Vecna -

Many tales are told of the arch-lich Vecna.

It is said that he was one of the Planes’ mightiest sorcerers, able to draw life from dust and send it back again, extinguish lives with a glance, and make the earth shudder beneath his touch. He was said to be so powerful that when the end of his life drew near, death refused to take him into it’s kingdom.

And so Vecna died, yet lived on.

Abandoned by death, Vecna became a master of a vast kingdom on a prime world called Oerth. Neither kind nor just, Lord Vecna’s rule was one of great horror and suffering, and it was said his reach was so great that even the Powers of Oerth did not dare to cross him for fear of drawing his eye.

Yet, while Vecna’s gaze traveled ever outward in search of new conquests, he failed to see his own end when it came for him… in the form of his lieutenant, Kas.

As was fitting for Vecna’s left hand servant, the arch-lich had fashioned a terrible weapon for his lieutenant as a symbol of his authority. Vecna made this weapon with such skill it is said that part of the sorcerer entered the blade, and it was this sliver of Vecna that gave the blade it’s life and it’s treacherous nature. Where once there was lifeless steel, there became thought, intent, and perhaps most horrible of all, a voice.

The sword whispered treacheries to the ambitious Kas, night upon night, month upon month, year upon year, until one night, the remains of Kas’ discipline was seduced by the rippling edge of the blade. Convinced by his blade that he was Vecna’s superior, Kas confronted his dread master upon his Dessicated Throne, and the two of them fought a terrible battle.

During the battle, Kas was killed, but before he fell, his blade had dismembered his former master, scattering his remains so that no one may draw them together again. And so it has come to pass that the pieces of Vecna have ever made their way across the Planes… one of these is the Eye of Vecna. It carries with it a bloody, violence history, so much that many lesser scholars, unlike myself, refuse to speak of its treacheries, for fear the eye will come to them, seeking to add another victim to it’s bloody chronology.

The Eye of Vecna was instrumental in the extermination of the House of Hyeric, once the ruling dynasty in Nyrond. It is said to have been behind the sundering of the Conclave of Tyssis-on-theSea, which led to the three-cycle war that poisoned the seas of Malhatai and left the oceanic world barren of life. On the ashen Plane of Ghalentir, it possessed the gentle father of Sasaran, a babe with the potential to lead his suffering people from their shadowed lands to the Gates of Paradise… had the eye not driven Sasaran’s father to murder his son as he lay sleeping in his crib. All these kingdoms, all these futures, the Eye of Vecna laid waste.

The Eye’s powers are said to shift with each new owner, but one thing is certain: no good ever comes from whoever has the misfortune to possess it. It is destined to betray it’s wearer at a critical moment, failing him when he needs its power the most.