Van Richten's Guide to Liches

Malygris sat unbowed and upright, his black and tattered fingers
clutching the ivory chair arms as of yore, and his empty orbits glowering
still at the eastern window. His is face was little more than a bearded skull;
and his blackening brow was like worm pierced ebony.

- Clark Ashton Smith
"The Death of Malygris"

The Lair

The lich takes enormous care to secure its domicile from the prying eyes and attentions of other creatures. Even its most trusted minions are ignorant of the true nature and plan of a lich's lair. It spends many years planning and constructing a perfect stronghold from which to operate. Given enough time and resources, both of which the lich has in abundance, it will surely construct an impregnable fortress.

You fools! You hurl yourselves into the void without the slightest notion of who or what awaits you.

Of paramount importance to the lich is its own security. Before any other factor is considered, the lich will seek a locale that is defended by natural barriers or allows for easy construction of superior defenses. Once that prerequisite is satisfied, two schools of thought govern the choice of lair: a need for privacy vs. a quest for political power.

Liches who crave privacy enjoy locales that are in a hostile environment. The more that mortals dislike a place, the more favorably it is viewed by liches. Cold bogs, frigid wastes, burning deserts, deep sea floors, and the highest peaks are popular places for liches to settle.

Since it likely began as a mage, a lich usually chooses as its first domicile a tower or similar construct. This soon proves inadequate, however, as a tower is vulnerable to attack. The lich might then seek an area that is difficult to reach by any means, serving as an intermediary home until the lich is established and powerful enough to begin construction of a more elaborate haven. Ruins are popular, as they already contain foundations and raw materials necessary for additional construction. In addition, a ruined castle (for example) will almost always have a great deal of dead buried nearby. These serve as a pool of labor upon which the lich draws to create its lair.

However, no matter how far removed or impenetrable the lich's lair, it must remain at least partially accessible. Servants, living or dead, must come and go. Also, there is a strategy among both liches and mortals to take and keep hostages. In most situations, the hostage-taker must allow verification that the hostage is still alive, so the lich's lair must be at least partially accessible to mortals. Therein lies the hope of all lich hunters: There must be a way into the lair.

If the lich seeks to establish itself as a political entity, it is virtually required to pick a well-known location to facilitate relations with the local mortal authorities. (Such a lich recognizes the mortal's need to associate a place with a leader and his power.) This may compromise privacy and present the lich as an inviting target, but the creature will assuredly take steps to remain secure against all attacks, so the lich will gain respect as it gains power. A lich with a gift for illusion might build an empire right under the noses of its most adamant enemies. If my theory about Lord Azalin is true, that he is a lich, this would certainly be the case for him.

I have dreamed many nights of what a lich must guard in the deepest recesses of its lair. Such treasures might be known to no more than one person in ten generations. A lich has dealt with magic during all of its existence, even when it was mortal. Considering the ultrapowerful wizard's capacity to enchant, the number of magical wares contained within the lich's private stores must be staggering. A king's treasure vault might not compare to the magical richness and variety of a lich's wealth! The lich treats magical items as we mortals treat tools. A wand that delivers lightning from its tip would be to a lich as a writing implement to a scholar-a common thing taken for granted.

I am told by many mages that the enchantment of common objects is a tedious, exhausting practice. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that a lich would rather steal a magical item than make it. I have confirmed this idea by luring a lich out of its lair with the rumor of a powerful magical item. (The lich made off with nothing more than a common twig; that small coup undeservedly enhanced my reputation among my cohorts, but it also earned me a blood vendetta from the lich.)

The methods by which a lich will gain what it desires are invariably circumstantial. The lich will always study and deduce the most efficient approach to the theft. Anything from extreme subtlety and quiet deception to a bold, horrific, and lightning-quick assault might occur. Only one thing is certain: If a lich desires something, it will not cease in its efforts to acquire it. It doggedly pursues anything it feels is necessary to its arcane practices.

Based on the aforementioned opinion regarding the enchantment of common items, I believe that the lich spends most of its efforts in the creation of strange and dire artifacts. Centuries of research, investigation, and exploration by a lich yield enchantments that even the most powerful living mages will never comprehend. Who knows what manner of arcane object one might find within the lair: conch shells that spew sheets of lightning when blown, or cauldrons that bubble with pitch-black liquids, seething with a life and evil of their own?

Perhaps the only comforting thought we mortals may entertain is that the lich rarely ventures outside its lair with the most powerful artifacts it possesses. Their terrible functions hopefully will remain locked away with the lich, to be discovered and experienced only by the courageous few who hunt that cursed creature of darkness.

It was in the deepest pit beneath the mountain that we came upon the heart-loved treasure of the lich called Phantom's Bane - we found its library. Here was a prize beyond the value of all the gold in Darken, beyond the price of life and death, beyond the worth of all the magic that Phantom's Bane had ever created or wielded! Row after row, shelf upon shelf, stack against stack, the volumes climbed the walls to the ceiling and stretched into a seeming eternity of darkness beyond.

Standing in the center of the room was Phantom's Bane itself! The monster regarded us with a mixture of impatience and amusement, as if we were a band of noisy children disturbing its private study.

"Well met, my intelligent little gadflies", said the lich in a whisper that issued from within our heads. "You have slipped through my screen in your efforts to taste of my sweets, and now I shall be forced to swat you dead. "

"Blast him!" shouted Geddar Ironheart to the mage Shauten. I recall thinking it odd that a dwarf would call for the use of magic, but Shauten stood and did nothing. Shauten did nothing at all.

Then I understood. It was not any spell of Phantom's Bane that stayed the wizard's hand. It was the prospect of destroying the accumulated knowledge of a millennium with the wane of a band and the release of a fireball. The lich understood, too, and it laughed aloud.

Has any creature in the universe not aspired to immortality? Some seek it through their children, others through works of artistic or academic achievement, but a few seek to live beyond the bounds of natural life through most unnatural means. In this ambition - to live forever - we certainly may identify with the lich.

Yet physical immortality is so far removed from personal mortal experience that it represents little more than a dream's goal, an end in itself, For the lich, however, immortality is merely a means to an end, and that end is power - specifically, the power of knowledge. It follows that the lich's greatest treasure of all is its library.

The span of subjects that undoubtedly fill the shelves of a lich's library would be exhaustive. As a scholar, I could spend hours or even days merely sifting through the titles found upon those shelves, and I would salivate in jealous desire as I deliberated. Of course, central to a lich's library will be the tomes filled with lists of rare and exotic components and processes needed to perform the rituals of spellcasting, but countless other subjects might demand the undead wizard's time and study. Besides, even a lich has intellectual pursuits other than the study of magical artifacts. (There is no law stating that a lich may not have an appreciation of art or literature.) To this end, the lich keeps a book collection the likes of which few mortals have ever laid eyes upon. The lich has literally all the time in the world to study any subject, from the construction of a trap that will confound a master thief to the preparation of a gourmet feast laced with deadly yet delicious spices.

The masterpiece of the lich's library, of course, is its spell book. Since the lich is subject to the mortal restrictions of spellcasting, it must scribe its spells in a tome of some sort. There cannot be a more closely guarded item within the entire lich complex. I feel confident that no more than two mortals of our lands have viewed a lich's tome of spells and lived.

We broke through the final block of stone just before the moon sank below the horizon. Ahead of us was a long, smooth, circular tunnel that twisted and turned in many directions. We eventually followed it to a chamber where we discovered a most unusual laboratory. There was a place for alchemical studies, as well as facilities for astrology, magic, and a host of other philosophies that I hardly understood.

Shortly after this discovery, we were set upon by some sort of mystical ghast that seemed to leech energy from us. With the aid of our priest, we were able to defeat it, but this was only a sample of the type of minions that the lich had placed in guard of its lair.

We had to withdraw and return a total of five times before we were confident that all of the minions were defeated. We searched the lair for three months. During that time, we found close to five score dead-end tunnels, false doors, and empty chambers. Our search culminated in the discovery of a room secreted in a pocket of space hollowed out of the mountain itself. Sorcery was responsible for it, and it was by sorcery alone that we discovered it. By the time we tunneled to the room, the lich bad long since departed, leaving behind a magical trinket as bait for us.

Undoubtedly, the lich still resides somewhere in the mountain, secluded in some deep, secret lair that we will never see. It eluded us masterfully, taking us down so many false paths, forcing us to waste so much time, that the lich could have prepared many an elaborate trap for us in the meanwhile.

I can only guess at why we were not killed, one by one. I believe it was so we could live knowing we were defeated so completely by the lich. It is still active, still spinning its terrible political webs, and still laughing at the mere mortals who like toddlers fumbled in the dark for it.

As the account of Hatchein Pirol attests, the lich practices extensive deception within its lair. Whole complexes within complexes are built to lure intruders to their deaths, lead them on futile chases, and even fool them into thinking they have accomplished their objectives.

This deception is carried as far as the lich can take it. A lich will construct duplicates of nearly everything it owns, preparing copies of texts, objects, rooms, chests - everything. It will even enchant objects to trigger magic-seeking spells and devices. A group of mortals will seldom find the true objective, the lich's inner sanctum, wtithout finding multiple fraudulent chambers in the interim.

There is really no way of discerning which chamber is the true sanctum, for each chamber may be guarded in some manner by a creature that closely - or exactly - resembles the lich. Who would not believe that after many trials of courage, mettle, and magic, the discovery of a hidden and guarded chamber is not the true sanctum, especially when a lich enters the chamber and lays waste to half the party in a foul effort to expel them from the room? Such trickery has been a double disappointment to many who have labored long and dangerously to destroy the monster.

Take extreme care. The only way to be absolutely sure of success is to reduce the entire lair complex to dust then search again. Only intensive excavation will provide confirmation, and maybe not even then.

For the true master of evil, an efficient method of preventing heroes from tampering with one's dungeon is to dispatch servants to kill trespassers. No matter how extensive the magical capabilities of the lich, this additional ring of defense must be placed, for if left to their own devices, most lich hunters will eventually defeat any physical or magical traps that prevent their entrance.

To this end, the lich usually maintains a heavy guard of undead soldiers whose sole purpose is to keep watch over the lich's surroundings. Therefore, the reader must understand that in order to face a lich, one must first face its army of minions. For most hunters, this means wasting the precious power and magic needed to defeat a lich by fighting only its subordinates. Although the master possesses the might to destroy a mortal army by itself, the lich will prefer to face even a few hunters after they have been drained of strength and spells. Understand this, lich hunters, before you step boldly forth to vanquish this foe!