How have people handled the fate(s) of the Circle of Eight? In Vecna Lives, which is pre-Wars - most of the Circle of Eight are allegedly killed by Halmadar/Vecna. How does this get rectified when many of them also are blasted by Rary's treachery after the Wars? Clones? Resurection?
Just wondering how people have handled this or even if they bothered to run Vecna along with the Greyhawk Wars.
In my current campaign I briefly touched on it when a henchman of Tenser mentioned to one of the party member's about that "nasty incident with Vecna a few years ago". He summed it as something beyond their understanding and that the Council pulled together and Vecna was defeated at the moment. When Vecna's name was mentioned the party grew pretty quiet and collectively agreed not to mention his name again lest some nasty disease or worses happens to them. One of my older players remembers a "Skull of Vecna" encounter in another campaign(not my idea orginally I saw it posted somewhere thought it would be fun to see what the party would do). Basically the party thinks they found the Skull of Vecna. The only way to attach it is to place it where one was missing. It was very interesting watching party members volunteer to have themselves beheaded so they could have the skull attached. After the third try the party began to wonder if they really had an artifact(of course it was a non-magical regular skull)....... I was soon doused with doritos once the deception was unveiled.
You know Fallon, that Skull of Vecna gambit could be a great way to tame the power oriented or munchkin-y gamer type. Loved reading this. Thanks for the smile. _________________ <div>Braggi, Swain and Varlet at Large<br /></div>
I have an alternate theory on the Vecna Lives set up. I played the module as if only part of the Circle of Eight got decimated.
IMO, the notion that eight of the most powerful wizards of Greyhawk would not bring their henchmen, tell others of their whereabouts, or otherwise wisely prepare themselves before a potentially dangerous investigation just can not be believed.
So I changed the start a bit, making this event the beginning of Rary's descent into evil. Rary, through his own powerful researching methods, gains the knowledge of the Hand of Vecna and Haldemar's true nature. Rary then contacts individual members of the Circle to come to this undisclosed location for some matter of vital importance and great secrecy.
Rary then sets up his fellow members of the Circle to enter Haldemar's tomb. He does this mostly piecemeal, a few at a time, leading them to the tomb and then leaving them to die at Haldemar's hands. Using spells, he conceals his betrayal to the other mages. Haldemar eventually breaks out of the tomb and Rary can not control the lich lord, so he flees the scene, setting up Vecna Lives.
Rary's goal is a couple fold - one is that by stringing out the Circle's demise, suspicion is much less (as these wizards often go out on their own on various projects - I just found that all of them going out mysteriously together was too much to swallow, but if only a few at a time vanish over a period of a few weeks, that seemed more plausible to me.
Also, Rary knew that each of the Circle had clones and contingencies, so he wanted to strip them of these back ups for when he finally made his move against them in person after the GH Wars. Finally, Rary faked his own death, and with the rest of the Circle also crushed by this Haldemar, this was plausible to the new clones of his fellow circle members - so they were unsuspecting when his betrayal came many years later.
I think this helps the set up of Rary's betrayal and makes Vecna Lives a bit less gimmicky in its beginning.
O-D
OK OK, so I am resurrecting a very old post here! (darn near ancient by today's CF standards) But what the hey, I'm an American, I pay my taxes, so by golly, I can repost to whatever the heck I want! So there.
LGJ 0 deals with this explicitly, saying that Mordenkainen (who conveniently phoned in sick that day) cloned them all back to life, getting them up and running just for the start of the Wars (but, also conveniently, too late to intervene to stop the Wars kicking off).
If you want to make the Vecna thing a frame job, you should be thinking bigger fish than Rary. :)
I have never liked the whole Vecna plot, but I can live with it, It just feels so forced.
I know they wanted something dramatic but it gives the "Circle of Eight" a "superhero" feel, much more believable if the Co8 simply couldn't stem the war due to forces set in motion despite their best efforts or disagreements among members. I have always seen Co8 as simply another power player, not the all powerful organisation that can stop a flanaess wide conflict.
The multitude of clones (sigh) reminscent of a saved video game, don't worry, no one really dies.
As for Vecna a hated faction despised by power player both good and evil, obviously a long laid plot, using alot of resources to advance Vecna cause and power but other then sow chaos what did Vecna accomplish through the GHW, Iuz and SB have empires, even Turrosh Mak gained an empire, no rebirth of the spidered throne so far.
Its only been about... oh, 15 years since I DMed Vecna Lives and I don't have the module handy so bear with my fading memory...
I think there was an option to use spare PCs instead of the Co8 at the beginning, that's what we did. I never liked the Co8 involvement anyway. My players had a party of high level "retired" characters as well as their current ones so we went with that and ignored the Circle issue altogether, which made it a lot easier to work in the wars later.
Moreover, I used Iuz's involvement in that adventure as leverage to pull off some of his own schemes later on in my campaign. I figured the gods of GH had to cut him some slack for helping stop Vecna and had to "look the other way" for a brief period. He was eventually thwarted by the PCs but it was the seed I used from Vecna Lives that formed the basis of a great campaign. Good times!
The multitude of clones (sigh) reminscent of a saved video game, don't worry, no one really dies.
I have to disagree with you on this point (though I do agree that the plot of Vecna Lives! is a bit forced). Any high-level wizard worth his salt is going to clone himself at the earliest opportunity. I'd find it hard to believe if the Circle of Eight didn't have clones prepared.
It is like a saved video game, but that's because video games have been so heavily inspired by D&D. Clones and resurrections are par for the course in D&D, and if the PCs can do it, it'd be odd if high-level NPCs couldn't.
I am not saying NPCs can't have clones or resurrection, indeed hard to see any truly importand NPC not making some plans, which leads to several tangents, value of assassination, GK nobles fearing animus didn't "plan" to have clones remove the undead mockeries, even the need for children at the highest levels of power.
In my understanding clones and resurrection is terribly rare and difficult but every Co8 mage except I believe one had several and then others that were "hidden", so much for trust, rary is a close friend for decades, his betrayal came as a shock, vecna plot was unknown and yet isn't strange that everyone has secret hidden clones prepared in case the many guarded clones are destroyed, talk about paranoid.
Clones and wishes came to be used in EGG's original compaign as a way around the level loss issues from getting raised from the dead a lot. Dying wasn't exactly uncommon in that campaign.
The spell is as published in various editions is rather more restrictive than how it was used in that campaign (and in the background of some of the published adventures featuring the Co8).
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