What would an immortal lich do with his time?

Would it take up any hobbies? In that case what kind of hobbies would a lich pick up?

Martial Arts.

He'd play dwarf fortress with his undead puppets.

If I was an immortal lich, I'd probably start by scouring the world and resurrecting important figures and leaders to have conversations with them about their lives, writing biographies about them.

Hell, maybe I'd even take up sewing. No proper Lich wants to be in tattered rags, after all. My finger bones could even be used as needles if I sharpen them properly. Hell, I've have the best-dressed army in the known world! I could even make myself a nice logo or insignia...

Making magical items, then cursing them.

I don't think the sort of people that become liches have hobbies

Shitpost on Veeky Forums.

Can't fool me you undead faggot

Reading.
Tabletop gaming with its pals. They have plenty of time, and first-hand experience as dungeon masters.

Depeneds on what his hobby was as a wizard

The art of rhyming over skeletal beats of course.

How about a lich who's obsessed about cooking.
Can't taste anything himself but abducts local townspeople and forces them to critique his food.

Party gets some hint about a lich kidnapping people, finds them in some ruin chained to a dinner table with heaps of croissants or something.

"IT IS I CAPABLANCA THE NEFARIOUS LICH, YOU HAVE FALLEN RIGHT INTO MY TRAP"

out comes a Lich in an apron with his name sequined on it and a tray of food

"NOW! TELL ME! What did you guys think of the dumplings because for a while now I've been thinking I put a tad too much sugar in them"

I'm going to spring this on my players at some point

Tattered rags are an aesthetic choice. A decent lich goes to great lengths to get just the right amount of raggedness to his robes, so that they still flow in an imposing manner, but give the impression of ancient forces beyond mortal ken.

Building dungeons and filling them with traps and monsters to protect his phylactery. Every time he finishes one, he decides that it's not good enough to protect his precious immortality, moves on and starts anew.

So that's why there are so many random dungeons popping up all over the world.

>a lich who likes to cook but can't taste his own food
That's pretty ironic.

Build a massive stadium that can hold 200,000+ spectators for !notBloodBowl everyone will be welcome. For entertainment and publicity, teams of my undead will play against one another, but the real attraction will be open invitations for the world to bring forth their best players and gladiators to compete against my leagues of undead for fame, fortune and to be forever immortalized as my star player

Even if this isn't the most likely answer, it is the best one.

I think I'd go around fucking with the politics of large kingdom for the lulz or work to make lich-animals. I would love to have an undead-magic cat and/or dog to keep around the Tower of Darkness.

More likely they're an extension of the academic's preoccupation with The Great Work to the exclusion of all else. Serious academics frequently go long stretches without sleep, meals, bathing or doing laundry. Imagine how long you might get wrapped up in your work if your body didn't need regular upkeep.

collecting tiny glass figurines.

Make endless pointless threads on Veeky Forums to kill time and boardspace

Lich seem to be generally obsessed with the arcane. So building new spells or magic items would be the obvious choice. The BBEG Lich in my campaign is obsessed with conquest so he uses the souls of celestials he kills to power rituals than flip large landmasses of the material plane and the shadowfell to give him armies of undead to conquer the world. He dreams of conquering all of the planes so he can control the magic in all of existence.

I suppose its the other way around - you have some agenda that you wont be able to finish in your lifetime and thus you became lich, to have more time and power, to reach your goal.

Sit around and study biology and magic while using their necromancy to make funds on the side for research by bringing hack loved ones for a price or whatever.

Had a Lich do that in one campaign with the party walk in on her while she was in the middle of dissecting a halfling.

He learns to play the xylophone.

Learns the art of casting fist without any muscles.

Find other immortals so we can make long-running bets on which countries and characters will rise to prominence and for how long.

Reverse collecting. Find a way to inspire an item to become a collectible.

Pick an arbitrary person and systemically wipe out every person, country, language, and ideal they have ever so much as heard of, just to see if you can. If so, pick someone else and try to beat your record.

Supplant the indigenous wildlife of a planet entirely with magical crossbreeds. Then crossbreeds of those crossbreeds.

Learn every dance, martial art, and instrument. Learn to create the relevant equipment for when the instruments are eventually forgotten.

Realistically, invent new board games. You can only play the classics so long before you crave variety.

Experience every variety of bodily death you can, knowing your body will safely regenerate by your phylactery later. Get yourself repeatedly killed in battle and pretend you've made it to Valhalla.

Decorate them bones. Become the most dapper dead motherfucker that ever did fuck dead mothers.

Challenge the local peasantry to staring contests with your eye sockets, or thumb wrestling contests with your detachable thumb bones.

Sculpting. The sculptures are, of course, so masterful and lifelike that anyone who comes across them will think that they've been petrified rather than sculpted.

It would be quite influenced by it's newfound immortality but i'd imagine it would be dependent on the lich's personality and likes.

If it were greedy it might seek more power by aligning itself with a god.

If it were benevolent i'd imagine it would look for a long term goal like inner peace or teaching magic

if it's an idealist it might champion an ideology like egalitarianism or the natural order of inequality.

If it's a hedonist it might buy a nice ocean view condo with a big ass library and spend it's time collecting art, literature, and drugs.

If it's adventurous it might travel the world and utilize alter self to experience many lives. Maybe it tries out running a bakery, becoming a student at a church, or adopting a family.
Since power and applied knowledge are already claimed the lich might seek out experiences instead.

Finally getting round to reading all the books he's accumulated.

Even better, those would-be players who are taken out "before their prime" are raised to be the Young Guns for the Undead Übermensch ensuring there's always a top-tier running for the Lich.

I mean once you reach that goal, you're sorta left there like "well shit...I completed what I couldn't in my mortal lifetime now I've got an eternity to fill in." It's not hard to think that the majority of the lesser known Lich's are age old who completed their goals and went underground badumtss to play out the rest of their undeath.

Majority of the "MUHAHAHAH" Liches are the newly raised ones. After the first century most tend to mellow out.

He'd like to think he would work tirelessly on a generations long project since he has committed unspeakable acts to see it to fruition.

But he mostly just procrastinates since he can always start tomorrow.

Creating an undead race without any deficiencies of being undead and all the perks!
Transhumanism, the death magic way!

probably kill everyone

>Planning his next move, Lichdom is a means to an end, not the end. Be it resurrecting a love, his magnum opus, his revenge, subverting established institutions (Monarchy, country, etc).

D&D Liches are insane OCD mages who were so obsessed with doing X that wanted to avoid death. They therefore do not have hobbies.

>you are now imagining a bunch of lichs sitting around a table arguing over dungeon design

>"But a trap that would make it rain zombies is freakin' awesome!"
>"Gods, Jim, this is why a bunch of scruffy ill-equped hobos keep robbing your dungeon, all your traps are shit!"
>"Oh, that's rich coming from someone who's hardest trap is a big round boulder! It's cliched!"
>"It's a classic!"