Lich

A lich was an almost universally evil form of undead spellcaster of great power, usually a wizard, but also possibly a sorcerer or cleric. 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). Lichdom was arguably the most powerful known form of undeath. "&mdash;My whole life has been in pursuit of these runes. And now, to find them here, broken and incomplete&mdash; Perhaps you can now understand why one lifetime is not nearly enough."

- Nevron, the Zulkir of Conjuration and Szass Tam, the lich Zulkir of Necromancy

Description
Liches were generally gaunt and skeletal with withered flesh stretched tight across horribly visible bones, but they could vary greatly in appearance depending on their age and level of decay. If their eyes had been destroyed, lost, or rotted away, bright pinpoints of crimson light burned in their empty sockets. Liches often 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. As their bodies continued to degrade over the eons, a lich might eventually become a demilich.

Some liches dressed in rich and regal finery and jewelry, others wore the clothes or uniforms of former occupations or allegiances, while many appeared to be nothing more than lepers as their clothes had rotted away. When moving, they seemed to glide as if floating on water.

Personality
Liches were often proud and arrogant. Those spellcaster who had sought lichdom tended to do so to pursue their own ambitious ends, casting off any social connections to lead a solitary existence pursuing magical power and knowledge. A lich was able to maintain its state of undeath through its force of will, but over time, this willpower warped into an obsessive drive to become more and more powerful. Many soon appeared borderline insane in their drive to acquire arcane secrets. This fixation would often lead a lich to outright forget about its former life, and most liches reached a point at which they abandoned their real names in preference for ominous titles and pseudonyms. Perhaps because of this effort to bury their old identities, it was said that speaking a lich's true name could confer power over it and reminders of its past life was a good way to get its attention.

Many liches cared only for their own affairs and usually paid little heed to the living unless their own activities were disrupted or some major event caught their attention. Contrary to popular belief, most did not have evil goals. Technically, a lich might ascribe to any alignment, however because they were so completely detached from any sense of mortal morality, the living could generally not understand their actions as anything but pure evil. In very rare instances, truly good liches may arise. These could be those who had a more noble purpose for seeking lichdom, or even those who had lichdom forced upon them.

Activities
Liches were avid collectors of arcane secrets and tools, including magic items, potions, spell scrolls, spellbooks, staves, and wands.

Whatever its goals were, a lich pursued them patiently and single-mindedly, usually relying on its cunning, its magic, and legions of lesser undead which it would animate personally. Because a lich had eternal longevity, they often used this time to form schemes that took decades or even centuries to develop, sometimes preferring to outlive a foe instead of confronting it. As such, most liches lived in secluded areas of Toril, where they were content with furthering whatever research or plots they had in motion.

Abilities
The average lich was a very powerful arcane spellcaster. They could memorize and cast spells as they had in life, and required the use of spell components and spellbooks just as a living caster did. Owing to the great depths of time they had to research and practice their magic, it was not uncommon for a lich to wield potent unique spells of their own devising.

Liches also possessed 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 could compel the weak-willed to flee in terror.

As powerful undead beings, liches naturally wielded great power over life and death, and were able to disrupt the life forces of those nearby and were highly effective at animating the dead. Even good liches relied on undead servants and wielded great influence over the undead.

Combat
Liches preferred to cast spells rather than to engage in melee combat, but were quite dangerous if they did. They were highly resilient, and their animating magics also made them very difficult to injure (and borderline impossible to injure without magic). Spells that sought to charm, put to sleep, enfeeble, polymorph, or inflict madness or death largely did not work against a lich. They were further unaffected by things like poison or disease, were difficult to turn, and could not be affected by electricity or extreme cold;   in fact, they radiated cold and darkness, and their touch was deadly and paralyzingly cold. A lich's bare hands could strike with magical, necrotizing power.

A lich was impossible to permanently kill without also destroying its phylactery, a special item or trinket that contained their life essence. As long as this phylactery was unharmed, the lich was immortal: if slain, its mind would leave its corpse and a new body would manifest next to the phylactery within ten days of the lich's apparent destruction. For this reason, liches took great care in protecting their phylactery from harm, employing decoys, traps, and other defenses.

Society
Liches rarely parlayed with anyone save whatever creatures helped to secure its lair. They preferred the company of constructs or lesser undead, but occasionally worked alongside fiends or other intelligent undead&mdash;such as vampires, &mdash;and they were known to use nightmares as steeds.

Creation
The process of achieving lichdom was very purposeful, evil, and secret process. Acquiring the knowledge often required making deals with dark gods or fiends&mdash;notably Orcus&mdash;who demanded service or fealty in exchange for the secrets.

The transformation required that the spellcaster construct a powerful magical artifact, known as a phylactery, in which they would store their life essence so as to tether their soul to the Prime Material plane. Crafting a phylactery was not a simple or inexpensive task, nor was the ritual by which the spellcaster transferred a bit of life force into the creation. During a full moon, the aspiring lich had to drink an extremely poisonous potion created from the blood of a sacrificed victim and enchanted using a combination of the spells animate dead, cone of cold, feign death, permanency, and wraithform. If and only if the phylactery and potion were perfect did the individual die and become a lich, else they were simply dead and left impossible to revive or resurrect.

Even once this process of transformation was completed, a lich had to continue to enact special conjurations and enchantments to sustain their undead form, notably by continuing to feed their phylactery with souls via the imprisonment spell. Failure to do so would cause them to slowly fall apart.

Dooms
Liches made their lairs in well-fortified keeps and crypts, usually hidden within the wilderness or deep inside twisting labyrinths. Sometimes these were places that they favored in life while other times they were purpose built to trap or kill intruders. Many, including alhoon and baelnorn, ruled small domains in the Underdark of Faerûn, which they often called "dooms" as a prideful promise to any who might intrude upon them. Such dooms never appeared on any maps, yet they were functionally governed by their lich overlord. Dooms often were located in abandoned dwarf or gnome caverns, provided that the old delves were large enough for the lich to conveniently move through and were free of any traps that the lich thought might harm it. Most dooms contained hiding places for magic items and involved a twisting labyrinth of tunnels and chambers. Within its own lair, a lich had even greater necromantic powers, able to lash out at enemies with negative energy or conjure the ghosts of former victims.

Uses
The ground-up bones of a lich were used as a component in the casting of the necromantic spell soul scour.

Types of Liches

 * Alhoon : An alhoon was an illithid lich.
 * Archlich : While the overwhelming majority of liches were evil, an archlich was a spellcaster who sought undeath to pursue noble goals, and chose to do so by pursuing a somewhat different form of lichdom.
 * Banelich : Clerics of Bane transformed into undead servants by the God of Tyranny. As baneliches grew older, their powers increased as well, until they were as powerful as any other lich.
 * Baelnorn : An elven archlich was called a baelnorn. They did not use phylacteries as their undeath was gifted to them by the Seldarine. Elven liches become undead to become backbones of their family. They were sources of magic, wise council, and guardianship.
 * Demilich : This advanced form was achieved when a lich felt it could not learn any more in its present state and sought other avenues to attain knowledge. It might do so by using astral projection to travel to other planes of existence. Dracolich - Fred Hooper.jpg
 * Dracolich : A dracolich was a dragon who had achieved lichdom. The process required to do this was discovered by Sammaster, former Chosen of Mystra.

History
In the, the lich Velsharoon ascended to become a god whose portfolio encompassed liches.

As of the late 14 century DR, liches could be found prowling the Battle of Bones in the Western Heartlands. Other places thought to be haunted by liches at this time included Castle Spulzeer, the Crypt of the Wondermakers, Myth Rhynn, and the Smoking Mountains.

Notable Liches

 * Alokkair, the wizard-king of ancient Hlontar known to have his lair in northeastern Shadowdale.
 * Asbaron, master of a famous dungeon in the southern Stonelands known as the Cavern of Death.
 * Iriolarthas, a Netherese lich and later demilich who was the leader of the flying city of Ythryn and the Wizards of the Ebon Star.
 * Larloch, a mighty Netherese lich, the former Sorcerer-King of Jiksidur, and master of Warlock's Crypt, where he lorded over many other liches.
 * Morik Stormhand, a vicious lich from Undermountain who felt unending hate towards Clangeddin Silverbeard.
 * Rysellan the Dark, who founded the Twisted Rune in Calimshan.
 * Sammaster, the founder of the Cult of the Dragon.
 * Szass Tam, the infamous regent of Thay and the Zulkir of Necromancy.
 * Valindra Shadowmantle, an elf lich in service to Szass Tam, and a former Overwizard of the Host Tower of the Arcane.
 * Zhengyi, the Witch-King of Vaasa who conquered Damara in the mid–14 century.
 * Zrie Prakis: a powerful lich, controlled by his once-lover Cassana, who was partially responsible for creating Alias.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden
 * Hellgate Keep • Dead in Thay
 * Novels
 * Azure Bonds • Red Magic • The Summoning • Haunted Lands (Unclean • Undead • Unholy)
 * Tymora's Luck
 * Video Games
 * Descent to Undermountain • Icewind Dale (game) • Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn • Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor • Neverwinter Nights: Infinite Dungeons • Sword Coast Legends • Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear • Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation • Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford • Baldur's Gate III
 * Baldur's Gate
 * Board Games
 * Dungeon Command: Curse of Undeath
 * Card Games
 * AD&D Trading Cards
 * Dungeon Command: Curse of Undeath
 * Card Games
 * AD&D Trading Cards

Connections
Leichnam