
It further proves how malicious and evil Vecna is, as if people needed more evidence.” “Vecna’s managed to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, and without the connection to the gods, faith is dwindling. “It’s kind of solving the problem of all these good-aligned deities who probably would have a problem with Faerûn being controlled by Vecna or Tiamat,” Whitby mentioned. Vecna has managed to chop off different gods from Faerûn, plunging the world additional into darkness and despair. Volo helps lighten the temper of the in any other case bleak guide, which is crammed with fallen cities dominated by devils, the undead, and people cruel sufficient to pledge their loyalty to darkish powers. “I like writing in his voice as a result of he’s so confident that nothing might go unsuitable, however one thing has gone unsuitable as a result of he’s now lifeless. “One of the first projects I ever did was Volo’s Guide to Getting Murdered, which is a murder mystery in which Volo is the one who gets murdered,” Whitby mentioned.

Now a ghost, he gives coloration commentary all through the Doomed Forgotten Realms: Sword Coast Gazetteer. One of the victims of the dying curse is Volothamp “Volo” Geddarm, the pretentious wizard who authored Volo’s Guide to Monsters. It imagines the god often known as the Whispered One as a secret additional boss in 2017’s Tomb of Annihilation, summoned to the realms by way of the machinations of the lich Acererak and the necromantic artifact the Soulmonger, which drained the lifetime of everybody who’d ever been raised from the lifeless. Sword Coast Gazetteer is a companion to the Quill & Cauldron journey Doomed Forgotten Realms: Rise of Vecna, which Whitby labored on alongside lead designer Scott McClintock. There’s not really any other evil character in the Realms who can quite reach that same pinnacle.”

“I had the idea of all these events throughout all the hardcover books slowly going wrong, but it’s not until the final shoe drops that everyone can see that there has been someone pulling the strings from the background this entire time,” Whitby mentioned.

But the biggest risk comes from Vecna, the evil god of secrets and techniques, who Doomed Forgotten Realms designer Matthew Whitby made the true mastermind behind the world’s downfall. At the identical time, the land has been ravaged by the highly effective evil elementals launched in Princes of the Apocalypse, whereas demon lords occupy the subterranean realm of the Underdark after rising from portals opened in Out of the Abyss.

In Doomed Forgotten Realms: Sword Coast Gazetteer the metropolis of Baldur’s Gate has been plunged into the Nine Hells because of the occasions of Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus. The end result? The darkest of all possible D&D timelines. Then they went even additional, imagining failure for each different main journey Wizards has launched since. Doomed Forgotten Realms: Sword Coast Gazetteer, a brand new setting guide from Quill & Cauldron, imagines what D&D’s major marketing campaign location would seem like if gamers of that journey failed. Wizards of the Coast launched the fifth version of Dungeons & Dragons in 2014 with the journey Tyranny of Dragons, the place gamers should cease a cult from summoning the evil dragon goddess Tiamat into the Forgotten Realms.
