Such evil deeds could religion prompt.
- Lucretius
"On the Nature of Things"
The Priestly Lich
When I last prayed to my goddess, I saw
that she was sad beyond words. She
had witnessed the mournful
transformation of one of her priests into
undead form - a lich. The priest had
abandoned all that he had learned and
forsaken his blessings to suck from the
rotten fruit of evil power. I do not know
what has happened to that priest, other
than he is doomed to suffer eternally for
the betrayal and forgiving his spirit over
to a malignancy which serves to curse
this world by its very existence.
- Tregarde of the Misty Dales
In general, the priest lich is much
rarer than the wizard lich. The
introspection common to secular
magical studies promotes a greater
number of mortals to lichdom. Clerics
tend to have duties that mandate their
association with other mortals,
keeping them more "human". Service
to another being, by its nature, also
inhibits turning to lichdom since it
suppresses the pervasive self-absorption necessary to drive the
aspirant.
While mages are considered
the most likely candidates to
fall prey to the lure of
lichdom, it should not be
forgotten that priests may
walk the road to unlife as well. In most
respects, the processes are similar. The
priest must, like the mage, discover the
ritual to lichdom, whether it is revealed by
beings from unseen planes, unearthed
from ancient scriptures where it lay
hidden in riddles, or unveiled by an evil
diety through prayer. The priest, too,
must manufacture a phylactery and
concoct a poisonous potion to go with it.
However, the transformation for a
priest is based in priestly magic, ritual,
and ceremony. A ritual designed for a
mage would afford certain doom to a
cleric.
Since a priest gains spells through
ritual contact with a deity, it is beyond
belief that the deity would not know of
such a profound change as the follower
transforming into a lich. The very
thought of being able to hide such a thing from a deity that a person serves
so intimately is absurd. It is almost
universal that a cleric lich is of a neutral
or, more likely, evil bent, as a power of
good certainly will not tolerate such an
unnatural and wicked transformation
among any followers.
In general, the priest lich is much
rarer than the wizard lich. The
introspection common to secular
magical studies promotes a greater
number of mortals to lichdom. Clerics
tend to have duties that mandate their
association with other mortals,
keeping them more "human". Service
to another being, by its nature, also
inhibits turning to lichdom since it
suppresses the pervasive self-absorption necessary to drive the
aspirant.
Goodly Priests and Their Deities
I cannot imagine what would cause a
priest serving the cause of good, justice,
and order to turn against everything he
has devoted his life to preserving. Nor
can I imagine what the wrath of his
betrayed god would be in a case like this.
During his research, a priest
sometimes encounters the secrets to
lichdom. Perhaps these secrets are given
to him surreptitiously by an evil deity, or
perhaps they are revealed by the priest's
own god as a test. Whatever the means,
a priest who comes by the secret might
elect to take full advantage of it for his
own gains. He may justify his actions by
saying that in this manner he will serve
his deity better, perhaps more powerfully
or more everlastingly, but these are
rationalizations. The transformation to
lichdom is always, at its heart, a selfish
course of action.
Even acquiring the necessary
components for the lichdom ritual -
organs from slain, sentient beings and poisons of dire repute and illegal
status - is enough to cause the priest to
be banished from his church if he is
discovered. Surely he would be
excommunicated when he undergoes
the transformation ceremony, for then
his deity will certainly know what
happened and inform other followers of
his actions. When a priest is so
banished, he loses all of the support of
his religion. He can seek no lodging
within lands or buildings owned or run
by his church, nor can he associate with
priests of his former religion or lay
followers who know of his new status.
Worse, the priest loses his ability to
cast spells of healing, protection, and
blessing, and he finds that the strength
his deity gave him to confront the
undead is taken from him. We people of
common peasant stock can survive
without the ability to turn undead away
from us, without the ability to bless or
heal, without the ability to inspire the
faithful to victory. If a priest should lose
these abilities, it represents the collapse
of the priest's very reason for being. He
has turned his back on his life and
jeopardized the very society he was
trained to protect and nurture. Who will
be there now for the people he served,
to heal their wounds of body and spirit
and to turn away the undead?
The deity who influenced that person
into becoming a priest and welcomed
him into the church is not likely to
embrace the priest's treachery. In fact,
the deity is more likely to react with a
terrible curse upon the fallen priest. So,
a cleric of good is unheard of among
liches, or so I've read. His deity has
abandoned and cursed him, and to
continue existing he must forge a pact
with a darker deity - at best, the
disinterested and cold gods of pure
knowledge, but at the worst the gods of
evil and decay. In short, I conclude that
so priest of goodness can ever become
a lich.
In some AD&D campaigns (notably
the Forgotten Realms setting), liches
may be of any alignment. However,
cleric liches, as well as wizard liches,
are uniformly evil within the Ravenloft
campaign. The dark powers that guide
the Derriiplane of Dread select only
evil liches to bring to that place, and
the native inhabitants of the
demiplane who have the abilities,
resources, and who escape the notice
of the lord of their domain long
enough to become liches are nearly
nonexistent.
Neutral Priests and Their Dieties
It seems reasonable to me that priests
who who espouse neither morality nor immorality, neither good nor evil, are
the most likely to become cleric liches.
In the main, these priest serve gods of
knowledge, who are often reverenced
by mages. These deities promote an
ethic of rising to one's own level of
ability by one's own hand, which
promotes aspirations to lichdom.
It might be in the best interests of a
neutral deity (for who am I to know the
ways of gods?) to allow a servant to
remain on the mortal world long beyond
the age of mortal men, in order to
accumulate and relate knowledge and
experience to the church. While potions
of longevity or elixirs of youth seem a
logical resort in such a case, these
concoctions are known to be of
questionable effect. They cause stress in
the normal fabric of a person's physical
being, stretching it back and forth like a
piece of rubber, until one potion too
many is consumed, and snap! - the body
disintegrates. One might rely on potions
of longevity for a span of decades if one
knew their mysteries (which I, alas, do
not), but in due course the hand of death
must close upon us all - or most of us, at
any rate.
Therefore, in the mind of some coldly
calculating and inhuman god, it might
seem an eminently logical and necessary
step to endow a faithful and trusted
servant with the information needed to
transform into a lich. The scrupulous
performance of the research and
processes necessary to complete the
ritual of transformation, and the success
or failure of the rite, would then prove the ultimate test of whether this servant
was worthy of lichdom.
I find myself unable, no matter how
broad of mind I attempt to be, to
sympathize with the intentions of such
gods. Mortals may not know the
intentions of the divine, but how could a
deity put one of its faithful through an
experience guaranteed to warp its very
mental being into something else?
Surely such a god would know the
unliving fruit of black knowledge is so
perverse that a drift into evil is
inevitable for its servant!
Evil Priests and Their Dieties
I have no doubt there are human fiends
who strive to find proper candidates for
lichdom, and I doubt not their success.
Evil religions have their own dark goals to
counter the forces of light. To tip the
balance, some evil deities surely attempt
to find priests among their followings to
turn into liches, making them much more
powerful tools in some evil design.
I have known some servants of these
dark gods; they are a paranoid and
elitist lot, certainly a mortal reflection of
the vile things they worship. To earn the
"gift" of lichdom (as I am sure they
regard it), there are surely many trials of
which only the priests themselves are
aware. These tests must be extremely
difficult, or I fear the world would be
quite overrun with priestly liches; such a
station would be highly prized by all
creatures of evil bent.
Having some understanding of the
hearts and minds of evil, I speculate
that the tests of lichdom are particularly
strenuous because the transformation
into lichdom represents an increase in
power so significant that the deity may
have difficulty maintaining control over
the lich. This simple conclusion
explains rather well why evil cleric
liches fall into two types: those
fanatically devoted to their deities, and
those madmen attempting to become
deities themselves.
The fanatics are extremely rare (I know
of only one in existence), but they
actually are most open about their
condition as liches, at least with other
followers of their gods. (My knowledge of
this was gained through, shall we say,
eavesdropping.) They are the high priests
of deities of death or disease. They
preside over unspeakably foul rites in
huge temple complexes, protected and
served by legions of fanatic followers.
Their deities reward their devotion with
ever larger insights into the mysteries of
magic, faith, and possibly the energies of
that plane of negative energy. They are
valuable generals in the ongoing battle
between evil and good for the hearts and
souls of mortals, and their gods reward
their loyalty with bounteous prosperity,
ample knowledge, and miraculous powers
beyond those of even the "common" lich.
An evil lich attempting to become a
deity is superficially identical to a fanatic, but it gradually subverts the
devotion of its god's followers, first
portraying itself as a mouthpiece, then
as an actual personification of the god's
power and desires. The lich walks a thin
and twisted line of duplicity, hoping to
amass enough of a following (and
enough magical items, artifacts of
power, and abilities) to promote itself to
the status of a deity without its own god
divining the lich's ultimate intent too
soon and squashing the lich like the
two-raced insect it is.
A cleric lich is more likely to have
salient abilities than is a wizard lich.
These may be abilities granted by the
lich's deity (and thus removable by
the deity), or they may be
manifestations of a difference or
improvement in the nature of the
ritual of transformation that invests
the priest with lichdom. These special
abilities could be the same ones
discussed under "Salient Abilities" in
Chapter Two, or they could be powers
more in line with the specific deity to
whom the cleric lich owes allegiance.
These special abilities often show
more of a subtle, interactive, charm-
and illusion-oriented bent than those
of the wizard lich; while the wizard
lich tends to rely more on brute force,
the cleric has a more social nature.
For instance, a cleric lich might
have a whisper of suggestion ability
rather than the voice of maleficence
ability. The former can be used on
anyone at any time, working like the
suggestion spell but with a -2 bonus
to the target's saving throw. The lich
could use this ability up to six times a
day. Suggestions could include
encouragement to perform obviously
harmful acts, but the target would
then be entitled to a saving throw at a
+2 bonus.
Psychological Impacts of the Change
A person has to possess a spirit at least
tainted, if not twisted, by evil to want to
become a lich. The realization of the
goal is even more twisted.
Some of the ingredients in the potion
of transformation are exotic and fatal
poisons of mind-boggling strength.
When drunk, these ingredients do more
than alter the body - they alter the mind
extensively as well.
Although I certainly have no direct
evidence to support it, I believe that a
cleric lich has a psychology all its own.
The mind of the priest is swept away,
shriveled by the potion and shattered by
the rites. A cleric is a person of faith -
faith in himself, faith in his deity, faith in
the steadfast workings of the universe.
The change into lichdom is a profound
leap of faith in a direction that goes
against the grain of the very constants
of the universe.
The mind of the being that exists
after the transformation is profoundly
different from the mind of the being
that existed before, because it has
taken it upon itself to defy the natural
ordering of the gods with respect to
itself. The cleric lich has set itself
above its own god in the matter of the
avoidance of its death, and the fact
that it finds itself still in existence after
the transformation, after having the
temerity to defy the universal order,
subtly but absolutely shifts the
underpinnings of its mind.
In the priest's place is a wholly
different being composed of seething
evil and pride. The personality of the
once-living person grows fainter through
the centuries, eventually fading from the
lich's own memory. All of the
knowledge and skills (and perhaps the
goals) of its former self yet reside within
the mind of the lich.
Yet driving the lich toward its goals is
a lurking evil so awful that it defies
mortal experience. The greatest loss in
the transformation is the irrevocable
erasure of the living person's
personality. His very spirit is forever
gone, remade in the image of the
dominating power that is the lich. This
loss is what makes deities of good
abhor the transformation and deities of
evil cautious about its use.
The cleric lich worships and
receives spells from a deity, just as it
did in life, but many deities will reject
a cleric for seeking lichdom or
destroy him out of hand. Cleric
liches therefore serve deities devoted
to raw knowledge, like Azuth or
Mystra of the Forgotten Realms
campaign; or they serve deities of
death, decay, or evil, such as Cyric
and Beshaba, also of the Forgotten
Realms setting.
The cleric lich is created through
the same process as is the wizard
lich, except that the spells it casts
are obviously clerical in nature.
Common abilities of the cleric lich
also match those of the mage lich,
in that it has an icy, damaging
touch, an aura of fear, certain spell
immunities, and defenses such that
it can be hit only by enchanted
weapons of +1 or better. A cleric
who becomes a lich loses the ability
to turn undead, but it may command
undead as described in the Player's
Handbook under "Evil Priests and
the Undead", as well as make use of
other methods of dominating,
controlling, and commanding
undead described earlier in this
section.
