Liches

A Lich, sometimes called a Lichnee, is an almost universally evil form of undead spellcaster of great power. Liches are feared 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.  

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 crimson light burns in their empty sockets. Some maintain a hint of their old hair or beards. Liches often 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 the illusion. As their bodies continue to degrade over the centuries, a lich might eventually become a demilich.  

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.   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 the personality and even emotions that 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.   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 often leads 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 are so completely detached from any sense of mortal morality, the living generally cannot understand their actions as anything but pure evil. In very rare instances, truly good liches arise, which include those who have a more noble purpose for seeking lichdom as well as those who have 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 design devious traps meant to ensnare adventurers in order to add their victims' magic items to their own collection.   Whatever its goals were, a lich pursues them patiently and single-mindedly, usually relying on its cunning, its magic, and legions of lesser undead (which it 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, where they are content with furthering whatever research or plots they have in motion.  

Abilities

The average lich is a very powerful arcane spellcaster. They can memorize and cast spells as they did 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, 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, a lich is impossible to permanently kill without also destroying its phylactery, a special item or trinket that contains their life essence. As long as this phylactery is unharmed, the lich is immortal: if slain, its mind and spirit 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 manifests next to the phylactery within a tenday. 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 lichnee maintains its wits but is limited to the physical capabilities of the corpse, which are quite less than its true form. The lichnee thus unerringly seeks out its real body as if following a locate object spell. Within seven days of ingesting any piece of its true body, this wightish form metamorphizes 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 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 cannot be affected by electricity or extreme cold; in fact, they radiate cold and darkness, and their touch is deadly and paralyzingly cold. A lich's bare hands can strike with magical, necrotizing power.   A lich is largely unperturbed by light or by 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. Older, more withered liches are also particularly susceptible to fire. However, because a lich cannot 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 travel to places of arcane learning and masquerade as living spellcasters eager to learn about new theories and research. However, in general, a lich keeps only the company of whatever creatures help secure its lair, over whom they demand total mastery. This most commonly includes constructs—notably flesh golems—or lesser undead—notably animated corpses, flameskulls, and wraiths—but liches occasionally also work alongside demons, devils, cultists of Orcus, 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. They are known to use nightmares as steeds.   Liches are not able to sire children.  

Creation

Liches cannot 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 would 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 Orcus—who demand service or fealty in exchange for the secrets. A full ritual is also said to be detailed in a rare tome known as The Tome of Vile Darkness. Only a living individual can successfully complete the transformation into a lich.  

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 full moon in the presence of the completed phylactery. If and only if the phylactery and potion are perfect does the individual die and instantly become 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 could 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 Orcus himself to bless the caster with lichdom. This ritual slays the caster and raises them as a lich if successful, however, this lich is beholden to Orcus, who has the ability to instantly destroy the phylactery of such a lich if he desires.   It is said that the process and requirements for a divine spellcaster to become a lich is yet a different process; however, it is overall very similar to the methods used by arcane spellcasters. There is yet another, entirely different process that spellcasters of more noble intentions underwent 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 completed, a lich has to continue to enact special conjurations and enchantments to sustain their undead form, such as by casting Nulathoe's ninemen on their phylactery once every 777 days and by continuing to feed their phylactery with souls via the imprisonment spell. Failure to do so causes them to slowly fall apart. Some liches are also known to consume larvae to aid with the maintenance of their undead form. Without great care, a lich's magic slowly fails over time, and it generally loses 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 alhoon and baelnorn, rule small domains in the Underdark, which they often call "dooms" as a prideful promise to any who might intrude upon them. Such dooms never appear on any 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.  

Lich Variants

The form and powers of a lich in life, as well as the means and motivations behind its ascent to lichdom all serve to create distinct forms of liches that often have little in common with each other beyond their transition to undeath. Below are examples of various types of liches.

Alhoon

An Alhoon, also known as an Illithilich, is an illithid lich.

Archlich

While the overwhelming majority of liches are evil, an archlich is a spellcaster who sought undeath to pursue noble goals, and chose to do so by pursuing a form of lichdom that allowed them to keep their personality and morality intact indefinitely.

Banelich

Clerics of Bane transformed into undead servants by the God of Tyranny are known as Baneliches. As baneliches grow older, their powers increase as well, until they are just as powerful as any other lich.

Baelnorn

An elven archlich is called a Baelnorn. They do not use phylacteries as their undeath is gifted to them by the Seldarine. Elven liches become undead to become backbones of their family. They are sources of magic, wise council, and guardians of their homelands and people.

Demilich

This advanced form is achieved when a lich feels it cannot learn any more in its present state and seeks other avenues to attain knowledge.

Dracolich

A dracolich is a dragon who has achieved lichdom.

Pseudo-lich

A relatively short-lived undead that results when a wizard's soul refuses to leave their body upon their death.

Hierarch

Hierarchs are Sorcerers who leverage their magic laden bloodlines to achieve lichdom

Intoner

Intoners are Bards who utilize the magic of their arcane melodies to tie their lichdom to the memories of their listeners

Blight

A druid who corrupts the natural lands around them to achieve lichdom is known as a Blight.

Necromaton

Necromatons are artificers who achieve lichdom by turning their constructs into living phylacteries that house their soul.