Lich

"My whole life has been in pursuit of these runes. And now, to find them here, broken and incomplete. Perhaps you can now understand why one lifetime is not nearly enough."

- A Lich.

A Lich are necromancers-turned-undead who gain immortality by using the power of Phylactery. There are classified as a creature of the night.

Overview
When some necromancers advance to a "greater" state of being through their magical prowess, they gain a quasi-godhood known as Lichdom. Liches were feared by mortal beings for their malign magic, their intelligence, and their willingness to embrace undeath for a chance to live forever (or rather, exist forever). Unlike most of the undead, which are often depicted as mindless, a lich is sapient, retaining their previous intelligence and magical abilities.

Liches often hold power over armies of lesser undead soldiers and servants. Liches are feared by mortal beings for their malign magic, their intelligence, and their willingness to embrace undeath for immortality.

True Lichs, similar to Natural-born Necromancers, are extremely rare, as they are only be born through the union between a magical mortal, often a witch, with a death-related entity, often either a reaper or a chthonic deity. Striving for eternal life undergoes an arcane transformation to assure eternal life, binding their intellect to their animated corpse and thereby achieve a form of immortality. Liches are usually cadaverous, their bodies desiccated or even completely skeletal. They are often depicted as holding power over hordes of lesser undead creatures, using them as soldiers and servants.

Description
Liches are the remains of great sorcerers 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.

However, unlike what popular media believes, the creation of a Lich is something extremely dark and difficult, considered to be the greatest of all the necromantic taboos, and thus all Lichs are considered by their former community as a stain within their history.

A lich is usually depicted as a gaunt and skeletal humanoid with withered flesh stretched tight across its bones. Its eyes succumbed to decay long ago, but points of light burn in its empty sockets. It is often garbed in the moldering remains of fine clothing and jewelry worn and dulled by the passage of time.

Lich's Phylactery
A lich is created by an arcane ritual that traps the caster's soul within a phylactery. Doing so binds the soul to the mortal world, preventing it from traveling to the afterlife 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 necromancer will transfer some of their own life force unto the object. This process is physically taxing upon the caster, and not all who attempt this ritual survive the ordeal. If so, 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 sorcerer falls dead, then rises as a lich as its soul is drawn into the phylactery, where it forever remains. Upon completion, the Lich no longer needs to fear death, for as long as this phylactery remains unharmed, the lich will remain immortal.

Phylactery
The process of achieving Lichdom required that the spellcaster construct a powerful magical artifact, a phylactery, in which the lich stored its life essence. As long as this phylactery was unharmed, the lich was immortal and would attempt to reassemble if it was ever vanquished (this happened within 10 days after its apparent destruction). It did not, however, grant any of the normal benefits of a phylactery until it was fully completed. For these reasons, liches took great care in protecting their phylactery from harm, employing decoys, traps, and other defenses.

The most common physical form for a phylactery was a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases had been transcribed. Other forms of phylacteries existed, often small or tiny trinkets such as rings, amulets, or similar items. It could also take other shapes if the lich expended more gold and experience to make such alterations.

When the phylactery was created, the magic caster transferred a bit of life force into the creation. While crafting the phylactery taxed the physical strength of the caster, the materials and components could easily exceed 120,000 gp. Overall, creating a phylactery was a very daunting task for anyone of arcane power.

Life Force Absorption
Another process of becoming a Lich involves draining the life force of someone and transferring it back to the Lich's body. One says that to become a Lich, one must force their body into death and beyond. The next part of becoming a Lich is having great necromantic knowledge in the dark arts.

Afterwards, the soon to be Lich must steal souls from their vessels as painfully as possible, as the higher measure of pain and torment from the sacrifices the purer the ascent to Lichdom. Lastly, a powerful relic either evil or good that can be perverted, has to be used as a focus point for casting the spell used to take souls from their owners; the more powerful the relic, the more powerful the soul rending.

Horcruxes
Artificial Lichs are born through using Horcruxes, which are created through a long and complicated process that includes tearing one's soul apart using the death of an innocent. This directly violated one of the necromantic laws' greatest rule - "Never interfere with the inner-workings of one's soul", which would inevitably lead to a punishment from a chthonic god.

Appearances
While they usually come in a variety of appearances, liches were generally gaunt and skeletal with withered flesh stretched tight across horribly visible bones but could vary greatly in appearance depending on their age. Some appeared as skeletons dressed in regal finery, yet others might appear to be nothing more than lepers.

They generally wear robes with a helm and shoulder plates, an amulet, and carry a staff that they use for combat. Bright pinpoints of crimson light burned in the empty sockets of those whose eyes had been destroyed or otherwise lost or were so old they had simply rotted away. They were often clad in dark, tattered robes. When moving, they seemed to glide as if floating on water.

Liches sometimes did not have lips or the necessary organs to produce natural speech, but they had the ability to project speech from their mouths magically, moving the jaw (if present) to aid the illusion.

In the case of the lich that faced off against Trevor Belmont and his group, it appeared to be wearing regal yellow robes, has withered rotted skin, and a skull engulfed in necroplasmic energy within a caged-shaped crown.

Personalities
"Discovering demands experiment."

- A Lich's motto.

Because liches had eternal longevity, they often used this time to form schemes that took decades to develop, sometimes preferring to outlive a foe instead of confronting it, and as such most liches lived in secluded areas of Earth, where they were content with furthering whatever research or plots they had in motion.

There are also those who chose to become liches of their own accord in pursuit of eternal life and limitless knowledge. They usually immerse themselves in their research at dwellings away from human settlements, and they rarely reveal themselves in front of people. To them, even their own body is a material for experimentation. Most of them don’t take much interest in others.

They are liches that were good beings during their life. They could be of any type of spellcaster and devoted their existence to whatever noble purpose motivated their transformation into lichdom.

Powers and Abilities
Liches possess much greater magic than they did while amongst the living. They are terrifying high rank undead that can freely use various spells such as "necromancy" which reanimates the dead into the undead, and "eromancy" which manipulates lust and heightens pleasure.

Liches are some of the most powerful undead as they are able to cast vast amounts of spells, and are able to summon undead such as skeletons and zombies. They apparently can resist magical attacks, and therefore are not to be trifled with; extreme caution should be taken when fighting with one. Liches can see those that are invisible, and have an immunity to all weapons besides holy and light weapons, although some are able to be killed by fire. Additionally, they are able to regenerate health when wounded.

The Lychgate
During the Middle Ages, when the number of Lichs are staggering high and necromancy started to be associated with evil and destruction as a result, a group of three unnamed witch sisters, through a series of complicated and unknown rituals, managed to create a pocket-dimension to be the eternal prison for the immortalized Lichs known as the Lychgate.

The prison, which could only be entered through the lynchgates located at churchyards - representing the gates between the world of the living and the dead, would create tendrils of dark magic to seek out and capture Lichs, before dragging them into the world behind the lynchgates.

In here, the Lichs' magic will slowly be drained away until they are nothing more than magicless piles of rotten flesh and bones.

Elder Scroll
An unnamed Lich is known to have existed sometime during the Merethic Era, during the rule of the Dragon Cult over Skyrim.

One of the first Liches ever created was the Altmer mage Mannimarco, a former member of the Psijic Order, who delved into the dark arts of magic. It was not long until Vanus Galerion, a fellow student of the order, discovered Mannimarco's activities, and the latter was cast out from the institute. During the great battle between Galerion's army and the Order of the Black Worm, Mannimarco transformed himself into a Lich, making him immortal.

Myths and Legends
Lich is an old English word for "corpse"; the gate at the lowest end of the cemetery where the coffin and funerary procession usually entered was commonly referred to as the lich gate. This gate was quite often covered by a small roof where part of the funerary service could be carried out.

Literature
The lich developed from monsters found in earlier classic sword and sorcery fiction, which is filled with powerful sorcerers who use their magic to triumph over death. Many of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories feature powerful wizards whose magic enables them to return from the dead. Several stories by Robert E. Howard, such as the novella Skull-Face (1929) and the short story "Scarlet Tears", feature undying sorcerers who retain a semblance of life through mystical means, their bodies reduced to shriveled husks with which they manage to maintain inhuman mobility and active thought.

Gary Gygax, one of the cocreators of Dungeons & Dragons, stated that he based the description of a lich included in the game on the short story "The Sword of the Sorcerer" (1969) by Gardner Fox. The term lich, used as an archaic word for corpse (or body), is commonly used in these stories. Ambrose Bierce's tale of possession "The Death of Halpin Frayser" features the word in its introduction, referring to a corpse. H. P. Lovecraft also used the word in "The Thing on the Doorstep" (published 1937) where the narrator refers to the corpse of his friend possessed by a sorcerer. Other imagery surrounding demiliches, in particular that of a jeweled skull, is drawn from the early Fritz Leiber story "Thieves' House".

Lich Sub-Species

 * Archlich - The greatest type of lich
 * Alhoon - An Illithid lich
 * Banelich - A lich serving a deity
 * Baelnorn Lich - A elven lich
 * Demilich - An astral lich
 * Dracolich - A draconic lich
 * Nether Lich - A spirit-like Lich.

Notable Lichs

 * Koschei - An infamous lich titled "Koschei the Deathless" from Slavic folklore, known to be slayed by the God of Steel Ivan Tsarevich.
 * Vulcanoth the Collector
 * Drath Mephruhn
 * Horned King - A intimating lich whose main goal was to find the Black Cauldron and use its power to unleash an army of immortal undead warriors.
 * Mannimarco - An Altmer lich, titled "King of Worms", notable for founding the Order of the Black Worm.
 * King of Miscarcand - A lich from Miscarcand that will only spawn after the Great Welkynd Stone was taken from its pedestal.
 * Erandur-Vangaril
 * Lorgren Benirus - A spirit lich who experimented on his slaves and left their spirits to roam his manor forever.
 * Arielle Jurard
 * Barilzar - A lich "worshipping" the god-like being Almalexia.
 * Prince Naemon
 * Gedna Relvel
 * Celemaril Light-Bringer - An Ayleid ruler and lich in the First Era.

Artificial Lichs

 * Herpo the Foul - An ancient Greek sorcerer who first invented the Horcruxes. It is rumored that he invented the abomination of a dark artifact as a way to flirt with the goddess Hecate, but only to be personally thrown into Tartarus for eternal torment by the Erinyes from goddess of witchcraft herself. Some believed he created the Basilisk, however it has being proven false.
 * Voldemort - A "Dark Lord" who terrorized the British Wizarding World and was defeated by Harry Potter. He is most well-known in the lich community as the "fool" who created 7 Horcruxes in less than 100 years apart, thus damaging his soul beyond repair by even the gods.

Quotes

 * "Fucking leaches, no one actually like those cowardly bastards. As if they haven't mess with the natural order by practicing necromancy enough, they have to make us death gods' works harder with shit like this." - Thanatos.


 * "Well, what kind of experiment shall we do today?" - A Female Lich.


 * "My dear Chancellor, I didn’t murder my entire family and use their blood to turn myself into an undead abomination to be told I couldn’t do things." - A old lich.


 * "In life, he drained his own blood from his body. His goal was to transfer his power back into himself after death, becoming a powerful lich." - A Librarian.


 * "My whole life has been in pursuit of these runes. And now, to find them here, broken and incomplete…" - Nevron, the Zulkir of Conjuration.
 * "Perhaps you can now understand why one lifetime is not nearly enough." - Szass Tam, the lich Zulkir of Necromancy.

Trivia

 * A lich can make a new phylactery if the old one breaks.
 * The ground-up bones of a lich were used as a component in the casting of the necromantic spell Soul Scour.

Image Sources

 * (Lich by artdeepmind d90u0le-fullview.jpg) Lich by ArtDeepMind
 * (Mean Lich.jpg) Mean Lich by procatfox
 * (Cristi-balanescu-m20-tomebound-lich.jpg) Tomebound Lich by Cristi Balanescu
 * (Lich dude by trollfeetwalker ddl85ur-fullview.jpg) Lich Dude by Trollfeetwalker
 * (Lich.jpg) Lich by Jetpack7
 * (BourassaArt The Collector Darkest Dungeon.jpg) The Collector by BourassaArt
 * (Drath Mephruhn portrait - Olivia Samson.png) Official art of Drath Mephruhn in his original form by Olivia Samson
 * (Monster Manual 1e - Lich - p61.jpg) Lich from Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (1e)
 * (Monstrous Manual 2e - Lich - p222.png) Lich from Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (2e)
 * (Monster Manual 3e - Lich - p166.jpg) Lich from Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (3.5e)
 * (Monster Manual 4e - Lich - p177 - Chris stevens & Jim zubkavich.jpg) Lich from Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (4e)
 * (Monster Manual 5e - Lich - p202.jpg) Lich from Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (5e)
 * (Archlich 4e.jpg) Archlich from Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (4e)
 * (244 lich L.jpg) Lich from Monster Girl Encyclopedia II
 * (ArchLich1.jpg) Arch Liches from Solo Leveling
 * (OblivionLich.png) Lich Model from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion