Hello there everyone, there has been some discussion about liches on the Discord, and on Denis Dyack's request, I'll try to present my points in this forum thread for posterity. Excuse the rambling, unfocused nature of the post, folks, I'm not a professional journalist and even then I've seen professional journalists with worse writing skills, oh, sick burn.

So what is a lich? A lot of people will probably answer with the first image that comes to their mind - a skeleton in wizard robes. But where does the modern image of a lich as a powerful skeletal spellcaster that cannot be killed through ordinary means come from? What defines it? The modern lich was invented by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz for Dungeons and Dragons in 1976.
Earlier stories of lich-like characters like Robert E. Howard's Skull-Face, or even Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray almost certainly served as the inspiration, but I'd like to take some time and focus on a Russian folk character that fits the modern definition of a lich almost to a T, Koschei the Deathless.
Usually portrayed simply as an old man, sometimes wearing royal clothes, sometimes wearing nothing at all, all stories featuring him give him one common attribute - he cannot be killed, because his "death" is not "in his body". It's in some other object, usually hidden within several other objects or guarded by other creatures, a famous example being "a needle inside of an egg inside of a duck". This isn't yet the resurrective immortality of a lich, mind you, but it's ALMOST there. Koschei is simply invincible and usually drops dead as soon as his death object is broken.

So why is the modern lich pretty much required to look all corpsey and decayed? Because according to the trendsetter, Dungeons and Dragons, no matter what the exact, horrible and profane steps on the path to lichdom are, one of the final acts, if not the final one, is to die. Usually in some self-inflicted ritualistic fashion. Most commonly by drinking a horrible poisonous concoction that functions as a catalyst for the process. Once dead, the body simply keeps decomposing while keeping the lich in a state of undeath.

As for why most liches simply look like dried-up bags of bones draped in powerful artifacts, I have a theory. Most liches simply don't care about their physical appearance. Having gone through the process of extending their lifespan far beyond all mortal limits, or at least trapping their undying soul in their decaying body, usually with the aim of pursuing increasingly more obscure arcane lore and forbidden power, most liches simply don't find the effort of preserving their physical shell worth it. Think of a lich as a massively powerful, actually immortal neckbeard. With leprosy. Who cares if he smells and if all his flesh falls off so he looks like he's been on the front lines of the skeleton war for way too long. He has to find a way to summon Exodia. Actually, for real. In short, the more dried up and bony and dusty a lich looks, the more powerful they probably are.

However, not ALL liches will necessarily look like a simple skeleton, and not all liches will completely neglect their physical form to the point of being a total fashion disaster. There have been some pretty cool ideas floating around on the Discord - shout outs to TalkingCupcake, Livin, and CyanStargazer on Discord, all of whom participated in the discussion, as well as Denis Dyack, who pushed me to actually write this up as a forum post in the first place.

Notable ideas include Egyptian-style liches, all mummified, dignified in their regalia, with canopic jars as their phylactery. Fossilized liches, with their bones hardened throughout the ages. Fossilized lich-monks, inspired by self-mummified Buddhist monks. Fancy liches with bronzed bones and gilded skin. Norse liches with runes carved into their bones.
Body modification is also an option for an enterprising lich curious about their changed body. Attaching different heads, or even extra heads, or extra limbs. Reshaping their bones like molten wax and then solidifying them again. But then the question comes up whether or not these changes persist between resurrections or if a lich that is regenerated by their phylactery default to their original form, just increasingly more skeletal. If the answer is "no they don't persist", that might be a point in favor of not doing it again.

In conclusion, yes, liches in their modern incarnation are all enormously powerful undead skeletal spellcasters, but that's not all they have to be. They're all individuals and they can choose to express that individuality in whatever way they see fit. Personally I'd love to see the lich equivalent of Elon Musk.
 
Very nice write up! I personally have never heard the story of Koschei so that was cool to hear. Very exciting to hear about all the potential varieties. It seems there will be as many different types of liches as there are cultures in the world. The thing about liches that I feel separate them from other Undead is the fact that they CHOOSE their undead nature, while almost every other type has their transformation forced on them. Sure one can willingly become a vampire and whatnot, but it can also be inflicted upon them. Exceptions exist. However, NO ONE becomes a liche by accident and that, to me, is one of the defining characteristics of a liche. Their willingness to die for the sake of what's beyond mortal limitation.
 
Thought I'd add another I thought of recently that I like to call burial shrouds.

Your skeleton is filled with soil from the grave that is held in place by numerous vines that sprout from it, vines covered in thorns and interwoven over one another to create a robe.
 
An excellent writeup, thank you for doing this @Mildly_Nuclear. I also have never heard of Koschei the Deathless, and he should almost certainly make a cameo in Deadhaus now :). This whole myth works very well within our Death System, and I can see fun permutations. We are lucky to have such contributions to the mythos frankly by experts in lore. Nice job and commentary.
 
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Thought I'd add another I thought of recently that I like to call burial shrouds.

Your skeleton is filled with soil from the grave that is held in place by numerous vines that sprout from it, vines covered in thorns and interwoven over one another to create a robe.
That sounds wicked! I'd love to see some artwork if such an liche :)
 
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That sounds wicked! I'd love to see some artwork if such an liche :)

I've got this cinematic in my head for acquiring it, where a still fleshy liche gets themselves buried in the grave after swallowing a special seed the night before a full moon. As they rest in the soil, the seed sprouts the vines that tear up the flesh and grows off the sustenance of the soil that is becoming drenched in the liche's blood. The Liche awakens one whole day later from the call of the full moon and claws their way out the grave, now stripped of flesh in exchange for protection of the vines that will thrive off the still bloody soil that is trapped within.
 
This expands what has already been said above but I've been contemplating what Ian speculated from the last stream about cosmetics having an impact on the character outside of stats and have a suggestion, have some branches of customization be part of entirely separate states of being for the undead as a distinct specialization. Submitting to such specialization would restrict some things while opening whole new avenues of equipment, abilities, and weapons. Here is one example from the suggestion of growing plants from soil stored in the liche.

Deadwood (undead Swamp Thing)

The Liche undergoes the transformation by making a new phylactery out of a seed, swallowing it and then burying themselves in the ground. The Liche then rises up a bare skeleton with soil held in the spaces between it's bones by roots sprouting from that phylactery seed that rests in the newly born Deadwood's chest, drawing upon its magic to curse the soil.

From there the deadwood can harvest and plant whatever vegetation they come across, growing from the cursed earth into twisted and predatory or even poisonous versions of what they were.

For example;

Planting a rose seed could result in thorn covered vines that either wrap around the deadwood's body to function as armor that hurts what fights it at close range or it could dangle over the arms and be used as whips.

Planting the seed of a tree results in bark growing over the deadwood to create an exoskeleton or if it was a fruit bearing tree then the deadwood's body now produces a version of them that can either be nourishment for the deadwood's health or a poison for its enemies.

Imagine what you'd get with a venous flytrap
 
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