Our Liches Are Different

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    Even a dead guy can make it in the world if he's got himself a college education!

    A lich is an undead sorcerer, often one who seeks Immortality or power above anything else, and became undead as the price he had to pay. Typically his soul is stored elsewhere in a Soul Jar, at times called a phylactery, which must be destroyed before he can be fully defeated. In other fiction, the Soul Jar is optional.

    A lich's physical appearance can range from near-normal, to zombie/corpse-like, to completely skeletal, which usually depends on the lich's age. Because of their skill at magic, liches tend to be the most powerful and dangerous type of undead in settings where they exist.

    Something resembling the concept goes at least back to Koschei the Deathless from Russian Mythology and Tales. He was a gaunt, skeletal villain whose "death" was hidden in a needle inside an egg. To kill him without him coming Back from the Dead, one must destroy the needle. He was also an Evil Overlord, a powerful sorceror and a great fighter. Basically, the only thing that distinguishes him from a lich is that he is very good at using his BFS.

    The word "lich" is an old word for "corpse" (in modern and slightly-archaic English, graveyards are still occasionally called "lichyards" and "lichfields") and was used in reference to (sometimes undead) corpses by Clark Ashton Smith in the 1930s. Dungeons & Dragons, inspired by this, used the word specifically to mean an undead sorcerer with his soul stored away. The influence of D&D on fantasy literature and on Video Games has spread the term to some degree, although it's still not a standard term and there are plenty of undead sorcerers in media that are never called liches. (Equally, there are cases where the creature is called a lich but is just a walking corpse, if the author thinks that "zombie" sounds anachronistic or inaccurate.)

    It's pronounced to rhyme with "witch".

    Examples of Our Liches Are Different include:

    Anime and Manga


    Comics

    • In Gold Digger, Gina and Britanny's kindly grandfather got caught in a magical accident that corrupted him into the undead Lich King.


    Film

    • Technically, and depending on whether you consider the sequels to be canon, Freddy Krueger of Nightmare On Elm Street could be considered a sort of "astral lich". He definitely would qualify as a powerful sorceror, with an appearance that screams "undead", and killing him tends to involve some rather unusual methods, most often dragging him onto our plane, and, even then, nobody has ever managed to kill him permanently.
      • Freddy can also be considered a sort of demon. Likewise, he may just simply be a particularly powerful ghost.
    • Rasputin in Anastasia.
    • Disney's The Black Cauldron has the Horned King as one.
    • Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of The Dragon God had a lich (according to him, anyway) who acted as The Dragon to the villain (who himself wanted to be The Dragon to the Dragon God). That is, he acted as The Dragon until it looked like the good guys were going to win and the villain started being unpleasant to be around. The he basically did a Screw You Guys I'm Going Home.


    Literature

    • In The Chronicles of Prydain, the party encounters a magician at one point who did the soul-transfer thing into his finger, which he then cut off and put in a coffer hidden in a tree in the middle of the forest. Guess which tree the party had previously rested at and searched....
      • Thanks to the antics of a playful crow, who tried to stash some "treasure" of his own in said tree.
      • However in the Disney adaptation, it's the Horned King that's a lich.
    • Voldemort in Harry Potter is a pretty straightforward example. He split his soul into 7 pieces with successive murders, and stored each one inside a Horcrux. When his Killing Curse backfires and kills him, he remains stuck in the mortal world as "less than a ghost", yet unable to die. Eventually one of his followers helps him to create a new body, and he gets back in business.
    • The lazar from The Death Gate Cycle are something of a cross between liches and zombies. Their souls are not stored in Soul Jars but rather have partially separated from their bodies, an excruciatingly painful process that drives most lazar completely Ax Crazy, and the bonds between soul and body can only be severed by an immensely powerful spell that only three mages (in a series chock-full of magic users) were ever able to cast. All lazar seen were originally necromancers in life, but it's unclear if that's a requirement or not.
    • In Greg Costikyan's Another Day, Another Dungeon, a send-up of D&D (although I didn't realize that for years and years) a lich functions as the main Big Bad's dragon. He's an undead sorcerer, but he's pretty much the Only Sane Man for Team Evil. He once spent a century as a disembodied skull being used as a birdfeeder, and it's left him with an almost uncontrollable urge to kill all songbirds.
    • Rare non-villain example: In the Garrett P.I. novels, the titular detective is advised by the Dead Man, the ghost of a Loghyr (a near-legendary race of geniuses) that haunts its own corpse. Nominally one of the good guys, the Dead Man didn't choose to become a lich—it's just what happens when Loghyr die—but he shares their near-indestructibility, and has Psychic Powers on par with conventional liches' magic.
    • In Winner Take All, from the Hawk & Fisher series, a political candidate is protected by Mortise, a wizard who'd died defending him from magical assassination. Unlike most examples, Mortise's lichdom is a temporary state, and he's forced to hide out in an ice-filled cellar to avert his body's slow and painful decomposition.
      • Note that other books in the same continuity (like Down Among the Dead Men) use "lich" to refer to zombie-like animated corpses.
    • In The Colour of Magic, Liessa Wyrmbidder's father Griecha is a wizard-king whom she murdered, but who hangs around in his dead body until one of his children proves strong enough to claim the throne. How he accomplished this feat isn't specified, but the high level of ambient magic that permeates the Wyrmberg probably helped.
    • In The Death Of The Necromancer, "lich" is the word for a corpse animated by a necromancer to do his bidding, in a usage that deliberately shies away from D&D's influence and goes back to the original archaic term.
    • Liches exist in The Riftwar Cycle, but have never played a huge role -- Recurring Boss Leso Varen has dealt with them, but while he's a necromancer who uses a Soul Jar he isn't one himself, since he steals living bodies to inhabit rather than animating dead ones.
    • The Dragaeran Sethra Lavode is a vampire upwards of 250,000 years old and has been studying sorcery all that time, allowing her to become the most powerful magic-user in the Empire. Given that standards for what constitutes "powerful magic" in Dragaera are a bit higher than in most settings, "most powerful" means "on casual speaking terms with a few gods," who rely on her to keep certain greedy Starfish Aliens out of the Empire when they can't.
    • Mercedes Lackey brought Koschei back for her book Firebird, only it was his heart, and it was hidden inside a magically fast duck hidden inside a magically fast rabbit locked inside a magic chest at the top of a magically tall tree guarded by a magical mechanical dragon.
      • Koschei (here spelled "Katschei") was also the final villain in the first Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms book, again it was his heart, he's later mentioned again in the third, which is actually primarily based off Russian folklore.
    • Kerrigor and the rest of the Greater Dead from Sabriel.
    • Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series has the dyrmagnos which are the ultimate result of the use of necromancy/dark magic: the body deteriorates leaving a dessicated husk animated by a strong, evil intelligence and wielding very powerful magic. Even dismembering cannot completely incapacitate one of them. Of the two cases seen thus far, one has been divided in many pieces that were dispersed, the head being put into a metal casket and dropped in deep sea, while the other was still able to nearly kill one of the main characters after being cut in two.
    • Kerrigor in The Old Kingdom became a Greater Dead Adept, the in-universe equivalent. He can never be banished entirely to death as long as his body still exists. Also, he has a staggering amount of power even across the Wall, because he's one of the royal family, and therefore one of the great Charter Bloodlines.
    • The novelization of Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth has a lich (standard AD&D type, as it is an AD&D novel) as a major mid-novel foe. He doesn't last very long, but he does yield a few handy magic items that come in very useful for the rest of the series.
    • Though no Soul Jar is mentioned, the narrator of the short story "Same-Day Delivery" by Desmond Warzel is an undead wizard, and so probably qualifies.
    • Morthûl the Charnel King from The Goblin Corps by Ari Marmell. He's not so much undead as a powerful wizard who has affixed himself between life and death using powerful magic. His Soul Jar comes in two parts: a crown that lets him possess other bodies, and his dragon, a demon whose immortality Morthûl has been using to sustain himself.


    Live Action TV

    • Davros from Doctor Who is mostly dead, is kept alive by dark means, turns people into servitor monsters, and is an Omnicidal Maniac to boot. Additionally, he has survived things that are supposed to be unsurvivable (although the Daleks' gunsticks may have been part of a Thanatos Gambit, which is another common lich pattern) multiple times, is able to modify his body extensively, apparently has multiple bodies (or at least really convincing puppets)...
      • Also, for a time when The Master was Out of Continues, you had him existing in undead-like fashion (second incarnation was a vastly decayed body, fourth was as a Puppeteer Parasite who continually burned out his host, causing his body to decay as the film went on). This is also the cost of his immortality, in a way (in the sense that it's the price of not allowing himself to die). He has always sought power above all else, but this forced him to seek immortality in the form of restoring his ability to regenerate in The Movie. There are also elements of this in his sixth incarnation's return (Came Back Wrong, resulting in powerful abilities, and Glamour Failure resulting in a skeletal appearance at times). One of the Expanded Universe books even gives Koschei as his name before it was "The Master."
    • In Lost Girl, a lich (pronounced "lick") is a species of flesh eating fae from Ancient Egypt. Despite their unusual origins, they do share traits with more traditional liches. They've transformed themselves into quasi-undead creatures in order to extend their already impressive fae lifespans, and maintain living phylacteries.


    Tabletop Games

    • Dungeons & Dragons, of course.
      • The specific rituals vary, from deals with evil gods to combination of alchemy and powerful necromantic magic.
      • A "Demi-lich" in the game first appeared in the infamous module Tomb of Horrors and is a lich that is so old that its body has decayed to uselessness, but has such great powers that this doesn't stop it. Nothing is left of a demi-lich but a skull (or other skeletal part) jammed full of jewels containing slowly digesting souls.
        • The 3e Epic Level Handbook featured the closest a demilich ever got to being non-evil with the owner of an extra-dimensional library containing every spell known. Said lich is nothing more than a hand (with jewel phylactery fingers) who works endlessly to scribe every new spell discovered into the organization's Codex, for the purpose of preserving the knowledge. She only really gets violent if you interrupt her for a trivial reason.
      • Greyhawk got Vecna, the evil god of Undeath and Secrets, who gained godhood by becoming a lich, but stupidly gave his lieutenant a sword that had a piece of the god's soul in it (making it inherently evil) and thus the lieutenant, Kas, betrayed Vecna by stabbing him in the left eye and cutting off his right hand. They... haven't gotten along since then.
        • Also native to Oerth, the Suel lich is a variant with no Soul Jar. A wizard who has converted his life force to pure, negative energy, it steals the bodies of other mortals to survive, potentially living millennia via Body Surfing.
      • Want to know how to make an illithid even creepier? Make it a lich. Illithid liches, also known as alhoons, are hated and feared even by other illithids because 1) they use magic which is normally taboo in illithid society, 2) undead are very difficult for illithids to detect via psionics, 3) they reject the illithid way of life, and 4) they are hideous undead abominations.
      • Psionic liches are a rare variation where a psionist uses Psychic Powers rather than magic to become a lich.
      • Not to mention the Lichfiend, an undead demon/devil whose soul is held by a Demon Lord or Archdevil instead of a phylactery. While this is theoretically safer than the traditional method, it gives their master the power to destroy them with a thought if they become disloyal. Unlike most examples, fiends are already immortal so the transformation is usually done for power alone.
      • Forgotten Realms sourcebook REF5 Lords of Darkness (1988, with AD&D1 rules) expounded on the process - in the "modern" variant common for Faerûnian humans - and consequences. Including details such as components and spells used to become a "lichnee" linked with a phylactery, and that a lichnee must possess one's own corpse or devour its fragments (or ashes) while possessing another corpse to turn into a full-powered lich; the remnants are automatically located by lichnee and can be utterly destroyed only by disintegration - wish still trumps this, of course. Also, "retreats" gradually diminish the remaining lifeforce, thus a lich can be eventually destroyed without breaking the phylactery, simply by whacking the body with weapons repeatedly... one level per killing, until beaten below 10 level, and it still can pause as much as it likes before returning.
        • Banelich is a high-level cleric of Bane "upgraded" via special ritual. They have phylacteries like the usual variety, but got somewhat different powers. Each banelich hosts a tiny bit of Bane's essence that would allow to bring the god back in case of demise (Finder's Bane novel described one such attempt), which also allowed them to retain divine spellcasting after Bane was killed. There were more than two dozens of them at the time.
        • There's Dracolich, using a similar process. Because for Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons. And that's where it's fun to remember that FR also got Dragonmagic. The nastiness adds up quickly.
        • There's also an illithilich on steroids - Thalynsar the Ulithautarch. It's an ulitharid... who became an alhoon... and also merged with a dying Elder Brain, inheriting most of its knowledge and Psychic Powers. Absorbing remnants from thousands of illithids' minds didn't exactly improve its sanity, so now it thinks that's the best way to go for its whole species.
        • Another variation is Baelnorn, elves that turned into a special, possibly good-aligned variant of liches to safeguard areas or items important to elves, or to be able to keep their wisdom passing on past even an elf's lifespan. They don't have phylactery, but are linked to an area.
      • The Archlich, introduced by Ed Greenwood in both Forgotten Realms and Spelljammer sourcebooks. Which is basically non-evil aligned counterpart to non-good lich. 3rd and 4th edition also have rules for letting a player turn into one. There are also priestly Archliches, including dwarven ones - by the same token as Baelnorn, they make tough and intelligent guards for important areas and knowledge.
      • Although not as common as the classic horror monsters, liches do exist in the Ravenloft setting, where known lich variants include psionic liches, elementalist liches (from 2E), the vassalich (basically an undead Renfield), and at least one NPC bardic lich.
        • The 3.5 supplement Libris Mortis - Book of Undead has a bardic lich halfling posing as the castle's friendly, helpful and cheery cook.
      • There's also something called a dry lich, which is basically a powerful mummy.
      • Death Knights are basically a Magic Knight version of a lich. Even way back in 2e, the implications were clear, what with them being fully sentient, ensouled, skeletal undead that were hard to permanently kill and which had such magical abilities as Fireball and Power Word: Kill. Outright admitted in 4e, which even made the source of their immortality the fact that they had bound their soul into their weapon. The trick is, smashing the weapon while they're "alive" barely slows them down, and if you don't destroy it after you kill them, they just come back, so it's not the weakness you might expect.
      • One setting included a very detailed society of evil wizards, one of whom was actually a lich pretending to still be alive. He just needed to be very careful to make sure that he still seems to take meals, and use the Preserve Food and Drink spell on his body weekly (the duration of that spell). Unfortunately, he occasionally forgets, and so has developed an unfortunate, if faint, odor...
      • D&D also has the Gray Shiver, a mundane spider which gains a fragment of a destroyed lich's power and intelligence after nesting in its skull.
    • Warhammer Fantasy Battle provides us with some examples of liches who don't have a Soul Jar - the lich-priests of Khemri (ancient mummified priests who woke up undead when a wave of raw necromantic power washed over their country.) There is also at least one example of a wizard who was so absorbed with his work in the lab, he "didn't notice when he died", becoming a lich purely by accident.
      • Nagash, "The Great Necromancer" is also an example, having become undead through a combination of great magical power and Heroic Willpower when his body died in the desert. By his looks he is clearly a lich (though constant exposure to Green Rocks has made him over 9 feet tall) and behaves as such but doesn't seem to have a Soul Jar. Even so, even cutting him up with Infinity+1 Sword and burning the remains to ash failed to kill him for good.
    • The Lich Lords of Cryx in WARMACHINE are otherwise your typical liches (ie. skeletal undead spellcasters), except with added Steampunk. Since the Cryx are piratical raiders, this technically makes them Pirate Zombie Robots. Which is awesome.
      • Led by the love child of Godzilla and Cthulhu no less, oh and it's only a matter of time until they throw in some ninja.
    • As an effectively undead psyker, the God-Emperor of Man in Warhammer 40,000 bears not a few similarities to a lich.
    • Mage: The Awakening features a Left-Handed Path known as the Tremere Liches, whose origins lie in a bunch of vampires trying to diablerize a bunch of mages and the whole thing going horribly, horribly wrong. They're not technically undead, but they become functionally immortal by consuming the souls of others.
    • A supplement for Ars Magica included notes on how to become a lich. In a world where most mages create longevity potions anyway (as each "adventure" was a season or ten long, characters rapidly got older in a long term campaign), such an enterprise wasn't going TOO much further. However, the execution was odd - instead of becoming undead, the character effectively replaced his failing organic bits with inorganic bits, effectively becoming a magitek cyborg and eventually a golem type.
    • Magic: The Gathering has two enchantments that turn you into a lich, making you impervious to damage, though you die immediately if your opponent manages to remove the Lich enchantment. There are also a small handful of Lich creatures, almost all Blue and/or Black Zombie Wizards.
    • The Big Bad in Blue Rose is Jarek, the Lich King of Kern.
    • Fighting Fantasy doesn't explicitly have liches, but some of the characters have heavy features of them, especially Zanbar Bone in City Of Thieves, described in a later Universe Compendium as "more than half undead himself".
    • If you're an Abyssal Exalted, you can become one with Immortal Malevolence Enslavement. Normally, dead is dead even for Exalted, but this Charm even allows you to quip "I'll be back" if you meet your (temporary) demise. The drawback of this charm is that your soul is too tightly bound to the Neverborn for you to ever seek redemption, and you'll inevitably fall into Oblivion if you ever meet your Final Death.

    Video Games

    • Liches in the Warcraft universe are former mages or warlocks turned Undead. The first round of Liches were Ner'Zhul and his Orcish Warlocks and Death Knights (which is why Liches in WC3 have those huge fangs; they're Orcs), Death Knights in the second war were the corpses of Azerothian knights from the first war animated by the soul of a dead Warlock. Human mages can also be turned into Liches, the most obvious example being Kel'Thuzad. Death Knights in the third war are undead Paladins with their souls sucked out, hence why Arthas turned into one. The Lich King (the 'second' one formed by merging Arthas with Ner'Zhul, not to be confused with just Ner'Zhul, who was also the Lich King) is therefore the body of a death knight combined with the mind of a lich with his soul bound to his sword, making him somewhat of a combination of the two. It's complicated.
      • Most liches other than Arthas resemble tall skeletons wearing wizard robes with chains; they hover a foot or so off the ground and attack using magic.
      • Gunther Arcanus is a special case. Most liches are created when elevated to the status by another lich or a powerful death knight; it's not something a necromancer can do on his own. Gunther, however, is a former scourge who was able to break away from the Lich King's control via his own, even when his might was such that even Silvanus herself could not do so. Because of this, many Forsaken refer to Gunther as a lich as a mark of respect, even though he technically isn't.
      • Silvanus herself is similar, as she is technically a disembodied spirit who can occupy a mortal vessel. For now, the "vessel" is the same body she had while alive, but that could change if she desired.
      • While this is usually not important, liches in World of Warcraft do have phylacteries, though they CAN be slain without destroying the phylactery. However, it is mentioned they may come back if the phylactery is left untouched. Back in vanilla World of Warcraft, a quest involving the phylactery of Kel'Thuzad has the player character pull a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero by selling it to an Argent Dawn member (who later turns out to be a Scourge spy) instead of destroying it, and for Wrath of the Lich King Naxxramas indeed returns as a level 80 raid, complete with Kel'Thuzad.
    • Gruntilda in Banjo-Tooie could be considered kind of a lich, given that she fits the idea of of a very magically powerful (She has an instant-kill spell for God's sake!) intelligent undead (She wasted away into a skeleton under that rock inbetween the games, and yet she's still moving, fine and dandy)
    • The original Final Fantasy I has the Lich as the boss of the Earth Cave; a powerful spellcaster capable of using some devastating magic. The later games, however, merely borrow the word for any undead mook, the only time this trope is in effect is in the rare cases when the original Lich makes a Bonus Boss appearance.
    • Common villains in Battle for Wesnoth, this turns out to be a central point of Descent into Darkness.
    • Liches aren't necessarily evil in the Exile/Avernum games (one was even created from a war hero to guard a demon's tomb in the aftermath of a battle), but most of them are egotistical psychopaths. A possible variation on liches might be the Crystal Soul, souls immobilized inside crystals that can only talk and cast spells.
    • Ultima had the Liche as a monster.
      • Ultima Underworld 2 even has non-wizard liches—a quadrumvirate of warrior, wizard, assassin, and one more as a hidden Bonus Boss. The warrior is the leader and the most dangerous.
    • In Nethack, of course.
    • Pious Augustus, the chronologically first playable character in Eternal Darkness becomes a "lieche" due to the "magick" of the Ancients. The artifact isn't a traditional phylactery, though, as it's mainly through the magical protection from the Ancient's link to the universe that grants him undeath and magical power. You still have to destroy it to get him vulnerable again, though.
    • In Dealt in Lead, the Lich-Emperor Abraham Lincoln has risen from the grave to continue the war against the South.
    • One of the major villains of Guild Wars Prophecies is a lich necromancer, transformed during the Cataclysm of Orr by Abaddon.
    • In Might and Magic VII, it's possible for sorcerers in your party to undertake a ritual to become liches, complete with Soul Jars. Liches also show up as part of the Necropolis army in the Heroes of Might and Magic games, both as heroes and units; however, they don't require Soul Jars- their use of necromancy allows them immortality, while also eating away at their vitality until they're reduced to emaciated living corpses.
      • Magic-users had the option of becoming liches in Might and Magic 7 through 9. The process was always quite complicated, and the main payoff was access to the top dark magic powers. It didn't give any particular immortality.
    • Liches are a recurring high-level undead enemy in The Elder Scrolls series. They shoot off a lot of magic but are otherwise fairly straightforward to fight. They do not use their Soul Jar in any important manner.
      • Of course, Oblivion has a necromancer oh-so-slowly changing himself into a lich; if you steal his Soul Jar, he instantly drops dead. An in-game note states this is the origin of the old wife's tale about the Soul Jar being a lich's weakness. After the transfer is complete, a lich can discard the item with no ill effect.
    • Quan Chi of Mortal Kombat is an arguable example - he's not entirely undead physically, but he did rise from the Netherrealm in sorcerer form (after being an Oni) and isn't exactly the most lively-looking man in the world with his white skin and sunken eyes. The unnaturally deep voice doesn't help.
    • Liches appear in Total Annihilation Kingdoms as a Tarosian unit. They follow the characteristics for other undead units in the game (can't be turned to stone, fade away on destruction without leaving a body), can cross bodies of water by floating above them, and their weapon is a life-draining wave of energy that can also damage your own units in the vicinity.
    • Liches are uncommon enemies in Vagrant Story. They're Glass Cannons: They can actually be easy to defeat if you attack them enough times before they can get a spell off, but said spells can be devastating. Liches are some of the only enemies in the game who know Radial Surge, a light spell. In Vagrant Story the main character gains resistant to elements the more he's attacked by those elements, but light spells are extremely rare and so the main character is likely to have absolutally no resistance to it. It's entirely possible for a Lich with a high-level Radial Surge to kill you in one shot.
    • Arcane Horrors in Dragon Age are the corpses of mages animated under Demonic Possession, and possess many of the standard traits of liches.
    • Liches in Final Fantasy XI are mid-level skeleton monsters who drop an item used in the first level cap quest. Corses more closely follow this trope- they are incredibly powerful skeleton sorcerers that absolutely no one willingly wants to fight because they are death on a stick that can charm players. And a few of the Notorious Monster Corses have skeletons that assist them.
    • Puzzle Quest has liches, which are rather strong enemies, and archliches, which are even stronger.
    • Similar to Lord Voldemort example above, this is how Nushi retains his Immortality in Girls Love Visual Novel Akai Ito.
    • EverQuest has Lucan D'Lere, Venril Sathir, and Miragul.
      • Lucan was a human Paladin who betrayed his god, was stripped of his holy powers, and found a way to turn himself into a lich in which he now rules over the city of Freeport with an iron fist.
      • Venril Sathir was an Iksar necromancer who once ruled over the Iksar empire. His pursuit of power and knowledge lead him to become a Lich by inhabiting the body of one his own sons many years after he had died. He currently rules over the Sathirian Empire on the continent of Kunark, as well as forcing all the Iksar rulers who took over after him to become his own vassals. They are fully aware that he is forcing them to work for him against their wills.
      • Miragul was an Erudite necromancer who only wanted to learn all the world's knowledge and master all forms of magic. As he grew older, he realized that his body would soon fail and he would die, so he created a lich body to transfer his soul into so he could continue his studies. Unfortunately, A miscalculation caused the ritual to go wrong, and his soul was transferred into the phylactery and not into the lich's body just as his body died.
    • Most of the Ogre Battle series features Liches, both as enemies and playable units. They do look quite dessicated/skeletal, and are usually dark-aligned. But you can actually make Holy-element Liches. The Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system means that they'll hit harder against dark Liches, but will also take more damage from their dark spells.
      • Usually, getting one requires an upgraded Wizard character of low alignment, plus several extremely rare evil artifacts. As the trade-off, though, they receive multiple castings of the most powerful multi-elemental spells around. Having one in any unit is usually enough to decimate all comers.
    • Liches in Rift are towering skeletons with their ribcages showing out of their robes, hovering slightly over the ground, and having wings made of bone, Necromancers get Lich form as their end talent, neither of these cases seem to use phylacteracies.
    • Kingdom of Loathing's Misspelled Cemetary contains lihces, which do not look very much at all like traditional liches. The Cyrpt also contains slick lihces, dirty old lihces, and senile lihces (who performed the requisite dire rituals to become immortal accidentally, while trying to make some breakfast).
    • Arx Fatalis has them filling a mini-boss role, much like the Ultima games. In Arx they're ghostly entities (who can manifest from piles of bones) rather than the still-animate bodies of sorcerors.
    • One of the bosses in Majesty The Fantasy Kingdom Sim is the "Liche Queen", who uses powerful dark magic and can summon undead minions. The flavour text doesn't mention any Soul Jar, but it does explain that she used to be a high priestess of Krypta whose mind snapped when a ritual to increase Krypta's power backfired. Presumably, that's what turned her into a lich.
    • Liches appear in dungeons in Ultima all the way back to Ultima I. It's unclear how smart they are, but they are powerful and dangerous. They appear as merely floating skulls, so they look more like AD&D's Demiliches.
    • Lichdom is the ultimate skill in Necromancy in Lusternia. The Necromancer dies, but rises again as an archlich—with increased strength and intelligence, a freezing aura, and the ability to bestow a lesser version of lichdom upon non-Necromantic allies. Nihilist priests fit the Evil Sorcerer mould and like the idea of immortality: elite ur'Guard troopers are mainly in it for the increase in power, becoming Death Knights in the process.
    • The Eight Dragon Priests in Skyrim. These powerful undead dragon worshipping sorcerers can be found in various tombs and barrows and one Dragon roost. The return of their master Alduin has stirred them from their ancient slumber.
    • Touhou has Toyosatomimi-no-Miko and her coterie. Their awakening even follow the standard "evil necromancers stir up from their millennial sleep in their forgotten tomb and threaten the life of decent people" plot.
    • The player character in Fallout: New Vegas at least briefly becomes a technological example of this in the DLC "Old World Blues." Upon being transported to the Big Empty, the Courier’s brain is promptly scooped out of him or her and deposited into a jar, after which it sends and receives data using a wireless connection to its dismembered body via "The COILS of NICOLA TESLA!" that had been placed in the Courier’s head. Despite player “death” still resulting in a game over, it can be argued that the Courier is alive and kicking until someone or something comes along and mashes up their brain wherever it’s stored in the Big Empty. That the Big Empty is absolutely full of lobotomized “skinvelopes” also makes the Courier’s body easily replaceable.
    • Baldur's Gate 2 has several liches as dangerous high-level opponents, and two demi-liches appear as bonus bosses (Kangaxx the Lich in Shadows of Amn, and an unnamed demi-lich in a tomb that is a side area of the Bonus Dungeon of Throne of Bhaal.) You never have to seek out their phylacteries though.

    Web Comics

    • Order of the Stick: Xykon is a standard lich by D&D rules, as well as the Big Bad.
    • Eight Bit Theater has the Lich as he was in the original Final Fantasy: an undead sorcerer. He managed to seal his soul in the Earth Orb, a powerful magical objects that controls the Earth itself, until Thief expels it by invoking anti-pollution laws. He is then dragged down to Hell thanks to Black Mage, but manages to replace him as the ruler of Hell, until the Lich is briefly summoned back to life by one of his son's former allies. Black Mage then promptly utterly destroys him.
    • The Necromancer of Harry Potter Comics is the inventor and perfector of the Horcrux formula that Voldemort used.
    • Richard in Looking for Group is an undead warlock. He seems to store his soul elsewhere, likely his gem or father's corpse, but this has not yet been confirmed. Many fans speculate that he is a lich.
      • He's not. The punishment from the Demon Court has been slowly turning him mortal again, and he needs to kill innocents to retain his undead state. That's the current going theory anyways.
    • In their store, Penny Arcade has a shirt that says, "Life's a lich, and then you never die".
    • Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is D&D based, so it features a lich named Lewie (short for King Lewstrom VII). At first he was portrayed as an Affably Evil Harmless Villain (a trait he shared with many of the characters) who would gladly lend you some of his skeletal minions to help with your gardening, and was fond of saying "Curses!" when annoyed. However, once he got his hands on an artifact that allowed him to summon his death goddess, he became Not So Harmless.
    • In Unsounded, Duane is an interesting subversion. One, he's a quiet, lawful scholar who's been blackmailed into escorting a brat of a child. Two, there are indications that his raising was done to him.


    Web Original


    Western Animation

    Mythology

    • One villain in Slavic folklore, Koschei the Deathless (Koshei basically means skeleton) is a lich by any other name (as stated above). While some incarnations made it possible to destroy Koshei by other means (like dropping him into a river of fire), the most notable incarnation makes his Soul Jar a needle, hidden inside an egg hidden inside a duck hidden inside a hare hidden inside an iron chest buried under an oak tree on an island in the middle of the ocean. Notably the hare will try to run away, and the duck will fly out if said hare is killed, so Koschei is probably the lich who put the most security on his Soul Jar ever.
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