Archetypes: L

The path to lichdom is long and winding, with many pitfalls that overcome all but the most accomplished and precise spellcasters. Despite the trials you underwent and decades spent sequestered away with magical tomes, you know with every fiber of your being that it's all been worth it. You devised a unique and incredibly evil ritual to tear your soul from your body, and you painstakingly crafted a receptacle to house your freed soul. Immortality now lies within your grasp.

Becoming a lich requires much more than just magical knowledge. It demands fierce intelligence, bold ingenuity, incredible determination, unending patience, and a strict adherence to perfection, along with incredible skill as an artisan, for each lich must create their own soul cage. A mispronounced word or flaw in the construction of your soul cage would end not in immortality but ignominious death. You have all these skills in abundance and now, with your ascension, you've proven your superiority beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As a lich, you understand better than any the power and potential of magic. Many liches strive to increase their magical skills and foil the magic of any who dare oppose them. Others delve so deeply into necromantic arts and foul rituals that their flesh can burn the living, causing biological processes to falter and filling those who behold them with uncontrollable fear.

Regardless of what paths they pursue, nearly all liches are obsessed with their soul cage, spending untold hours and a veritable fortune to protect it, surrounding it with magical and mundane hazards, and guarding it with powerful, loyal defenders. Some liches prefer to secure their soul cage through obscurity rather than force, enshrouding it in magical abjurations or illusions to hide it from prying eyes. The most gifted crafters among liches tinker and improve their soul cage over time, rendering it nigh indestructible. This is a dangerous proposition, undertaken by only the most confident and arrogant magical engineers, as physically altering one's soul cage could have unintended consequences on its function. Many wizard liches instead learn to tap into the soul cage's magical energy from afar to fuel their own spellcasting.

Whether you study to further your own ambitions or simply out of fascination with the intricacies of language, your way with words is unparalleled.

You've trained as a spy in service of Kheithoun, learning secrets of disguise, manipulating crowds, and deceiving various sorts of magic users with ease. You likely dropped out of the Lokhia Academy, Kheithoun's premier bardic college, in order to train at one of the Lion Blade's elite Shadow Schools.

You have delved into ancient sphinx magic to imbue your body and soul with the patience and strength of stone, as you work to create a special magical ka stone to finalize your oaths.

With the dawning of a new era comes the need for a new seat of power, and what better way to show your coming master your devotion than by sacrificing your entire being for their use? You presented yourself before their altar and they answered your call, flooding your body with their power and granting you the gift of their original form. Or maybe you were abducted in the dark, on a night that the moon refused to shine, when you were taken to a profane location where a mysterious cult bound you to their master against your will. Now you have powers you didn't before and you have new features that scare (and maybe, in a small dark part of your heart, thrill) you.

You might have even become a living vessel through a strange bargain. For instance, perhaps at the brink of death, you received an offer from an entity to spare your life in exchange for inhabiting you. Or you might have offered yourself to the entity in exchange for saving a loved one, for riches, or to fulfill a lifelong dream.

Beings of any alignment can inhabit a living vessel. Evil-aligned beings, especially demons, are most likely to be interested in such an arrangement, especially if it involves forcefully taking over and changing the body and mind of a sapient being. Part of being a living vessel is learning more about your entity and finding what assuages them best and what their ultimate plans might be for your body and the world. Few vessels can fully dictate the terms of the arrangement, but the fact that you give the entity a corporeal form does give you some amount of leverage. Use it wisely.

Additional Feats: Your GM might determine that you can take a pact feat from the pactbinder archetype as an additional feat, as long as the pact is made to the entity within you. For instance, if you're hosting a fey, you could make a pact involving fey. These pact feats are at the same level as for a pactbinder.

Knowledge is power, and you labor in pursuit of that power. No matter the situation, you can usually procure some tidbit of knowledge to inform your actions. You specialize in secrets, both uncovering them and hiding them away, and your command of the written word borders on the supernatural. As you discover deeper secrets of lore, you might develop a power over knowledge that becomes outright magical, allowing you to understand and disguise information even more effectively.