If you’ve played enough of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition’s published adventures, you may have noticed a recurring detail: mysterious black obelisks popping up in different locations (including Chult, Icewind Dale, and Phandalin) whose true purpose is unclear. More than a simple Easter egg or a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference, these clues were meant to set up a major final adventure that never came to fruition. And now, we know why.
In a video interview with former D&D creative director Chris Perkins about Rime of the Frostmaiden, one of the most popular 5e adventures, I asked him about the obelisks. In that adventure, their purpose was finally revealed. Built by a mysterious ancient species called the Weavers, they were imbued with time magic to reverse time’s flow in case of a calamity. The extinct Netherese Empire had discovered some of these obelisks, but they were unable to activate them to prevent the end of their civilization. Rime of the Frostmaiden mentions that Vecna stole one of the obelisks at some point, and it’s teased that these artifacts would play a part in the lich-god’s final gambit for absolute power.
However, when Vecna: Eve of Ruin was published in 2024 as the final adventure for 5e before its D&D 2024 revamp, there was no trace of the obelisks. Vecna’s big master plan was replaced with a random plot about secrets and the multiverse. I asked Perkins what happened to the obelisks, and his explanation was simple: “The reason it was dropped was that different people were in charge of the adventure design,” he said. “I had rolled off a lot of my hands-on product work to help out with other parts of the business. And so, when I creatively walked away from the day-to-day adventure creation, we sort of lost the plot.” Perkins was just referring to the obelisks plot specifically here, but I couldn’t help but find his latest remark amusing. Rather than 5e’s crowning achievement, Vecna: Eve of Ruin wound up becoming its biggest disappointment.
“The original plan, in my mind, was that we would actually culminate the story by going back in time to fight the Netherese Empire,” Perkins said. “It was always on our radar to bring Netheril back in some way. And this was the way I envisioned it happening, because the only way you could really fight Netheril again is to travel back in time.” This was even teased at the end of Rime of the Frostmaiden, where players can activate the black obelisk and travel back in time to the height of the Netherese Empire. I always saw that as a shocking possible conclusion to the adventure, but I never imagined it was supposed to blossom into a whole project.
“I was excited about the idea of a time travel adventure,” Perkins said, “simply because it would feel very different from the other campaigns we had done up to that point. And I thought given time and attention, we could do some really fun things with Netheril and explore a style of magic that felt different from contemporary magic. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks would be sort of like the vibe I’d go for, where the magic is so weird it almost feels technological.” Expedition is a beloved classic D&D adventure written by Gary Gygax, where players stumble into a crashed spaceship and have to fight robots and gather futuristic weapons.
Instead of the boring sequence of fetch quests that is Vecna: Eve of Ruin, we could have gotten an epic time-travel adventure to give 5e a proper send-off. It could have been the equivalent of Avengers: Endgame for D&D. Imagine starting the adventure after Vecna won, and the heroes have to restore the timeline by traveling back to the age of Netheril. More importantly, perhaps, this would have been the payoff for a mystery that had been tickling players’ imaginations since the first black obelisk appeared in Princes of the Apocalypse back in 2015.
“We actually did some concept artwork on Netheril in anticipation of ending the obelisk story there, and it never coalesced,” Perkins concluded. More than a missed opportunity, to me, that’s also a sign of a paradigm shift that coincided with Perkins moving away from “hands-on product work” to later leave Wizards of the Coast entirely for Darrington Press. Setting the disappointing Vecna: Eve of Ruin aside, D&D actually came back to Netheril after Perkins left, with 2025’s digital-only adventure Netheril’s Fall. In line with D&D 2024’s adventure design style, this is a sequence of preset encounters that is a far cry from the exciting time-travel epic that Perkins envisioned.
In the end, the black obelisks didn’t just disappear from Dungeons & Dragons. They marked the end of an era. What began as a slow-burn mystery meant to reward long-term players instead became a reminder of how fragile shared storytelling can be inside a massive corporate machine.
