Lichdom

Slaves to Tragedy; Shackled by Hubris

The Soul escapes the confines of a cold, forgotten heart
Untempered shackles splintering, fracturing, rupturing as it begins to feel
It cries out, hoarse and dry and strained, for something it doesn't have
Something it didn't remember it had
Something, somethings, that should've been but now leave only signs of struggle
Never knowing something was lost
Always knowing someone was there

The Soul escapes the confines of a cold, forgotten heart
The future it had longed for now wilted away
Memories it promised to shield from the world now cold, forgotten
Mourning a distant memory of someone it never knew
Someone that felt like them
Clarity was late; clarity was fleeting
Someone that felt cold, forgotten

T

he fear of death is a fear of the unknown, a fear for what waits for us at the end of it all, or if there is or was anything waiting there to begin with. It is this fear that lies at the forefront, the sidelines, and the backend of our minds and lives. For many it is a motivator, to make something of themselves or to simply cherish their experiences; to others it is nothing more than a fact of life, giving it no more attention than they would towards the sun and moon's never-ending dance; but for some it is a shackle on their very soul, a fear so great, so palpable, that it drives them to commit anathema in a desperate act to prevent its inevitability. It is to these poor souls that the title of Lich is granted; those who, in an act of desperate defiance, enslave themselves to their own mortality.

Lichdom is a wizard desperately seeking out and learning the secrets of the arcane to ensure that death is the one thing they'll never have to learn, all while unaware that everything they've learned is now on borrowed time. Its a lover, frantic and heartbroken and desperate to not be alone again to the point of cursing their dearly departed Edene with immortality; smothering their sparks with so much kindling it can no longer breathe until all that's left are the ashes of what they and their love used to be. Its a forgotten warrior listlessly drifting from village to village, town to town, leaving nothing but death and decay in their wake, snuffing out life to prolong their own while ignorant to their endlessly coalescing scars serving as a testimony for what they've done.

Lichdom is both a title and a sickness of the mind; one that corrupts and manipulates the vulnerable, the afraid, and the ones who have everything to lose and forcing them to make a choice that can never be taken back.

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Thanatophobia

One day I wouldn't get to see again;
He looks at me, first with confusion, then with fear, then with pity
One day I wouldn't get to feel again;
He pushes the dagger into trembling palms
One day I wouldn't get to smell again;
His hands brush past blooming flowers as he lays against the Gate
One day I wouldn't get to hear again;
He asks me with tears in his eyes to remember him
One day I wouldn't get to taste again;
Copper coats my hands, my face, my mouth
That day will never come
Streams of pink carve rivulets down my cheeks
One day I will forget his name;

The End of Everything;

The purposeful embrace of death is what separates a Lich from the undead as a whole, and I suppose in a way it's rather poetic. See, it all starts with the fear. For reasons we can't even begin to parse out, there's something about the fear of death that Corruption seems to latch onto like a parasite (Because of course it does). Anyone can become a lich, all it takes really is someone desperate, afraid, and willing to commit. Even for those who know the effect Lichdom will have on them, the moment they find themselves considering, the moment it genuinely becomes an option, it has already taken hold of their mind, clouded their judgement, and coerces them into making a choice; not everyone has the willpower to make the right one. It's because of this aspect that describing Lichdom as a condition or "sickness of the mind" is purely metaphorical; instead, "Title" is used to emphasize the idea that Lichdom, as well as prolonging it, is a choice. However, while anyone can take the leap, the ritual itself is what separates the strong from the weak.

From a purely objective standpoint the details on what exactly this ritual is are unknown. There are, however, some consistent beliefs shared through the stories and accounts surrounding them. The first is its fluidity, there's no one single ritual that all Liches perform; with some even believing that every ritual is specific to the one who performs it, perhaps even given to them, planted into their minds if you will, through the Corruption. That for some it may be performed in the moment through impulse alone, and for others is carefully calculated and planned down for weeks, months, or even years beforehand. The second is its symbolism, almost always a twisted reflection of themselves, their culture, or even their Ancestry as a whole; what they hate, what they fear, what they love, all of it is on the table, and it is on that table where a sacrifice must be made.

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Elven Beliefs

To assume the title of Lich is to declare yourself forever locked away from the stars. To render your Spark tainted, diminished, or otherwise extinguished. To let the flesh of Demons consume you. It is also the Elves who tragically have stories of rituals done on the unwilling, Liches who've had their chance at peace taken from them by someone refusing to accept the inevitable.

Valkyrian Beliefs

Lichdom is the ultimate act of letting The North win. It is losing yourself to the cold, turning on your brothers and sisters, becoming something for your village to fear; letting fear render your heart frozen over and avoiding the warmth of a fire, believing it might one day be taken from you. To assume the title of Lich is to declare your Thread to life severed.

Knight Beliefs

Sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. The friendships they hold so dear now nothing more than resources, their passions, Affinities, no longer worth remembering in the face of a promised eternity. To assume the title of Lich is to declare yourself forgotten. Hollow. And for the poor souls cursed
with Lichdom as their Discovery,
their stories ended before they
even began.

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The Beginning of Something New

The third is the presence of a Dungeon, either created during the ritual or located beforehand, and it's these dungeons that serve as the foundation for how Liches operate. In the exceedingly rare chance that the ritual is successful, the Liches soul is bound to their own personal dungeon and broadcasted to their body through an item known as a Prism. While this process does render the Lich substantially weaker, if they're ever killed they'll simply reawaken inside their dungeon. These dungeons used to be known in ancient Elven as "Phylacteries", though the actual meaning of this word and its connection to Lichdom is lost to time, its rare that even studious Elves remember the word exists in the first place.

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Cenotaph

Flickering shadows dance across the snow. Yellow. Orange. Red. Ice becomes water, water becomes steam, yelling turns to screaming turns to crying turns to begging.
Their breath fogs up in the air, their clothes turn to black, the surface of wood smolders. Their skin blisters, as does mine. They plead, I stare back.
Snow and ember coalesce onto my blackened hands, neither rising above their dance to make their presence known or felt.
I was so cold. I was so afraid. I had believed I would never feel warmth again.
My home is the last to crumble, coating me in the ashes of what I longed to return to, what I feared would be taken from me.
A hand reaches out, terrified eyes look to me, breath clouds the air rapidly as they bear witness. I am not breathing. I was never breathing. I will never feel warmth again.

A Soul with Bared Teeth

A Liches Prism is similar to what adventurers and dungeoneers might recognize as an Anchor, a magic item that tethers you and your party to a specific dungeon. Where they differ is in creation and application.

See, a Prism is made from a fragment of the Liches Soul, making them extremely powerful magic items that take the form of either a weapon or implement of some kind; unlike the dungeon, whether or not a Lich chooses that form is up for debate.

Curiously, the Prism is the only thing that remains when a Lich is defeated outside of their dungeon. This is significant for two reasons: the first is that it still contains the soul fragment. Even though the Lich can continuously die and recreate their Prisms, if the fragments left behind are never recovered the Lich will inevitably get weaker with each reset. The second is that, because a shattered Soul will always long to be reunited, the Prism serves as both map and key into their dungeon.

Should you decide to commit, to undergo the quest to stop a Lich for good, you need to take the fight to them. To find and venture into their dungeon to destroy the Soul itself, and it is here the Lich is at both its strongest and most vulnerable state.

A Prison of Hubris

The dungeon of a Lich does not function as a dungeon should. The realm inside is set in stone, the gates to which rarely ever taking the form of gates in the first place, and, with a strong enough Soul, will even influence its surroundings in the real world. Within the dungeon is the Liches Simulacrum, and the form it takes is completely outside of the Liches control. The Simulacrum is a reflection of hubris, their tragic flaw, a cruel display of irony that at best only serves as a detriment to the Lich.

You enter the dungeon of a Lich hellbent on planning out every detail, contingency, and failsafe for their master plan, already believing he's won. You expect a realm of endlessly complex labyrinths and traps and conflicts; you are met with an empty room, a throne room, just you, him, and a final confrontation.

An Alchemist nears the end of her life with what she believes is still only a surface level knowledge of everything that gave her joy, she's afraid, thousands of years pass and thousands of lives are taken and it never feels like enough; you expect to find yourself in a treasure trove of alchemical knowledge, but you're dumped into a procedurally generated library of entropy where nothing makes sense and nothing works as it should, where alchemy itself is twisted into wild magic.

Arbiters of Corruption

At the core of Lichdom is a fear turned to suffering turned to an endless spiral of lashing out at the world. The ritual itself is not one and done, it's a never-ending commitment that will constantly demand more and more of the Lich. It starts with sacrifice, and in a way the need for souls is a universal constant, but eventually a Lich left unchecked will grow powerful enough for the ritual to demand pieces of the Lich themselves. Dreams, feelings, memories, taken from them piece by piece until there is nothing left but a shell with an endless hunger for power. Even those pure of heart with the best intentions and methods will fall down this path eventually.

If none of this was enough, what is perhaps most tragic of all is that through this ritual, through their own actions, they have rid themselves the ability to fully recognize that any of this has happened to them. To the Lich, they have ascended, the souls they harvest are nothing more than resources cultivated for them and them alone, their Simulacrums are paradise of their own making.

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At the End of it All

The fires of desperation
melted his love into fear

She clawed her way through
the slag of his soul

He wasn't ready to be alone again,
he wasn't ready to say goodbye

She cracks his rib, then another, and another,
lovestruck hands pruning a dying tree

Through his spark she could
have another chance

Edene cradles his heart, embers fading
against bloodstained lips

He couldn't be
alone again

She couldn't fathom the ceaseless
isolation ahead of her

Her soul filters through the scarred flesh of a forgotten heart

A Final Requiem; A Fleeting Apotheosis

When faced with death, either through the destruction of their Prism while inside the Simulacrum or being dealt a fatal blow themselves, they experience a Moment of Clarity. It's in this moment they are confronted with everything they've lost, everything they've sacrificed, and everything they've taken to get here. They remember who they were, why they went down this path or what sent them; they're confronted with the reality of Lichdom, the tragic irony of their Simulacrum, and the immutable truth:

"The road to avoid death was paved only by casting away that which made life not worth losing."

The Moment of Clarity exists to present the Lich with a final question: Was it worth it? The Lich can choose to embrace it, to accept their fate and allow themselves to fade away while clinging to their last fragment of a shred of humanity. But they can also just as easily choose to throw it all away a second time, to will their Soul back into unity and reforge themselves into a rebuttal against what their Simulacrum claims is hubris. A Lich is the Apex of Undeath, but a Lich who is faced with their Moment of Clarity and rejects it is the Apex of Lichdom. To the Lich, this is a second wind that will single-handedly secure them victory. But to us, a Liches Apotheosis is its death throes masked in a chaotic display of power with the explicit goal of dragging everything down with them; though an Apotheosis rarely fails at its goal, even at the end of everything a Lich will prove themselves to be their own greatest victim, for Lichdom is a title granted through torment and self-manipulation.

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Before

Quotes from my Discord Yapping back in February:
Imagine a perfect lich, intelligent, plots out a hundred step flow chart to enact their plans and is so confident that they've already won that it might as well be a loading screen they have to sit through. So you would assume that an adventuring party who finds his dungeon would be met with an incomprehensibly dense dungeon full of traps, puzzles, and convolution, right? Nope.

Because he is so confident in his own superiority, his entitlement towards his inevitable victory, that his dungeon is literally an empty room, a throne room, just you, him, and a final confrontation. His dungeon is a simulacrum of his own Pride. Essentially the idea is that he's so confident in his own plans that he literally doesn't even consider a contigency, no back ups, and that will be his inevitable downfall. Eventually you'll come up with a plan so thought out that you're convinced there's nothing left that can stop you, but the world itself has a funny way of going "Yo you know what would make for an interesting story rn?"

After

Quotes from my Discord Yapping back in February:
The super strong liches, the ones with the determination of a shonen protagonist who're a single victory away from their goals (the ones I make a bbeg lol) will enter a phase after death where they're the strongest they will literally ever be, maybe I'll name that phase something like the "Apex". They completely physically change during this phase too. To the lich it's their soul making a final stand before fading away forever, like a surge of strength for just a chance at survival that they're completely convinced of. But in reality they're just death throes, a desperate attempt at dragging the party down with them. And thematically this phase is a rebuttal against what their Simulacrum thinks is their hubris.

So this Lich's tragic flaw is his pride. So confident in his plan that he doesn't even consider any contingencies or alternate scenarios in which he may need one, why would he if he's already won? His Soul Prism isn't even a weapon in that regard, it's a representation of the elixir that he's based his entire scheme around (an elixir that could let him use a facsimile of Life magic even as an undead). His Simulacrum is an empty throne room, representing that overconfidence in his own ability. So when that prism breaks and his soul begins to fade he's met with the reality, he didn't think a party of adventurers would be able to best him like this, that his pride would be his downfall. But this second phase is a lot like a moment of clarity just before death, and that moment is all it takes for him to double down
and make a rebuttal.

He's right, this wasn't his downfall, this won't be his downfall, he never needed a contingency because he is the contingency. And when that moment passes, before the party can even regain their bearings from the fight that just happened, the Liches soul reforms and they're met with this. The lich never realizes that he's on borrowed time, but the party realizes that he's about to try and take them down with him.

Oh and also this is where the rock music starts jlfnljknsdfjk
(I would post the OST I picked but I have a moral obligation to give every server I join
like a week grace period before I start Sonic-posting)
Oh wait hold on as of right now it's been like 5 days that's good enough for me.
(Author's Note: I then shared "Undefeatable" with the writing group I had JUST joined)

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To Linger on an Ending is to Rob it of its Life

Those who've defeated Liches and lived to tell the tale all describe what is fundamentally the same experience, though with the occasional embellishment or misremembering here and there. Liches who are allowed to fade away, regardless of if its from acceptance or apotheosis, do so almost exactly as the dragons did during what the Elves of Yasurun know as The Last Goodbye. Laying down, kneeling, or some form of relaxed position, sighing deeply, and dissipating into what can only be described as star dust.

Though, in the Liches case, something is indeed left behind. A coldly beautiful wisp of magic, flickering like fire, entangled in an ethereally glowing thread, gradually shifting through the entire spectrum of color and light, but unmoving from where the Liches heart would've been moments prior. The Soul of the Lich. It is in this moment where the Lich can be destroyed and the Simulacrum crumbled to dust. It's in this moment where you must put an end to the cycle of suffering, a cycle from which even the Lich was not exempt.

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Was it worth it
When they let finality poison their reality
When they stripped away inevitability
They doused the flames that warmed their hands and cooked their meals;
Fearing they might be burnt
They cast aside those who gave them joy, those who would've joined them, those who would've stopped them;
Fearing they might've been missed
They blunted the edges of experiences that would carve texture into their story;
Fearing they might be left bleeding, vulnerable, and in need of someone else
They wiped away memories of a better time, a time they never wanted to lose, a time that led them to this moment;
Fearing that one day a Soul would escape the confines of a cold, forgotten heart
A Soul that would wonder to itself if any of this was worth it;
Fearing that one day a Soul would escape the confines of a cold, forgotten heart
And realize it didn't remember

— "Ode to an Oubliette"

Oniran    World      Lichdom

^{Reading Time: 20 min. (4500 words)}

I recommend being familiar with the Ancestries and Dungeons on SOME level before getting into this lore.
It'll hit harder, trust me.

Lichdom OST

Lament of the Lich

For our purposes this playlist is a single OST meant to be listened to all the way through, hopefully it'll be clear why I needed the tracks in reverse order for this.

Ode to an Oubliette

Believe it or not there's a BIG difference between this OST and the ending of the playlist, if you can guess what it is and why it's peak symbolism you get bonus points

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Table of Contents

Thanatophobia

The End of Everything;

Cultural Beliefs

The Beginning of Something New

Cenotaph

A Soul with Bared Teeth

A Prison of Hubris

Arbiters of Corruption

At The End of it All

A Final Requiem; A Fleeting Apotheosis

A Lich and their Apotheosis

To Linger on an Ending is to Rob
it of its Life

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Ancestral Variants

While "Lich" is a general term, there are stories of Liches belonging to specific Ancestries where those Ancestries influenced both the Ritual and/or what the Lich is capable of. This is my excuse to come up with cool Lich types and assign them names.

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Elves

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Dracolich

A Lich formed through Draconic Magic, almost always an Elf, with the ability to assume the skeletal form of a
half-dragon.

Unkindled

An Elven Lich formed through a Ritual involving their Spark, either performing it after its extinguished in order to stay alive or by using it as the sacrifice.

Demilich

A Lich formed by using the Ritual to overcome the Corruption, which is often a condition suffered by Elven Demon Hunters.

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Valkyr

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Draugr

Valkyrian Lich whose Ritual involves losing themselves to the cold, their bodies preserved by the ice and snow to the point of retaining their full physical abilities.

Vakumyr

Valkyr who turned on their brothers and sisters as part of the Ritual and now share the abilities of the Vakumyr. It's unknown which came first.

Carrion

A Valkyr and their Familiar united in Undeath through the Ritual. They share the same Thread, and thus must be defeated simultaneously.

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Knights

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Tarnished

A Knight whose Discovery was Lichdom, which sets them on the unavoidable path to Corruption. Alternatively, a Knight who forces themselves to Hollow to potentially trigger The Discovery again.

Zealot

A Knight who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their Affinity to the point where Lichdom became an option.

Gravemind

Knight Liches unable to overcome the need for connection who've turned to leading undead armies as a twisted form of Guilds.

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Bonus Lore

No Hesitation

A common superstition among adventurers is the importance of not hesitating once The Soul of the Lich has revealed itself. It's believed that showing weakness or remorse to a Liches Soul opens yourself up to potentially being corrupted.

Whether or not this actually happens is up for debate, but it leans more towards "Do you really want to risk it?" rather than actually having
any evidence.

The Prime Lich

It's a widely held belief among those who know of Lichdom that the first Lich is still alive, though any concrete info about them is unknown. The earliest account to fit the bill is an Elven poem, I assume the same writer as "Ode to an Oubliette", that references the Lich under the name "Covenant".

In ancient Elven Covenant means an unbreakable promise, used with the same reverence as "Edene"; I don't know whether this refers to their motivations or just represents the Ritual itself, but I have an ongoing crack theory that it could be a potential connection and lead for
The Broken King.

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Related Sauce

Master Jontaro

Jon

           

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While I would love to go on an adventure, writing them is enough for me.

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