Lich
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This article is about the undead creature. Lich is also a city in the district Gießen, Hesse, Germany.
The term lich comes from the Old English lic, (pronounced the same) which means "corpse"; an alternative spelling is "liche". The word is cognate with modern German Leiche, meaning "corpse"; for the linguistic background see lich on the German language Wikipedia.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a lich is a spellcaster who seeks to defy death by magical means. They convert themselves into an undead state by means of black magic and necromancy, storing their souls in magical receptacles called phylacteries.
As a consequence, the only permanent way to kill a lich is to destroy its phylactery; otherwise, it will be able to recreate a new body for itself. Occasionally, this metamorphosis occurs by accident as a result of life-prolonging magic. A lich retains the abilities that it possessed in life, but it has a virtual eternity to hone its skills and inevitably becomes quite powerful.
Some argue that liches are the most powerful of the undead. The gods Vecna from the Greyhawk campaign setting and Velsharoon from the Forgotten Realms campaign setting had both been liches before ascending to godhood, and the githyanki lich-queen Vlaakith CLVII has been attempting to attain godhood as well.
If a lich exists long enough it becomes a "demilich". The demilich's interest turns away from the physical realm, instead using astral projection to travel across other planes of existence. The magics preserving the demilich's body against the ravages of time weaken, usually causing the body to gradually deteriorate until only a skull or even a single skeletal hand remains. Despite its ruined body, a demilich is far from powerless; if disturbed, the skull will levitate and suck the souls from nearby living creatures. The most notable demiliches are Acererak, found in the classic adventure Tomb of Horrors, and Kangaxx, one of the most powerful adversaries in the PC game Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn.
Many other works of fantasy fiction have borrowed the term and concept from D&D and its derivative works. Such works include the video games NetHack, Warcraft III, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, the Final Fantasy and Ultima series, the Mage: The Ascension and Shadowrun role-playing games, and the novel Perdido Street Station by China Miéville.
While the term "Lich" is peculiar to D&D, the underlying idea of eluding death by means of arcane study and black magic is not. It can be traced to Middle Eastern folklore, and the method of achieving immortality by placing one's soul in a jar (which is usually hidden in some vast fortress) is strongly suggestive of the burial practices of Egypt. This would make the Lich a very-far-from-its-roots mythologization of Egyptian pharaohs.
External links
- A detailed description of liches in fantasy (http://www.nascr.net/~jcburd/cofc_lich.htm)de:Lich