Goodman Games

I'm in the middle of designing my own patron and I'm having a hard time devising some spells for them. Using the examples provided in the rulebook for inspiration I was finishing up some details on the first spell and I noticed what I think is a reference to Vecna.
On page 337 there is a picture of what I assume is a wizard invoking Sezrekan and at his feet are a hand and an eye. These could just be a couple of material components that the wizard is sacrificing, or using to make his spell work, but I couldn't help and think of the infamous hand and eye of Vecna. Especially of Sezrekan is the "wickedest of wizards" that he has somehow achieved a greater level of power than Vecna ever had.

Good eye.
I missed those details in the picture.

Possible, although the idea of the hand and eye of Vecna were taken form an even earlier literary source: Moorcock's Corum stories.

I thought they were probably lifted from something even earlier than that.
"The Raven" with Vincent Price has him making a potion with a dead man's hand and frog's eyes, or maybe it was a dead man's eyes and a frog's hand...

And of course, Vecna is an anagram for Vance.

I cannot believe I never noticed that.

Over thirty years and I never made that connection... You have just blown my mind!

Vecna would make an awesome patron.

As far as I know, Vecna is now WotC's IP. How about an anagram of Vecna? Let's see......Vance!

Well, any evil Wizard Lich missing a few body parts might serve. . It doesn't have to be an anagram.

I totally missed that ... at least I'm not alone

So many people missed it. I thought it was common knowledge. Even wikipedia mentions it.

Oh sure, NOW it does! I remember a time when there was no reference to Vecna on wikipedia, nor did he have his own page.

Gygax, et all, did that a lot. I know that in the Greyhawk campaign there are a couple dozen names which, if descrambled, turn out to be regular names. Drawmij, for example, is "Jim Ward" backwards and is ironic because as I understand it Jim can't even use his own name backwards in a gaming product because WotC owns the IP for the name.

Wow! I didn't know that either.

Nystul is pretty obvious.
But Mordenkainen?
Bigby?
Otiluke?
Tenser?
I can't imagine any of these are anagrams of real peoples' names.

Mordenkainen's name was inspired by Finnish mythology.
Tenser is an anagram for Ernest (as in Ernest "Ernie" Gygax, Gary's son and Tenser's player).
Otiluke may be a reference to both a PC of Gygax's named Otis and his son Luke.

...And in this vein, it is probably redundant of me to mention that Melf (of the Acid Arrow fame) was what a player of Gygax's came up with when he needed a name for his character, a male Elf...

My DM in college pointed that out to me to convince me to read Vance. I'd tried one of Vance's books as a kid and thought it was just weird.

Wait -- you mean 'weird' isn't what I'm supposed to like about them...???

At 10 or 12, I was a very literal reader with a tendency to skip descriptive paragraphs. Not great qualities for appreciating Vance.