Lich making - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


GM Workshop

A community-created and maintained place for Game Masters of all systems to bounce ideas around. It's a place for inspiration and sharing tips.


Lich making

   
Lich making

Hi everyone- I'm hoping to borrow your creative juices.

IRL I'm running a homebrew Pathfinder game in which one of the side/background plots involves the patroness of the PCs who is unknowingly in process of becoming a lich.

I took an idea from the Oracle Curse in Paizo's Horror Adventures book, Touch of Corruption: Lich, where the bearer of the curse knowingly or unknowingly has performed some of the rituals towards lichdom.

My side plot involves the PCs recovering a scroll that has the instructions to become a lich spelt out on it. An evil lich checklist of sorts. Then as PCs are progressing through their main campaign, they'll notice evidence of the patroness engaging in some of the relevant activities and say, uh . . .wait a minute, what is going on here? Then try to stop the process. If they don't stop the process, then they'll get to battle their evil lich patroness later.

What I need help on is this, what type of evil acts do you think one would need to perform to become a lich? My players tend to like nature themed characters, Druids, hunters, rangers, so I'd like to include some horrible crimes against nature on the list for the lich-to-be to commit. I'd like the crimes/evil acts to be something that would generate some type of evidence so my PCs can connect the dots as they go.

So please, post your ideas for evil acts to necessary to become a lich.

I have nothing to reward you with other than my thanks, but they are yours.

This is probably a late-stage thing, but I'd go with the classic "Corrupt the holy nature magic of the sacred grove/spring/cave/whatever." That way, you can give your characters something to do, battling the twisted animal abominations that proceed from the corrupted thingumajig, and figuring out a way to purify it.

As for how to do it, pouring the blood of something evil there should do. You'd probably have to be deceived to do this unknowingly, but I'd imagine that you've already established the reason why the patroness is doing these things.

the ritual is described as being the most unspeakable of evils, so take the most horrifying thing you can imagine and knock it up a few notches.
Personally, in my games I associate the process with the destruction and consumption of the souls that bind the individual to this plane. Basically, a Lich must capture, ritualistically sacrifice, rend asunder and bind their victims soul to power the process. The lich must undermine destiny itself and rob their decedents, and immediate family of the fate they were due in the universe.
At least that's how I do evil liches.

And if all else fails, literally using small children as raw materials (and/or eating them- but that one's probably how you become a ghoul, instead) goes a long way into the 'that's just messed up, dude' category. Perhaps after a slow death by starvation and/or torture. And without the part where they get to stay dead afterward.

Pick up the Book of Vile Darkness and sit down to a night of Lovecraft and coca wine, see where your nightmares take you.

Also, grab the Complete Guide to Liches. It's actually got a lot of really cool concepts to the creatures, complete with dozens of different lich concepts. Some real favorites of mine include the Philolich (which is to say a mortal companion that a lich turns into a lich to keep around), the 'nova' lich (due to using a different, cheaper process, you get a lich with greater power that only has a single year to accomplish its goals) and the warlich (super undead tank).

All with their own backstories and conceptual possibilities.

http://goodman-games.com/store/produ...to-liches-pdf/

It never really goes into details on the "unspeakable acts required", however. So the usual 'use living beings as raw materials' advice remains the same. It's about as horrifying as it gets.

The BEST thing I can think of, I can't claim as origin. Full Metal Alchemist has a couple REALLY good examples of people being unspeakably evil in pursuit of power.

Anything that involves destroying a person to gain power, like "Father Cornello" with Rose, or
'Nuff said. You don't know it, look it up. I'ma go cry now.
Nina Tucker. The use of hundreds or thousands of souls to create the
Alchemist Stone, phylactary, McGuffin of power, take your pick.
phylactary, making a war to GET those hundreds or thousands of souls all in one place at one time to enact the final ritual that makes the McGuffin. Making an entire city sick and slowly die to craft one of the
Red water
components.

From the vile
Me, of course
mind of evile:
Not sure if the Pathfinder mythos has a Negative Energy Plane like Grayhawk, but open portals to the equivalent. Better, make the PCs do it, without even realizing that's what they are doing by giving them "quick returns". They have some magical device that, after they complete a mission, they hit the button and it takes them immediately back to the BBEG. They don't get to see the fact that it ALSO rips open a portal to the NEP ten minutes after their portal closes.

Or, it turns out the components for making a phylactary are EXACTLY the same as making an angelic defense system, so to protect the town, the PCs need to place these components in strategic locations around the outside of the town walls. It's only in the final ceremony, saying the prayer one way get's you a power ward for the town, say the whole thing sdrawkcab and it forces the area into the NEP. The entire region. All that energy makes a lovely addition to the phylactary, in addition to pleasing any dark gods you want.

As I was typing this up at work, I went to break and was reminded of the SOURCE of the Lich in D&D, Sauron from LotR. What was HIS great evil? It was a small thing, but it made him incredibly powerful, he crafted a series of
Rings
gifts for the leaders of various nations. These gifts had a hidden vileness, decades and centuries in the corrupting, and his phylactary was another Ring, one that controlled all the others in secret. He sipped the power and light from the other holders of the gift Rings until he had it all, and the weakest, the humans had become naught but wraiths of their former glory and might. It was a small thing, but it destroyed an entire SERIES of civilizations. Of course, it does kind of require a really long lived patron.

Another thought, which may be suitably mythic, is to go all Greek tragedy on it: do something awful to a member of your family. For instance, take revenge on your sibling by tricking them into eating their own children.

But it should start small, I think, and scale up to the real horrors.

Thinking about it, "unknowingly" is tricky, because the underlying logic seems to be that you choose to do something so horrible that it makes you a lich. It doesn't seem that you would have to know that it would make you a lich, but you would have to know that you are doing something horrible, as otherwise the moral aspect is much weakened.

Of course, one could change that.

Have the players catch the would-be lich pouring milk in the bowl before the cereals.

I think that whether or not the act is unspeakable if you do it unknowingly depends on your view of morality. In some of the ancient Greek versions of myths, eating the flesh of your children (even unknowingly) is an unspeakable act. Maybe the players are looking for the instructions to make an angelic shield, but it was a forgery by an evil lord long ago, and the ritual is actually a way to massively blight a land. The patron of the PCs performs the ritual, and (horror-struck at what they've done) take their life, only to rise again as a Lich, warped and twisted by evil.

As for specific unspeakable acts, you've got to be a tad careful on the site (PG-13 rules and all). I'm running The Savage Tide, and during the players' first real run-in with demons I wanted to truly make them hate demonkind. None of this cartoonish strong-armed evil. True depravity.

You can really get depraved without the results of the action being world-shattering. Sure, causing mass starvation due to blight is evil as hell. But so is completely destroying a person, their hopes and dreams, their psyche. In some ways, you might think of the latter as worse, since it's personal. As Stalin never said: " A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

Corrupting and blighting a Druid's Grove with desecrate and negative energy so that any thing that dies within miles rise up as lesser undead, grave-touched ghouls, and various other spawn. Before long you would have an entire undead, blighted forest.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Actana View Post
Have the players catch the would-be lich pouring milk in the bowl before the cereals.
My eyes!! I can not unseen this unholy blasphemy.




 

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-19 08:45:18am local time
Myth-Weavers Status