Publisher: Wizards of the Coast, 2024 — D&D’s 50th-anniversary adventure, levels 10–20.
Vecna’s plan: Vecna traverses the multiverse gathering secrets, and uses their accumulated power to cast the Ritual of Remaking to unmake and remake all of existence. His power source is secrets — not any single artifact.
The Rod of Seven Parts (the trap): Lady Alustriel Silverhand marshals allies — Tasha and Mordenkainen — intending to cast a Wish spell to dispel Vecna’s gathered secrets and render the Ritual of Remaking useless. But “Mordenkainen” is actually Kas the Betrayer, disguised with the Crown of Lies. Kas sabotages the Wish and convinces the group to reassemble the Rod of Seven Parts instead, falsely claiming it is the only way to stop Vecna. In truth, Kas wants the assembled Rod to free the demon lord Miska the Wolf-Spider — his ally, imprisoned in Pandemonium — so the two can kill Vecna and Kas can usurp the ritual. The Rod is never Vecna’s, and it never powers the Ritual of Remaking.
Structure: A multiversal crawl to collect the seven rod pieces across settings (Forgotten Realms/Underdark, Spelljammer/Astral Sea, Eberron/Mournland, Ravenloft’s Barovia, Dragonlance’s Krynn, Greyhawk/Oerth, and Avernus via Planescape). In Ch. 9 Kas reveals himself, steals the reassembled Rod, and flees to Pandemonium to free Miska (Ch. 10); the party stops both Kas and Vecna’s Ritual of Remaking in the Cave of Shattered Reflection (Ch. 11).
HotOG relevance: The culminating adventure of Exandria Revisited. Briar (ER PC; tracked in Notion) ended ER in possession of the fully assembled Rod of Seven Parts, which she later merged into a Luxon beacon — the “Beacon of 7,000 parts.” What the Rod contributes to the beacon is its Law / perfect-preservation (fixity): it preserves bound souls perfectly and locks forms against change. Its Miska-prison-key function is inert on Nuxan — a key does nothing without its lock, and Miska’s prison is in Pandemonium (the Outer Planes), not the Material Plane. So only the fixity carries into the Luxon beacon-hunt 1000 years later.
Reference: dnd.wizards.com; 5eTools VEoR