Lich

Gaunt and nearly skeletal like a mummy, a lich has hollow sockets lit by two burning points that see in total darkness and are never dazzled. Cold and gloom roll off it. Most (75%) wear decayed noble finery, the rest the robes of their old calling, with a 25% chance the rags are magical. Each began as a wizard of 18th level or more.

A creature under 5 Hit Dice or levels that sees one must save vs. spell or run in terror for 5d4 rounds. Its touch deals 1-10 cold damage and requires a save vs. paralysis; failure freezes the victim until the effect is dispelled.

Only +1 or better weapons, spells, or monsters with magical natures or 6+ Hit Dice can hurt it. Insanity, death spells, electricity, cold, polymorph, enfeeblement, sleep and charm all fail. Priests of 8th level and paladins of 10th level or higher may attempt turning.

It casts as in life, still needing spellbooks and components, uses magic items freely, and after centuries of study may wield spells nobody has seen. Its life force rests in a phylactery, much like magic jar, so the body must be utterly destroyed and the hidden, heavily guarded phylactery found and broken too.

Liches dwell alone in grim strongholds or vast crypts and rarely bother with the living unless something personal stirs them. Then they become patient, brilliant foes who may raise undead armies. Indifferent to good and evil, most are deemed evil, though rare ones of any alignment exist. Over centuries many forget who they were and take titles such as the Forgotten King; learning a lich's true name is rumored to give power over it.

The aspiring lich crafts a phylactery of superb quality worth at least 1,500 gp per level using reincarnation, permanency, magic jar and enchant an item. It then brews a lethal draught laced with animate dead, feign death, cone of cold, wraithform and permanency, and drinks it at the next full moon. A failed system shock roll means a flawed potion and permanent death.

The demilich is the last stage of a lich, whose spirit has gone off to strange planes and left only a skull, bones and dust. Enter its tomb and the dust rises in human shape. The oldest (25%) merely menace and disperse after 3 rounds unless attacked. The rest form an unturnable dust figure with a wraith's powers that stores damage as energy while pretending to suffer; at 50 points it becomes a ghostlike image of the lich, also unturnable.

Whoever touches the skull draws its gaze toward the mightiest intruder, preferring spellcasters, and it howls a death ray across 20 feet; anyone failing a save vs. death dies permanently. Next round its gem teeth (1d4+4 of them) each trap a soul, and the victim's body rots in one round. It repeats this while challenged until every gem is full. An amulet of life protection saves the soul but not the body. Its curses (always being hit, never saving, gaining no experience) yield to remove curse at the price of 1 Charisma permanently.

The skull has AC -6 and 50 hit points. Forget makes it sink without attacking; dispel evil deals 1d4+4, shatter 3d6, holy word 5d6, and power word kill from an ethereal or astral wizard destroys it. Fighters and rangers deal normal damage with a vorpal weapon, sword of sharpness or sword +5, as do paladins with vorpal or +4 arms; anyone else needs a mace of disruption or +4 weapon to deal 1 point per hit.

Once it is destroyed, each trapped soul saves vs. spell or is gone forever. Survivors glow faintly in their gems (true seeing shows them) and are freed by crushing the stone, needing a body such as a clone or simulacrum within 10 yards. The demilich reforms in 1-10 days unless its shards are soaked in holy water and hit with dispel magic.

Rumors of non-evil liches, even lawful good ones, and of priests turned lich in dire need, have proven true, but such beings are extraordinarily rare.