Liches Doing Normal Things

>inb4 in MY SETTING...

It's all morally relative. The souls of women and prepubescent children would be acceptable sacrifices.

Eberron had good liches, but they were Elves so...

Anyway, it really depends on the setting. Sometimes, it's relatively easy to become a lich. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice children to the dark gods or do other gay shit to become a lich.

Either way, it's perfectly valid for a setting to have non-evil liches, so I don't see why we can't post pictures of them doing perfectly normal shit.

>what is a Baelnorn
>what is an Archlich, literally what happens when you don't take the dark magic shortcut that is standard Lichdom

>"you can't use your preferred setting to base your liches on."
>"anyway, here's my preferred setting to base liches on."

Only the straight ones.

Sure, and in my settings liches are not evil OR immortal, they're not even undead. They're tiny flying creatures resembling pixies in all ways except for the name.
I now demand that you use my liches as baseline all others should be compared to, as opposed to an exception.

I like idea of lich adopting children, I kind of want to make so he is raising a new generation of necromancers by supporting an orphanage and going off there to read tales for the children - and then have one of the players come from this place.

Of Course

>the head principal of the esteemed and famous mage school is an ancient jolly lich

That's so cool, user! That's kinda like what Tolkien did with Orcs; take something that existed before and change it almost completely, to the point where it takes on a life of its own and is now more popular than even the original.

Although, I recomend that you instead make something less well-known into tiny flying pixies. Maybe you can make them Sprites, or Chupacabras, or whatever you want. It's a lot easier to convince people when they don't really know about the original already, you know?

Would a (relatively) peaceful kingdom of undead that replenishes it's population by adopting the unwanted kids of neighboring nations be a good play on the whole "undead scourge that grows stronger by consuming the living to add to it's ranks"?

>"There is no such thing as minor changes or creative licence. There is only the exact same to my specifications or there is completely different or awful."
You know that there are better ways to get your (you)s, right?

Up yours, corpsefag.

Maybe, but nations of good undead have kinda become cliche at this point. What you don't see a lot of, however, are undead who aren't evil, but aren't really jolly or likeable or anything.

Imagine, if you will, a nation of neutral undead. They don't slay the living by the thousands, but that's mostly because they don't actually do anything but stay in their necropoli and try to ignore the outside world. Maybe they'd increase their numbers by having hidden agents in neighbouring realms, offering new "lives" to poor and destitute street urchins.

Of course they can, however they still need to fill out the paperwork THEMSELVES. Some liches keep sending their minions to do it, and honestly turning away a skeleton that can't speak is very hard.

>year 2050
>gays get equal rights
>but not liches
I can see the protesters now. Their reeee'ing louder than all the futuristic sounds of the city.

Nah and fuck people who try and make Liches "sympathetic".

>Kill Lich
>"Oh but in the corner of the room you see a cat, puppy and little girl, who it adopted, crying as you slay their guardian"

Everything always needs to have a good side nowadays.
Why can't something, or someone, just being generally despicable?
A Lich has to do some fucked up shit to attain immortality.

>"But they don't in my setting!"
Fuck you and your setting.

It's been agreed upon for years upon years that a Lich has to do fucked up shit to become a Lich and that they eventually lose their capacity for emotion, over time, running on nothing more than dark energy and cold hard logic.

A Lich isn't some misunderstood hero who became a Lich to help them in their righteous quest.
They are a Wizard who desecrating their mortal form and immortal soul for ever-lasting life and greater magical potential.

>Points at those Elf Lich things
>"See, there are good Liches?"
That's hardly the same and incredibly stupid to call them Liches.
They are simply bound to tombs or important places by a powerful magic ritual.
They don't have to commit horrid acts and they aren't powered by negative energy.

TL;DR?
NO!
They are creatures kept alive by negative energy and run on logic.
They would not be able, or have any inclination, to care for another living creature.

That explains why the lich destroyed the realm! They were upset that everyone was trying to make gay marriage legal, but didn't even consider the plight and oppression faced by the nonliving.

...

>he thinks that dnd is the only setting there is

Yeah, well they should get in line. Robots are getting oppressed too but they're not spending their eternity REEEEIING so loudly.
They want rights, they make themselves useful and get employed.

Sayaka is my wife.

Nobody care about d&d bullshit. They don't have a big monopoly of fantastical creatures.

Cats are neutral evil anyway. Possibly chaotic neutral.

Well said, brother.

Depends on the ritual to become one
If, for example, it involves tearing your soul asunder and putting most of it in the phylactery, then you've literally lost most of your humanity just by becoming one
If it's just enchanting a phylactery and shoving it somewhere secret, then go ahead and be a humane lich, but it loses flavour that way. Evil characters become liches because they're depraved enough to do anything for power, it shouldn't be an avenue that good characters consider

...

Nigga, we're talking about mundane shit, not good shit.

>"but liches are crazy! Their emotions have been deadened by long years of undeath, and they don't see things as humans see things."
Have you never heard of crazy cat ladies? You could have a lich villain who's an antagonist because of his insanity, not his evil. In that case, it would actually be MORE dehumanizing to see the lich caring for pets - it'd show that he's gone completely insane.

>"we all agreed that liches have to be evil"
Are we just gonna ignore all the examples of liches who became undead so they could learn forever in peace? How about the ones who did it "for the greater good?"
No? Just the ones that are omnicidal boss monsters? Okay.

Honestly, that example here of liches needing to constantly eat souls is a bigger asspull than the idea of good liches - I've never heard of an example stating that liches needed to continually feast like vampires and other undead. The fact that they don't have to worry about that stuff is kinda the main reason wizards choose to become liches in the first place.
You know, now that I think about it, the soul-eating thing just sounds like a BS way of forcing liches to always be villains and never be neutral. No wonder user liked it so much: it conformed to all of his biases.

After several hundred years of immortality I imagine even liches get bored of evil.

Thanks, Onii-Chan!

To become a Lich they have to commit truly evil acts and become powered by negative energy.
Book-worm or homicidal maniac, they are still evil when they attempt/become a Lich.

Re-read and stop bastardising Liches.

It doesn't necessarily have to make them sympathetic. It's not beyond an evil being to care for it's progeny.

That depends on if you buy into the 3.5 idea that Good and Evil are forces inherent to the universe like Heat or Entropy, in which case the whole thing becomes divorced from regular morality. A lich could still save orphans and care for his pets and never hurt a living creature, but still be Evil because negative energy is spooky.

Incidentally that's a perfectly okay thing to do. It's an interesting dynamic to see that Good is not always good, and that Evil is not always evil, and whether it's more important to be Good or to be good.

>Muh good liches
Eat shit and die.

>running on logic is considered a bad thing
LuL

It's not the 'for the good of the most people' logic
It's self-serving logic

How about no.

Logic doesn't make them evil.
The acts they committed, their willingness to commit vile acts and the negative energy that sustains them make them evil.

Liches can save villages from the raiding Orcs or unleash a deadly plague.
But after a time, they only think with cold hard logic.
Why save the village when the Orcs will just create fresh corpses?
Why adopt living creatures when you can study?
Save the Kingdom from destruction because the Kingdom is useful.
Don't save the tavern wench from bandits because one person means nothing to a being that outlives thousands upon thousands during its long "life" span.

Reddit

>stop bastardizing Liches
So you prefer them to be one dimension, cliche villains?

I tend to hate setting specific systems being EVIL or GOOD inherently. Rather, different systems tend to attract different sorts of people, and eventually each system or set of systems determines what's "Good" and what's "Evil"

This doesn't mean the ultra-edge of "Everyone is morally grey" - I tend to play my villains quite straight, and the line between good and evil in the players eyes are generally quite clearly delineated. I just don't make it a function of the system, but the person that's attracted to the system.

This all fits in with Liches because >in MY SETTING
The way you become a lich isn't Evil in and of itself, it just requires a very specific type of person to willingly dissect themselves while still alive, while knowingly committing a heresy against the widely followed religion, all for some enhanced strength and technical immortality.

Generally this sort of person tends to be what most people would consider "Fucked Up Mad Douchbags", because it requires one be an edgelord and at the very least quite fanatically devoted to becoming an immortal, and those two traits rarely mix well.

There's at least one "Good" lich, but he's really more kin to True Neutral and he's only really a lich because he wants to play Light Yagami with the world and he's a bit batty. He's only sympathetic by comparison to the mad court he hangs out in (gotta get paid, yo).

I prefer them to be villains. Everything else is you making shit up.

> Nah and fuck people who try and make Liches "sympathetic".
And fuck those people who make villains one-dimensional too. You can make a character have a good side - and it will make it even more villainous. Beautiful pictures Hitler drew, Stalin's great sense of humor, and so on, don't make them good people, but make them way more memorable. And nobody - literally nobody - becomes a villain for the sake of being a villain. The only exception may be insane serial killers (but they just believe they are doing an important thing) and demons/ devils/ whatever fantastic infernal creatures you have - and even they are not always completely malevolent.

>everything else is you making shit up
Oh wow,it's almost like they aren't real and this topic is about games that are all about making shit up. Hoo boy

> I come here to shit on people whose posts I don't read.

>Muh one dimension
Neck yourself.
Liches are powered by negative fucking energy and commit atrocities to become immortal.
They can be heroes but only when they benefit because why else would an immortal caster which runs on cold logic help?

See above.
They can be helpful or destructive but why would they be philanthropic when they could lose their precious immortality?

>Beautiful pictures Hitler drew
The fuck? Hitler was awful. So awful he couldn't even get into college to be a proper starving artist.

Why do you think he hated jews so much? He blamed them instead of his shitty art!

> Muh edgy cardboard characters beter dan ur complicatd stuf
Go to /h/, spend some time there. Seriously. You're too angry. A good fap will help you siphon all your negative energy.

Still way better than half of what modern artists draw.

Because sometimes people change their mind. Imagine a Lich whose been alive for decades, maybe even centuries, and something about him changes over time and he decides "you know what, I did some shitty things, maybe I'll go ahead and try and use my immortality to make up for my decisions and help people."

>This meme again
Fuck off, reddit

I thought art school was to improve your art
It isn't?

Also, some of the graduates of that school were garbage, worse than Hitler's stuff

D&D Lichs who aren't evil make for really terrible parents.

I mean, they couldn't take care of themselves so hard that they didn't even notice they were dying and reborn as undead.

IRL we had the Andes kingdoms, where most of the land and goods belonged to mummified lords and princes. Those certainly could adopt, even tough it would be their servants taking care of the child-rearing as they were quite immobile, quite non-sentinent and quite dead.

I don't know about you guys but Hitler really liked to have an airship castle. If only he spent his money on an airship castle..

From what I remember, all of that is from when he had already conquered Germany. It's not the art he showed up at university with.

Plus Vienna was full of people who could paint in that style and on and above that level, so it's natural than he didn't make it.

>Benevolent Liches

The owner of the orphanage was once a simple but fairly gifted healer. He wasn't particularly wealthy, the building wasn't a grand estate, but he made sure the children always had good food, warm beds, and as much attention and love as he could give to them. And, naturally, he kept them healthy.

Time marches on, of course, and despite his magic bolstering his aging body, he knew that his time was growing short. Death itself didn't frighten him- he'd lived long enough to come to terms with mortality. But he despaired at the thought of one of the children seeking him out one morning and finding him cold in his bed. More than that, there was no one to take his place as caretaker. He had no family of his own to pass the orphanage on to, and he had long since outlived all his old friends. Seeking out potential staff in the village was fruitless; those he felt suited to the job were too busy with their own lives, and those with the time to spare weren't the sort he wanted raising his children.

What he really needed, he decided, was more time.

He'd already been pushing his healing magic to it's limits to rejuvenate himself. But perhaps... if he came at the problem from the other direction?

It took him nearly a decade of study, research, and experiments. He bartered and begged for old tomes and battered grimoires, cajoled whatever esoteric knowledge he could from wandering mystics, and more than once secreted himself away in the middle of the night to call on primordial spirits for wisdom. His strength waned as the years went by, but he always made time for the children- seeing them safe and happy in his home kept the fire in his soul burning.

And, eventually, when everything was in place...

When the night was dark...

When the stars were right...

When the circle was drawn and regents gathered...

The old healer laid his head down one final time.

And the eternal guardian of the orphanage rose up.

You mean cliche on Veeky Forums, as I have literally never seen this happen IRL.

Apologies if I'm confusing you with another user, but stop ping-ponging between arguments. Are liches evil, or has logic put them beyond understanding morality.

If the latter, that doesn't stop them from doing mundane stuff, or even altruistic stuff. It just means that they're not doing it for altruistic reasons.
Like, you can care about shit because you find it fascinating, even if you don't have empathy for it. This is especially true for liches who have forgotten what being a mortal is like.
>"wow, look at that cool spider spining it's web. Facinating. I'll try not to destroy it in my negligence, and maybe even prevent threats from destroying it."
>"wow, look at that mortal child playing it the woods. I'll make sure not to destroy it in my negligence, and maybe even prevent threats from destroying it."
Of course, this altruism only lasts as long as the lich's attention span, but when time is that meaningless to you, there's a better chance that the child dies of natural causes before the lich loses interest.

If the former, then the only support your argument has is tradition.
There's so much that's been left vague about Liches, trying to put them 100% of them into the same category is foolish. What exactly is the evil ritual needed to become a lich? how evil is it? Is it the kind of act that can be redeemed or done for an altruistic cause, or is it completely vile and irredeemable?
We don't have anything close to answers to these questions, so basing our decisions on assumptions that we do have answers is stupid.

Never seen nightmare before christmas?

One example is not a cliche.

"I have literally never seen this happen IRL."

Even WoW did it.

>literally the craziest cunt in a show about nothing but crazy cunts

Try harder, at discussions and life.

People do change their mind but Liches aren't supposed to feel emotions after a while.
So feeling bad doesn't really come into it.

Can they do good to try and win over the loyalty of the people?
Sure, but why would the Lich do that when he can hide away researching spells that could enslave them all without risking himself?

Don't worry you got the right user.
The actual ritual is up to the DM but it is accepted across most, if not all, official (read non-homebrew) settings that the ritual is an unforgivable evil.
You have to be evil to be willing to commit the act and the act itself fuels you with negative energy which makes you ping evil.

Most undead are considered evil even if they are mindless because of the negative energy that fuels them.
There are benevolent undead but most undead are evil.

Living solely on logic doesn't mean you aren't evil.
It means the Lich has no emotions so for them to make decisions they will naturally gravitate to the most pragmatic choice.
They can have goals.
Maybe even goals that started off as altruistic.
But ultimately, committing the ritual (whatever evils that may entail) AND being fuelled by negative energy make the Lich evil.

Demons and Devils could commit good acts and they would still be evil due to their very being being evil.

One last thing that I couldn't fit in.
Tradition is a perfectly valid reason and a strong one as well.
Tradition is the foundation of RPGs.
Tradition is what makes Wizards and Sorcerers separate classes.
Tradition is what makes the various races and sub-species recognisable.
Tradition is what makes Liches corrupt the land around them and mark them as abominations against nature and anything good (positive energy and alignment).

>liches be allowed to adopt??
Isn't there a book by China Miéville with that ?

I'm assuming we're ignoring Ebberon. That's fine, by the way.
Thing is, if we're only looking at official setting, that means that we're playing with 3.5 morality. Is it an unspeakable act of evil, or is it an unspeakable act of Evil-with-a-capital-E? The answer is, either; the ritual is, after all, up to the DM.
But if it's up the the DM, and if the DM makes it Evil but not evil, so what? Why should I give a shit if becoming a lich releases 3.2 killo-spellpoints of negative energy into the atmosphere? Why would that affect the lich's eligibility to adopt?

But does being fuelled by negative energy make them omnicidal? Will an uncontrolled zombie seek out the closest living thing and kill it, or will it just stand around and do nothing? Before you answer that, keep in mind that positive and negative energy elementals (I think they're called energons or something) are True Neutral, and that the primary lifeform on the Positive Energy Plane are fucking Oozes (and they're far from saints).

I hate to use the word nihilism these days, what with Rick and Morty degenerating at it's current speed, but undeath/immortality doesn't make all your desires long-term and Machiavellian. Sometimes you can have goals, and sometimes you can just have momentary desires. Sometimes, those momentary desires are calling that ball of fur and warm flesh Fido, and giving it a hipbone of a zombie you're not currently using.

Not that important, but those things have reasons of existing beyond just tradition. The differences between wizards and sorcerers and the different subspecies are very well defined, and have stayed consistent. The precise nature on liches have nowhere near that consistent. All we know for certain is that it requires at least one act that can be considered "evil," in a morality system that allows for redemption after out-of-allignment acts.

Yeah, more realistic art. This one cares less about humans and more about buildings that we literally see every day. Real fancy.

>Liches are Evil

If the villagers thought anything of the caretaker becoming more reclusive, his advancing years were a perfectly valid excuse. The children that showed up in the village on errands appeared health and happy enough.

The regions unwanted children were still brought to the orphanage. Nurtured by their unresting guardian, these kids grew into robust youths and would leave.

Years passed.

Some say it was death that warped him. After all, what man could shrug off his mortality unchanged? Others that it was the passage of time. The years a man was never meant to live could only make him something other. But maybe it was always in him. The same love that drove him to dark and profane rituals could only drive him to it again.

Seeing a child expire of some illness he couldn't cure or even hearing of a former charge passing of old age was no longer tenable. They were his children after all and he had the knowledge to protect them from all life's ills...

>we're ignoring Ebberon
Good thing we're ignoring it, cause there's no such thing

I know you're trying to turn my nice impromptu storytime back to horror, but I'm just pleased someone used it as a prompt to write something of their own. Kudos.

He's right tho brah, Tolkien does

T.animefaguu

But we are not talking about people, are we? We are talking about liches, those who stripped their soul from their bodies, who amputated their own mortality and rejected their humanity for more power, more time.

It is so hard to think them, that time no longer has so strong a grasp on them? In abandoning death, death may have abandoned them. In abandoning time, time can no longer heal their wounds.

A lich might appear a dessicated corpse, a walking skeleton being puppeered by a soul as a mockery of life, or even as a corpse that you wouldn't recognize as dead were it not for the lack of a beating heart. But they are wrong. So much is wrong with them.

Time heals all wounds, but they are timeless. A man forgets, a lich remembers. A man forgives, a lich seeks vengeance as if the wrong has been commited that very day.

Because the thruth is, in unlife the lich sacrificed its ability to change. They are static, traped in the mindset that spawned them, unable to cope, to pass beyond, to become a better or worse person. They are the same pitiful individual that performed the ritual to lichdoom, forever.

That is the curse of those who defile their nature to gain a permanency they weren't made to bear.

They can be cunning yes, and gain insight of the modern world. But their lenses will always be those of the man that was, and let me tell you, good men do not perform the foul ritual that spawn a lich.

Ayway, that's my take on it in any case.

Lol look at this nigger faggot
Honestly, making a moral gray area could be interesting but they can't be fully benevolent. Either they went through a long process of avoiding soul binding dark magic or they've killed to get this far.

The nicest lich personality should be like the ice king. He's achieved this power to help Marceline but got crazy and evil. I could see it enlisting necromancers but still need a soul to devour

>Those who stripped their soul from their bodies
To ask the autistic question here, why is that Evil? Why is separation of soul and form fundamentally evil or dehumanizing, especially if the soul and form still have a form of communication?

Does a TV having a remote instead of a dial make it less of a TV? Would it be Evil to separate the dials from the TV and replace them with a remote?

Because the only way to do it is to pervert the natural order. THERE IS NO NATURAL THING ABOUT BECOMING A LICH.

Provided they intend to give the child an egalitarian education that allows for freedom of choice at the age of consent in their realm for the inevitable "join me in undeath" offer.

I can imagine worse parents though.

He's autistic, user. Be kind

I feel like 80% of tg is the lunch table at community college that plays MTG to pass time while autistically screeching and acting like they live in an anime

Nor is there much natural about industrialization, arcane magic, or much of civilization. That it is not natural sounds much akin to the fundamentalist arguments made by pelorites against subjugated members of their society for centuries.

Pray tell, what is natural about healing magic as it subverts natures method of removing the weak of body?

Or the skilled cut of a surgeons scalpel removing the diseased organ?

Brother, I ask of you but to consider your life, such as it would be, were it to be *natural.*

I can tell you, it would be ugly, brutish and short.

Do not hate the liche, rather be emboldened by his actions! He seeks to rise above mortality and improve humanity for it! A sacrifice most are unwilling to make, yet you hurl churlish insults.

Think well on your behaviour today, and do better in the future.

I'm about to explode this thread.

Evening glory
>prophet is a lich
>glory is TN
>prophet is TN
>church is a mix of living and undead creatures
>love

Boom

Liches are usually not actively evil. However they are often played incorrectly as actively evil and seeking the destruction and suffering of others. This is not actually the case as liches that live long enough become demi liches.
Another problem is that demiliches are also played incorrectly. What is a demi lich really and why is it only a skull? To understand this you need to explain what really happens in the unlife of a lich. A lich was a mortal creature and only becomes one in order to stave off inevitable death. They do this because they still have so much more to learn and knowledge is always their primary motivator.
Eventually the body of a lich withers away, the skin reveals bone, and the bone dries out and starts to crack. After thousands of years nothing is left of the body anymore except for the skull which acts as a conduit between the demi lich and the physical realm. Actually the demi lich has abandoned the shackles of physical existence and transcended into a higher dimension of thought. Unshackled they are able to experience many new things and learn many more secrets than ever thought possible, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time.
They only act in the physical realm when their skull has been disturbed, their tactics can show their detachment but they're still very powerful. Given the right circumstances they can materialize the dust and remains of their old form as a physical form again until the battle is over, the heroes / tomb robbers are dead, and they can return to their journey.

Is this evil? It's definitely selfish and an affront to natural life, they have no qualms harming others, but they're not always the embodiment of evil.

Evening Glory is cool. I really wish they had taken the concept beyond just "the necrophilia goddess." Stuff like death being the lover's embrace that ends pain and brings inner peace.

Better then most of this thread, good job user.

While being "natural" in the real world is meaningless it is very important in fantasy. Magic is natural. It is weaving the energy of the world from one form to another. Dark magic is unnatural, you twist it into shapes it should never be. Industrialisation is unnatural (as shown by Tolkien) and that is why most fantasy settings don't have it, it kills the land, harms the spirits, takes the skill away from the crafts.

Healing magic is natural, you communicate with life to ask its aid in returning the body to how it should be. Undead should not be, and that is why healing hurts them.

When a soul is separated from the body in the way it is for a lich, it suspends the natural order. The soul is trapped, suspended, its tethers to its body weak and sickly, only enough for it to not move on into the afterlife. The body is hollow, its inputs no longer their to ground its mind, no longer there to feed it humanity.

Well, for starters you are deliberately playing with your very soul, to obtain something that will be harmful for you, without real need to do it, and with means that are fueled by evil acts.

Imagine lobotomizing yourself in exchange for candy.

I would simply like to point out that undeath is fueled by the negative energy plane which is an elemental plane.

About as nature as the pep, or the other elemental planes.

There is nothing wrong with doing differently than in D&D

You're not describing Demiliches, user. You're describing Acererak. Demiliches do more than just contemplate infinity and Astral Project places.

Demiliches do all sorts of neat things, very few of them actually evil. There was this one Demilich called Sharlee the Enchantress (or something) like that who took the form of a jewelled hand instead of a jewelled skull. She was given a quest by Mok'slyk the fucking Serpent himself to save Arcane Magic itself by scribing a spellbook that contains every spell ever. She now spends literally all her time writing spell after spell in her book, while all her underlings go out into the multiverse to find new spells for her to scribe.

Are all D&D players as terrible as the ones in the thread?

>Tolkien
>Liches

Sure. Now show me which settings allow PC liches.