Lich King's Phylactery
A group of individuals stand in a charnel horror, surrounded by dead, destroyed unliving, and a few of their friends who fell in a battle just concluded. A youth, berathing heavy from the exertion, turns to a grizzled vetran nearby.
Wow...That took a lot...We won, though, the thing is destroyed.
Young fool, think ye that the pow'r o' th' Lich be so small it be subject t' mere destruction by force of arms?
What to you mean...It's dust on the ground.
Aye, its form be dust, but wi' it reforms ye'll be mighty sorry ye dinna find th' phylactery.
Phylactery? What's that?
Youth... Listen then, and learn a thing.
...
What, then are we to do. I understand what is needed, but how do we end this abomination forever?
Why, find an' destroy the phylactery, o' course... Aye, here it lies.
The older, grizzled veteran grunts as he lifts a large stone slab, with some surreptitious help from the youth beside him, beneath is a small chamber. The youth, eager and foolish, darts forward to grasp the small object within, a flash and pop, and the youth falls dead.
Arrgh, stupid youth. Ye ne'r jump b'fore checkin fer magic 'round a Lich's phylactery!
The grizzled veteran calmly takes a wooden stake from his pack and, reciting a prayer, drives it through the chest of his companion's corpse.
We don' need 'nother vampire, th' Lich hae too many o' them already.
The veteran calls a thin reedy older man over, and that man conducts a few rituals, finding the powerful wards, and carefully removing them one by one. Another man, a large and robust, but surprisingly agile, brute comes over after the wards are removed, and carefully examines the space, then skillfully disables yet more mundane dangers. Between them they carefully extract the small locket guarded by these many wards and protections.
There 'tis, bring it t' the anvil.
They carefully carry this tiny thing, so innocuous looking, to a large iron anvil nearby.
Eh, took months o' research an' prayer t' learn what we need, an' months more t' hae this cold iron anvil made. Ne'r fight a Lich wi'out learnin first how t' find an' break their phylactery.
With that, the older individual takes hold of a massive forge hammer, carried in a jewel encrusted case carried by an associate, and with the utterance of a prayer, the hammer suddenly gleaming with blinding bright holy radiance, the hammer is brought down with a massive blow, the crack of deafening thunder, and an intolerably bright flash, the locket is left shattered in three parts upon the anvil, and the dark iron is somehow transformed to base lead.
Ahh, 'tis done, the soul unbound the foul creature'll pass on t' whichever eternal prison be it's destiny.
The group gathered what treasures they had found, and their deceased companions, and began to make their way back to the city, their task complete.
Of all the terrible artifacts associated with the foul Lachendon, the Lich King's Phylactery is the most mysterious. The phylactery was destroyed at the end of the War of Undying, and in that destruction the lich was destroyed.
The Lich King's Phylactery was exceptional, as all things associated with that horror were. Most phylacteries are small items, a box, or a locket, or perhaps manacles; some small item that can be closed. The Lich King's Phylactery was a massive sarcophagus, fully twelve feet long, and 4 feet high and wide; made entirely of a pure black granite darker than the most accursed of starless nights. Ensconced within a massive tomb, carved into the root of a mountain, and lined in wall, floor, and ceiling with purest white Dovestone.
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