecna the Undying King. Vecna the Whispered One. Vecna the Lord of the Rotted Tower. Over more than a hundred thousand years, incandescent hatred carried him from the humblest of origins to a conqueror’s throne, then to the realms that lie beyond life and death, and finally to godhood. Many have suffered his terrible wrath, but few can recount how a lowly scribe left an aeon-deep scar on the multiverse before ascending beyond the material altogether. Only a few fragments of Vecna’s story have ever been unearthed.
It is said that Vecna was born into a lowly caste on the world of Oerth, son of a hedge witch and a father he never knew. An order of wizards exiled Vecna’s mother into the wastes for practicing the forbidden art of necromancy. The order bound her orphaned son into servitude and employed him as first a bootblack, then a scribe. Vecna spent the better part of his childhood secretly educating himself in his masters’ arts, stealing into their library of magical treatises each night after midnight. It was during these intense study sessions that he first heard a soothing voice in his head, a whisper from another world that promised him revenge if he would only yield to the hatred that was festering in his heart. Once Vecna learned all he could from his masters and their books, he massacred them. On that very night, the voice urged him to record his every foul thought and dream, and he started to pen his Book of Vile Darkness.
According to legend, Vecna went on to forge a kingdom in the world of Greyhawk. He ruled for several centuries from an obsidian tower that rose from the bottom of the black waters of the Nyr Dyv to stretch far above its surface. During this era, at the urging of the voice, Vecna conquered vast realms and swept great cities beneath earth and rock. Generations later, when his physical form finally started to succumb to the ravages of time, Vecna’s festering hatred would not permit him to perish. He called upon the forbidden arts of necromancy to transform himself into a lich, a frightful being beyond the reach of death.
At some point, Vecna grew bored with his kingdom on Oerth and started visiting his evil on other worlds, still driven by the mysterious voice and his unquenchable hatred for all things true and pure. For a time, he is said to have inhabited a palace known as the Citadel of Cavitius, located in a vast field of ash somewhere near the border between the Planes of Earth and Fire.
It is said that Vecna was born into a lowly caste on the world of Oerth, son of a hedge witch and a father he never knew. An order of wizards exiled Vecna’s mother into the wastes for practicing the forbidden art of necromancy. The order bound her orphaned son into servitude and employed him as first a bootblack, then a scribe. Vecna spent the better part of his childhood secretly educating himself in his masters’ arts, stealing into their library of magical treatises each night after midnight. It was during these intense study sessions that he first heard a soothing voice in his head, a whisper from another world that promised him revenge if he would only yield to the hatred that was festering in his heart. Once Vecna learned all he could from his masters and their books, he massacred them. On that very night, the voice urged him to record his every foul thought and dream, and he started to pen his Book of Vile Darkness.
According to legend, Vecna went on to forge a kingdom in the world of Greyhawk. He ruled for several centuries from an obsidian tower that rose from the bottom of the black waters of the Nyr Dyv to stretch far above its surface. During this era, at the urging of the voice, Vecna conquered vast realms and swept great cities beneath earth and rock. Generations later, when his physical form finally started to succumb to the ravages of time, Vecna’s festering hatred would not permit him to perish. He called upon the forbidden arts of necromancy to transform himself into a lich, a frightful being beyond the reach of death.
At some point, Vecna grew bored with his kingdom on Oerth and started visiting his evil on other worlds, still driven by the mysterious voice and his unquenchable hatred for all things true and pure. For a time, he is said to have inhabited a palace known as the Citadel of Cavitius, located in a vast field of ash somewhere near the border between the Planes of Earth and Fire.
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