Lich
A lich, sometimes called a lichnee, is an almost universally evil form of undead spellcaster of great power, having been a wizard in life. Liches are feated by mortal beings for their malign magic, their intelligence, and their willingness to embrace undeath for a chance to live forever—or rather, to endure forever. Lichdom is arguably the most powerful known form of undeath, being challenged by the particularly rare dread soul or related dracoliches.
Description
Liches are generally gaunt and skeletal with withered flesh stretched tight across horribly visible bones, but they can vary greatly in appearance depending on their age and level of decay. If their eyes have been destroyed, lost, or rotted away, bright pinpoints of light burn in their empty sockets. The color of this light depends largely on the magic the lich has mastered, with the most common being a bright green color reflecting necromantic focus. Some maintain a hint of their old hair or beards. Liches ften do not have lips or the necessary organs to produce natural speech, but they have the ability to project speech from their mouths magically, moving the jaw (if present) to aid in the illusion. As their bodies continue to degrade over the centuries, a lich may eventually become a demilich. Some liches dress in rich and regal finery and jewelry, others wear the clothes or uniforms of former occupations or allegiances, while many appear to be nothing more than lepers as their clothes have rotted away. Liches are particularly common within The Kuneirmeru Desert, where their skin is often preserved by the dryness and heat, and they are praised akin to nobility. They adorn themselves with gold and gemstones, piercing their bodies or even plating their bones with it.Personality
Those spellcasters who seek immortality through lichdom tend not to do so merely for fear of death, but to buy themselves limitless time to pursue their own ambitious goals. Thus, they discard any mortal connections in favor of a solitary existence, generally to pursue magical power and knowledge. Within the Kuneirmeru, many seek this path as a way to be seen as closer to Khemb-Setia and this path is seen as a favored class, not a vile creature. The hallmark of a lich is that it has tethered its soul to the Prime Material Plane, and as a result, most liches retain much of their personality ad even emotions they had in life, at least at first. However, countless years of undeath cause memories to fade and the mind to twist. Eventually, a lich loses all shreds of its humanity. Those in the Kuneirmeru are often much more in tune with their emotions even after long periods of time, due to their close work with the living. The state of existing as a lich is not a pleasant one, and a lich is able to maintain its existence only through sheer force of will. However, over time this willpower warps into an obsessive drive to become more and more powerful. Many soon appear borderline insane in their hunger to acquire arcane secrets. This fixation will often lead a lich to outright forget about its former life, and most liches reach a point at which they abandon their real names in preference for ominous titles and pseudonyms. Perhaps because of this effort to bury their old identities, it is said that speaking a lich's true name can confer power over it, and reminders of its past life are a good way to get its attention. Liches are often proud and arrogant, demanding the subservience of all those around them. Many are also cold and scheming. They care only for their own affairs and usually pay little heed to the living unless their own activities are disrupted or some major event catches their attention. Contrary to popular belief, most do not have explicitly evil goals. Technically, a lich might ascribe to any alignment, however because they often grow so detached from any sense of mortal morality, the living can generally not understand their actions as anything but pure evil. Even so, some liches are known to be amicable and willing to exchange words rather than spells with mortals, or even to offer advice or training. In very rare instances, truly good liches arise, which include those who have a more noble prpose for seeking lichdom as well as those who had lichdom forced upon them.Activities
Liches are avid collectors of arcane secrets and tools, including magic items, potions, spell scrolls, spellbooks, staves, and wands. They use these items extensively, and will design devious traps meant to ensnare adventurers in order to add their victims' magic items to their own collection. Whatever their goals are, a lich pursues them patiently and single-mindedly, usually relying on its cunning, its magic, and legions of lesser undead (which it typically animates personally). Because a lich has eternal longevity, it often uses this time to form schemes that take decades or even centuries to develop, sometimes preferring to outlive its foes instead of confronting them. As such, most liches live in secluded areas of Elaris, where they are content with furthering whatever research or plots they have in motion.Abilities
The average lich is a powerful arcane spellcaster. They can memorize and cast spells as they had in life, and require the use of spell components and spellbooks just as a living caster does. A notable exception to this rule is that some liches are able to permanently commit some spells to memory, becoming one with the spell itself, allowing them to be cast even without material components. Owing to the great depths of time they have to research and practice their magic, it is not uncommon for a lich to wield potent unique spells of their own devising. Liches also possess several unique abilities, such as being able to manifest coldfire; weaken, terrorize, or even kill the living with a touch; drive the living into unconsciousness with just the sound of their voice; and cause fear, pain, or death with a simple glare. Even merely looking upon a lich can compel the weak-willed to flee in terror. As powerful undead beings, liches are potent necromancers and wield great power over life and death: they are able to disrupt the life forces of those nearby and are highly effective at animating the dead, so it is little surprise that they often command small armies of lesser undead. Even good liches rely on undead servants and wield great influence over the undead. Some liches can also regenerate, but more importantly, it is impossible to kill a lich permanently without also destroying its phylactery, a special item or trinket that contains its life essense. As long as this phylactery is unharmed, the lich is immortal: if slain, its mind and soul will leave its corpse and flee to the phylactery, and if the lich's old body is destroyed—such as with a disintegrate spell—a new body will manifest next to the phylactery within a week. This spiritual form of a lich divorced from a physical body is known as a lichnee, and it seeks to reunite with and possess its body in order to resume its unlife. A lichnee is completely invulnerable and impervious to any attempts to harm it as it flees to its phylactery. It can also temporarily inhabit another corpse, which produces a wight-like creature that can only cast whatever spells the lich already has memorized. In this form, the lichness maintains its wits but is limited to the physical capabilities of the corpse, which are quite less than its true form. The lichnee will thus unerringly seek out its real body as if following a locate object spell. Within seven days of ingesting any piece of its true body, the wightish body will metamorphize into a full lich body. Possessing another body in this way is much more difficult if the lichnee is of a more goodly or lawful disposition.Combat
Liches are most dangerous in combat when they have time to prepare their spells and contingencies, and they usually seek to pit their enemies against lesser minions and traps before they themselves ever engage. Before a battle, they will cloak themselves in defensive spells and summon allies. Once a battle begins, they open with their most powerful and wide reaching spells, hoping to slay or ensnare as many foes as possible. They are highly intelligent combatants, and thus adept at quickly adapting their tactics to a chaotic battlefield. Liches prefer to avoid fighting in melee, instead leaving that to their minions or allies. Nevertheless, they are quite dangerous if engaged in close quarters. They are highly resilient, and their animating magics also make them very difficult to injure (and borderline impossible to injure without magic). Spells that seek to charm, put to sleep, enfeeble, polymorph, or inflict madness or instant death largely do not work against a lich. They are further unaffected by things like poison or disease, are difficult to turn, and can not be affected by electricity or extreme cold; in fact, they radiant cold and darkness, and their touch is deadly and paralyzingly cold. A lich's bare hands can strike with magical, necrotizing negative energy. A lich is largely unperturbed by light or radiant energy that might disrupt lesser undead, although it can be destroyed and rendered unable to reform as anything but a demilich if exposed to the symbol of life glyph. They remain easily harmed by positive energy, being the true antithesis of the lich. Older, more withered liches are also particularly susceptible to fire. However, because a lich can not be conventionally killed, it often fights with little concern or fear for its own safety as long as it is confident that its phylactery is safe. For this reason, liches take great care in protecting their phylactery from harm, employing decoys, traps, and other defenses. When put in a situation wherein it does fear for its own safety, a lich is quick to teleport away.Society
Liches rarely leave the privacy of their lairs, although some will travel to places of arcane learning and masquerade as a living spellcaster eager to learn about new theories and research. However, in general a lich keeps only the company of whatever creatures help to secure its lair, over whom they demand total mastery. This most commonly includes constructs—notably flesh golems—or lesser undead—notable animated corpses, flameskulls, and wraiths—but liches occasionaly also work alongside demons, devils, cultists of Krivun, or other intelligent undead such as vampires. Liches are also sometimes drawn to atropals, but they rarely if ever serve a more powerful master if they can avoid it.Creation
Liches can not come about by any "natural" or spontaneous means, and transforming into one requires an individual to make a very purposeful and evil decision to pursue the ancient and terrible rituals that will make them into a lich. There is more than one way to become a lich, but as a rule all methods are secret and complex rites that involve the costly and complex crafting of a phylactery, and the brewing and drinking of a toxic mixture made with the blood of an innocent, known as a lichnee potion. Acquiring the knowledge of one of these rituals often requires making deals with dark gods or fiends—notably Krivun—who demand service or fealty in exchange for the secrets. It is widely known that the Archlich Khemb-Setia has the information to turn another into a lich, despite having been created already in that state of death. Only a living individual that possesses a soul can successfully complete the transformation into a lich, and as such only humans and demihumans can become liches. In addition, due to dwarves being incapable of arcane magic, they can never become liches through normal means.Rituals
One version of the transformation ritual requires augmenting the lichnee potion with a series of spells—animate dead, cone of cold, feign death, permanency, and wraithform—before imbibing it during a night in which Farus or Mesus are a new moon, and neither are a full moon while in the presence of the completed phylactery. If and only if the phylactery and potion are perfect does the individual die and instantly becomes a lich, else they are simply dead and left impossible to revive or resurrect. A more forgiving version of the ritual allows the potion and phylactery to be prepared separately and over an indefinite span of time, however dying at any point in the process before it is completed requires the whole process to be restarted (although the prospective lich can be revived by an accomplice). This manner of achieving lichdom causes the individual to undergo a traumatic transformation directly from being alive into being a lichnee. Yet another version of the ritual apparently does not involve a lichnee potion, but instead relies on calling upon Krivun himself to bless the caster with lichdom. This ritual slays the caster and raises him or her as a lich if successful, however this lich is beholden to Krivun, who has the ability to instantly destroy the phylactery of such a lich if he desires. There is yet another, entirely different process that spellcasters of more noble intentions undergo in order to become an archlich. In some cases, a flawed ritual might produce a lich with weakened or incomplete powers, or alternatively a mage with too little strength to seal their own soul into a phylactery might inadvertently become a boneclaw rather than a lich. Creatures with a strong innate resistance to magic are said to be unable to achieve true lichdom due to many components of the ritual failing to properly take effect.Maintenance
Even once the process of transformation is complete, a lich has to continue to enact special conjurations and enchantments to sustain their undead form, such as by casting arcane preservation on their phylactery once every 777 days. While liches do not necessarily need to feed souls to their phylactery to continue their unlife, they do need the souls of their living to sap energy from in order to regain magical energy. The souls in these cases are not destroyed, but they are heavily sapped of energy before being able to pass on. As such, liches are often despised by many deities, even if the deity is evil-aligned. Some liches are also known to consume captured petitioners to aid in the maintenance of their undead form. Without great care, a lich's magic will slowly fail over time, and it will generally lose both its sanity and its body after around 900 years of lichdom. Only very careful preservation or a transformation into a demilich might avert this fate. A lich can only have one phylactery, but if it is destroyed, the lich can attempt to create a new one. If the lich is destroyed with no phylactery to which it can return, it is truly dead.Dooms
Liches make their lairs in well-fortified keeps and crypts, usually hidden within the wilderness or deep inside twisting labyrinths . Sometimes these are places that they favored in life while other times they are purpose built to trap or kill intruders. Many, including alhoons and baelnorn, rule small domains in the Underdark of Elaris, which they often call "dooms" as a prideful promise to any who might intrude upon them. Such dooms never appear on maps, yet they are functionally governed by their lich overlord. Dooms are often located in abandoned dwarf or gnome caverns, provided that the old delves are large enough for the lich to conveniently move through and are free of any traps that the lich thinks might harm it. Most dooms contain hiding places for magic items and involve a twisting labyrinth of tunnels and chambers. Within its own lair, a lich has even greater necromantic powers, able to lash out at enemies with negative energy or conjure the ghosts of former victims.Notable Liches
Additional Information
Uses, Products & Exploitation
The group-up bones of a lich are used as a material component in the casting of certain necromantic spells, namely soul scour and chill touch, the latter of which is said to allow the caster to wield the same deathly cold hands as a lich.
Civilization and Culture
History
The Death Ward spell is said to have originally been invented by liches.
Common Myths and Legends
It is said that the first necromancer, Leander, was able to bind liches to his will. To this day, no other necromancer has been able to accomplish this deed.
While unsubstantiated, it is said the Krivun can reform a lich that died with its phylactery destroyed, albeit as a highly unstable form that would crumble at the slightest injury.
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Types of Liches
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Lifespan
Functionally immortal, but rarely more than 900 years
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As Race in Life, typically far lighter due to loss of skin and muscle
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