Why does the lich speak modern language...

Why does the lich speak modern language? Aren't liches meant to become liches to do nothing but study arcane secrets and abandon all social distractions?

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>hurr durr what are scrying devices
>hurr durr what are low-level translation spells
>hurr durr someone else can probably fill in some more rhetorical questions

How do translation spells work? Is there a plane of intelligence, a sea of poetry and rambling, to tap from to decipher unknown languages?

Depends on the setting.

Repeat after me: it's magic, i aint got to explain shit

No. Explain it to me NOW.

In DnD? There's an antebabelic language all the mortal languages are derived from.

It's either be some rudimentary empathic sort of translation or maybe they use an ancient artifact such as Google's Cortana

Good. Then I shall ban the spell.

There's no secret more arcane than language.

Are there self-aware spells?

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>Are there self-aware spells?
Magic Mouth

Pfft. Maybe YOUR liches are old dry grandpas, but MY street liches are young and hip and urban.

Angels.

Most enchanted swords are self-aware in classic D&D.

Like it's actually fucking crazy how high the chance of a magic sword being intelligent and capable of speech was in original versions of D&D. That's something that people never bring up, the fact that the party had an average of seven talking swords carried by their 120 hirelings.

Are you seriously asking "how does magic work?"

Yes.

The more magic it is, the more rules it needs. When magic is common, it has no mystery. It's a farce. You can't have awe when magic is as mundane as using a tool just like a spell from Harry Potter.

this actually makes some sense: in classic DnD they hadn't thought up Artificers yet, making magical objects was hard high-level shit. The quick/dirty method of enchanting weapons was probably just binding generic outsiders to them.

It seems to me that being able to communicate on level with other contemporary great minds would benefit one's research greatly.

He's obviously speaking "alignment".

Yes, that was a thing.

You get really bored after thousands of years and start learning new shit to study

Also being able to understand what your enemies are planning tends to help

You don't allow magic in general then?

The lich maintains low level scrying on mortal mages, he might be an order of magnitude above them but there's still that one in a million chance they stumble across something he doesn't know through sheer chance. At least that's how I justified it in my setting. I fucked with the party wizard for months with it too, he picked up a spell scrying on him once by pure chance and descended into a paranoid wreck terrified of assassins and the like only to find out it was a magical NEET in a cave somewhere who was absolutely no threat at all provided the group didn't go and fuck with him

That's not autistic at all.

It's my understanding that the learning Arcane secrets and studying are merely tools down the path to immortality. Yes, they are arcane master who use that mastery and knowledge to grant them life after death. But life after death is only there so that they can accomplish the things they want to do without having to do so within a limited time frame. Nothing says they have to be shut in autists who do nothing but study.

because he's TOWERING, FIERCE, TERRIBLE. NIGHTMARE MADE MATERIAL
not all liches are neets, I suppose

So when some fucking rowdy kids come snooping around the crypt, you can tell them to fuck off and hopefully they'll listen.

I don't think you understand that a criminal like a Lich doesn't care if something is banned

Liches become liches so they have all the time in the world to study. But when you have all the time in the world, you can actually dedicate however much you want to doing anything else. Imagine if all your deadlines for life goals got pushed back by a millennium.

Not anymore