What would you do with your Phylactery Veeky Forums

>>find big rock in middle of nowhere
>>carve a hole that would be a comfortable size to reform in
are you this guy?

Leave it on my work desk with a piece of paper folded over it. On the paper is written "Don't overthink this" in at least 5 common languages.

Lead-lined and otherwise divination-proofed chamber under several hundred feet of bedrock somewhere without valuable minerals or other reasons for people to go digging. Preferably close to my back-up lair.

Create a situation in which the plane cannot exist without the phylactery, then steadily move every life form in the universe to the so-affected plane. The power to end everywhere, everyone, every living thing, every possible existence, would be mine, FOREVER!

I would put it in a shoebox under my bed

>that one owl with the twig

are liches affected by the decompression stuff when they go to/from space?

PEOPLE are barely affected by decompression. We just pass out from lack of oxygen. The body is actually sealed very well.

Giving someone a sex toy containing your very soul sounds pretty hot.
10/10

Eat it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_exposure
TD;DR you're full of shit.

This actually sounds like a decent enough threat for a campaign. Entire villages, towns, nations, FUCKING OCEANS disappear over night, and it's up to your party of bumbling dimwits to save the day.

Or die trying.

Clearly, the solution is to turn one member of the party into a lich, and make your own phylactery-plane! With blackjack and hookers! Nobody will want to go to that boring other plane!

Spoiler alert!

If the Idea of Evil or The God Hand (Both Berserk series canon) are in the game, I plan to sacrifice every being in existence once they are all on the plane. Ultimate power will be MINE!

Secure it in the most apocalypse proof box possible and drop it into the eye of a swirling magical vortex of kill.

That's a really easy way to get backstabbed and die user.

Current BBEG of my campaign is a lich.

He's built a huge castle that is effectively sentient and undead, using stone and mortar imported from the negative planes and the bones of an unknown, titanic colossus to support the structure, as well as the bones of countless animated skeletons who act as part of the structure of the building, literally built into the walls with the only purpose of monitoring the facility. It pumps negative energy through its body through pipes and vents throughout, and at its heart is a giant arcane machine that functions not only as a literal heart of the building, but a gateway into the shadow plane. Inside is his sarcophagus, set in a room designed to have two purposes. One, it acts as his place of repose and recovery. Two, it's triggered to disengage the building and disconnect entirely if the phylactery set inside the sarcophagus is damaged.

This kills the castle, which erupts into a miasma of negative energy creating wild, purposeless undead from any body capable of rising in the region, as part of the beast's machinery keeps the energy from spilling out and infesting the countryside. Meanwhile, the unlucky sod fiddling with the sarcophagus finds himself trapped in a room in the middle of a hellish supernatural wasteland where mortality itself is alien.

The part that makes this more than a "just have the wizard plane shift out" situation is that the BBEG, being an immortal, paranoid spellcaster himself, has rigged the thing with antimagic field generators and wards against scrying/divination should those fail or someone attempt to locate his phylactery the old fashioned way, and the lid of his sarcophagus itself is held open by a magical contraption which springs shut when the field cuts out.

>Typically, a phylactery was a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which arcane phrases were inscribed. However, a phylactery could be any number of things, such as a ring or amulet.
It's generally something important to the wielder or powerful itself user, I'm not sure where this random rock meme came from.

Make the gaudy runic silver box as required, then cover it in rock. Like, inside a hollow stone.

So a poor man's Azathoth?

something like that

...

So what happens when you, the spellcaster who regenerates at the phylactery, are now trapped by rock. How do you plan to prepare spells in this state, much less be ground to bone dust.

Depends, do I get any buffs for carrying it on me?

..Hm.
Oi, this guy has a good idea:

No, but if we go by the fluff you should probably get penalties for spending long periods of time without checking on it.

Idea of Evil got "retconned" (never saw actual release), and it's for the better imo

Worked for Voldemort.

I'd probably just carry it with me and then not be an asshole. No more reason to kill me.

Every dozen of years or so you gotta feed it a heart/soul, I think.
Oh hey.

Have an isolated tribe of cannibals treat it as a sacred relic and sacrifice people to it. I don't even need to move to grow in power, MWYYAAHH!

>Every dozen of years or so you gotta feed it a heart/soul, I think.
Actually I mean more in terms of liches being obsessed with checking on their phylacteries just because. For everything else, there's power rituals.

Make the moon a phylactery.

This, that anons ass is prime real estate for phylacteries

buttplug

I would make a waifu pillow. I would love her and carry her around untill she disintegrates, at wich point I will die. Without her I would simply stop existing. Without her hugs, I would vanish. It would defeat my enemies by making them feel.

The objectively correct answer. There is no place safer.

I will tell a tribe of desert warriors it is a sacred metal from the sky and forge a cube out of it. I will create a cult around that skymetal cube and instruct the tribe to never allow non-believers near it. Then I will fly away to go on my adventures on my pegasus-pony, telling them I have ascended to heaven.

This guy had it figured out!

I assist the dwarves with my magic staff (aka Phylactery) until they trust me enough, and make a deal that they keep the staff safe, and they can use it to summon me to help defend their city, no matter the threat I shall protect them.

Not that guy, but even the wikipedia article points out that everyone subjected to it for durations under 5 minutes lives just fine. Unless you are trained in holding your breath for very long, you will pass out before being depressurized for too long. Heck, being out in space is only a loss of 1 bar of pressure, divers that paniced and swam up too fast often have a much larger pressure differentian and survive it anyways, if given proper treatment. Also, if you do it slowly, it will have no effect other than lack of oxygen, so if that one is not a problem for you, it won't matter. The nasty thing is that in 0 pressure water boils at body temperature, so you would get a very dry mouth and dry eyes. Note that the boiling will only irritate, since its not actually hot. There are very good reasons to keep you pressurized, so astronauts don't go out without pressure suits, but he is right in that your skin and even the membranes in your ears and eyes are strong enough to keep your internals more pressurized and closed off. You can't keep your breath in your lungs at that will make them burst, but if you don't have to breath or have a breather it won't matter.

All in all, a lich should be perfectly capable of surviving out there. The radiation and lack of oxygen is the real killer in space, without the atmosphere shielding you, you will get severe radiation burns within minutes. Without a medium of heat transfer you also won't cool down nearly as fast as everyone seems to assume, the vaccum will insulate you plenty, though you will still slowly loose more than you produce, so a thick coat and a heating spell will take care of that. All in all, I think the magic nessecary to keep you alive in space isn't all that bad. And that is assuming you actually don't just put your phylactery into something pressure sealed in the first place.

>Make a crown, expertly forged to look like a crown lost in legend or, if possible, elven craftsmanship
>"Return" crown to royal forces in the guise of a knight or scholar.
>Watch as the foolish kings wear my phylactery for centuries while I skim their thoughts everyday.
>Panic when people start thinking democracy is a good idea.
>Unpanic when they decide to go with a constitutional monarchy,and my phylactery remains guarded forever in a museum by Beefeaters/Burly Boys as a 'national treasure'

They can't destroy your phylactery if they think it's 'theirs'.

No one lives forever user. If I lose my only companion then there's no reason for me to stick around in undeath anyways.

I bet you posted in the turtle thread.

Turtle thread? I didn't post there but do you have a link? Sounds interesting.

Nah. It was a thread about what a lich's pet would be, and vultures and racoons and disgusting stuff was posted, but people finally agreed on a living turtle. Then someone said something about a knight kicking the turtle and some user responded in the exact same way you did.

Interesting. Yeah, undead are certainly useful, but in most settings they make very boring companions. You need something living with you if you want to stay sane.

Aren't undead sort of immune to that? If you're not a living being you shouldn't really be affected by loneliness the same way the living are.

No, because they have no blood.

Perhaps, but that also sounds like it would get boring really fast. I mean, once you've gained immortality, and have ensured that your phylactery is safe and you have a steady supply of souls to keep on living, what do you do? What is your motivation?

It would be more accurate to say that most undead are already sort of insane(or become insane shortly after their death - assuming they were sane to begin with).

Hey, it could be the lich's pet rock.

>trying to get me to reveal the location of my phylactery
Nice try.

My guess is that since you are not longer a slave to body chemistry, and you are a magical being, it would be explained by "you become a clear manifestation of your spirit", which I suppose would mean you become addicted to that one thing your spirit is all about. I guess if we are talking about a farmer that died and became undead, he would either aimlessly try to farm, because of his love of the land, or to try to destroy anything that is plant-like to seek vengeance of being tied to the land for so long, or some bullshit with his family about love/revenge.
I suppose so. Though Liches aren't are they?

Bonus points for having raven companions

That makes sense mostly, and there's some interesting possibilities there, but it also sounds like it make for some pretty 1-dimensional characters (although to be frank "I want to turn the whole world into a giant farm" sounds a heck of a lot better than "end all life cause why not")

shove it up my ass, duh.

Is that you, user?
Have you been keeping our phylacteries safe up there?

I meant it more in the sense of you get erections from those things. You're not completely under a spell, but just like a naked woman provokes a response in men, in that way the "clear manifestation of your spirit" makes you react to things as if your biology dictates that you should love those things. Like the farmer wouldn't try to make the world a giant farm, but he would feel actual pain if he steps on a flower and would start panicking. If he sees a garden in neglect he might take a while to put it in order and would feel tremendous pleasure from it.

>I suppose so. Though Liches aren't are they?
Well, it's hard to say, isn't it? They tend to be obsessed with knowledge(and often to the point of unhealthiness), reclusive and self-centered, but for many of them that's hardly a change from how they were when they were alive. And they're certainly canny enough to conceal any obvious weaknesses, not to mention that undeath(heck, immortality in general) is sure to change their perspective(not to mention their lack of soul! While present in the phylactery, it is nevertheless separated from their body). Nevertheless I would not consider the typical lich to be a paragon of sanity.

Came here to post this

one must master their rectal muscles to keep a phylactery up their ass, or else it may shatter(look up one man one jar for reference)

Huh, that sounds pretty cool actually. Without bodily desires to drive you, it is what your soul cares about that gives you purpose and determines your actions.

Also, since you mentioned erections, it also solves the problem of an undead feeling arousal but not having the "tools" to pleasure himself with

I didn't mean actual erection, but whatever floats your boat.

yes, yes i did.

Nah, I get what you mean.

I'd make it look relatively mundane and enchant it with some lesser ability like disease resistance or invisibility so that anyone who could detect that it was magic would be less likely to figure out its true nature. I'd also craft more subtle magic into it to coerce people into wanting to hide and protect it.

Create a permanent Demi plane, store it there with a rod of atunment to the material world along with a back up spell book.

When I die my body will regenerate there completely safe from harm. Once I'm restored, open a portal back to the material world, toss the rod back into my Demi plane and continue on with my immoetality.

So what would a farm lich do with his phylactery? Put it in an amish village where they are required to raise a barn in the lich's glory every day and move the phylactery there, so it is harder to find? Would having a barn raised as a sacrifice count as one?

>So what would a farm lich do with his phylactery?
Bury it under the family tree.

Isn't it sort of too obvious? And wouldn't the phylactery do weird things to the tree?

Nigga, its a farmer that somehow became a Lich. Odds are he became a Lich by some bizarre occurrence and doesn't know why the glowing necklace is important to him, he just instinctively knows he needs to hide it.

It could be an alchemist/wizard who really liked his garden, and grew up on a farm.

Could be, but I'm in love with the idea of some random farmer becoming a Lich and he doesn't even know it. Over countless years he figures out his powers and uses his new magical abilities to win 1st prize in the town's yearly harvest competition.

Put it inside another phylactery.

And then in user's ass?

I see a prized pig there somewhere. But does a farmer accidentally become a lich? The only possible ways seem to be
1. Another lich is goofing around.
2. Divine intervention.
3. Some artifact did some weird shit.

I still like the plan user had about making a swarm of demiliches and giving them a hive mind. Could you make a swarm of animated objects that were each a tiny bone-shaped phylactery?

What if user's ass *is* a phylactery?

now you're thinking. this strategy eliminates the one man one jar problem with shoving a phylactery up one's ass

And then kill user so he goes to heaven, taking the phylactery with him.

youtube.com/watch?v=2uKwglBeiJE

Artifact doing weird shit.

>Farmer is out working the fields one day
>While taking a break to wipe the sweat from his brow he sees something glitter in the dirt
>He picks it up and discovers its a shiny necklace with a large gemstone
>he polishes off some dirt and then suddenly the skies go dark, the ground shakes, and the amulet lets off a bright flash
>the flash causes the farmer to fall unconscious and when he awakes he feels different
>He feels like he needs to protect the amulet so he buries it.
>He continues to do farmer stuff and months go by before he starts discovering his new powers.
>324 years later, Jethro the Farming Lich takes 1st in the pumpkin growing competition. He goes back home to his farm and puts the 1st place ribbon with all the others.

gotta be on the same plane of existence tho
unless you're trying to smuggle yourself to heaven...
FUCK

Ya give it to a dragon as "tribute," let him guard it for ya without knowing. The odds are the dragon and you won't be attacked by adventurers at the same time.

Yes. Good.

How would he deal with industrialization and tech? Normal farmers would start being a real competition in time.

Paul Bunyan type of competition.

Turn it into my apprentice, preferably a young elf girl or something similarly cute and impressionable.

I don't know what that means.

Paul Bunyan was this lumberjack from American folklore. He was the best at chopping trees. One day his employers wanted to replace him with a machine. The people selling the machine said that it could chop down 100 trees in a day. Paul Bunyan said he could chop more than 100 trees in a day and so a competition was held. Paul Bunyan won the competition by chopping down more trees than the machine and got to keep his job.

Teleport to a random place on the map.
Disguise myself as human.
Find the nearest curio shop/museum.
Sell the phylactery and accompanying box to the curio Trader.
Tell him that it is a 100% genuine Lich's soul.
He will then, presumably, put it on a shelf and show it off to passers-by.
No one will ever believe him.

Fair enough, but what about even later in time? At what point would GMO magic beans become better than legit magic beans? Cuz I'm sure there will be someone autistic enough to steal Jethro's produce and try to genetically engineer them.