What about liches?

[Palude]

Ok, so now we know that vampires are actually evil undead spirits controlling somebody's reanimated body while enslaving its soul for memories, and often impersonating it for the sake of disguise.

What about liches, however? Are they, too, evil spirits enslaving a former living soul, and using its body as a vessel? In this case, wouldn't the Xykon we know from SOD actually be trapped, and the character we know as the lich Xykon a completely separate entity?

[Zmeoaice]

Possibly, but Redcloak wouldn't know about it.

Also, we don't know if all vampires are spirits controlling somebody's reanimated body while enslaving its soul for memories, only that a few vampires have been.

[Palude]

Possibly, but Redcloak wouldn't know about it.

Also, we don't know if all vampires are spirits controlling somebody's reanimated body while enslaving its soul for memories, only that a few vampires have been.

That certainly can be the case about vampires; but I think it is more probable that they are all equal in this respect.

As for Redcloak, however, I believe he may have suggested exactly the hypothesis I brought up when he had his last quarrel with Tsukiko. He said that Xykon had some strings in which he "unknowingly dances"...a figure of speech, maybe, meaning that Xykon is being manipulated by him. In face of new evidence, however, it can also be interpreted as "I know what Xykon actually is, and he is enslaved by an evil undead spirit which I can manipulate, since undead are tools, weapons to be used by the living as they see fit".

[137beth]

It is not in any way consistent with Xykon's transformation and behavior in SoD.

Consider:
a)After becoming a Lich, Xykon wanted coffee, exactly like he did as a human. He was horrified to discover he could no longer taste coffee. If it were a negative energy spirit possessing him, this would have been impossible, because a negative energy spirit would never have been able to taste coffee, and so would not have developed a craving for it in the first place.
b)Aside from no longer eating, lich Xykon behaves exactly the same as human Xykon. Identically. There was no sudden personality change. After failing to taste coffee, Xykon switches to his old favorite hobby from life: torturing/killing innocents. There was no "corrupting pull towards evil" or any of the other BS that gets thrown around in alignment threads. Human Xykon thought and behaved exactly the same as Lich Xykon.
c)Eugene made his blood oath when Xykon was still alive. If that Xykon is really destroyed and the lich walking around is someone else, then Eugene's oath would be fulfilled, which it isn't.
All the evidence points to lich Xykon being the same person as human Xykon.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Liches do not work in the same manner as vampires, since the point of a lich is to prolong the life of caster who turns themself into a mage, not being in control of your body would defeat the purpose of that transformation. Plus, Xykon acts exactly the same way both during and after he is alive.

[RedSand]

It's not just inconsistent with Xykon; it's not consistent with Malack. Remember this scene?

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0878.html

If that was just a negative energy spirit pretending to be Malack, why would it be kind-of nostalgic for brothers it never had? Why is there so little a disconnect between the person and the spirit?
Personally, I'd guess that the different way dwarven spirits are handled by the gods means different things for their undead. Or perhaps Durkon's class makes him a tool for the gods, regardless of what state he's in, and Hel's just taking advantage of him.
Either way, having the Xykon of the first half of SoD not be the Xykon in the actual strip would undermine his entire arc(or whatever you'd call it) in that book. It would render the loss of what little humanity he had moot. It'd be cheap and unsatisfying. It would mean the guy Roy's fighting technically has nothing to do with his Blood Oath, since Xykon was alive when he did that.
Regardless of the lore perspective, from the story perspective it's basically impossible.

[Keltest]

Lichdom is a deliberate process undergone by magic-users to preserve their soul on the mortal plane to escape death. They specifically bind their soul to the phylactery so that it has a non-lower-plane location to escape to on the destruction of its current host (Ie the body). The body becomes undead, but the soul is still in control. Any change in personality can be explained by the increase in mental stats in combination with the pseudo-immortality and lack of fleshy desires.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

It's not just inconsistent with Xykon
It's not inconsistent for Xykon at all. So far, the spirit possessing you has only been applied to vampires and, as you point out, there is some debate on whether or not it applies to all vampires. There is no inconsistency for Xykon, as there is no other lich for us to compare him to.

[Bulldog Psion]

There wouldn't be much purpose in becoming a lich if that were so, and since it's a voluntary process, I think we can discount the Durkonesque theories.

[Zmeoaice]

It is not in any way consistent with Xykon's transformation and behavior in SoD.

a)After becoming a Lich, Xykon wanted coffee, exactly like he did as a human. He was horrified to discover he could no longer taste coffee. If it were a negative energy spirit possessing him, this would have been impossible, because a negative energy spirit would never have been able to taste coffee, and so would not have developed a craving for it in the first place.


It's possible that the spirit was very similar to Xykon, or was putting up a facade to fool Redcloak. It's also possible that the Lich Spirit absorbed Xykon's memories instead of having to go through them and remembered the taste of coffee.



c)Eugene made his blood oath when Xykon was still alive. If that Xykon is really destroyed and the lich walking around is someone else, then Eugene's oath would be fulfilled, which it isn't.\

If he's trapped in the Lich's body and/or Phalactery, then he technically hasn't gone to the afterlife yet.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

It's possible that the spirit was very similar to Xykon, or was putting up a facade to fool Redcloak. It's also possible that the Lich Spirit absorbed Xykon's memories instead of having to go through them and remembered the taste of coffee.
This still doesn't answer the question of why a ritual designed to help the person who voluntarily chooses to undergo it would end up with a spirit possessing their body. And this hypothetical spirit does a remarkably good job of copying Xykon, to the point where there is no difference between them as far as the reader can tell.

[SavageWombat]

Thought: the negative energy spirit hypothesis explains why a vampire retains his memories, and yet has become evil as a result of the transformation.

Do liches need such an explanation? Does becoming a lich make you evil, or is it only evil mages who would become a lich? Some people allow non-evil liches.

Maybe it's only vampires that need a "you're a plant who believed he was Alec Holland" explanation.

[Everyl]

Liches are supposed to be "any Evil," and the process for becoming one is "unspeakably evil" for reasons that are unspecified, at least in their SRD writeup (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm). This sort of thing has bothered me for a long time in D&D - why are undead inherently evil? If creating undead traps the soul and prevents it from moving on to its deserved afterlife, that partially answers the question, but what would be evil about willingly turning oneself into an undead creature? Liches don't have any appetites or drives that make them inherently harmful to other things. What makes lichdom inherently more evil than other ways of extending one's lifespan?

What if part of the process of becoming a lich involves subcontracting the animation of one's body out to a negative energy spirit? The mortal's soul resides in its phylactery, safe from harm, and sends orders to the spirit at the proverbial speed of thought, resulting in the lich's body acting exactly the same way that the living person would have. Because this is a willing, negotiated arrangement, the negative energy spirit does what it's told, but it's still free to offer "helpful" suggestions, much the way that the soul-spliced spellcasters goaded Darth V along. Nothing forces the lich to follow those suggestions, but the result is still that liches have a perpetual "shoulder devil (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0435.html)" voice encouraging their worst nature - something that would be bound to influence one's actions after hearing it for years, decades, centuries, however long the lich manages to persist.

Now, I don't personally subscribe to this theory, in the OOTS-verse or in my own games. But if you're the kind of person who has trouble sleeping at night without a Grand Unified Theory of Undead Metaphysics, here's a way to reconcile a lich's apparent retention of their original personality/soul with the loss of personal identity/autonomy associated with other forms of undead.

[Koo Rehtorb]

No. Liches and vampires are completely different things.

[Roland Itiative]

It's not just inconsistent with Xykon; it's not consistent with Malack. Remember this scene?

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0878.html

If that was just a negative energy spirit pretending to be Malack, why would it be kind-of nostalgic for brothers it never had? Why is there so little a disconnect between the person and the spirit
I have two ways to see that. In the simplest one, it just is on the dark spirit's best interest to put on a façade of being the same being as the living person whose body hosts it. So, Malack waxing nostalgic was just the dark spirit making use of that memory to further perpetrate the ruse. This must come second-nature to these dark spirits, specially after "living" in that body for centuries.

On the more complex angle, maybe Malack (still talking about the dark spirit, the original soul will be referred to as the "shaman", since we don't actually know his name) is so used to the memories of the living shaman that, to it, there is no difference anymore. I mean, at which point does memories you steal straight from the source stop being just information and start being your memories? After centuries, the line must be at least a little blurred, specially if the shaman had a similar personality to Malack's to begin with, so the memories wouldn't clash with how the spirit would deal with any given situation. This angle could work if the Giant intend to delve on these questions, maybe having Durkula genuinely reacting like Durkon would (not saying he should make Durkula turn good, but perhaps they can "synchronise" on the Law part of their alignment), at some point.

As for Xykon, there is no way to determine if the soul on command is that of the human sorcerer. Even things like the coffee tantrum could just be the dark spirit emulating the human, but on the other hand we can't really extrapolate the behaviour of vampires to any sort of undead. But, as far as the story goes, I don't think Xykon will be shown to be anything but the human spirit. I mean, it would take away from the character if all those things he did while undead were not really his doing, specially when the Giant went to great lengths to show that living Xykon was every bit as evil as lich Xykon.

[factotum]

This sort of thing has bothered me for a long time in D&D - why are undead inherently evil? If creating undead traps the soul and prevents it from moving on to its deserved afterlife, that partially answers the question, but what would be evil about willingly turning oneself into an undead creature?

I read the lich transformation slightly differently--the desire to become immortal in an undead body is not itself "unspeakably evil", it's the procedure for doing so that is, and so only someone who was already irredeemably evil would actually go through with it. As for most other undead, I think they're inherently evil because they're always created by evil beings--undead are powered by negative energy and are thus inherently opposed to the living, so no Good cleric would create one.

[Sunken Valley]

If Xykon was a negative energy spirit, why would he care about the gate plan at all or stick with Redcloak? Surely he'd have a different agenda. Plus, even before the reveal, Vampire Durkon behaved differently to Durkon, saying he was nothing without his magic when the real Durkon would smack things with his hammer, spells or not. Xykon has identical battle tactics to his old form.

[Bulldog Psion]

Liches are supposed to be "any Evil," and the process for becoming one is "unspeakably evil" for reasons that are unspecified, at least in their SRD writeup (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm). This sort of thing has bothered me for a long time in D&D - why are undead inherently evil?

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?

[Domino Quartz]

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?

Would you PM me too?

[Koo Rehtorb]

The process to become a lich is unspeakably evil, presumably because it involves some horrible process like sacrificing the souls of a dozen children to fuel the ritual, or whatever.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?
Could you PM as well? I'm very interested in this kind of topic and would like to hear your theory.

[Morty]

Liches are supposed to be "any Evil," and the process for becoming one is "unspeakably evil" for reasons that are unspecified, at least in their SRD writeup (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm). This sort of thing has bothered me for a long time in D&D - why are undead inherently evil?

Because the writers didn't put any thought into the alignment system, is my guess. They just slapped Evil alignment onto every undead creature, because they're walking dead, scary and stuff, and didn't think about it too hard.

At any rate, vampires are vampires, and liches are liches. They're two entirely different kinds of walking corpses. There's no reason to draw any analogies between them.

[hamishspence]

Ghosts are "Alignment: Any".

And there's plenty of background material in Libris Mortis for playing the rare nonevil member of a Usually/Always Evil undead type.

[Palude]

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?

Would you please PM me too?

[Falbrogna]

Also, we don't know if all vampires are spirits controlling somebody's reanimated body while enslaving its soul for memories, only that a few vampires have been.

This. We don't know how much Hel's interference counted against normal vampirization.

[Everyl]

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?

Sure, I'm interested in hearing any theory about unspeakable evil that is, in and of itself, unspeakable. :smallwink:

[Keltest]

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?

Id like a PM too, if you don't mind. This is an interesting topic.

[Zmeoaice]

Would you please PM me too?


PM me three

[Vinyadan]

I don't say that it would be impossible in theory, but I think that someone who built a phylaktery would know it, if it were meant to store two souls in it.

[Raimun]

Liches are supposed to be "any Evil," and the process for becoming one is "unspeakably evil" for reasons that are unspecified, at least in their SRD writeup (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm). This sort of thing has bothered me for a long time in D&D - why are undead inherently evil? If creating undead traps the soul and prevents it from moving on to its deserved afterlife, that partially answers the question, but what would be evil about willingly turning oneself into an undead creature? Liches don't have any appetites or drives that make them inherently harmful to other things. What makes lichdom inherently more evil than other ways of extending one's lifespan?


Thing is, Good and Evil in D&D are not just philosophical concepts but instead, concrete forces. There are planes of existance that are literally made of an alignment, like Evil. Everything native to an Evil plane is just that: Evil. It's even possible to channel those forces and blast people with pure Evil, which harms Good people but doesn't harm Evil people. Or you could channel Evil to a corpse and animate it as an undead. So, the more there are undead, the more Evil there is on the material plane. Read about Negative Energy Plane (which powers undeath). It's not a fun place at all.

Undeath also screws the natural order of life and death. The body does not compose and the soul does not reach afterlife to meet its eternal rest or damnation. Remember, this is pretty crucial to D&D-cosmology. Of course, Evil D&D-gods don't mind people creating undead, since it means material plane becomes that much more Evil... which is what they are after, you know.

[Peelee]

I have a theory about this with fairly robust support, but it involves delving into topics profoundly forbidden on these forums. May I PM you about it?

I would also like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[ReaderAt2046]

I have two ways to see that. In the simplest one, it just is on the dark spirit's best interest to put on a façade of being the same being as the living person whose body hosts it. So, Malack waxing nostalgic was just the dark spirit making use of that memory to further perpetrate the ruse. This must come second-nature to these dark spirits, specially after "living" in that body for centuries.

On the more complex angle, maybe Malack (still talking about the dark spirit, the original soul will be referred to as the "shaman", since we don't actually know his name) is so used to the memories of the living shaman that, to it, there is no difference anymore. I mean, at which point does memories you steal straight from the source stop being just information and start being your memories? After centuries, the line must be at least a little blurred, specially if the shaman had a similar personality to Malack's to begin with, so the memories wouldn't clash with how the spirit would deal with any given situation. This angle could work if the Giant intend to delve on these questions, maybe having Durkula genuinely reacting like Durkon would (not saying he should make Durkula turn good, but perhaps they can "synchronise" on the Law part of their alignment), at some point.

As for Xykon, there is no way to determine if the soul on command is that of the human sorcerer. Even things like the coffee tantrum could just be the dark spirit emulating the human, but on the other hand we can't really extrapolate the behaviour of vampires to any sort of undead. But, as far as the story goes, I don't think Xykon will be shown to be anything but the human spirit. I mean, it would take away from the character if all those things he did while undead were not really his doing, specially when the Giant went to great lengths to show that living Xykon was every bit as evil as lich Xykon.

It's also possible that if the original spirit desires it can merge with the vampiric spirit, creating a single entity with the full memories of both parties and a hybrid of the two personalities, one that thinks of itself as both the vampiric spirit and the original soul simultaneously.

[Keltest]

It's also possible that if the original spirit desires it can merge with the vampiric spirit, creating a single entity with the full memories of both parties and a hybrid of the two personalities, one that thinks of itself as both the vampiric spirit and the original soul simultaneously.

Of all the theories proposed about Malack and vampires in general, that's the one I consider least likely. The biggest most obvious flaw is why would the evil spirit share? Even if the victim was themselves evil, as redcloak ranted once, that doesn't mean theyre all one big happy omnicidal family. A spirit sharing ownership of its new body is about as likely as Sauron sharing control of the Ring with Saruman.

[Everyl]

Thing is, Good and Evil in D&D are not just philosophical concepts but instead, concrete forces. There are planes of existance that are literally made of an alignment, like Evil. Everything native to an Evil plane is just that: Evil. It's even possible to channel those forces and blast people with pure Evil, which harms Good people but doesn't harm Evil people. Or you could channel Evil to a corpse and animate it as an undead. So, the more there are undead, the more Evil there is on the material plane. Read about Negative Energy Plane (which powers undeath). It's not a fun place at all.

Undeath also screws the natural order of life and death. The body does not compose and the soul does not reach afterlife to meet its eternal rest or damnation. Remember, this is pretty crucial to D&D-cosmology. Of course, Evil D&D-gods don't mind people creating undead, since it means material plane becomes that much more Evil... which is what they are after, you know.

Yeah, I'm aware that creating undead is evil in D&D because the books say that creating undead is evil in D&D. They don't do a very good job of explaining why undead is inherently evil, though. According to the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#goodVsEvil), "'Evil' implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." If creating an undead creature, even a mindless one like a skeleton or zombie, requires binding the creature's soul so that it cannot move on to the afterlife, then we know why creating undead is evil - it oppresses the soul of the victim. From what I've read of the core rules, though, it takes some reading between the lines to reach the conclusion that all undead, mindless varieties included, have the body's soul trapped inside. The rules don't explicitly state it anywhere that I've seen, but it's implied by the limitations on Raise Dead and Resurrection spells. It seems odd to me that it takes careful examination of the limitations of life-restoring spells to understand what makes Animate Dead deserve the [Evil] tag; if you don't cross-reference the rules with lawyerly precision, Animate Dead appears to fail the "hurting, oppressing, and killing others" test for Evil in D&D.

On top of that, negative energy isn't inherently evil in the standard D&D cosmology. It's harmful to the living, and therefore frequently used by evil clerics and outsiders, but death is a natural part of the cycle of life. The Positive Energy Plane and Negative Energy Plane fit into the Inner Planes like any other elements, and unprepared exposure to either will be swiftly lethal to a mortal traveler. Undead are animated by negative energy (that's why they're "healed" by Inflict spells), but that energy isn't inherently evil, even if it can easily be used to harmful (and therefore evil) things.

So what makes lichdom evil, then? How does using negative energy, a fundamental element of the setting in the same sense as fire, earth, air, and water, to extend one's time in the Prime Material Plane cause harm, oppression, or killing of others? The rules tell us that the process is unspeakably evil, but don't say why. We're left with a very unsatisfying (to me, at least) situation where liches are evil because the book says liches are evil. Even the "evil" races tend to have better reasoning given for why they're "usually evil" or "always evil," as they tend to have cultures built heavily around harming, oppressing, and/or killing others.

Now, the GM can obviously work around this. Personally, I just fill in the gaps a bit, and say that the ritual to become a lich requires freshly-harvested tears from a child orphaned by your own hand, or something similarly unfeasible to acquire without committing great evil. Upthread, I posited that lichdom might require sharing headspace with an evil spirit that encourages the lich to ever-greater acts of evil over their eternity together. My point in this is just that the books provide a general definition of what constitutes "evil" in D&D, then do a really, really bad job of telling us how things that are labeled "evil" actually meet that definition, and liches are a prime example of this phenomenon.

(As an aside, Soul Bind seems like a really expensive hassle to prevent someone you don't like from being resurrected. Animate Dead is just about as effective for preventing resurrection, but is 5-6 levels lower, has a much, much cheaper material component, and can be cast longer after the victim's death.)

[Jaxzan Proditor]

(As an aside, Soul Bind seems like a really expensive hassle to prevent someone you don't like from being resurrected. Animate Dead is just about as effective for preventing resurrection, but is 5-6 levels lower, has a much, much cheaper material component, and can be cast longer after the victim's death.)

The thing with Animate Dead is that a zombie is usually more easily destroyed than the gem because of the protection spells that can be cast on objects like that. So, if you really want to prevent those souls from being resurrected, Soul Bind works better.

[thereaper]

Yeah, I'm aware that creating undead is evil in D&D because the books say that creating undead is evil in D&D. They don't do a very good job of explaining why undead is inherently evil, though. According to the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#goodVsEvil), "'Evil' implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." If creating an undead creature, even a mindless one like a skeleton or zombie, requires binding the creature's soul so that it cannot move on to the afterlife, then we know why creating undead is evil - it oppresses the soul of the victim. From what I've read of the core rules, though, it takes some reading between the lines to reach the conclusion that all undead, mindless varieties included, have the body's soul trapped inside. The rules don't explicitly state it anywhere that I've seen, but it's implied by the limitations on Raise Dead and Resurrection spells. It seems odd to me that it takes careful examination of the limitations of life-restoring spells to understand what makes Animate Dead deserve the [Evil] tag; if you don't cross-reference the rules with lawyerly precision, Animate Dead appears to fail the "hurting, oppressing, and killing others" test for Evil in D&D.

On top of that, negative energy isn't inherently evil in the standard D&D cosmology. It's harmful to the living, and therefore frequently used by evil clerics and outsiders, but death is a natural part of the cycle of life. The Positive Energy Plane and Negative Energy Plane fit into the Inner Planes like any other elements, and unprepared exposure to either will be swiftly lethal to a mortal traveler. Undead are animated by negative energy (that's why they're "healed" by Inflict spells), but that energy isn't inherently evil, even if it can easily be used to harmful (and therefore evil) things.

So what makes lichdom evil, then? How does using negative energy, a fundamental element of the setting in the same sense as fire, earth, air, and water, to extend one's time in the Prime Material Plane cause harm, oppression, or killing of others? The rules tell us that the process is unspeakably evil, but don't say why. We're left with a very unsatisfying (to me, at least) situation where liches are evil because the book says liches are evil. Even the "evil" races tend to have better reasoning given for why they're "usually evil" or "always evil," as they tend to have cultures built heavily around harming, oppressing, and/or killing others.

Now, the GM can obviously work around this. Personally, I just fill in the gaps a bit, and say that the ritual to become a lich requires freshly-harvested tears from a child orphaned by your own hand, or something similarly unfeasible to acquire without committing great evil. Upthread, I posited that lichdom might require sharing headspace with an evil spirit that encourages the lich to ever-greater acts of evil over their eternity together. My point in this is just that the books provide a general definition of what constitutes "evil" in D&D, then do a really, really bad job of telling us how things that are labeled "evil" actually meet that definition, and liches are a prime example of this phenomenon.

(As an aside, Soul Bind seems like a really expensive hassle to prevent someone you don't like from being resurrected. Animate Dead is just about as effective for preventing resurrection, but is 5-6 levels lower, has a much, much cheaper material component, and can be cast longer after the victim's death.)

Well, creating an undead out of someone is effectively a violation of their corpse, so there's that.

[Everyl]

Well, creating an undead out of someone is effectively a violation of their corpse, so there's that.

Depending when and where you look, real-world funerary practices can involve burial underground, interment in mausoleums, embalming, feeding the corpse to vultures, cremation, ritual cannibalism, mummification (by various methods), public display of the corpse (of loved ones or of enemies depending on culture), performing regular ceromonies involving ashes and bone fragments of the deceased, and many others that I can't think of off the top of my head. Odds are, people from most cultures will see at least a third of those as violating the corpse somehow, and it will be a different third depending on one's home culture.

If reanimating a corpse doesn't have consequences on the deceased person's soul, then "violating the corpse" is a cultural concept, not one that fits well into an objective good-evil system. If nothing else, it would really limit a DM's ability to make interesting funerary practices for different peoples in their setting.

[snowblizz]

So what makes lichdom evil, then? How does using negative energy, a fundamental element of the setting in the same sense as fire, earth, air, and water, to extend one's time in the Prime Material Plane cause harm, oppression, or killing of others?
Maybe it is about selfishness? You only get so much time on earth and no more. Trying to circumvent that, as Xykon talks about, is essentially a crime against nature? Creating a loophole in the cosmic forces of karma. Cheating the gods.

Must evil necessarily be against others? Can it be against reality itself?

[Katuko]

So what makes lichdom evil, then? How does using negative energy, a fundamental element of the setting in the same sense as fire, earth, air, and water, to extend one's time in the Prime Material Plane cause harm, oppression, or killing of others? The rules tell us that the process is unspeakably evil, but don't say why.

[...]

Now, the GM can obviously work around this. Personally, I just fill in the gaps a bit, and say that the ritual to become a lich requires freshly-harvested tears from a child orphaned by your own hand, or something similarly unfeasible to acquire without committing great evil.
Considering that the rules say the ritual is "unspeakably evil", I have always taken it to mean exactly that. Something about the process is defined as Evil, and it most likely does involve something like draining orphan blood into a chalice or whatever. Maybe you need to rip out the souls of creatures to be consumed as the fuel for your transformation into an immortal body.

I dunno, but Voldemort from Harry Potter is pretty much a lich, and he process he uses is to murder someone, which causes his soul brief turmoil, and the magic then takes advantage of this and rips loose a soul fragment to store somewhere. Now, while people can yap on about how splitting your soul is the evil part, the murder is what I would focus most on. As in, the only way to become a Voldemort-styled lich is to willfully kill someone innocent.

Beyond the ritual, I don't see lichdom as evil per se. There are many magicians in fiction that appear extremely old and pretty much immortal without being Evil. Negative energy tends to come with all the "bad" emotions and effects, though, like the fear aura and the reversal of healing types. Negative energy inflicts harm upon people who are still alive, and so they will naturally see it as dangerous and unnatural, enough to make them tailor spells to detect negative energy beings as Evil regardless of whether they are mindless zombies or intelligent liches.

Personally, I would probably be willing to become undead in order to live forever and get some extra spells etc., but if the ritual was truly as disgusting and morally corrupt as it is implied to be, then I'd try to find a different way to immortality. Losing flesh, the sense of taste, having to rely on negative energy to heal... that would be acceptable because I'd not be able to exist beyond my natural lifespan with those things anyways. But being Evil is not about the energy you channel, but about what you do with it. I believe a Cleric with no god gets to choose their energy type regardless of alignment?

Is negative energy bad from a cosmic standpoint? Likely not. It's just part of nature. An alien observer may not care if Villager A turns into a vampire and eats Villager B. Villager B and his/her family, though - and probably whatever gods had Villager B as a follower - would care a lot.


(As an aside, Soul Bind seems like a really expensive hassle to prevent someone you don't like from being resurrected. Animate Dead is just about as effective for preventing resurrection, but is 5-6 levels lower, has a much, much cheaper material component, and can be cast longer after the victim's death.)
At least in Order of the Stick, creating an undead/golem out of the remains keeps a person from being resurrected but allows them to reach the afterlife with no knowledge of their zombification. Soul Bind has the added bonus of keeping your enemy from reaching an afterlife in the meantime, though. If you're Evil, I guess you can see how this would appeal. :)

Plus, I'm sure you can do a lot of fancy necromancy with a captured soul. Stealing/defiling souls is a big part of what makes necromancy evil in some settings.


Maybe it is about selfishness? You only get so much time on earth and no more. Trying to circumvent that, as Xykon talks about, is essentially a crime against nature? Creating a loophole in the cosmic forces of karma. Cheating the gods.

Must evil necessarily be against others? Can it be against reality itself?
In a setting with confirmed gods, yes, they may very well say it is evil to artificially extend your own life. If not, being willing to perform the ritual (which probably involves baby-eating or something) is pretty much what makes you Evil by default.

It's the same reason why vampires were always seen as evil before: They are willing to hunt down and prey on the innocent. "Modern" vampires get around this by using donated blood and similar substitutes, so that they can stay on the anti-hero or even pure Good side of the story. Classic vampires tend to be bloodthirsty and completely lacking in care for their victims. They only care about their own continued survival even if it means centuries of daily slaughter. Hence: Evil.

[orrion]

Yeah, I'm aware that creating undead is evil in D&D because the books say that creating undead is evil in D&D. They don't do a very good job of explaining why undead is inherently evil, though. According to the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm#goodVsEvil), "'Evil' implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others." If creating an undead creature, even a mindless one like a skeleton or zombie, requires binding the creature's soul so that it cannot move on to the afterlife, then we know why creating undead is evil - it oppresses the soul of the victim. From what I've read of the core rules, though, it takes some reading between the lines to reach the conclusion that all undead, mindless varieties included, have the body's soul trapped inside. The rules don't explicitly state it anywhere that I've seen, but it's implied by the limitations on Raise Dead and Resurrection spells. It seems odd to me that it takes careful examination of the limitations of life-restoring spells to understand what makes Animate Dead deserve the [Evil] tag; if you don't cross-reference the rules with lawyerly precision, Animate Dead appears to fail the "hurting, oppressing, and killing others" test for Evil in D&D.

On top of that, negative energy isn't inherently evil in the standard D&D cosmology. It's harmful to the living, and therefore frequently used by evil clerics and outsiders, but death is a natural part of the cycle of life. The Positive Energy Plane and Negative Energy Plane fit into the Inner Planes like any other elements, and unprepared exposure to either will be swiftly lethal to a mortal traveler. Undead are animated by negative energy (that's why they're "healed" by Inflict spells), but that energy isn't inherently evil, even if it can easily be used to harmful (and therefore evil) things.

So what makes lichdom evil, then? How does using negative energy, a fundamental element of the setting in the same sense as fire, earth, air, and water, to extend one's time in the Prime Material Plane cause harm, oppression, or killing of others? The rules tell us that the process is unspeakably evil, but don't say why. We're left with a very unsatisfying (to me, at least) situation where liches are evil because the book says liches are evil. Even the "evil" races tend to have better reasoning given for why they're "usually evil" or "always evil," as they tend to have cultures built heavily around harming, oppressing, and/or killing others.

Now, the GM can obviously work around this. Personally, I just fill in the gaps a bit, and say that the ritual to become a lich requires freshly-harvested tears from a child orphaned by your own hand, or something similarly unfeasible to acquire without committing great evil. Upthread, I posited that lichdom might require sharing headspace with an evil spirit that encourages the lich to ever-greater acts of evil over their eternity together. My point in this is just that the books provide a general definition of what constitutes "evil" in D&D, then do a really, really bad job of telling us how things that are labeled "evil" actually meet that definition, and liches are a prime example of this phenomenon.

(As an aside, Soul Bind seems like a really expensive hassle to prevent someone you don't like from being resurrected. Animate Dead is just about as effective for preventing resurrection, but is 5-6 levels lower, has a much, much cheaper material component, and can be cast longer after the victim's death.)

No, you're left with a situation where liches are evil because in order to become one you did something unspeakably evil. That's not a situation of "evil because the book says evil" it's a situation of "evil because it requires evil being done." The GM defining what that is isn't "working around" that; he's enforcing it.

The implication to me is that violating the natural order is evil 99.9% of the time.

[Zmeoaice]

Considering that the rules say the ritual is "unspeakably evil", I have always taken it to mean exactly that. Something about the process is defined as Evil, and it most likely does involve something like draining orphan blood into a chalice or whatever. Maybe you need to rip out the souls of creatures to be consumed as the fuel for your transformation into an immortal body.

They made Xykon from a bunch of herbs and mushrooms, there was no draining orphan blood or whatever.

[Koo Rehtorb]

They made Xykon from a bunch of herbs and mushrooms, there was no draining orphan blood or whatever.

Redcloak had been planning it in advance, hadn't he? Maybe he'd already performed some of the ritual preparations before they got stuck in the cave. Bottled orphan blood, just in case.

[Yadugara]

Maybe it is about selfishness? You only get so much time on earth and no more. Trying to circumvent that, as Xykon talks about, is essentially a crime against nature? Creating a loophole in the cosmic forces of karma. Cheating the gods.

Must evil necessarily be against others? Can it be against reality itself?


1.What about elves (and other long-living creatures) ? In many settings they are immortal but not immoral (sry for the rhyme, i couldn't resist).
You could argue that it is their god(s)-given "destinity" to not die of old age, but then to seek immortality shouldn't be an total evil act for a mortal.

2.Even resurrection would be evil then, you prolong your given time on earth with this,too.

3.I dont play D&D but i read that there are other ways to extend your lifespan through magic which arent considered evil.

I, personally, think the (not very farsighted) "Undead-are-evil-so-turning-yourself-into-one-is-evil-too" explanation is right.

[Vinyadan]

It's also possible that if the original spirit desires it can merge with the vampiric spirit, creating a single entity with the full memories of both parties and a hybrid of the two personalities, one that thinks of itself as both the vampiric spirit and the original soul simultaneously.

I don't say that it's impossible, but the Spirit's words to Durkon about eternal dormancy seem to me to mean that he will be out of contact with reality when it will have absorbed all of his memories.

[snowblizz]

1.What about elves (and other long-living creatures) ? In many settings they are immortal but not immoral (sry for the rhyme, i couldn't resist).
You could argue that it is their god(s)-given "destinity" to not die of old age, but then to seek immortality shouldn't be an total evil act for a mortal.
Long-lived, short lived or immortal is really immaterial. They'd be "natural" as immortal if that's how they are supposed to be. In many settings (I include stuff outside DnD as well in this) gods specifically "fix" creatures like elves to be almost-but-not-quite immortal. Obviously this suggestion only holds for a setting where the basic premise is true.
In the WaXP comments Rich calls Redcloaks out as a hypocrite for his longevity and for considering himself 100% natural goblin in #372 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0372.html)

And some settings even have good aligned "liches" I understand, there's no one answer for all settings.


2.Even resurrection would be evil then, you prolong your given time on earth with this,too.
Actually you don't. Not in OOTS. This is a major plot point for Roy and Eugene the latter needing Roy to go out and kill... well destroy the lich because he knows his allotted time is nearly up.
I can't speak for DnD because I've never played. But Resurrection is a divine spell, therefore granted by the gods and so must be an expression of their divine will. Ergo it can't really by considered prolonging your time, because your resurrection is a direct effect of divine intervention.
The gods rolled dice for your lifespan and they will hold you to that in normal circumstances.


3.I dont play D&D but i read that there are other ways to extend your lifespan through magic which arent considered evil.

I, personally, think the (not very farsighted) "Undead-are-evil-so-turning-yourself-into-one-is-evil-too" explanation is right.
Well, what setting we consider will kind of decide what options exists and what the result of these are. Good-align liches and so on.

I sort of prescribe to the idea that becoming a lich is something only horrible (evil) people would ever consider doing in the first place (because apparently you do unspeakable horror). I just agree with the sentiment that it would be interesting with a bit more explanation. Especially since the time and place Xykon is created is kinda short in unspeakable horrors to perform.

[factotum]

The implication to me is that violating the natural order is evil 99.9% of the time.

I don't see there's a logical connect there. Fact 1: what mages have to do to become liches is unspeakably evil. Fact 2: a lich, or any undead creature, violates the natural order. These two facts are both true, but there's no reason for them to be connected in any way. (It should also be noted that pretty much *any* arcane or divine spell violates the natural order of things, but not all those spells are classed as evil!).

[Zmeoaice]

The gods rolled dice for your lifespan and they will hold you to that in normal circumstances.

So your argument is basically "liches are bad because the god said so". It seems pretty unfair to give some people a longer lifespan than other. Actually it seems pretty douchey to create people who are mortal, and thus won't stay on the material plane for as long as they like.

I can't imagine why any way to circumvent one's imminent death would be considered evil unless they had to commit evil acts to do so.

[ReaderAt2046]

Of all the theories proposed about Malack and vampires in general, that's the one I consider least likely. The biggest most obvious flaw is why would the evil spirit share? Even if the victim was themselves evil, as redcloak ranted once, that doesn't mean theyre all one big happy omnicidal family. A spirit sharing ownership of its new body is about as likely as Sauron sharing control of the Ring with Saruman.

If nothing else, because it would mean the evil spirit wouldn't have to fight or even query the original for information-it would possess it as naturally as the original did.

[Katuko]

They made Xykon from a bunch of herbs and mushrooms, there was no draining orphan blood or whatever.
Yeah, I've found that a bit strange as well. In this setting, I suppose it is in fact undead themselves that are considered very bad, both due to the intelligent ones usually being murderous and the mindless being "corpse violation" or something like that. Xykon also agreed to the lich ritual with evil intents, so it's not like it changes much. Xykon, lich or not, is evil. If I designed the setting, undeath would not be evil (as the "good lich" example of some D&D stories kinda shows already), but the methods to become one could be.

I agree that it would make more sense right here if Redcloak really did have something on hand for the ritual that was Evil in and of itself, such as orphan blood, but we may not assume so. It could be possible that there were other prisoners around that was flayed alive (or something) for the ritual, but maybe it is indeed just the intent that matters. Xykon decided he wanted to regain his magic, avoid death and damnation, and go wreak havoc again, despite Lirian's "offer" for him to live out the rest of his life as a non-magic old man.

We could say it's shortsighted of the OoTS gods to mark undeath as always evil, but it appears to be just how it works in this setting. Tsukiko also disagrees, pretty much, despite having some flawed ideas about what an undead actually thinks like. It makes sense to me that if liches are people who willingly go through a terrible ritual with evil intents, and vampires are malevolent spirits, and other zombies are usually desecrated corpses; that the gods have simply made it very, very hard to use undeath for something Good. I mean, if you want a labor force, you'd use golems or something, right? There are options that does not use the corpse of a guy who might want to get resurrected. Even though Necromancy can be used by Good characters, it's mostly for picking up a dead combatant and turning them to your side, so to speak, non-adventurers would have little use for a spell that makes corpses walk but not regain actual life. Since the gods would have to be the ones that provide resurrection magic as well, it makes sense that they want "living normally" to be the Good state, and the "shambling corpse that only resembles a mockery of true life" as the Evil state.

Consider that the gods allow resurrections for any willing subject at any time so long as their soul is up for it, but has designed things so that resurrection is denied to those who have lived out their given lifespan. This means the gods have actually put expiration dates on people, and they don't want you to dodge your intended afterlife, good or bad (but they permit you to wait out your full lifespan, if people allow you to). Stands to reason that it is mostly the bad guys who want to become undead and avoid damnation, while good guys are reasonably certain they end up somewhere nice and thus don't need any sort of lich ritual. Even if it's just herbs and mushrooms.

[Keltest]

If nothing else, because it would mean the evil spirit wouldn't have to fight or even query the original for information-it would possess it as naturally as the original did.

which it could do given time anyway. Besides, its immortal.

[Everyl]

Personally, I'm not a fan of declaring anything that "violates the natural order" to be Evil, largely because it's such a vague statement. Does embalming violate the natural order because it prevents decomposition? What about cremation? Does building a levee violate the natural order because it could change the course of a river? Furthermore... I can't figure out a way to enunciate the rest of my opinion on this without violating forum rules.

I'll go with this: In a game setting, it's possible to say that the Powers that Be have decided on an objective "natural order" and defined Good and Evil according to it, leaving no room for interpretation or cultural variation among mortals. This would actually help explain the dearth of interesting cultural variety in many game settings. However, I, personally, am not satisfied with a game setting where adding magic, dragons, planar travel, a multitude of sentient races and species, and countless other factors that don't exist in the real world somehow results in moral questions being simpler than they are in the real world. That's a very YMMV perspective, though, I realize.

[snowblizz]

So your argument is basically "liches are bad because the god said so". It seems pretty unfair to give some people a longer lifespan than other. Actually it seems pretty douchey to create people who are mortal, and thus won't stay on the material plane for as long as they like.

I can't imagine why any way to circumvent one's imminent death would be considered evil unless they had to commit evil acts to do so.
I wouldn't really call it an argument per se. I'm just pitching one explanation for the observed phenomenon in the interest of discussing the issue. The futility or "evilness" of struggling against fate is a common literary theme. The evil lich could be an expression of this.

And where does divinity require being fair? The gods in OOTS for example specifically created sentient humanoids to be slaughtered for the betterment of their chosen people (clerics). I think we passed douchey way back at the last intersection. The gods in OOTS is anything but fair.

The fixed random lifespan is also established for OOTS, I was not joking when I said the gods roll a dice to see how long you get to live.

I can imagine why circumventing one's imminent death would be considered evil. Which is why I suggested this. I don't necessarily have to agree with it the idea, but it is one possible explanation.
It is the perceived lack of committing evil in the process, which can apparently be massively ad hoced even, "woo 'shroooms I'm a lich!".

Here's another interesting conundrum. The only ones available to commit unspeakable horrors on would be Redcloaks fellow goblins.

[Keltest]

I wouldn't really call it an argument per se. I'm just pitching one explanation for the observed phenomenon in the interest of discussing the issue. The futility or "evilness" of struggling against fate is a common literary theme. The evil lich could be an expression of this.

And where does divinity require being fair? The gods in OOTS for example specifically created sentient humanoids to be slaughtered for the betterment of their chosen people (clerics). I think we passed douchey way back at the last intersection. The gods in OOTS is anything but fair.

The fixed random lifespan is also established for OOTS, I was not joking when I said the gods roll a dice to see how long you get to live.

I can imagine why circumventing one's imminent death would be considered evil. Which is why I suggested this. I don't necessarily have to agree with it the idea, but it is one possible explanation.
It is the perceived lack of committing evil in the process, which can apparently be massively ad hoced even, "woo 'shroooms I'm a lich!".

Here's another interesting conundrum. The only ones available to commit unspeakable horrors on would be Redcloaks fellow goblins.

Maybe that's why Xykon was actually throwing goblins to their doom. He needed to do it to retroactively bind the lich spell.

[Fortuna]

Of all the theories proposed about Malack and vampires in general, that's the one I consider least likely. The biggest most obvious flaw is why would the evil spirit share? Even if the victim was themselves evil, as redcloak ranted once, that doesn't mean theyre all one big happy omnicidal family. A spirit sharing ownership of its new body is about as likely as Sauron sharing control of the Ring with Saruman.

My own take on this theory, which I've not before now had cause to offer, is that a sufficiently complete takeover might be indistinguishable from a merge, particularly in cases without direct divine intervention.

Consider - although the HPoH/Durkula/whatchumacallum clearly has preexisting personality, loyalty, and seemingly also memory and knowledge, there's not necessarily any reason to believe the same of the spirit that infuses a normal vampire. If such a spirit were a sufficiently blank slate, then it absorbing all the memories of the individual would plausibly be indistinguishable - not only from the outside, but from the spirit's and possibly even the original soul's perspective - from a merger.

[snowblizz]

Maybe that's why Xykon was actually throwing goblins to their doom. He needed to do it to retroactively bind the lich spell.
Sort of an instalment plan for lichdom?:smallbiggrin:

[blacksabre]

Not sure if this possibility has been presented...

There maybe other mechanics going on..

Malack, Durkula's creator, gave Durkon his autonomy...or more to the point, Malack opted not to use his control...

Perhaps when a Vampire is destroyed, control for a Child they created becomes contested in someway with evil spirits, whom themselves are looking for a vessel to possess.

A failed Saving throw, and the evil Spirit has their vessel
A successful Save, and the Vampire maintains their freewill


I can see an inner dialogue of the Contested Control between Durkula and the evil spirit going on in this strip while Nale is blabbing
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0907.html

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Maybe that's why Xykon was actually throwing goblins to their doom. He needed to do it to retroactively bind the lich spell.

Or, perhaps you can only become a lich if you have committed a significant amount of atrocities in your life, and being a lich is merely a sign that one is "unspeakably evil".

[Vinyadan]

Or becoming a lich requires the priest to summon some evil, unnamed entities, which gain entrance through his actions and turn the dead into a lich, with the promise of being paid through freely taking innocent lives, which they later do, because the ritual is meant to work as a backdoor to any treaty the gods have running, or this is a kind of spirit not involved with the treaty, because they only have access to the material plane when summoned by its inhabitants.

[Obscure Blade]

My own take on this theory, which I've not before now had cause to offer, is that a sufficiently complete takeover might be indistinguishable from a merge, particularly in cases without direct divine intervention.

Consider - although the HPoH/Durkula/whatchumacallum clearly has preexisting personality, loyalty, and seemingly also memory and knowledge, there's not necessarily any reason to believe the same of the spirit that infuses a normal vampire. If such a spirit were a sufficiently blank slate, then it absorbing all the memories of the individual would plausibly be indistinguishable - not only from the outside, but from the spirit's and possibly even the original soul's perspective - from a merger.
You beat me to it. Durkon is clearly a special case in at least some ways; he's being used as the agent and High Priest of an evil goddess with an agenda, he isn't just Nameless Vampire Mook #5.

Also, people who are already evil or who want to be a vampire may be infused with "blank slate" spirits because there's no need to do otherwise. Meanwhile, someone like Durkon who would try to resist being evil and stop being a vampire would get a spirit designed to keep them in line with the cause of vampiric evil.



So what makes lichdom evil, then? How does using negative energy, a fundamental element of the setting in the same sense as fire, earth, air, and water, to extend one's time in the Prime Material Plane cause harm, oppression, or killing of others? One possibility: it warps the personality. Liches are powered by Negative Energy rather than just using it externally, and it may well over time influence them to be more inclined to cause harm, oppression, and killing. If becoming a lich automatically makes the new lich a psychopath, there's your reason right there.

[DaggerPen]

Would you PM me too?

Can you add me to that list! The lack of explanation for what makes lichification so evil has always bugged me, so I'm all for more theories on it.

[ti'esar]

One thing that I don't think I've seen mentioned here is that while, yes, D&D does portray positive and negative energy as not having a particular alignment, the use of those energies by others is a different story. Which one a cleric channels is directly tied to their alignment or the alignment of their deity. Eberron - a setting that otherwise largely does away with racial alignments - contrasts good/neutral deathless that are animated by positive energy with evil undead that are animated by negative energy. We saw something similar in OOTS with the Ghost-Martyrs. So I think there's definitely evidence for saying that by established D&D canon, there is something inherently evil about using negative energy to preserve your material existence (which is what a lich basically is doing).

[hamishspence]

Indeed. When it's not "Any Evil" it's "Any nongood" - the necropolitan from Libris Mortis, for example.

[ReaderAt2046]

There are several literary examples of extended life being gained by stealing from someone else. For example, The Magister Trilogy features mages who gain eternal life by latching onto someone else's soul and causing their "consort" to age twice as fast. Or in The Death Gate Cycle, raising someone from the dead causes another member of the same species to fall down dead. Maybe every year a lich lives costs some random non-lich a year of their divinely determined lifespan.

[Genth]

Sorry, this may be me being confused by being more familiar with Pathfinder, but I understood the Negative Energy plane to be Evil. It's the opposing force of the positive energy plan, and all about the destruction of everything. Even more so than beings of Pure Chaos, since the NEP 'wants' to reduce everything to -nothing-, Davros style.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Sorry, this may be me being confused by being more familiar with Pathfinder, but I understood the Negative Energy plane to be Evil. It's the opposing force of the positive energy plan, and all about the destruction of everything. Even more so than beings of Pure Chaos, since the NEP 'wants' to reduce everything to -nothing-, Davros style.

The Negative Energy Plane is not Evil. It is the Outer Planes that have a predisposition towards a certain alignment. The NEP, however, has no alignment. It is merely an Inner Plane that is major-negative dominant. Also, being the opposite of the PEP does not make it Evil, since the PEP is not Good.

[Keltest]

The Negative Energy Plane is not Evil. It is the Outer Planes that have a predisposition towards a certain alignment. The NEP, however, has no alignment. It is merely an Inner Plane that is major-negative dominant. Also, being the opposite of the PEP does not make it Evil, since the PEP is not Good.

My understanding is that both are more or less equally lethal to us squishy mortals as well, but for different reasons.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

My understanding is that both are more or less equally lethal to us squishy mortals as well, but for different reasons.

Pretty much. The Negative Energy Plane forces you to make a fortitude save each round or gain a negative level, in addition to dealing small amounts of damage to you each round, until you hit 0, where you crumble into ash. However, Death Ward protects from these effects.

The Positive Energy Plane, on the other hand, seems to be more beneficial, as it offers fast healing and temporary hit points. However, it can also blind you and too many temporary hit points make you literally explode if you fail a fortitude save. Positive Energy Protection prevents all these effects.

Both planes are described as being among the most hostile of the Inner Planes.

[ti'esar]

The Negative Energy Plane basically represents entropy, a natural part of the cosmos. It's when it's consciously used by intelligent beings that there's a conscious effort to unmake things involved.

An analogy might be something like this: death (to most people) is a natural part of life, but that doesn't make murder acceptable.