Liches and Osirites

[IamLEAM1983]

- liches are formed when a mortal individual is directly connected to a ley line or Nexus and doesn't have the equipment or training to prevent raw via from overloading his body
- effects are fairly recognizable: the body is killed and the soul is trapped inside. The end result isn't a Ghoul, however.

- the body tends to store arcane power and to discharge it evenly. Energy goes in the left side of the body, is projected from the right side - unless fairly standard and benign arcane conditions are detected
- liches are formed when too much power goes in for the body to project without killing itself. Imagine a kettle with rising pressure. Eventually, the lid pops or explodes...
- what happens next is arcane power suffuses corpse and actually sustains sentient life despite ongoing decomposition
- everything organic and non-mineral rots away over time, leaving only bones. Raw arcane power replaces organs that sustained life. Heart, brain, kidneys, liver, etc.
- mineral elements become saturated with arcane power over time. As ley lines tend to be visible as blue in the arcane spectrum, living skeletal beings start glowing with a bluish hue
- if enough power is amassed, glow can be followed by smoke or fire--like effects around head or in eye sockets, all still blue

- these specific undead are essentially walking arcane capacitors. They constantly draw in via from the left side of their bodies, unlike living mages who have to focus to do it
- they *have* to discharge their excess energies somehow, or risk catastrophic displays. For mages, being a lich is an assured jackpot. You're guaranteed a constant and impressive store of raw potential
- not all liches are practitioners, although some people have been turned into one and chose to develop their new talent rather than force themselves to ground all that power every two or three days
- this makes being a lich one of the few sure-fire ways for non-talented mundanes to develop a considerable amount of arcane potency. The cost, however, is fairly high.

- normally, mages can work with surrounding supply of energies. They don't need to connect to a ley line. The world carries enough via in itself for it to be enough.
- sometimes, though, the arcane big guns are needed. This is why you would want to connect to a ley line. Summoning an angel or a demon, for instance, or performing necromantic rituals
- the "in" port, in normal circumstances, is the set of glyphs and accessories you'll put on the floor. Few buildings ever sit directly on top of a ley line, so you need to coax the flow into choosing your location as a new destination
- this involves "opening up" the location to large amounts of arcane power.

- the "out" port is the spell you're working on. The power you're tapping needs to be put to use quickly enough, or else it'll build up inside you to dangerous levels. Smaller circles or prepared areas can slow down the influx
- it's like using a sieve. Less power trickles in at any given time, but the delivery is more stable, less likely to overload you

- you NEED those two elements to work a spell. Even on-the-fly stuff depends on that. Your body and mind are conduits to via while you're working on that fireball spell, for instance. You need to make yourself into a channel.
- receptive, but not weak. You have to mentally curb that power into whatever it is you want it to do. Hence why some approaches to magic can encourage the use of tattoos or jewellery. They mark you as being suitable as a conduit if prepped

- the best way to create a lich is to simply neglect the outgoing elements of spell-making, or to incorrectly dose them. If your arcane openings aren't wide enough or simply nonexistent, chances are you'll injure yourself on an arcane level
- this is actually why Wizards, Warlocks and Archmages tend to be long-lived. They've made so many mistakes and survived so many botches they're essentially half-liches. Their flesh responds to via by aging more and more slowly
- arcane injuries are rarely physically treatable, but they do affect the practitioner's mind. Can be anything from migraines to crippling pain coming from flaring nerve centers, to honest, clinically observable dementia and insanity
- this informs the stereotype of the absent-minded wizard. The older you are, the more mistakes you've made, the more your mind might have minor missing bits and pieces

- so if you're not decently prepared as a conduit, if your outgoing flow is blocked, you run the risk of being consumed by arcane power. This is how liches are born.
- when that happens, all that power can no longer be contained in the practitioner's mind. It erupts out of the body, but not in a controlled manner like when spells are cast
- it DEVOURS the body, instead. Usually takes the form of blue-white fire rapidly chewing away at the poor unfortunate's flesh
- this obviously kills the person. For a time, the mage stays dead. Then, a few minutes to a few hours later, depending on the severity of the burns suffered, sapient life is restored
- clothes are mysteriously unaffected, unless blood and fluids produced by decomposition are concerned
- a lot of liches tend to stick to the clothes and items they burned in, as they also become part of the conduit they've become
- considering, personal items belonging to liches are worth a lot on the arcane black market. May have led to the misconception of liches needing phylacteries
- this especially applies to lich weapons. Can be literally anything. Hyperborean Warlocks had wands, but Zebediah Buck has a few rings. Coach has his Colt pistols and coach gun.

- as said above, can have a high mental price. Willing liches tend to be fairly eccentric, if not outright homicidal. See Rasputin.
- typical protection against mental degradation involves being severely impared or unconscious at the moment of death. If the waking mind couldn't be directly affected, chances are you'll be okay
- Rasputin is gone, Zeb is... mostly okay if you ignore his Bleeding Heart Romantic/Classic Gothic schtick, and Coach is virtually sane
- Coach was spared mental breakage because he was poisoned before being forcibly connected to one of the local ley lines
- being unconscious *and* a mundane to boot, he never did know how to ground or project the excess via he was taking in. So he burned.

- so why become a lich? For the power. As one, you can tap directly into the energies of Creation. You lack the finer control of decades or centuries of study, but...
- ...you have no limitations on the number of Schools or arcane concepts you can tackle. Not that favorites don't emerge. A lot of liches made out of nonpractitioners tend to have practical approaches.
- you don't start out as being particularly good, as you still need to train like any other mage. You're just more flexible than the norm.
- being seriously not talented for this and being turned into a lich is a *severe* bummer. See Zebediah..

- you're also harder to kill, and long-lived. Normal bones can be broken with fairly ordinary amounts of force. Goes double if they're dried up. Lich bones become *extremely* resilient to pressure, impact, heat and cold extremes, etc
- ...unless you drain the lich. Force it to ground itself and give away all of its stored power, and you've earned yourself a short, if generous time window of a few minutes.
- emptied lich bones are extremely brittle. A few good hammer blows can reduce a lich's supporting bones to powder

- the "capacitor effect" is exponential, though. Drained liches are inert and dormant, but will get back up within minutes. You need to act quickly.

- before maces or heavy hammers were readily available, Neolithic wizards used to exploit a loophole to keep evil liches dormant...

The Self-Sustaining Draining Spell Trick
- trap a lich in a space that's been prepared to draw from the lich's own stores of power. The output needs to be a spell designed to keep draining the lich
- the end result is a lich that's trapped in an area that's designed to draw from the lich to power itself. This cycles all of the lich's power in the spell that's keeping it drained, and prevents it from re-entering the skeleton
- this trick usually involves a secondary spell placed under the first, designed to catch and ground any excess power that could trickle in

- a coffin can be the trapping mechanism, for instance, while the ground underneath the coffin is turned into a sort of arcane gutter to prevent the coffin's material from overloading or burning out with time
- if the lich's crypt is kept away from any ley lines or nexuses and dug in deep enough, even if it escapes, it's likely to remain too weak to escape its tomb.

Osirites
- nominally Egyptian variation, but term is used to refer to any lich created that includes the use of mummification processes
- same basic principle, except via suffuses bones and mummified flesh alike
- can be very dangerous if awakened, seeing as mummified liches usually requested this process for one simple reason...
- ...they wanted to have more than just their bones to use as storage devices. Osirites can store more total power than standard Western liches
- what isn't known is that mummification also had its arcane twin: reconstruction
- Osirites will use their own stores of energies and a mixture of Ghoul rituals and spells to restore themselves to stable organic life
- only liches whose power level is tied to their overall state. Dried or mummified ones are fairly weak, restored Osirites are terribly powerful. Comparable to former Hyperborean sorcerors