Notes of Lichdom

Liches are the remains of great wizards who embrace undeath as a means of preserving themselves. They further their own power at any cost, having no interest in the affairs of the living except where those affairs interfere with their own. Scheming and insane, they hunger for long-forgotten knowledge and the most terrible secrets. Because the shadow of death doesn’t hang over them, they can conceive plans that take years, decades, or centuries to come to fruition.
Secrets of Undeath. No wizard takes up the path to lichdom on a whim, and the process of becoming a lich is a well-guarded secret. Wizards that seek lichdom must make bargains with fiends, evil gods, or other foul entities. Many turn to Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath, whose power has created countless liches. However, those that control the power of lichdom always demand fealty and service for their knowledge. A lich is created by an arcane ritual that traps the wizard’s soul within a phylactery. Doing so binds the soul to the mortal world, preventing it from traveling to the Outer Planes after death. A phylactery is traditionally an amulet in the shape of a small box, but it can take the form of any item possessing an interior space into which arcane sigils of naming, binding, immortality, and dark magic are scribed in silver. With its phylactery prepared, the future lich drinks a potion of transformation — a vile concoction of poison mixed with the blood of a sentient creature whose soul is sacrificed to the phylactery. The wizard falls dead, then rises as a lich as its soul is drawn into the phylactery, where it forever remains.
Crafting a Phylactery A phylactery is a legendary magic item that has an interior space – such as an amulet, a ring, a small box, or a small coffin – into which arcane sigils are inscribed in silver. The phylactery binds the lich’s soul to the mortal world, and prevents it from passing on to the afterlife.
Crafting a phylactery is a difficult and complex task, which takes 10 days and requires valuable gems, metals and spell reagents worth 50,000 gp or more.
Brewing a Potion of Transformation The potion of transformation is a vile, magic potion that both serves as the means of the future lich’s demise and the bond that links the lich’s soul to the phylactery.
Brewing the potion of transformation takes 3 days. The potion is brewed from the heart of a humanoid infant, 1 quart of blood from a vampire, 5 doses of wyvern poison, 3 doses of purple worm poison, and 2 doses of midnight tears, making the total cost of the potion 15,000 gp. These ingredients only make a very lethal potion, however – to finalize the potion of transformation, it must first be infused with the blood of a sacrificed, sentient creature during the final stage of the ritual of lichdom.
Performing the Ritual When the aspiring lich has prepared both its phylactery and a potion of transformation, it can perform the ritual of lichdom during a full moon. The 1-hour-ritual involves the weaving of powerful, necromantic magic, obscure phrases and – sometimes, but not always – dark prayers to evil entities such as Orcus or Vecna, and can only be undertaken by a spellcaster who can cast 4th level spells.
The ritual culminates with the sacrifice – willing or not – of a sentient creature with an Intelligence score of 7 or higher, whose soul is consumed by the phylactery (making resurrection impossible). The blood of this creature is then mixed with the potion of transformation, and ingested by the aspiring lich at exactly midnight.
Conclusion If the ritual was performed correctly, the character dies instantly upon consuming the potion of transformation, but its soul becomes absorbed by the phylactery instead of leaving the mortal world. Shortly after, the character’s physical body reanimates as an undead lich. Though its mortal vessel is now soulless – its soul remains contained in the phylactery – the lich character retains its personality and sentience in its undead form.


Soul Sacrifices. A lich must periodically feed souls to its phylactery to sustain the magic preserving its body and consciousness. It does this using the imprisonment spell. Instead of choosing one of the normal options of the spell, the lich uses the spell to magically trap the target’s body and soul inside its phylactery. The phylactery must be on the same plane as the lich for the spell to work. A lich’s phylactery can hold only one creature at a time, and a dispel magic cast as a 9th-level spell upon the phylactery releases any creature imprisoned within it. A creature imprisoned in the phylactery for 24 hours is consumed and destroyed utterly, whereupon nothing short of divine intervention can restore it to life.
A lich that fails or forgets to maintain its body with sacrificed souls begins to physically fall apart, and might eventually become a demilich.
Death and Restoration. When a lich’s body is broken by accident or assault, the will and mind of the lich drains from it, leaving only a lifeless corpse behind. Within days, a new body reforms next to the lich’s phylactery, coalescing out of glowing smoke that issues from the device. Because the destruction of its phylactery means the possibility of eternal death, a lich usually keeps its phylactery in a hidden, well-guarded location.
Destroying a lich’s phylactery is no easy task and often requires a special ritual, item, or weapon. Every phylactery is unique, and discovering the key to its destruction can be a quest in and of itself.

Type

Manual, Magical / Occult

Medium

Vellum / Skin

Myth

The Myth of the First Lich

Location

Tower of Echirok the Lich

Authors

• Pentergost