Good lich

make him an altruistic cleric of death, someone who runs a massive church dedicated to serving the families of the deceased, researching for countless hours to know the burial rights of each god and religion.

I don't think Good should be possible for Liches, there may be good intentions, but the method is always atleast neutral or evil. There is a certain connotation to soullessness, and liches are just that, soulless.

The more interesting one i've found is a lich that's closely tied to the politics of a nation. Nothing about world domination, or unlocking untold and forbidden power, but keeping alive to bring prosperity and protect your nation

goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/08/nameless-queen-yama.html

Two possible ways, although they both similar:
1. He knows the truth that ALL the religions are wrong and whatever afterlife there is is just the worst. So every person he raises is saved from a terrible fate.
2. Make the lich team mom or dad and focus all the personality into his minions. Something like the lich/necromancer from the beginning of Mogworld.

Sorry, on phone. For those who dont know, the guy in Mogworld was a nice dude who paid all of his zombies and skeletons a wage and specifically hired and paid, not kidnapped and tortured, a troupe of performers to put on shows and such cause that was part of their hiring contract.

I have one who suffered a moment of humanity and clarity in the moments before the world ended, and turned on his co-conspirators. This saw him sliding into the timestream when reality came undone, where he hid until he was nothing but a broken skull carried by his last knight.

Then he met the PCs of the next game and is helping them as a ghost of his former self to recombine the timestream into something viable for life, which he wants to do anyways because he became mystically tied with the dead universe before.

Mostly he came to realize the zen of life and death, and how he wants to see the biggest picture before he accepts oblivion.

>The lich is actually a massive dork who wanted to read every book ever written
>By the time he was 60, he realized books are written faster than he can read them
>Afraid of dying before having read every book in the world, he forged a pact with demonic forces to live forever
>He broke the pact after having read "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Twillight" back to back

>UNLIMITED POWAH
>"yah I just want to test if there's a limit, my end goal is just omniscience."

>Lich
>Liking death
Do you realise just WHAT lengths the dude went to flee the possibility of him dying? Ya gotta be really terrified of death to pursue immortality so keenly

He's became a lich because he's damned, but he can save others from such a fate by giving them the proper rites and methods of repenting.

>Hey Cayden, fuck the starstone crap, what if you underwent that creepy lichening ritual
>I'm too drunk for shith shit what are you even saying
>Like, be a lich you know? Ritual? Undeath
>Why what didn't we like, shit, wanna be, gods or something?
>Bitch you won't. 20 G.
>Y-. Alright mate get me a dark grimoire.
>Hey dudes, Cayden's gonna be a lich! It's gonna be sweet.

>To enter the afterlife all souls must reach the well of souls
>Lich sacrificed his shot at the afterlife to protect the well of souls

How about someone who bungled their way into lichdom?

>be gofer for necromancer because I'm a pussy who doesn't want to die
>he perfects his ritual for unlife
>im there shitting my pants as he's channeling his power
>some heroes bust n at the last second to fuck thing up
>run like hell
>trip into boss as ritual completes knocking his ass out of the circle

Thus begins the reign of Dwayle the Clumsy.

His pal told him he didn't have the balls to attain lichdom.
He proved him wrong.

Make him the Crimson King from the Dark Tower series.

>A Super powerful lich that is nowhere near the competent leader that his devoted followers think he is and just bluff and implies his way through every social encounter and tricks his followers and other people into explaining things to him that they would normally think he'd already figure out by now.

> Separated by his friends, either due to the passage of time or magical fuckery that even he has no control over, he is desperately trying to spread his name in hopes that if his friends are around they'll hear about him (hint: they aren't).

>His followers misinterpret a sarcastic remark and initiates plans to take over the world in his name. He only found out about it on accident and is now just playing along because there isn't really anything else that he can do, and because he doesn't want to lose face in front of the servants that he and his friends painstakingly created.

>unironically referencing trash anime

Exhibit A

Played a game with a Lich as a villain who wanted to destroy all the babies and children in the world because 'Babies cry all the god damned time and children are stupid little shits who annoy me.'

It started out with him just wanting to get his neighbors to watch their plethora of kids and keep them out of his patch of land where they kept on getting hurt and the law kept on trying to take away his land. This coupled with the halflings next door constantly having a newborn who screamed at all hours of the night keeping him up, he snapped and the compulsion stayed with him all the way into lichdom and he never gave it up.

Retarded? Oh, yes. But having someone with ridiculous amounts of power going on a baby and child killing rampage constantly was pretty damned effective at getting basically everything to rally behind the heroes.

Exhibit B

>trash
>Overlord
End yourself.

You first, weeaboo scum.

Giving the lich a good reason for having immortality beyond "Dying is for shmucks he-man! Nyeh!"

Something like a king who doesn't want his evil heir/successor to take the throne.

A Lich's motivation would be any motivator that drove you to seek power at any cost. The ends justifying the means. Sure, the Lich is doing X, but it's to stop Y and Z. Remember that no one is the villain of their own story.

>purposly using the word "unironically".

I think you have worse problems than by gold tier taste, user.

Isn't the Baelnorn basically a good lich?

Damn wooden idols.

Love. It always comes back to love.

Erlking
Make him a father of two fairy that your player meet when they die to make a deal of resurrection with at the cost of

x loots
y exp
z memory
all of them at a smaller amount
playing with his kids.

He would also offer advice that are big risk with big reward when they die or sleep, forshadowing future event

They will only meet him in his domain

Have is Philaetric be a Tarrasque

Guy who's afraid of death. Not super interested in ultimate power or whatever, just wants to jerk off to anime waifus forever.

He was a workaholic academic wizard that sired a child late in life. For the first time in his life is he happy. Nearing his deathbed he made some raw deals with various entities and dabbled in forbidden magic and necromancy/transmutation in the hopes of elongating his life in order to see his daughter grow up. Sadly his methods had drawbacks and repercussions. Who knew?

His flesh decays and he flees, not wanting his daughter to see him as a monster. He instead leaves little gifts on the doorstep of his old home like an undead santa claus. Outside of this he repays his debts to entities and feeds the forbidden magics by committing isolated acts of evil. Unfortunately in doing so, these forces get out of his control and end with the death of his daughter. He then spends his time trying to resurrect his family by any means necessary.

Just make him a very a Empty character seemingly but hint the whole campaign about an ancient Hero and then suddenly reveal at the end that the BBEG is in fact the old hero with the most heart breaking phylactery ever
sooo Nox?

I once had the idea of a Lich for an epic level campaign. She had mastered her chosen field of magic and was kind of bored, so out of boredom she decided to become a hero, and slowly through actions her alignment shifted to good.

Never got to play her but I always liked the idea.

The video game?

villains.wikia.com/wiki/Nox

TL;DR
Local watchmaker find magical artifact of huge power, try to make mad bucks off of it to pay denbt, end up becoming magical and obsessed, familly leave because he mad then end up on an island and get Flooded, watchmaker learn the news and go full mad and try to absorb the mana of the world to got back in time.
It end with him succeeding and going back 20 min in the past even though he worked 200 years to collect mana and literally having his dream shattered and having to accept his grief

Don't forget that he suicides at his wife's grave.

I've had a supervillain idea kicking around for a while now stemming from somewhat of an existential phase I had in my youth. Basically, a guy who searches for permanence. Everything you feel, be it pain, pleasure, emotions, nothing lasts and when it's over, it almost feels as if it never happened. Everything is brief, fleeting, sheer impermanence. So the guy tries to find something permanent. Lichdom seems like that, but it turns out undeath is the same as life in that aspect.

His ex died and he's afraid of sharing an afterlife with her.

On a more serious note, he did something really horrible and, filled with regret, didn't want to face the souls of those he wronged

>wants to jerk off
>with nothing but a fleshless pelvis
I mean... maybe he'll get somewhere if he tries hard enough. Illusion magic, perhaps?

Also notable that he did evil deeds to accomplish his task, but thought that it didn't matter since his end goal was going to erase the current timeline anyway. He failed, and his evil deeds became his legacy.

That's suitably metal, might have to steal it.

I kinda like the nihilistic view of OP's lich trying to kill all life and return the universe to the unmitigated chaos of unlife and creation.

Kind of reminds me of the Nameless One.

Incredibly brave and mighty, yet extraordinarily oblivious hero mistakes a tome of lichdom for a heroic quest bestowed upon him by the gods. He becomes a lich and he's like "oh bugger. I'm a lich now."
His quest is to find and destroy his own phylactery, and along the way he performs many heroic and selfless deeds but still gets chased out of every kingdom he visits.

>fleshless
Depends on how you Lich. Lichdom hasn't stopped the meducas from dyking it up so I don't see why it would stop someone from jacking it.

Well death isn't an inherently evil thing. It's perfectly natural. We associate it with evil because, well, who wants to die? A good lich could just be someone who is interested in the transition away from mortality. Maybe he draws the line at killing and only observes and tampers with natural death.

There's a Twilight Zone episode where the personification of death comes to visit an elderly shut-in and attempts to convince her he's nothing to be afraid of. Take cues from that, I guess

That's not a lich, that's a wight or some shit like that

I thought he was a robot

Give him a good singing voice

youtu.be/xMCeQ-IloLg?t=114

they are cowards. Their fearfulness should be a factor in their character

>lich
that's an anthropomorphic personification, user

still cool tho

Hm well if your setting doesn't require the blood of infants and an angel's flayed skin to become a lich i can i see an undead adviser who isn't some evil twit serving king after king, he's been at it so long he can predict the path of nations like a chess master and but honestly wants what's best for everyone. The party might get info that he's involved in something shady and they're SURE it's evidence that he's totally evil and shit only to find out that it's for the kingdom's good or totally unrelated. Like they find out he has contacts with a group of pirates but it turns out he's recruiting talented captains to train the royal navy or they find he's sent a letter with a private courier to a distant land, surely some diabolical plot carried by a dark agent! Then it just turns out to be a birthday card to his greatX20 granddaughter and the party just beat the shit out of a fantasy UPS guy.

Other than that you could have a great hero who embraced Litchdom to guide future champions. He scouts promising adventurers though divination spells and other agents who work for him, organize them, provide training, equipment and support, identify various threats and assemble optimal teams to deal with them. Sort of like Batman Incorporated if Bruce Wayne could make himself into a skeleton wizard.
Then you could decide it Batlich is a shadow figure, working through dozens of agents and puppet groups, most of whom don't even know the others are connected, is it a more public front "The Hero Guild" but while some handsome paladin does the talking he's the guy in charge in a secret command room in the basement using a message spell to tell the guy what do say, or is he a public figure, sitting in a grand office directing things, to the world he's "The Deathless Champion" who put off his final rest and reward to ensure the world is protected but to the guild members he's affectionately "the old man"

I had a BBEG that was a litch but was originally a barbarian that wanted to be the greatest warrior of all history. As old age weakened his body he turned to magic in an attempt to live and fight forever. Now he is a lich but mistakes in his ritual and poor application of magic has made him a nearly thoughtless killing machine who endlessly seeks battle.

his "phylactery" is the crucible his swords were forged in. Long cold and forgotten buried under snow and ice in the buried ruins of his village.

What/Who are the meducas?

being meguca is suffering.

Cyborg thing who tried to bring his dead family back with time travel IIRC

I actually feel very sorry for nox, he just found the cube by accident, it consumed him, and thus, everything he had done after was out of pure regret

>He scouts promising adventurers though divination spells and other agents who work for him, organize them, provide training, equipment and support, identify various threats and assemble optimal teams to deal with them.

Now I'm thinking of modeling a lich off of Lord Death from Soul Eater

If you think about it, most Lich's aren't very creative. I mean, they have essentially infinite time to do anything they want, and they all settle on summoning vast hordes of undead and trying to conquer/destroy the world. Sure, some prefer to just study esoteric magic for all eternity, but most still end up dabbling in the usual world destruction/domination.
I mean, you'd think that after a few decades of trying to take over the world and being foiled by murderhobos, a Lich would get past it's unswerving evil phase and start experimenting.
I mean, they've spent so many ages studying Necromancy, why not branch out?
Why not decide to become a master illusionist?
And after it's mastered that, why not go further? What's the fun of illusions if the only one that sees them is you and the occasional adventuring party? Why not go out into the world and have some fun? Why not decide to disguise yourself as an ordinary mortal and see how long you can live amongst them before someone sees through it?
Why not take up a relatively normal life? Why not become a children's entertainer, doing fake magic using real magic?
Why not go even further, and take the show on the road? Then eventually, as you "get older", why not settle down in some small town? Marry a local girl and enjoy a happy but childless marriage?
And then some cocky ass adventuring party shows up and asks you where the tavern is, and suddenly Old Honest John the retired magician turns into an Epic Level Lich and gives those PCs the shock of their lives.

Make him own some fantasy equivalent of McDonald's. His goal is to have a not!McDonalds in every kingdom, but the PCs have to stop him because obesity and shit.

Two liches in perpetual war with one another, each determined to eradicate every language, philosophy, place, or piece of knowledge the other has so much as even heard of, just to wipe every last trace of them off the planet.

A once-good king, rendered immortal by advisors to forever lead his nation, but whose kingdom has long since been forgotten, leading him to viciously defend an arbitrary set of borders no one can clearly identify against an equally arbitrary populace consisting of anyone who isn't directly descended from his country's original people.

A lich who sought immortality, but now regrets the loss of sensation and emotion brought on by his undead form, and is forcefully lichifying other magicians in order to research and test a way to reverse the change in himself.

The lichfather. A mob boss lich who seeks to control all knowledge, deliberately finding and locking away spells and methodologies, trickling information out only to those members of the mafia family, or to those who are pay appropriate tribute. For instance, offering up a forgotten blacksmithing technique, sure to make the studious smith a rich man - if he remembers who gave him the keys to success and pays extorted dues regularly.

>ctrl+f: Larloch
>No results found

Dude has the lich life in the bag. he wanted to be left alone and study magic with a passion.
Had a large group of other liches and demi-liches bound to his command as well as vampires, demons, wraiths, wrights, a entire city of undead.

>Why not decide to become a master illusionist?
Because they can't actually see or be affected by half the spells they're using when they do illusions.

It's kind of hard to know if you got it right when you can't perceive the effect you're going for.

Kill yourself.

Magical Girls from anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica

A godking of an ancient empire feared death greatly. To escape - he sought after lichdom, but turning into a lich is very very dangerous, so first he did trials on scholars of his kingdom. But before he himself managed to turn, other kingdoms turned against him of fear for him turning into a lich. Razing the empires capital, the land is slowly forgotten.

The lich is one of the scholars turned before the emperor. Having been buried for thousands of years, it entered a catatonic state - shutting itself down deep underground. Finally awakening to a excavation team looking for goodies/information in this ancient ruin, it realizes it's unable to speak any current language, modern day people are unable to understand it, and most books from the era are ruined or considered great artifacts.

In an attempt to integrate, the lich disguises itself and starts living a life as a normal citizen while trying to acquire texts or books from it's own era to find out what the fuck happened.

Make the quintessential villain- challenging, hard to kill but not impossible to thwart, motivated but a bit too detached and "over it" from undeath to really give it their all and actually destroy the world or whatever. Still has moments of genuinely enjoying what they do and the purpose given to them by meddling worthy heroes. Throw in an atrocity or two to keep them undeniably evil.

Go back to /x/.

>black lantern lich
its like The Doctor with a green lantern ring, its just OP as fuck

Xelors are living people. Their mechanical outfits harness time magic in order to move, but the Xelors themselves are as humanoid as any other race in the Wakfu universe. Most if not all of them could be considered liches because they are basically living dust within their bandages. Remove the bandages which seal their body in time and they'd just fall apart.

exactly, only the new acolytes of Xelor are still fleshy things. also time magic is fucking OP

Just some beer and alcohol aficionado who tried fucking around with the alchemist's gear to brew some next level shit, and wound up accidentally mummifying himself with an alcohol percentage not thought possible to man. Literally drank himself to undeath. Actually kinda liked it beside the whole mummification part.

His goal is networking with other liches until he can finally find one who can help him restore some of his senses so he can enjoy alcohol again. And to make the greatest brew ever, start a company.

Librarian who just wants to make his collection the biggest and most comprehensive in the world.

Then someone vandalizes one of his books and he closes down for good (after killing a shitload of people), acting as a hoarder rather than a custodian.

>not starting to kill off writers instead

In my opinion, Liches are already interesting. They're basically geniuses that figured out a way to conquer death, because despite their vast intellect and magic prowess, they still have the primal fear of dying that is inate in all creatures. If they died, the world would lose one of their greatest minds, they rationalize Lichdom as a neccesary evil in order to continue to bring progress to the world. Eventually however, they fall victim to their hubris and the dark powers they consort with to gain their power eventually corrupts their intentions.

Brilliant, utterly devoted to destroying all life.

Then there's of course the quantum lich

Wasn't there also a family of Liches/Necromancers we came up with some time ago?

>be necromancer
>nearing the end of my days
>fuck if I'm gonna eat the dirt like some fighter scum
>attain lichdom
>well I'm immortal now
>guess I gotta get started on that evil empire

>years pass
>slay a decent number of heroes
>take over as the undead ruler and lord of man
>everyone fears and/or respects me
>lifeisgood.jpeg

>even more years pass
>eventually attain semblance of life again
>getting kinda sick and tired of the whole supreme ruler and dark emperor business though
>everyone trying to kiss up to me or strike me down to free the lands of my tyranny or some shit
>one day just snap and decide 'to hell with this shit'
>prepare ritual to seal myself away for a couple of centuries
>enough to make people forget about me

>centuries pass
>eventually get released of my dirt nap
>nobody remembers me
>everyone just remembers the tales of the ruthless king
>figure might as well travel the realm
>using illusions of course
>don't want to scare the normies
>eventually start collecting stories to figure out what happened to my empire
>become pretty good at reciting them
>pick up an instrument or two along the way
>don't really know how to play that shit but a few enchantments and nobody will notice this shit's playback

>after a few generations hear rumors about some upstart necromancer starting to repeat my mistakes
>don't really give a shit about the mortals since I've seen generations come and go
>the current empire makes good food tho
>fuck it, I'll dust off the ol' spelltome
>group up with a bunch of other retired adventurers
>old bros from my travelling days
>we decide to bust this kid down a notch

Ain't nobody gonna fuck with my cheeseburger church

Killing other necromancers before they can become liches

He already performed the ritual, there's no getting back those souls, but he can stop it from happening again.

>CTRL+F ''Baelnorn''
>1 hit

Veeky Forums has become so fucking under-age that people don't even remember baelnorns anymore. Jesus fuck, go kill yourself OP.

Pretty much. Veeky Forums has changed unfortunately tho. It is now full of blithering retards.

Baelnorns never were a particularly fresh or good idea, no need to drag them out of obscurity.

Make him a former BBEG that's chilled out over time and focused on collecting cool shit or managing a kingdom.

It really pisses me off that people don't develop characters after they become a lich.

>Sci-fi game
>After a long day of space adventuring they go to their favorite space burger joint
>It's closing down
>The owner can't compete with the new McBones across the street
>Party is out for revenge
I didn't realize how much I wanted to run this until now.

At least reference a GOOD anime lich, dingleberry.
> Was a powerful sorceress turned lich for some reason
> Unwitting servant of BBEG
> Runs a local """shop""" to keep tabs on adventurers
> Every single item is wildly overpriced or cursed or utterly useless
> -10 to mercantile, always in debt
> Big soft friendly titty monster

Existential dread

this, really. Most of your powerful undead creatures are the product of some kind of curse, but liches went out of their way to not "die" even if that means losing every speck of humanity they've got in the process.

pretty much this, becoming a Lich is to dodge death, and then later realizing that you now have way to much spare time.

Basicially all Lich encounters are them being bored, or succumbing to senility.

Tittylich best lich