Liches    Atro Vys, the first Aterr, met his death during the Draconic Wars. However, he continued his existence in Lur-Asko for many years, surviving until the decade before the Fall. By sustaining their body purely from the energy of their adamant, some arcanists are able to go without a conventional death.

    Becoming a lich requires a long process of preparation that must begin long before death is faced. For the Aterr, it involves fully treating the adamant as a living being, making a "pact" over several decades to continue one's life for a specific purpose. For the Orthodox, it involves extensive training and mental discipline, sometimes with the ultimate price of one's sanity. Finally, the arcanist must meet their physical death, either naturally or violently; many liches end their own life in a controlled process, to prevent anything from going wrong. If their preparations were sufficient, the arcanist will be sustained and animated by their link to their adamant, continuing their "life" in a sense. How long they survive in that state depends on the type of lich, as detailed later in this chapter.

Physical Characteristics    Liches are Lur-Asko's only form of true "undead." A lich's body is sustained through the energy contained in their blood's adamant content. The body is technically dead, and the lich is considered non-organic. Eventually, a large portion of the body will decay, leaving only bones, mummified muscle, the brain, nervous system, and indispensable adamant blood. Established liches appear near-skeletal, and take on a gray to silver coloration. Because energy constantly courses through their body to sustain it, a lich's eyes always glow a faint green.

    All current damage and injuries are "healed" when the lich is created; their life will continue until they again take a lethal injury, or come to the end of their lifespan according to their lich type. A lich will typically destabilize into dust and liquid adamant upon this second death.

    A lich's bCON and bDEX are increased by 3 each upon creation. They can heal only though the Arcana Abilities of themselves or other liches, or through a natural healing roll (as non-organics, they are immune to complications).

    Liches require sleep like organic characters.

Exhaustion & Arcana Abilities     Liches treat fatigue as all non-organic characters do. However, unlike other non-organic characters, they are still affected by exhaustion exactly as an organic character would be. They can remove exhaustion through rest as normal. A lich's previous exhaustion (if any) is reduced to 0 upon being created, just like damage.

    The positive side is that this means liches are able to continue using any Medic-favored Arcana Abilities that have an exhaustion cost for the caster. In addition, any of their Medic-favored Arcana Abilities that are only effective on organic characters become effective on liches as well. They do not become effective on any other kind of non-organic.

Becoming a Lich     Liches come in three main types, usually referred to as pact, forced, and mad. All require an amount of LP to be invested by the arcanist, with pact and mad liches in particular requiring a large amount of their "first life" to be devoted to the effort. A character can invest LP at whatever time and in whatever amount desired; they have until their death to meet the total amount required.

    Aterr is the only Arcana Background which can become a pact lich. Dark Path adherents cannot become mad liches, and Conjurers cannot become any type of lich. Except for these restrictions, the lich types are accessible to all Backgrounds and philosophies. Once you are a lich, you cannot switch types or contribute any more LP. You can invest LP in multiple types, but can only become one upon death.

    To become any type of lich, an arcanist must have tiers in both Athletics and Arcana. Each must be at least 4, and the sum of both must be at least 17. The character cannot have received any injury that would also prevent being revived from death.

    Revenants cannot become viable liches; all who have attempted it have lost their interface with their construct bodies, leaving them trapped as nothing but a short-lived undead brain.

    Upon creation, liches completely remove any aging effects, just as if they were prime adults. A forced lich that is revived immediately regains their former aging effects. No type of lich may be formed from an adolescent.

Pact Liches    The Aterr's preferred method of lichdom involves a lengthy mental "negotiation" with the adamant. This process is made easier by the interactive visions of a sorcerer, but non-sorcerer Aterr can also accomplish it. Most Aterr believe that the necessity of the pact comes from the Restless Sleeper's awareness of the danger of mad lichdom - the confines of the pact are necessary to preserve the clarity and self-honesty vital to Aterr philosophy.

    The pact involves a particular desire, chosen by the Aterr in question, meditated on, and communicated to the adamant over many years. The context of this desire, clearly, is something the Aterr needs unnatural long life to see fulfilled. This does not necessarily need to be an obsessive desire, but it does need to be a major one, and one that may not be satisfied by a normal lifespan.

    The LP required to become a pact lich is equal to 25, plus 1 for every 15 years of intended lich lifespan. The total amount is increased by 20% if you are not a sorcerer. For example, to become a pact lich that can survive for 150 years after death, you must spend 25+10=35 LP as a sorcerer, or 35*1.2=42 LP as a non-sorcerer. The catch for a pact lich is that your pact will be cut short if your desire is fulfilled before the end of your technical maximum lifespan. To use the most historically iconic example, Atro Vys became a pact lich based on his desire to "see my people established for all time, their survival ensured." To this end he contributed enough of his life to study and meditation to theoretically survive for centuries as a lich. However, once he saw the seeming invulnerability of the Tennebris and the mass inclusion of other species into the ranks of the Aterr, he felt assured that his desire had been met, and died again after only 83 years of lichdom.

    The desire you center in your pact must be reasonably attainable within the timeframe of your maximum lich lifespan, but attaining it does not need to be a certainty. A modern example is Atru Vydéns, the near-mythical "Perceiver" - a centuries-old anthrosaur pact lich who spies on Eer'Kalla, their pact centered on the desire to one day see the city fall. Additionally, not all pacts need to be life-consuming and grandiose; many Aterr have made shorter pacts on such desires as "to outlive my rival," "to defeat my hated enemy," or "to train another 30 apprentices." As long as the desire is genuine and the combination of goal and timeframe seems reasonable to the adamant, the pact will succeed.

Forced Liches     Forced liches were the first liches to arise from the Orthodox schools, and the type is even pursued by some Aterr for its ease of entry. Forced liches, as their name is meant to imply, establish a desperate link to the adamant by necessity and sheer force of will. They need neither the communication of a pact lich nor the sacrifice of a mad lich, but they are extremely short-lived by comparison. The method is essentially "insurance" against an unforeseen death. Most poetically, it has also been employed by elderly arcanists to revive themselves after a natural death, leaving behind the frailty of age for a short season of final epic adventure.

    To prepare to become a forced lich, you must spend at least 8 LP in study and training; you may spend more to increase your chances of success and potential lifespan. Upon dying, you must roll d20 on WILL, with a +TN equal to the total amount of LP invested in forced lich training, and no reactive +TNs. If you succeed, you become a forced lich. Multiply the amount by which you succeeded by 5; the result is how many days you will survive as a lich. If you succeed by 0, you will survive for d20 hours. Upon creation, you have an innate knowledge of how long you will survive.

    In addition to being the easiest type of lich to become, forced liches are also the only type that can be revived. For 15 minutes after creation, keep track of your "old" damage, injuries, and exhaustion, but ignore their effects; any Ability which can normally revive the dead can be used on your old injuries, at which point you will cease to be a lich. If more than 15 minutes pass or you take a new injury as a lich, you become a forced lich permanently. Being revived does not hamper any attempt to become a forced lich again in the future.

Mad Liches     Mad liches were invented by the Magi, who referred to them more charitably as "the Devoted." Too ambitious for the limited lifespan of a forced lich but without the Aterr ability to negotiate a pact with the Restless Sleeper, the Magi developed a series of arcane meditations and disciplines. If pursued with fanatic devotion over a large part of one's life, these methods would result in permanent, theoretically immortal lichdom. To the Magi, this was a sure sign of their own superiority over the Darkened, who could neither learn this method nor live forever with their own.

    Of course, the Aterr have hardly envied the accomplishment. The Devoted were reduced to servile soldiers under the rule of living Magi. Using the methods today now earns the moniker mad lich, as a significant part of the arcanist's intellect and sanity is sacrificed to placate the adamant and sustain the lich link. This sacrifice manifests itself as one of several lich psychoses, which range from debilitating to villainous. Although the Aterr are viewed as hardly any better by the masses of Lur-Asko, the perception of mad liches as universally evil has endured nearly everywhere outside of Magi enclaves and the Wynthian Republic. This is perhaps due mainly to a later, even more prolific subfaction: the Liches of On, a sect of Destroyers and Sentinels used by the white dragons in much the same way as the Magi employed the Devoted.

    To become a mad lich, you must invest a total of 40 LP over the course of your life. If you invest an additional 10 LP, you may choose the lich psychosis that you receive; otherwise, you must roll a d6 on the following list upon your death and receive a random one:

Lich Tiers     Any increase in either your physical or arcane training will directly influence your capabilities as a lich. This progression is quantified as your lich tier.

    Normally, your lich tier is equal to 50% of your Arcana tiers, plus 50% of your Athletics tiers, minus 7. Because of the tier requirements to become a lich, your tier will never be less than 1. When you first become a lich, you will begin at 1st tier. If the above equation calls for a higher lich tier, you will gain 1 tier per day until the appropriate total is reached. After this point, you will immediately gain lich tiers whenever you gain an even-numbered depth or Athletics tier. This is the only way you can gain lich tiers.

    At 1st tier, you gain one Lich Ability. At every tier beyond 1st, you may either gain a new Lich Ability, or emphasize one you already have. Much like Study Abilities, each Lich Ability lists progression effects for both Normal (unemphasized) and Emphasized states; each one refers to your lich tier.