Psionic Lich

The greatest psionicists, like archmages, can stretch their lives past nature's limit. The result looks like any lich: mummified skin drawn tight over the skeleton, empty sockets lit by red sparks. It usually wears whatever it liked in life, from court robes to a knight's plate, so its clothes reveal nothing. Metal armor lowers its psionic power score, though a small shield does not.

It keeps its old languages, proficiencies and thieving skills, and a once-human lich may have been dual-classed, mixing psionics with wizard or priest spells, a rare and terrible combination.

It normally hides behind hordes of servants, so many heroes never learn what they are fighting, but face to face it is among the deadliest foes imaginable. Its aura is felt even by those with no psychic gift: anyone within 50 yards must save vs. spell or be mind struck, suffering -2 to attack and damage rolls and needing twice the normal time to cast spells, which also gives targets +2 on their saves. Any spell or power that removes fear or grants courage counters this.

Its touch tears at the life force for 1d8-2 damage and drains a psionic victim's PSPs by double the damage dealt; these return normally.

Typical powers include aura sight, object reading and spirit sense (clairsentience); animate shadow (psychokinesis); shadow form, life draining, death field, ectoplasmic form, displacement, cause decay and aging (psychometabolism); teleport, astral projection, dimension door and dream travel (psychoportation); psionic crush, domination, tower of iron will and mind wipe, backed by mind thrust, ego whip, psionic blast, inflict pain, id insinuation, ESP, contact, thought shield, mind blank, mental barrier and intellect fortress (telepathy); and empower, psionic sense, psionic drain, receptacle and wrench (metapsionics). Many vary from this list, and centuries of study often yield entirely new powers that follow the usual rules for range, area and damage but have unheard-of effects. It also uses magic items as it did in life.

Because a mental force, not magic, sustains it, it resists charm, fear and similar spells and powers as though it had Wisdom 25. Effects that work through biology, such as sleep, finger of death or life detection, fail entirely, as does cold. Other spells deal normal damage, and it can be engaged in ordinary psionic combat. Only weapons of +1 or better pierce its aura. Priests and paladins can turn it, but only as a special creature. A defeated psionic lich survives in its phylactery, and that well-guarded object must be found and destroyed to end it.

These are powerful espers who shed the body's needs to chase total mental mastery and care for the living only as tools toward that end. They hole up where they feel safe, and their keen sense of auras makes that judgment sound, favoring places tied to death or learning, ideally both, such as the library of a castle buried long ago by a volcano with everyone inside.

When it emerges, it gathers followers, rarely undead, more often young espers eager to learn from a master. They do not realize it values them only for its current scheme, perhaps retrieving an old tome of mental lore or testing a new defense mode. Afterward it dismisses them, and those who linger are likely killed.

The first one seen in the misty dread realm appeared at the edge of a domain ruled by mind reavers, within a gloomy forested domain. Its lord may have destroyed it, though many think it escaped, and sightings suggest at least three more have since arisen.

The force that made it is natural rather than supernatural, but pushing the mind that far beyond mortal limits is not, and these exiles from life sometimes regret the folly that brought them there.

The candidate must be at least 18th level with a wide array of powers. It first commissions a phylactery of the finest materials from master craftsmen, anything from a ring or crown to a sword or idol, usually reflecting its personality, at 5,000 gp per level (100,000 gp for a 20th-level psionicist). It then uses a subtly altered form of empower to pour every power it has into the object. Normally an item holds only one discipline, but a phylactery can hold all, provided each discipline is fully transferred before the next begins; a finished discipline cannot be reopened. Every power placed in the object is lost to the psionicist, leaving it badly exposed during the work. Empower goes last, and transferring it drains the final spark of life and completes the change. The candidate must then pass a system shock roll; failure means its will shatters and its spirit scatters forever, beyond any power short of a god's, not even a wish.