Living Spellbook

A sort of neutral variant of the more famous lich, a living spellbook is a tome of knowledge that a wizard has bound their soul into. When the wizard dies, a copy of their consiousness is stored in the book and is able to interact with the world through the magic they knew in life. Technically, they are constructs with souls rather than undead, as the soul within is merely a lesser copy of the original wizard soul, not the real thing, though it can be very difficult to tell the difference. It is unknown what happens to the original soul of the wizard, but it is believed that it is destroyed in the process of creating the copy soul. This is best proven by the simple fact that a living spellbook only recalls what was known to the wizard at the time of its creation, but not anything that happened after the fact it was not present to witness. Most wizards that create such spellbooks hide it in their hope to keep their knowledge and technical immortality safe, so the gap in experience between wizard and soul can be quite pronounced. The technique was first developed in the Dragon Wars as a way for spellcasters to ensure that the knowledge of magic would not be lost even if large conclaves of spellcasters were destroyed all at once. In the modern age, the spell to create a living spellbook was classified as a secret of the eighth circle of the Guild, so all references to the tomes were destroyed or captured and the knowledge itself reserved in the libraries of guild leaders. Some of the books teach classes or apprentices, but per Guild rules they simply insist that the book is a unique artifact that cannot be replicated. 
Once the copy soul is in place, the book becomes its own entity. A still living wizard that carries their own living spellbook can effectively converse with themself, and there are some advantages in a spellbook that can perform its own magic. The process carries one particularly glaring and unfortunate weakness, that being if it is destroyed while the creator wizard still lives, the mortal flesh of the wizard no longer has anything animating them. Essentially, the wizard becomes a living being with no soul nor any way to think.

Scientific Name

Construct