Café de Nuit

Vecna, once a prisoner of the Demiplane of Dread, managed to get out. We are talking about an evil deity with a nuclear arsenal of secrets, here. Is it so unlikely that he would want to get back at the Dark Powers somehow for his time in the slammer?
And if so, how do you think he would go about it? What twisted strategies are being played out in the shadows?

Vecna got the secret knowledge of how to escape from the Serpent, so if Vecna received knowledge of how to get revenge against the Dark Powers, it probably came from the Serpent as well.

I thought killing 2e and ushering 3e was enough payback against the Dark Powers :p

The Lesser Evil wrote:Vecna got the secret knowledge of how to escape from the Serpent, so if Vecna received knowledge of how to get revenge against the Dark Powers, it probably came from the Serpent as well.

For those of us who've never played Die, Vecna! Die!, what is the Serpent?

As far as I understand it, 'the Serpent' is the whole of magic. Whether it is alive or not (or something other) is up to individual interpretation. It could be an overdeity who Vecna communes with, or Vecna has an insight into the Art that others lack.
The Serpent is also mentioned in Eldritch might 2 and the Epic level handbook.

I would say the serpent is an overdeity who is doing most of the work. I can't see a mere demigod escaping otherwise. Look at what the Dark Powers can do. They can rewrite the laws of magic, create whole new creatures living and undead, give new powers to such creatures that already exist, control space, control time, are aware of everything happening anywhere in the mists etc. We are talking greater gods at least IMO.

Unless big V had an epiphany about a loophole even the DP couldn't cover in time.

Rock wrote:Unless big V had an epiphany about a loophole even the DP couldn't cover in time.

In which case I can't see him trying to get revenge. The last thing he wants to get stuck in RL again. That is the big reason I think he didn't. It is far too risky.

In my campaign I had Isolde say straight out that Vecna was allowed to escape because it was fate and that he couldn't have escaped otherwise. I did that to point out to the PCs even Vecna is nothing compared to the DPs.

Truth be told, in my campaigns Vecna was never there...

The implication I got as that The Serpent was actually Asmodeus, the entity imprisoned at the very bottom of either the Abyss or Baator.

Rock wrote:Vecna, once a prisoner of the Demiplane of Dread, managed to get out. We are talking about an evil deity with a nuclear arsenal of secrets, here. Is it so unlikely that he would want to get back at the Dark Powers somehow for his time in the slammer?
And if so, how do you think he would go about it? What twisted strategies are being played out in the shadows?

In my cosmology, Vecna didn't actually escape. After getting beat down in Sigil, the backlash just throws him back into Cavetius because the cruelest fate possible for a DL is to escape...and then have to come back. And in that case, Vecna DEFINITELY wants revenge/to actually escape.

Considering in this version, the Serpent is an aspect of Tharizdun (as are the DPs, since Ravenloft is actually his prison), then it likely continues to whisper things to Vecna in the hopes of finding another means to escape/destroy Ravenloft. I suspect he'd turn away from Oerth as a means to do so after that last attempt (not nearly so much of use on Oerth if Iuz wasn't enough extra power to successfully escape). Quite possibly he'd begin looking into the Ethereal plane for answers...trying to find a way to cheat the rules of the Ethereal and its relation to the Mists in order to escape like it was a normal demiplane. That or other powerful artifacts. Codex of the Planes sounds promising, maybe? The trick would be getting someone to find one and bring it to him so he could try it.

Tharizdun is one of those really creepy elements of D&D that I could never enjoy.

It reminds me of a fun little note I read about the Yuggoloths; that they're supremely confident that at any time of their choosing, they could end the Blood War and unite the three types of fiends in a march on the Upper Planes, destroy them and then turn on the Prime Material.
That's right, the only reason there isn't a dark host marching on the Upper Planes is because the Yuggoloths are still having too much fun playing mercenaries. If they ever decide they're bored and get serious ... Boom.

Tharizdun reminds me of the comics' interpretation of Unicron, too. Not just a single planet-sized machine eating worlds, but a greater deity of chaos and destruction, devouring reality in multiple dimensions simultaneously ... and even if you defeat one incarnation of it, there are plenty more of them, all chowing down and conceivably creating more incarnations to keep the job of destroying reality going.

Rock wrote:Tharizdun is one of those really creepy elements of D&D that I could never enjoy.

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Tharizdun reminds me of the comics' interpretation of Unicron, too. Not just a single planet-sized machine eating worlds, but a greater deity of chaos and destruction, devouring reality in multiple dimensions simultaneously ... and even if you defeat one incarnation of it, there are plenty more of them, all chowing down and conceivably creating more incarnations to keep the job of destroying reality going.

There are certainly a lot of interesting interpretations of Tharizdun for sure, most of which I decided to ignore, mostly sticking close to the original version Gygax used in his Gord novels. I never found him creepy, personally, because he's a known entity: in my cosmology he's one of 5 primordial beings, and he represents Evil. Not Neutral Evil, just Evil. He isn't a blend or a melange of lawful and chaotic, he's just evil. Law and Chaos have their own primordial beings and such things are completely foreign to him. Because he can't play well with others (being Evil), his 4 compatriots had to throw him in jail somewhere, and they've done a good job locking most of him up...but he is primordial, so things like the DPs, the Serpent, priestly powers his followers can call on, etc all manage to get out and do things, but Tharizdun himself has no control over these things, they are autonomous spins off from him and not all of them are even interested in his gaining freedom (they are, after all, evil, and his freedom would end their existence so they have biases). So really, except via those fools who worship some version or aspect of him, its pretty much impossible for any of my players to EVER even be threatened by him.

It reminds me of a fun little note I read about the Yuggoloths; that they're supremely confident that at any time of their choosing, they could end the Blood War and unite the three types of fiends in a march on the Upper Planes, destroy them and then turn on the Prime Material.
That's right, the only reason there isn't a dark host marching on the Upper Planes is because the Yuggoloths are still having too much fun playing mercenaries. If they ever decide they're bored and get serious ... Boom.

I recently got my hands on the Hellbound: The Blood War set and read the history therein, which is the (in universe) 'true' history as told by the yugoloths and I had to laugh at it so much. Honestly, I couldn't even take it seriously (it really does not hold up to even the lightest of scrutiny), but its exactly the kind of 'history' the yugoloths would write and then let someone 'steal' from them to spread around the planes and I love it for that.

What's known about him is just what bothers me.
There are plenty of things that want to win the game and turn it into their private playground. It's not everyone who wants to crush the whole game and leave nothing.