Elemental Lich

These wizards mastered the misty dread realm's strange elements before or after death, and their bodies show it: ashen, corpse-gray skin, wispy white hair drifting like fog, robes that snap and flicker like flames, and rotting flesh that weeps thick red blood. They keep their living languages and can speak with any creature of the elemental planes.

Unlike most liches, an elemental lich likes close combat. It surrounds itself with undead and elementals of all kinds, then wades in to use its four touches, each once per day against a given target. After that its touch deals 1d10 without paralysis.

Touch of the grave: the victim saves vs. death magic. Success means 1d10 damage and nothing more. Failure sets his bones cracking as they try to tear free of his body; he dies unless he gets a heal within one round, and even then must succeed at system shock to survive the trauma.

Touch of the pyre: 1d10 damage from a smoldering wound, and the victim's clothing or armor must save vs. magical fire or ignite. The flames burn him for 1d10 each round, cannot be put out with water or other ordinary means, only by dispel magic, control flame or similar magic, and do not spread, dying once the item burns to ash in 1d4 rounds.

Touch of blood: 1d10 damage and a save vs. paralyzation; on a failure blood oozes from every pore for 1d4 per round, stopping only with dispel magic or magical healing. Once the bleeding alone has cost him a dozen hit points, not counting the initial 1d10, he loses one level just as from a wight's touch.

Touch of mist: reserved for quieter schemes, it deals no damage, but a target who fails a save vs. spell becomes chaotic evil and the lich's servant, linked to it telepathically over as many miles as its Hit Dice. Only remove curse from someone of the victim's original alignment frees him.

Each day it can also summon one 8 Hit Dice dread elemental of each type: grave, pyre, blood and mist. It casts spells for its Hit Dice and memorizes conjure elemental in every slot it can spare, but it cannot control undead like other liches. Anything of 5 Hit Dice or fewer that sees it must save vs. spell or flee for 5d4 rounds. Only weapons of +1 or more, spells, or monsters with at least 4+1 Hit Dice can hit it, and it ignores the same list of spells other liches do. Dread elementals can harm it but attack it only when a rival elemental lich summoned them or someone of greater level controls them. Priests of 8th level and paladins of 10th can try to turn it. When its body is destroyed it retreats into its phylactery, much like magic jar, and both must be destroyed to end it.

Elemental liches pursue the same dark power as their kin but by commanding elemental spirits rather than undead hordes. The touch of mist lets one quietly take over a hamlet or town where nobody is likely to recognize a lich, using its thralls to spread despair and death without drawing heroes' attention.

Each day it communes with the realm's elemental powers, whose relationship to it is unknown. To keep its gifts it buries its phylactery in a nearby grave, burns a bonfire of bones over it and soaks the ashes with blood; if the powers approve, mist rolls in to hide the site. Hunters therefore know to search misty ground such as graveyards, barrows or lonely forest clearings, but the mist itself demands a save vs. spell every turn or confusion, as the 4th-level spell, for 1d10 turns. Digging directly over the phylactery alerts the lich telepathically, and it arrives in 1d10 rounds ready to kill everything there.

Their 1d4+4 gem teeth cast trap the soul. A victim who fails to resist loses his life force to a gem while his body becomes a 16 Hit Dice elemental of a random kind (roll 1d4: grave on 1, pyre on 2, blood on 3, mist on 4) that serves the demilich for as many months as its Hit Dice. Since the body is consumed, only a wish can restore the victim. Their lairs are strewn with the charred, broken bones of would-be slayers.