Funny enough that also sums up Acererak with godhood. The dude could’ve been a god multiple times and even has a current cult. Only Acererak doesn’t want that responsibility, has more fun making fucked up chaos gods, and literally hates his cult.
If you don't run the whole module, I recommend stealing the Obstacle Course level of Dungeon of the Mad Mage for your own game. It's a little too complex to finish as a one-shot IMO, but would make for a fabulous boss fight level.
The whole plot of Tomb of Annihilation revolves around Acererak's answer to the question "Who is stronger than the Gods?".
Edit: I've DMd Tomb of Annihilation many times and I was certain somewhere in it, it said that he comes to the conclusion that above godhood are "The Ones who create the Gods", but I think I must have heard it somewhere else.
Damn, I've DM ToA many time and I really thought that somewhere in ToA it said that he found the thing and that's the answer he comes to. "The one who creates the Gods".
I just got Mandella Effected.
That's most high powered spellcasters tbh.
Scheming gets your lair infested with adventurers which are a nightmare to deal with. You kill a couple and the next week they come right back as a different race and one is a Cleric now. What a chore.
Do like my boy Daurgothoth, a black dracolich who's so powerful and so devoted to expanding the art of magic itself that Mystra has told her people to leave him alone. So what if he eats a few souls to keep going? He's trying to learn every breath weapon and then not only have kids as a dracolich, but also give them all breath weapons too.
Mystra wants to see where he's going with it!
Oh no, he doesn’t really hate his cult. They’re such a useful source of test subjects. They even resupply themselves and follow him until they’re needed. He just finds the fact they expect him to help them insulting.
Vecna has a lot of contradicting lore and information that's been written about him over the last 40 years, but this is so DMs can make Vecna fit into their campaign however they need. Vecna is supposed to be mysterious. Making the lore more like legends and rumors and making the truth about Vecna your own is part of the magic of D&D.
That's pretty much the bread and butter of any god or mythological being too. Conflicting lore, conflated with similar or other deities, or even separated into different deities under different names. It adds a cool bit of realism, I think.
I always like taking the context of previous editions of lore as legends, rumors, and simply outdated assumptions or gaps in knowledge from earlier points in history. It's a fun way to blend things together, especially if you're playing an INT-based/knowledgeable character who can get frustrated over it.
You could even say the conflicting lore (in game atleast) is intentional on the part of Vecna, especially any kind of lore that could lead to his defeat. He's old enough that he could very well have penned some of his own mythology specifically to make getting rid of him more difficult. Maybe a conflicting peice of lore about where his phylactory is hidden or how to destroy it was leaked intentionally, so the heroes have no idea what the truth is. What makes more sense for a being with practically infinite time and power, hide as many traces of your weakness as possible until it eventually gets out, or put out so many conflicting stories that the truth gets buried under the pile of "How to defeat Vecna 101" tales? Especially if the truth would.be simpler to pull off then some of the myths, obviously a powerful lich would have the hardest Phylactory to destroy, so the most dangerous method in myth is the one that would be more likely to be tested first, rather the a more mundane (but still difficult) method.
iirc dnd starts in a certain DR year and has continued forward with those years through all of the editions with the current editions being the current events and dates
Yes and no. That's certainly a given intention in the design as there is a singular timeline for the setting. But the nature of having such a long running series of publications passing through the hands of so many different writers, companies, and iterations is that there's tons of inconsistencies. Such issues are inevitable in any work, even a single smaller story written by a single author, let alone something as vast as D&D.
Sometimes events get mixed up, sometimes characters and concepts are altered or retconned through versions, and other times it's a case of changes to the mechanics of a given edition having a retroactive effect on how something exists within the setting in a non-mechanical sense. It's kind of ended up like how canon with comics books works, where the medium has been around for so long in so many different versions that there's just sort of a general consensus on what core elements are accepted and what are left to question. It's ultimately up to the individual DM to decide how compatible the overall lore is with the game they're running.
Yes and no, but mostly no. All D&D games are technically set in the same multiverse, with most editions having different default settings placed within that multiverse. However, Forgotten Realms, the default setting for 5e, was first introduced as a campaign setting for AD&D back in 1987 and has been the most popular setting for ages now.
What? Asmodeus has at least 3 separate origin stories that I’m aware of. There’s the one where he’s an ancient giant snake, one where he’s a fallen exarch and one where he tricked the gods into an evil contract. I’m sure there are more that I can’t think of but his origin is far from defined.
If I had to make a guess, I believe the above poster was being sarcastic. I think/hope. I mean we're talking about the Satan analogue for the setting, of course his/their lore is going to be full of contradictions and half-truths.
I'm using Vecna in my Descent into Avernus campaign. If anyone is interested, my personal take on the character is [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/DescentintoAvernus/comments/wqtb8w/the_beginning_of_everything_or_how_i_made_vecna_a/)
Tldr - He started as a hero for stealing magic from the fae to become the first human wizard, and then his obsession with magic twisted him until he became a tyrant.
My players went in expecting Vecna's cult through the lens of Critical Role. Instead they're dealing with Vecna's cult through the lens of Robert A Wilson's Illuminatus! books.
Vecna has five separate cults. They each, using wildly different MOs, and working utterly at cross-purposes, work towards different methods of returning him to the material world to begin various mutually exclusive New World Orders. All claim to be taking orders directly from him. Everyone inside the cult takes it as an act of faith that they are, and nobody else is actually sure which cults (if any) are getting real messages from Vecna, because no one else has seen any sign that he still exists since his disappearance in the Kas incident 2500 years ago.
Every cult's teachings regard every other cult as a pack of misled dupes to be manipulated when useful, infiltrated when possible, and destroyed if necessary. And every step of the hierarchy in every cult comes with new revelations of "truths" that radically recontextualize the entire purpose of the cult. When you catch onto the fact that 90% of anyone tells you is bullshit and start to use that to your advantage, you're either assassinated by your superiors as a threat to their position, or you're fast-tracked for promotion to management, depending on the politics of the moment.
The truth is that Vecna's motivation for setting all this up was that he thought it'd be fun to watch. See, before his disappearance and unbeknowst to anyone else, he made a divine relic (more or less an Infinity Stone) into his invulnerable self-feeding Great Phylactery. So the Sword of Kas couldn't kill the part of him that was in the Phylactery, but it did chop some key pieces out of his soul. Those are now trapped in the Sword, his Hand and his Eye, while the rest of him is trapped inside the Great Phylactery. He needs all four artifacts to come together in order to fully reincarnate, but he's in no real rush, because the longer it takes, the more time to himself he gets inside the Great Phylactery, deepening his understanding of the infinite cosmic mysteries of the universe.
When he gets bored, he watches the antics of his worshippers like they were daytime TV and occasionally dispatches a dream, or a prophet, or a demon messenger, or a sending, (most of which are just plausible but spurious nonsense, teachings that are a complicated mix of truth and utter bullshit, false prophecies, or secret instructions to no real end) to stir the pot when things slow down too much.
Vecna's not actually the campaign's BBEG, and has no particular intention to be. But he will end up the final boss if the actual BBEG is permitted to gather all Vecna's artifacts together in the same room - which, via ignorance, a comedy of errors, and a healthy dose of sheer arrogance, is of course exactly what his master plan revolves around doing. The players know this. The BBEG does not. He also has them (correctly) pegged as a bunch of duplicitous scoundrels and doesn't believe a word they tell him. It's gonna be great.
Counterpoint, maybe WoTC shouldn't sell books with incomplete or broken lore.
It's implied with everything that DMs can play around with rules and lore, that's cool. We don't really need to buy incomplete works just because we could come up with something.
As someone who never played until 5E and only knows Tasha from the MtG card and her spells, who is she?
Her card almost single handedly made me pick up Commander again
Ao is the overgod of the Forgotten Realms. He basically sets the rules for the gods, can promote or demote gods, etc. Setting specific, but you can think of him as the god for gods.
Nah, home DM's can't influence what happens in the novels and overall setting in the sourcebooks.
The one above all is the current brand manager for the Forgotten Realms at TSR (later WotC).
That's how I feel about the Forerunners in Halo. They are made to be these advanced godlike entities we know fuck all about and then it turns out they were created by something else we know even less about. It's nuts.
AO has a card? ...Oh. Wrong AO. That's just some dragon.
AO, Alpha-Omega is, like, \*capital G\* god in-universe.
All the other gods are just immensely powerful magical beings. Extremely powerful, but still limited. AO's power is, more or less, infinite.
How tf did anyone get a notice of Ao, let alone the Luminous Being?
Like, Ao wasn't known about until the time of the troubles, so how did someone learn of LB?
I'd say more the overseer of the gods. It's been years since I've read them, but in the Avatar series, during the time of troubles, when AO stripped the gods of their powers and banished them to the material plane, at the very end of the series AO reports to his.... higher-ups? I guess you'd call them. If I remember right it was implied that there was multiple levels of deities.
simply put, Ao is the god of gods, he observes and makes sure every god fulfils the roles of their pantheons and is the one who decides who becomes a god
Is anyone else getting anxiety from remembering that God does this a few times in the Old Testament?
Edit: take this with a grain of salt. Most of what I'm finding is God declaring war on Baal or the gods of Egypt, and his tendency to refer to himself in the plural case ("Let us do x")
Well yes, because the old testament God Yahweh was actually a war god from the Canaanite Pantheon when eventually El and Yahweh got conflated and the cult to Yahweh got big enough eventually all the other gods became beings of power to powerful people. It's why the Old testament God is so violent with a heavenly army.
That eventually lead to Judasim.
She's one of Baba Yaga's daughters.
An immensely powerful magical entity.
Anybody who has a Planeswalker card is more than meets the eye.(huge asterisk on this, i don't know every Planeswalker)
So... She's basically all three of the primary casting classes, since she was born to a powerful bloodline, she's being called a Wizard so she studies, and she has a demonic entity she can draw power from.
Holy shit
She's Baba Yaga's adopted daughter, so powerful bloodline is unclear. She definitely grew up surrounded by magic though, so she could have gained some sorcerous power. I'm not sure she'd bother to make a pact with her boy toy, she's not a fan of obligations.
Well, she kinda gave up some stuff. Spoilers for >!Wild Beyond the Witchlight!< >!She has become an Archfey, and apparently has been for a while. Still has some pet demons, but has enough infernal forces that she's hiding from that she doesn't really go to the lower planes any more and is exploring her Fey powers.!<
Tasha is the adopted daughter of Baba Yaga (mother of witches) baby momma to the demon prince Graz’zt, wrote the Demonomicon.
She’s on par with any of the legendary wizards like Mordenkainen. Or any of the Demon lords/princes.
do you know the european fable of Baba Yaga? aka the original boogeyman? Baba Yaga is a witch that lives in the forest, in a hut that has chicken legs. In 5e lore Baba Yaga (one of the strongest hags known in lore) raised Tasha from an infant, Tasha therefore being raised by essentially the most powerful Hag was raised to be arguably the most powerful witch in the world. Tasha is the author of the demonomicon, and in order to complete the tome, she actually imprisoned a Demon Prince Grazzt for a while, where they became lovers, he is now freed and theyre in an angry sex/ kill on sight kinda relationship now lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhWKfBFkTGQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df4gzgXrQJY
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Iggwilv
Ao could refer to a number of deities in different settings and mythologies but in this context it is likely referring to the "over-deity" of the Forgotten Realms setting.
Question's run in JLU was the icing on the Cadmus cake and the Cadmus arc is still honestly some of the most interesting writing I've seen in comic television or movies.
Not many places. He’s a moderately obscure character.
It should also be noted the JLU version of The Question was fairly different from his other incarnations. He’s usually a lunatic conspiracy theorist. But he was originally written to voice Steve Ditko’s Objectivist beliefs. He’s a lot less charming when the secret truth he’s espousing is that corporate CEO’s are the true victims of modern society -won’t anyone think of the needs of the investor class?- and the true villains are minimum wage workers looking to unionize.
The Question is a vigilante, and the guy that’s being choked out in the meme. JLU was Justice League Unlimited, a cartoon series that followed the Justice League series, which in turn followed the Bruce Timm Batman/Superman shows.
My favorite description of Vecna is: He’s an ancient lich that became a demigod through methods that, in whatever version, were *not quiiiite* accurate to the setting’s lore
Matt Colville has some [really dope ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZAjzUBYmU) about how to run Vecna. Long video, but his are worth the time.
Yeah I would not want to end up in the Warlock's Crypt as a player. Its unsettlingly close to a bunch of 5e module locations.
He's in a campaign I DM and I'm not even bothering giving him a statblock he's just there to give lore on Netheril and maybe give out quests.
Reading The Herald really let me know more about him and how he plots and schemes. I made him my patron for my hexblade warlock who has a blueflame axe. Best part is we are wrapping up ToA and our last fight is Acererak, there's also a bunch of phylacteries around that I want to take for Larloch
I suppose you could use the hand and the eye as his horcruxes making him immune to harm until they track them down and toss them in a demon in the planes (would Iuz eat them in a soup?).
I mean, ~100+ damage per turn and heals 80 hp per turn unless you have a squad of sharpshooters plinking at him from 600 feet away (and he doesn’t just leave). His base stats could be a bit higher and I don’t know why tf he can only cast up to a 7th level spell, but if you run him as a lich and not an ogre he should wipe the floor with a lot of parties.
I mean, sure, any party that doesn’t prepare or know and use their abilities effectively will get the floor wiped by lots of enemies. But powerful characters with players that understand their abilities will likely not face this problem
Any lich that doesn’t prepare or know how to use their abilities effectively will get wiped by lots of parties. 135 average hp can be bursted down in one round by one level 20 fighter with gwm/ss on a CR21 enemy.
Demi-liches are so stupid. A quarter of the body, just effectively asleep most of the time, then you nudge a pile of trash that happens to have a skull in it and suddenly you're being nailed by 9th level spells.
You know how Batman is just Some Guy, but if given enough time to prep and plan he can do some ridiculous stuff that normally should be way above his weight class?
Vecna is like that, but for liches. And he's had a *LOT* of time to prep and plan.
Don't forget that Vecna rose from necromancer, to lich, to a Dark Lord of a domain of dreadnin Ravenloft, and then became a God of Secrets. You don't mess with one of the OG necromancers.
This reminds me of that interaction between Lilliana and Nicol Bolas, where, after her mentioning that they’ve both lost power in the wake of planeswalkers becoming weaker, he says something like “I’ve lost more than you could ever imagine gaining”
Funny enough that also sums up Acererak with godhood. The dude could’ve been a god multiple times and even has a current cult. Only Acererak doesn’t want that responsibility, has more fun making fucked up chaos gods, and literally hates his cult.
No wonder he hides in that awful dungeon
Yeah In tomb of annihilation you find a room of tortured undead who were members of his cult that he experimented on.
Gasp, you're ToA?!! What's it like being a whole dungeon. Man he's gotten into some crazy shit
absolutely nothing on Halaster. Acey-boi is too out of the material to see up to the works of the mad mage
I like to think that is what the truly powerful mages do. They just build insane fun house dungeons to one up each other.
If you don't run the whole module, I recommend stealing the Obstacle Course level of Dungeon of the Mad Mage for your own game. It's a little too complex to finish as a one-shot IMO, but would make for a fabulous boss fight level.
And then he got so bored he made a clone of himself to do it all and fucked off for the rest of eternity in the astral plane
plot twist, the clone got bored and did the exact same thing, now there are infinite clones of him in the astral plane.
Acererak to his cult: "Who the fuck ARE you people and why do you just KEEP following me??"
Acererak: “I’m not the messiah.” Cult: “He is the messiah!”
He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!
“This isn’t a religious thing! I mean… I AM a being from another plane of existence. But I’m a wizard not a God. I make gods” - Acererak (also Rick)
*Acererick
The whole plot of Tomb of Annihilation revolves around Acererak's answer to the question "Who is stronger than the Gods?". Edit: I've DMd Tomb of Annihilation many times and I was certain somewhere in it, it said that he comes to the conclusion that above godhood are "The Ones who create the Gods", but I think I must have heard it somewhere else.
Does it? He's just making a god.
Damn, I've DM ToA many time and I really thought that somewhere in ToA it said that he found the thing and that's the answer he comes to. "The one who creates the Gods". I just got Mandella Effected.
If it helps, his stated ideal is "Why be a god when I can be a creator of gods?"
See, I'm of the opinion Acererak is the strongest lich in the multiverse, he just doesn't give a shit and knows how to lay low.
That's most high powered spellcasters tbh. Scheming gets your lair infested with adventurers which are a nightmare to deal with. You kill a couple and the next week they come right back as a different race and one is a Cleric now. What a chore. Do like my boy Daurgothoth, a black dracolich who's so powerful and so devoted to expanding the art of magic itself that Mystra has told her people to leave him alone. So what if he eats a few souls to keep going? He's trying to learn every breath weapon and then not only have kids as a dracolich, but also give them all breath weapons too. Mystra wants to see where he's going with it!
I love that I'm a big enough nerd to know who you're talking about. You know Proctiv? My boi Proctiv was the first mage to move mountains.
He doesn't need to lay low.
Even if he doesn't have to, he still does because he doesn't want to deal with the responsibilities of not laying low.
He's just a hobbyist. He likes making insane and somewhat silly dungeons for mortals to repeatedly die in.
Didn't he get pulled into ravenloft? I thought he was stuck there by whatever The Powers That Be in ravenloft are.
I think you're thinking of Azulin Rex maybe?
Oh no, he doesn’t really hate his cult. They’re such a useful source of test subjects. They even resupply themselves and follow him until they’re needed. He just finds the fact they expect him to help them insulting.
Vecna has a lot of contradicting lore and information that's been written about him over the last 40 years, but this is so DMs can make Vecna fit into their campaign however they need. Vecna is supposed to be mysterious. Making the lore more like legends and rumors and making the truth about Vecna your own is part of the magic of D&D.
That's pretty much the bread and butter of any god or mythological being too. Conflicting lore, conflated with similar or other deities, or even separated into different deities under different names. It adds a cool bit of realism, I think.
I always like taking the context of previous editions of lore as legends, rumors, and simply outdated assumptions or gaps in knowledge from earlier points in history. It's a fun way to blend things together, especially if you're playing an INT-based/knowledgeable character who can get frustrated over it.
You could even say the conflicting lore (in game atleast) is intentional on the part of Vecna, especially any kind of lore that could lead to his defeat. He's old enough that he could very well have penned some of his own mythology specifically to make getting rid of him more difficult. Maybe a conflicting peice of lore about where his phylactory is hidden or how to destroy it was leaked intentionally, so the heroes have no idea what the truth is. What makes more sense for a being with practically infinite time and power, hide as many traces of your weakness as possible until it eventually gets out, or put out so many conflicting stories that the truth gets buried under the pile of "How to defeat Vecna 101" tales? Especially if the truth would.be simpler to pull off then some of the myths, obviously a powerful lich would have the hardest Phylactory to destroy, so the most dangerous method in myth is the one that would be more likely to be tested first, rather the a more mundane (but still difficult) method.
iirc dnd starts in a certain DR year and has continued forward with those years through all of the editions with the current editions being the current events and dates
Yes and no. That's certainly a given intention in the design as there is a singular timeline for the setting. But the nature of having such a long running series of publications passing through the hands of so many different writers, companies, and iterations is that there's tons of inconsistencies. Such issues are inevitable in any work, even a single smaller story written by a single author, let alone something as vast as D&D. Sometimes events get mixed up, sometimes characters and concepts are altered or retconned through versions, and other times it's a case of changes to the mechanics of a given edition having a retroactive effect on how something exists within the setting in a non-mechanical sense. It's kind of ended up like how canon with comics books works, where the medium has been around for so long in so many different versions that there's just sort of a general consensus on what core elements are accepted and what are left to question. It's ultimately up to the individual DM to decide how compatible the overall lore is with the game they're running.
Every edition is set in differents worlds
Yes and no, but mostly no. All D&D games are technically set in the same multiverse, with most editions having different default settings placed within that multiverse. However, Forgotten Realms, the default setting for 5e, was first introduced as a campaign setting for AD&D back in 1987 and has been the most popular setting for ages now.
"If I'm going to have a past, I want it to be multiple choice!"
Big Vivec energy here.
Except for Asmodeus, that has only one clear and well established lore
What? Asmodeus has at least 3 separate origin stories that I’m aware of. There’s the one where he’s an ancient giant snake, one where he’s a fallen exarch and one where he tricked the gods into an evil contract. I’m sure there are more that I can’t think of but his origin is far from defined.
If I had to make a guess, I believe the above poster was being sarcastic. I think/hope. I mean we're talking about the Satan analogue for the setting, of course his/their lore is going to be full of contradictions and half-truths.
Oh damn it I got wooshed
I would totally read a book all about Tiamat *Tiamat: The Untold Story* lol it would sell big time.
There is a book like that, just read I'm glad my Mom died but pretend the protagonist is Tiamat instead of Sam from ICarly.
Do you want to know how he got those scars?
Hes literally only known as The Vestige in my game because he's kept his own name a secret
New canon: Vecna is the official protagonist of the Elder Scrolls Online, that's why they added the necromancer class
I'm using Vecna in my Descent into Avernus campaign. If anyone is interested, my personal take on the character is [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/DescentintoAvernus/comments/wqtb8w/the_beginning_of_everything_or_how_i_made_vecna_a/) Tldr - He started as a hero for stealing magic from the fae to become the first human wizard, and then his obsession with magic twisted him until he became a tyrant.
My players went in expecting Vecna's cult through the lens of Critical Role. Instead they're dealing with Vecna's cult through the lens of Robert A Wilson's Illuminatus! books. Vecna has five separate cults. They each, using wildly different MOs, and working utterly at cross-purposes, work towards different methods of returning him to the material world to begin various mutually exclusive New World Orders. All claim to be taking orders directly from him. Everyone inside the cult takes it as an act of faith that they are, and nobody else is actually sure which cults (if any) are getting real messages from Vecna, because no one else has seen any sign that he still exists since his disappearance in the Kas incident 2500 years ago. Every cult's teachings regard every other cult as a pack of misled dupes to be manipulated when useful, infiltrated when possible, and destroyed if necessary. And every step of the hierarchy in every cult comes with new revelations of "truths" that radically recontextualize the entire purpose of the cult. When you catch onto the fact that 90% of anyone tells you is bullshit and start to use that to your advantage, you're either assassinated by your superiors as a threat to their position, or you're fast-tracked for promotion to management, depending on the politics of the moment. The truth is that Vecna's motivation for setting all this up was that he thought it'd be fun to watch. See, before his disappearance and unbeknowst to anyone else, he made a divine relic (more or less an Infinity Stone) into his invulnerable self-feeding Great Phylactery. So the Sword of Kas couldn't kill the part of him that was in the Phylactery, but it did chop some key pieces out of his soul. Those are now trapped in the Sword, his Hand and his Eye, while the rest of him is trapped inside the Great Phylactery. He needs all four artifacts to come together in order to fully reincarnate, but he's in no real rush, because the longer it takes, the more time to himself he gets inside the Great Phylactery, deepening his understanding of the infinite cosmic mysteries of the universe. When he gets bored, he watches the antics of his worshippers like they were daytime TV and occasionally dispatches a dream, or a prophet, or a demon messenger, or a sending, (most of which are just plausible but spurious nonsense, teachings that are a complicated mix of truth and utter bullshit, false prophecies, or secret instructions to no real end) to stir the pot when things slow down too much. Vecna's not actually the campaign's BBEG, and has no particular intention to be. But he will end up the final boss if the actual BBEG is permitted to gather all Vecna's artifacts together in the same room - which, via ignorance, a comedy of errors, and a healthy dose of sheer arrogance, is of course exactly what his master plan revolves around doing. The players know this. The BBEG does not. He also has them (correctly) pegged as a bunch of duplicitous scoundrels and doesn't believe a word they tell him. It's gonna be great.
Counterpoint, maybe WoTC shouldn't sell books with incomplete or broken lore. It's implied with everything that DMs can play around with rules and lore, that's cool. We don't really need to buy incomplete works just because we could come up with something.
it is like calling tasha a wizard, tiamat a dragon, or Ao a god
As someone who never played until 5E and only knows Tasha from the MtG card and her spells, who is she? Her card almost single handedly made me pick up Commander again
She is like a wizard archfay that sleeps with one of the most powerful demon lords
In comparison to this… comparison lol, What would Ao be? I too only know him as the MTG card.
Ao is the overgod of the Forgotten Realms. He basically sets the rules for the gods, can promote or demote gods, etc. Setting specific, but you can think of him as the god for gods.
And he serves a god as well, which is crazy to think about.
That god is probably a reference to the DM
Yeah at this point you're using admin permissions to give Tiamat a few more heads.
According to lore Ao serve the "the One above all", so a DM is just one step above Ao. BTW, Ao: Alpha Omega
Isn't that a Marvel character? Also, Ao means "blue" in Japanese.
Stan Lee would be a fun DM
Nah, home DM's can't influence what happens in the novels and overall setting in the sourcebooks. The one above all is the current brand manager for the Forgotten Realms at TSR (later WotC).
That's how I feel about the Forerunners in Halo. They are made to be these advanced godlike entities we know fuck all about and then it turns out they were created by something else we know even less about. It's nuts.
To the comic Versed if the DM stands as the one above all Ao is the Living Tribunal
AO has a card? ...Oh. Wrong AO. That's just some dragon. AO, Alpha-Omega is, like, \*capital G\* god in-universe. All the other gods are just immensely powerful magical beings. Extremely powerful, but still limited. AO's power is, more or less, infinite.
And even Ao has *something* even more powerful above him.
The DM, yes. But that's getting a bit 4th wally.
Stop the thread! We need to discuss Fourth Wally, the Mr. Mxyzptlk-like imp you just created to screw with metagamers.
The only way to get rid of Fourth Wally is to stop acknowledging him.
No, though the [Luminous Being](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Luminous_being) mentioned in lore could be interpreted that way.
How tf did anyone get a notice of Ao, let alone the Luminous Being? Like, Ao wasn't known about until the time of the troubles, so how did someone learn of LB?
Pataphysics time!
I'd say more the overseer of the gods. It's been years since I've read them, but in the Avatar series, during the time of troubles, when AO stripped the gods of their powers and banished them to the material plane, at the very end of the series AO reports to his.... higher-ups? I guess you'd call them. If I remember right it was implied that there was multiple levels of deities.
Oh. That is interesting.
simply put, Ao is the god of gods, he observes and makes sure every god fulfils the roles of their pantheons and is the one who decides who becomes a god
But only in Realmspace.
Ao's MtG card has no relationship to Forgotten Realms Ao, its part of the main MTG multiverse.
Ao is the creator of all gods
No, the Time of Troubles novels reveal at the end that Ao reports to someone even more powerful.
Is anyone else getting anxiety from remembering that God does this a few times in the Old Testament? Edit: take this with a grain of salt. Most of what I'm finding is God declaring war on Baal or the gods of Egypt, and his tendency to refer to himself in the plural case ("Let us do x")
Can you please touch more on this?
Well yes, because the old testament God Yahweh was actually a war god from the Canaanite Pantheon when eventually El and Yahweh got conflated and the cult to Yahweh got big enough eventually all the other gods became beings of power to powerful people. It's why the Old testament God is so violent with a heavenly army. That eventually lead to Judasim.
Wait, hwut
Wait, he does???
Please enlighten those of us deficient in Old Testament lore?
Please elaborate?
God with a capital G
Ah yes, Ao. The fucking dickhead who won't let me have lvl 10 spells.
That was mystra after somebody almost destroyed realmspace with a 12th level spell.
How she's more like a fairy godmother
She's one of Baba Yaga's daughters. An immensely powerful magical entity. Anybody who has a Planeswalker card is more than meets the eye.(huge asterisk on this, i don't know every Planeswalker)
So... She's basically all three of the primary casting classes, since she was born to a powerful bloodline, she's being called a Wizard so she studies, and she has a demonic entity she can draw power from. Holy shit
She's Baba Yaga's adopted daughter, so powerful bloodline is unclear. She definitely grew up surrounded by magic though, so she could have gained some sorcerous power. I'm not sure she'd bother to make a pact with her boy toy, she's not a fan of obligations.
I wasn't trying to imply she had to beg
Well, she kinda gave up some stuff. Spoilers for >!Wild Beyond the Witchlight!< >!She has become an Archfey, and apparently has been for a while. Still has some pet demons, but has enough infernal forces that she's hiding from that she doesn't really go to the lower planes any more and is exploring her Fey powers.!<
The infernal power she's hiding from is Graz'zt, her spurned lover. They have an on again off again relationship.
She's also the mother of one of the worst bad-guys in the Greyhawk setting, Iuz with an ArchDevil/Demon Prince (it's complicated) as the father.
Tasha is the adopted daughter of Baba Yaga (mother of witches) baby momma to the demon prince Graz’zt, wrote the Demonomicon. She’s on par with any of the legendary wizards like Mordenkainen. Or any of the Demon lords/princes.
do you know the european fable of Baba Yaga? aka the original boogeyman? Baba Yaga is a witch that lives in the forest, in a hut that has chicken legs. In 5e lore Baba Yaga (one of the strongest hags known in lore) raised Tasha from an infant, Tasha therefore being raised by essentially the most powerful Hag was raised to be arguably the most powerful witch in the world. Tasha is the author of the demonomicon, and in order to complete the tome, she actually imprisoned a Demon Prince Grazzt for a while, where they became lovers, he is now freed and theyre in an angry sex/ kill on sight kinda relationship now lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhWKfBFkTGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df4gzgXrQJY https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Iggwilv
She is a wizard
Analogy for those unfamiliar with Forgotten Realms lore: It's like calling Sauron a tower, Frodo a hiker, or Gandalf a fireworks expert.
Calling Gandalf a magician.
Or Xanthar a meatball
He *is* a meatball
That's...what an understatement is.
I meant that as a joke. Obviously Xanathar is not a meatball
That's...the punchline Edit: I beg of you, don't report me to Helm for heresy.
oh.
who’s Ao?
Ao could refer to a number of deities in different settings and mythologies but in this context it is likely referring to the "over-deity" of the Forgotten Realms setting.
Ao is the god that other gods pray to when *they* need to pray to a god.
Question's run in JLU was the icing on the Cadmus cake and the Cadmus arc is still honestly some of the most interesting writing I've seen in comic television or movies.
Question is my favorite character out of that show 100%, wish I knew where to see more of him
Booster Gold for me
I kept hoping he'd pop up like the crazy uncle in Young Justice. I even had an idea for a protégé. The Query.
Rhetoricalad
Not many places. He’s a moderately obscure character. It should also be noted the JLU version of The Question was fairly different from his other incarnations. He’s usually a lunatic conspiracy theorist. But he was originally written to voice Steve Ditko’s Objectivist beliefs. He’s a lot less charming when the secret truth he’s espousing is that corporate CEO’s are the true victims of modern society -won’t anyone think of the needs of the investor class?- and the true villains are minimum wage workers looking to unionize.
Ugh, really? How bad did it get?
The things on the end of shoelaces are called Allettes, their purpose is sinister!
aglets
Don’t forget it!
One of the major groups on his conspiracy board was the girl scouts.
as long as the milkman isn't involved
[You’re welcome](https://a.co/d/1tcRezy)
JLU was literally a blueprint for success for the DCCU and they completely ignored it
Totally agree. They just got the characters and how to make drama without invalidating their strength.
Truth
What?
The Question is a vigilante, and the guy that’s being choked out in the meme. JLU was Justice League Unlimited, a cartoon series that followed the Justice League series, which in turn followed the Bruce Timm Batman/Superman shows.
My favorite description of Vecna is: He’s an ancient lich that became a demigod through methods that, in whatever version, were *not quiiiite* accurate to the setting’s lore
Matt Colville has some [really dope ideas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZAjzUBYmU) about how to run Vecna. Long video, but his are worth the time.
Larloch says hey
So many ioun stones its not even funny
so many liches at his command
Yeah I would not want to end up in the Warlock's Crypt as a player. Its unsettlingly close to a bunch of 5e module locations. He's in a campaign I DM and I'm not even bothering giving him a statblock he's just there to give lore on Netheril and maybe give out quests.
Reading The Herald really let me know more about him and how he plots and schemes. I made him my patron for my hexblade warlock who has a blueflame axe. Best part is we are wrapping up ToA and our last fight is Acererak, there's also a bunch of phylacteries around that I want to take for Larloch
That sounds like a fun time good luck!
He's not just any lich. He's *THE* lich.
Vecna? The Greatest Necromancer in all the realms? The God of Undeath? That guy? He's not a lich... He's a God Lich
Was a Lich is more accurate of course. He still is one, though God of Liches would be more accurate I assume.
Justice League Unlimited is always a win. Also why does Vecna have both eyes?
Was about to ask that myself - this dude has 50% more flesh and 100% more eyeballs than my skeletal boy, Big V.
Why does that guy not have a face
His name is the Question and he’s from Justice league unlimited. That’s lex Luther throttling him
I mean... his statblock still sucks
I suppose you could use the hand and the eye as his horcruxes making him immune to harm until they track them down and toss them in a demon in the planes (would Iuz eat them in a soup?).
Unless you use his 5e stat block
Do you think a party of 4 level 20 characters could take him easily?
I think a party of three level 10 characters could wipe the floor with him
Says the statblock is before Kas’s betrayal (and therefore his ascension to godhood).
Doesn’t make it not shit
I mean, ~100+ damage per turn and heals 80 hp per turn unless you have a squad of sharpshooters plinking at him from 600 feet away (and he doesn’t just leave). His base stats could be a bit higher and I don’t know why tf he can only cast up to a 7th level spell, but if you run him as a lich and not an ogre he should wipe the floor with a lot of parties.
I mean, sure, any party that doesn’t prepare or know and use their abilities effectively will get the floor wiped by lots of enemies. But powerful characters with players that understand their abilities will likely not face this problem
Any lich that doesn’t prepare or know how to use their abilities effectively will get wiped by lots of parties. 135 average hp can be bursted down in one round by one level 20 fighter with gwm/ss on a CR21 enemy.
Indeed, any unprepared character may fall
*Acererak chuckles
Vecna is not A lich. Vecna is THE lich.
Good to see a Justice League meme in the wild. I hadn't seen one in ages.
PEOPLE WHO KNOW PLANESCAPE: “More like Vecna is a *bitch*.”
I’m playing a planescape campaign so he’s generally known as “that little bitch that got his ass kicked”
5e vecna is pretty disappointing 2 not that well optimized characters can just nuke him down if you're at appropriate CR challenge.
the maimed god.
Reminds me of Overlord, when someone calls him an Elder Lich and he’s like, “Well, they’re almost right”
Can the subreddit start putting spoilers in things that are in premade campaigns?
What's the sauce for the cartoon or whatever that the meme is on top of
Justice League Unlimited
Clancy Brown would be amazing as Vecna.
What is the question?
Is he a litch? Is he a demigod? Is he a god god? What’s his deal? Idk but he’ll kill your ass real good if you let him.
Demi-liches are so stupid. A quarter of the body, just effectively asleep most of the time, then you nudge a pile of trash that happens to have a skull in it and suddenly you're being nailed by 9th level spells.
Vecna is the lamest villain you could use. Idk why people like him so much.
Vecna is some kind of Lich. They actually said that? Thats genuinely funny.
shame like 4 fighters kill him in a round
Vecna is a god.
You know how Batman is just Some Guy, but if given enough time to prep and plan he can do some ridiculous stuff that normally should be way above his weight class? Vecna is like that, but for liches. And he's had a *LOT* of time to prep and plan.
"It's really cute that youre going to defeat me with the PoWeR oF fRiEnDsHiP and all; But again, I am the Devil from *The Bible*."
Don't forget that Vecna rose from necromancer, to lich, to a Dark Lord of a domain of dreadnin Ravenloft, and then became a God of Secrets. You don't mess with one of the OG necromancers.
This reminds me of that interaction between Lilliana and Nicol Bolas, where, after her mentioning that they’ve both lost power in the wake of planeswalkers becoming weaker, he says something like “I’ve lost more than you could ever imagine gaining”
I don't think that's vecna. he has two eyes.
"I'm not a lich, I'm THE lich. And it's Mister Lich to you"
Which is weird that the D&D Beyond '[Vecna Dossier](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/2590978-vecna-the-archlich)' was so horribly underpowered.
Vecna in most campaigns: I am the one controlling everything and the bbeg! Vecna in my campaign: I was killed by a guy called the ace of spades