LICH
Name: Lich [lit-sh]
Class: Monster
Subclass: Terrian, Midweight
PPL Category: 4 - Very dangerous and hostile to peoples
Forger: Originally forged by Reaper, Divine of Death. Corrupted by Disgrace, Divine of Hate.
OVERVIEW
Liches are soul-eating monsters with necromantic powers. They resemble skeletal humanoids with glowing red eyes. They do not have legs or wings, and instead levitate themselves using magic.
Liches must feed on the souls of people to survive. In times of scarcity, they can enter a hibernation state and survive for centuries without feeding. However, once they enter this state, they cannot wake up on their own and must be disturbed by a living person to rise from dormancy. Other monsters and undead cannot wake them. Because of this, a lich will only go dormant as a last resort, otherwise they may lay in a forgotten dungeon until they eventually become dust.
Every lich is armed with a special staff that resembles a lantern. This is called a “soul matrix”, and it is where they capture and store souls to eat later. One soul matrix can contain dozens of souls at a time. If it is broken, however, the souls will escape and the lich will not be able to craft a new staff themselves. They must steal one from an angel or another lich, or else they are likely to starve to death.
A lich without a soul matrix is far more aggressive and dangerous than usual. Conversely, a well-fed lich with a full matrix will ignore prey entirely, and may even be reasoned with.
Angels can “spend” the souls in their matrices to heal themselves and others, but liches do not have any healing abilities. They can instead raise corpses into zombie thralls, which angels cannot do.
HISTORY
All liches were once angels, monsters forged by the divine Reaper to harvest souls for him.
Long ago, Reaper was married to Queen Morgause of the Unseelie Court, but fled her kingdom when he grew weary of her abuse. Morgause did not take kindly to this and hired the divine of hate, Overlord Disgrace, to kill Reaper. Overlord Disgrace wielded a unique blade called the Divine Executioner, which could destroy immortal souls and prevent them from resurrecting.
Disgrace has made many attempts on Reaper's life, and failed miserably each time. Both divines are necromancers, but Reaper is far older, wiser, wealthier, and more powerful than Disgrace, so he has managed to defend himself with ease.
Disgrace hasn't succeeded at killing Reaper yet, but he has managed to capture many of his angels during their battles. The angels are advanced, intelligent monsters with impressive powers–far beyond any monster that Disgrace could forge himself.
So, Disgrace decided to take Reaper's creations and corrupt them to serve his own dark purposes. He turned them into elite warriors for his Crescent Dominion. These warriors became known as liches.
Liches have greater necromantic powers than angels. They can raise a small troop of corpses to fight for them. Unlike angels, however, they must feed on souls to survive. This makes them inherently dangerous creatures, feared by allkind.
CULTURE
Most liches on Gaia serve Overlord Disgrace. They are elite soldiers and guardians of his most important operations. They choose to serve him because he is an agent of war who creates death wherever he goes, and death is what liches crave more than anything else.
These monsters are very intelligent and can be trusted to carry out complex tasks. Disgrace is known to send them into battle to harvest the souls of the fallen for him. These scavenger-liches bring a portion of the souls they harvest back to Disgrace in exchange for more battlefield excursions in the future.
Queen Morgause also has a few liches in her employ, though she tends to cull them when her soul supply runs low, as she relies on a soul-powered contraption to maintain her eternal youth. She does not wish to compete with her own knights for “food”. Because of this, there are far more liches in the Crescent Dominion than in the Unseelie Court. These monsters are killed on sight by authorities in every other kingdom on Gaia.
Rogue liches are often found living in skorpius lairs around the Serkel Desert. They form partnerships with these other monsters because the skorpius regularly bring live prey back to the lair to feast upon. The skorpius has no use for the soul, so it is harvested by the lich. In return, the lich uses its intelligence and levitation powers to scout out more prey from afar, then points the skorpius in the right direction.
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