On Liches Over the last couple of months, we’ve had some inquiries on what it would take for somebody to become a lich.
Other than the fact that we want to have the lich creature in the world (and already have, see NPCs such as Drezneb), we never defined how it would actually work and if it would be player attainable.
Liches, Death, Soul Strands and Soul Vessels. In Layonara, and the way death works with soul strands, an aspiring lich would have to successfully be able to attach his soul strands to something other than his body. This “something other” is what is usually called a phylactery, but which we will call a Soul Vessel.
Before being able to do so, the aspiring lich would have to undertake certain rituals. The final ritual would mean the death of the body of the aspiring lich, re-attachment of any remaining soul strands to the Soul Vessel and the soul of the aspiring lich then possessing the now-dead body.
This way, the soul would possess and control the body, but not be attached to it through soul strands. It’d be attached to the phylactery object (which can be any object).
Because of the way the bindstones work (see
LORE: Bindstones ), the link to the bindstones will be severed at the time of successful completion of the attachment of the Soul Strands to the Soul Vessel.
This way, when the lich’s body is destroyed, the soul would then return to the Soul Vessel and not the bindstone. It would then take 7-14 days for the lich’s corporeal form to manifest again.
· If the Soul Vessel is destroyed while soul is in the Soul Vessel, the lich dies for real and the soul makes its way towards the Thread as normal (see
LORE: Death )
· If the Soul Vessel is destroyed while the soul is controlling the body, the lich will continue to “survive” until the body is destroyed. At that point, the soul makes its way towards the Thread as normal.
Why would you want to be a lich? · [FONT="]if you're bound to the bindstone, you will eventually die of old age. If you're a lich, your body is already dead so you won't die of old age[/FONT]
· you will not die of old age, so you have more time to practice your craft/research/magic/etc
Anyone pursuing lichdom would have a loose grip on his sanity though.
Lichdom for PCs? Player characters are able to attempt lichdom however, when successful after several CDQs and a WLDQ, the consequence would be that the character would become an NPC.
This is for the following reasons:
1) We are not keen on making a new death system that would deal with the Soul Vessel, respawning and the like.
2) We don’t want to make a new class as that is too much work. We could make a subrace skin for a lich, but that’d mean it’d make the character classified as “undead” which could have all kinds of consequences with spells.
3) We don’t want something like a "kind, misunderstood lich" RP. To pursue lichdom, you aren’t an entirely sane person, and very likely have Chaotic Evil tendencies. CE has always been grounds for NPCification. Of course, there may be plausible stories to get around the CE tendency, but that won’t overcome the other reasons.
4) The character would be undead. From a practical point of view, the character would not be allowed to enter cities, craft halls, other public spaces with a good chance of looking under the hood (literally), which is not practical to check without permanent GM presence.
5) The character would also be almost impossible to play on quests, bar potential Corath ones. We as GMs would most certainly NOT allow the lich in a party when other party members would know IC it's a lich, but would tolerate him because the players don't want to be mean to the player that plays the lich.
6) The Soul Vessel would have to be in game. Many undead abhorring players could/would/should go look for it and destroy it as that would be something their character would do. This would then mean players would actively seek the perma-death of another. You can then say “Well, let’s not take it that far then” but that would not be realistic.
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