#quickling

I asked for Dr. J earlier, and I would like to see her now. She's one of the best doctors in Pittsburgh.

THE PITT 2.04 "10:00 A.M."

bonus:

Loretta Dalma plushie!!!!!! @sacredhyacinth has made a pledge for a plushie siignnnn!!!!!

Quickling (Magic 2015) - Clint Cearley

On the left, the Stone Giant Dreamwalker! 18 ft (5.5 m) tall artists devoted to thier craft and known for thier wisdom, but these are special! You see, to a stone giant anything aboveground is "the land of dreams." These are ones who brave and embrace this "hallucination", but thanks to latent magic the world starts changing around them like it's actually a lucid dream. They turn things to stone, magically charm people, random errant thoughts make favorite objects become part of them. They think they're in a dream world without consequence, so they act on errant emotion and whim.

(art by MitchGrave on DeviantArt)

Ah yes, the lich, considered by many necromancers to be the pinnacle of necromantic study, turning oneself into a perpetually renewing undead being so that their study of magic and accumulation of personal power never has to be stopped by a silly little thing like death.

In the previous edition, becoming a lich was something that was less governed by class options and more by personal investment in terms of downtime research and monetary expenditure, and that’s technically still true in 2E, but today’s subject lets you gradually claim the powers of that transformation rather than go through the arduous task of the GM adapting those powers into your power set.

While we’ve covered a handful of these undead archetypes before on the blog, the lich is a little bit different in that unlike the others, the lich is guaranteed to be something that the character willingly did to themselves, putting their soul into a receptacle to that their body and mind could persist as a powerful undead wizards and simply regenerate a new body whenever slain as long as nobody finds the soul cage and destroys it.

Oh right, yeah, 2E made the call to rename the object that serves as the vessel for their souls from the old “phylactery” to “soul cage”, as the latter is a much more evocative name, and also because the former is one of the names for a bit of religious paraphernalia from the still-living Jewish religion, making it kinda icky to use. These are sacred things, not a toy box of terms for any RPG or writer to just use whenever. (This is the same reason that the upcoming Remastered version of 2E is doing away with the term “golem” and making all of those constructs a moderately related group of created creatures without a unifying name.)

But that’s enough of that side tangent. Another way that the lich archetype differs from other undead archetypes is that it’s not one that can be taken in a reduced form at first level, or early in the character’s career at all. After all, liches are masters of magic, and while they are no longer limited to arcane casters, they still require a good deal of mastery in magic to fully grasp the concepts of the lichdom process and research their own personal path to dark immortality.

The dark powers of a lich are many, and we’ll soon see exactly how they can provide for your amoral casting character.

The base dedication for becoming a lich requires you to be a skilled craftsperson and have upper-middle casting proficiency, and for it the lich gains the basic undead benefits and their soul cage, which returns them to unlife when slain.

Those liches that started out as wizards can choose to make their soul cage their focus item, allowing them to drain reserves of magic from it to cast spells as usual. However, unlike other bonded items, it need not be on their person, and once per day (even if they are able to drain multiple times per day), they can use the drained power to cast any spell they know, even if they didn’t prepare it that day!

Given it is the key to their continued unlife, the soul cage is a lich’s most prized possession. As such, many weave a complex and layered series of abjurations and illusions over it to make the vessel extremely hard to identify as anything but a mundane items, as well as alert the lich if it is damaged at all.

While not quite as powerful as the touch of the monstrous lich stats, many do learn to charge their touch with negative energy to sap the life of their foes, and even potentially making them more sluggish.

Many of these undead mages also develop a natural sense for magic, helping them to notice spells and items nearby.

The efforts to further bolster their soul cage often bear fruit, with the item becoming especially durable and able to regenerate a new body for the lich at a much faster rate on average. Truly masterful liches can even be regenerated in a matter of hours.

Though most every lich dreads the fate, some liches do take inspiration from the crystalline demiliches by infusing a gemstone into their own flesh, usually the forehead, to cast a warding or divination spell, allowing them to draw upon the magic of the stone to cast said spell.

Meanwhile, some of the more powerful exude an aura of dread that strikes fear into the hearts of mortals, driving them away.

The fact that this archetype doesn’t come into play until midway through the levels means that your character will have plenty of identity beyond the archetype before you take it and can be built however you like with the lich feat being barely obtrusive. On that note, this archetype is exclusive to casting classes, so which one you choose will define your build as much as anything else, though it can be hard to justify any sort of primal caster becoming undead, unless you flavor them as being a perversion of nature or homebrew some modifications to make the archetype more like a druid undead like a siabrae. If there’s anything I’d say the archetype lacks, it’s the lack of feats tied directly to the abilities of other casting classes the way it does for wizards specifically.

The story of lichdom is one of both hard work and dedication, but also of hubris and an arrogant inability to grasp the consequences of one’s selfish actions. Sure, you may persist far beyond your mortal span until finally being slain for good, but is any of it actually worth it if you forget what it meant to be mortal, to be kind and understanding? Many liches are twisted into monsters unable to conceive of what they lost even before they’ve gone through with the process, while others may realize far too late how alienated they’ve become from the life they tried to preserve.

Faster than some traps can spring and hard to spot even when visible, quicklings like Zephyrtoes make for excellent thieves. However, when the young fey snatches a pretty bauble from a hidden vault, he soon realizes that his latest trinket is none other than a lich’s soul cage, and the undead mage is as relentless as Zephyrtoes is quick, possibly even more so.

The Rasinstar family has long been plagued by bouts of weakness and nausea that seem hereditary, but many a noble family has such quirks due to how such lineages are maintained, so nobody bats an eye, but their malaise is more than just a result of their breeding, but rather their ancestor: a familial lich who doesn’t wait to be destroyed to take advantage of the many able bodies in his lineage, sapping away a little bit of their life force at random when casting certain spells.

From: Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse

Tiny Fey, Chaotic Evil

AC 16

HP 10 (3d4 + 3)

Speed 120 ft.

Str 4 -3 Dex 23 +6 Con 13 +1 Int 10 +0 Wis 12 +1 Cha 7 -2

Skills Acrobatics +8, Perception +5, Sleight of Hand +8, Stealth +8

Senses Darkvision 60 ft.

Languages Common, Sylvan

CR 1

Traits

Blurred Movement. Attack rolls against the quickling have disadvantage unless the quickling is incapacitated or restrained.

Evasion. If the quickling is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, it instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.

Actions

Multiattack. The quickling makes three dagger attacks.

Dagger. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d4 + 6) piercing damage.