Larry’s guide to Liches, Lichen, and Lycanthrope - Campfire

General Summary

As the lich's body melts into a puddle on the ground the group can still hear it's last words echoing.
"Well shit," Myra swears.
"I had a feeling that wouldn't be the end of him," Raijun comments "those who try and cheat my emo waifu always have contingency plans."
"You speak of such a powerful deity with such familiarity, how did you establish such a bond with this being of fate?" Amelie asks.
"Well Amelie, I was given a chance at redemption when a certain situation turned bleak. She chose me to help her rid the lands of certain evils trying to cheat the ultimate end we all eventually meet. She's cool, just pretty cryptic so far but I do my best to do what she says and make her proud of her favorite hero!" Raijun speaks with zeal and enthusiasm, he clearly feels strongly she is a mystical figure worthy of reverance, despite his nickname for her.
Myra looks impressed at Raijun's honesty as she was clearly expecting him to start ranting about being the chosen one. "What about your goddess Amelie, how did your relationship come about?"
"That sure is a very mature approach and view on her duty and yours," Amelie comments to Raijun, "'My connection to fate is similar but less confined than yours. Your mistress serves as the final stop where my connection to fate involves the choses and paths taken to get to that point. The Enduring Oracle has chosen the woman in my family to guide those in this plane along their path and to observe key points and events. My path was always before but it was not till I was a young one that a ritual within our holy site awakened my abilities within dreams. I hope to leave this place in order to continue my work to serve fate and my people."
"Sounds like we both had people shaping our destinies before we figured it out for ourselves. Tell me more about this connection with Fate, you must know quite a bit about why things happen like they do then, so I'm curious, why is it that we often don't learn things until life hands us cruel experiences?" Raijun ponders.
“Hey, quick question," Hagren cuts in, "Don’t Lich come back to the mortal plane as long as an artifact called a flagtory exist?”
"Yes, that is what I meant earlier," Raijun answers, "it's likely hiding a phylactery, which is how those monsters are able to cheat death, which begs the question as to where it might be."
"Oh, its phylactery, not lavatory" Hagren giving an enlightened look on his face.
"Its typically some sort of jewel, keepsake or hard to destroy object, but its unique to that individual, so I don't know what just yet."
"Fundamentally I believe the practice is to split your soul," Myra adds. "Necromancy is not really my forte but from what little I've studied it to prepare in case something happens to one of you the basic premise is when you die your souls passes on to the outer planes. Liches get around this by binding their soul to an object. As long as the object survives it can't pass on. However I have no idea how one would do that process, how many objects you can bind yourself to, or how you could destroy such an object. Raijun you've studied... The area do you know how one could destroy something like that?"
"I know the immortals hit squad took on a mission back when I was a teenager, a wizard gone mad with power and threatening to expose contacts of the big boss, so they sent them in. Only half the squad returned, and I heard in passing the wizard has ascended to lichdom, and that he started to wipe out the squad, until an errant disintegrate scroll hit a large crystal behind the lich, shattering it, and the lich in turn. I heard Azrael, one of the magic assassins, say something about without disintegrate, he likely wouldn't have been able to break the crystal. Ergo, this phylactery of his must be some sort of valuable or unbreakable device, and likely hidden somewhere out of sight."
As Raijun thinks back to Azrael regaling you with the story, he tries to remember the details. First he remembers Azrael telling him about his blind date, or maybe it was him trying to locate or negate you start to think you really wish you had asked him to restate what happened with his Teammates but the best he can do is advocate that someone Azrael did decimate the delicate or maybe not so delicate item… It muddles together some, but what he definitely remembers, “If you decimate the phylactery, it will not be able to regenerate.”
Meanwhile Myra contemplates if she's read any more about liches and remembers sitting in the library, one day while looking through a scroll she saw a word you didn’t know. That word was “phylactery”. She asked a tutor about it the following day, they instantly turned white and asked where she'd heard such a word. They suggested that it wasn't proper to be asking questions about such topics and to not mention it to anyone. Such a response clearly only prompted more curiosity. She begin to pour through the book looking for a definition or an explanation. It was late afternoon when she stumbled on an old dusty book on the bottom shelf of the last row of your families large library. “Larry’s guide to Liches, Lichen, and Lycanthrope”. Inside there was an in-depth explanation of not only what a phylactery was but the process, what it was for, who could create such a thing, and horrific process through which it was made.
Larry's guide detailed that a significant number of souls are needed to forge the item. He goes on to recount a particularly nasty lich named Harry the Unholy who lived about 800 years ago. Harry used the death of an entire village to create his phylactery wiping out everyone in the settlement. Over the following days you read through the rest of the chapters of the book alternating between the more viscous chapters on lichdom and the nicer chapters on lichen. The memory of the book and the smell of it's leather is burned into your brain by the weeks of nightmares that followed.

Report Date

02 Apr 2022