Die, Vecna, Die!

Die, Vecna, Die! is a second-edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure, year 2000, by peak Bruce R. Cordell and Steve Miller. This is what propelled archlich Vecna, already awesome, to the Greyhawk pantheon. Unlike some modules in recent memory, these two authors kept the PCs at the forefront.

It is the third in a trilogy. Zeb Cook's wretched Vecna Lives! and Monte Cook's much-better Vecna Reborn precede this one.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

The party starts at Tovag Buragu across the Hellfurnaces, one of the old-school Greyhawk mysterious settings, which - we learn - hosts rifts through time and space. These lead to a network of planes including an easter-egg shared with Queen of the Demonweb Pits: the Pink Ocean. Also: true ghouls from Wolfgang Baur's classic "White Kingdom", Dungeon #70. Ultimately, the PCs need Vecna's home demiplane Cavitius. That's through Cirithburg, and its Adytum.

Cavitius is an agreeably horrid part of the Dread. The highpoints in Vecna's palace are, of course, his sundry mummified extremities which the party members can try on, including the Head.

Lastly, Sigil for the showdown.

Reception

DVD's three-act structure is, at heart, a planar romp. Planescape fans were used to jarring shifts in theme between one setting and the next. As sold to Greyhawk and Ravenloft fans, especially the latter, this one struggled.

Ravenloft fans continued the rage they'd inherited from Vecna Lives! and Vecna Reborn, that here was an outside character making a mockery of the gothic rules behind their beloved setting. Well at least now Vecna isn't their problem anymore.

Overall most players figured out what DVD was trying to do, and DVD currently enjoys 3.9/5 on GoodReads.

Legacy

This was the module which heralded the canon-changes in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, most of all the Planes.

Greyhawk didn't change as much - it didn't have to, this time, inasmuch as there already existed a (2e) "Living Greyhawk" and its Gazetteer as an emergency correction to earlier mistakes. Which is just as well because Cordell and Miller weren't experts in Greyhawk lore; it wasn't easy to fit Vecna's past in Greyhawk's, whether before or after the Twin Cataclysms.