Lich - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In modern fantasy fiction, a lich (icon; sometimes spelled liche, cognate

Cognate

In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...

to Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

lijk and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

Leiche, both meaning "corpse") is a type of undead

Undead

Undead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased and yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...

creature. Often such a creature is the result of a transformation, as a powerful magician or king striving for eternal life uses spells or rituals to bind his intellect to his animated corpse and thereby achieve a form of immortality

Immortality

Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...

. Liches are depicted as being clearly cadaverous, their bodies desiccated or even completely skeletal. Liches are often depicted as holding power over hordes of lesser undead creatures, using them as their soldiers and servants.

Unlike a zombie

Zombie

Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...

, which is often depicted as mindless and/or under the control of some magician, a lich retains its independent thought and is as intelligent as a living human - and often, far more so. In some works of fiction, liches can be distinguished from other undead by their phylactery

Phylactery

Phylactery may refer to:* An amulet or charm.* English name for Tefillin, a pair of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers....

- an item of the Lich's choosing into which they imbue their soul, giving them immortality until the phylactery is destroyed.

Various works of fantasy fiction, such as Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...

's "Empire of the Necromancers", had used lich as a general term for any corpse, animated or inanimate, before the term's specific use in fantasy role-playing games. The more recent use of the term lich
Lich (Dungeons & Dragons)
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the lich is an undead creature; a spellcaster who seeks to defy death by magical means.-Dungeons & Dragons :...

for a specific type of undead creature originates from the 1976 Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

role-playing game

Role-playing game

A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...

booklet Eldritch Wizardry
Eldritch Wizardry
Eldritch Wizardry is a supplementary rulebook by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume, written for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, which included a number of significant additions to the core game.-Contents:...

, written by Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax

Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....

and Brian Blume

Brian Blume

Brian J. Blume is noted for being a business partner of Gary Gygax in TSR, Inc., producers of the fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons.-Biography:...

In literature

The lich developed from monsters found in earlier classic sword and sorcery

Sword and sorcery

Sword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...

fiction, which is filled with powerful sorcerers who use their magic to triumph over death. Many of Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith

's short stories feature powerful wizards whose magic enables them to return from the dead. Several stories by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

, such as the novella Skull-Face and the short story "Scarlet Tears", feature undying sorcerers who retain a semblance of life through mystical means, their bodies reduced to shriveled husks with which they manage to maintain inhuman mobility and active thought. Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax

, one of the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons, stated that he based the description of a lich included in the game on the short story "The Sword of the Sorcerer" by Gardner Fox

Gardner Fox

Gardner Francis Cooper Fox was an American writer best known for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics. Comic-book historians estimate that he wrote over 4,000 comics stories....

. The term lich, used as an archaic word for corpse (or body), is commonly used in these stories. H.P. Lovecraft also used the word in "The Thing on the Doorstep

The Thing on the Doorstep

"The Thing on the Doorstep" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft, part of the so-called Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror fiction. It was written in August 1933, and first published in the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales.-Inspiration:...

" (published 1937) where the narrator refers to the corpse of his friend which was possessed by a sorcerer. Other imagery surrounding demiliches, in particular that of a jeweled skull, is drawn from the early Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber

Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...

story "Thieves' House".

An earlier mention of the lich can be found in "The Death of Halpin Frayser", a short story by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

. Halpin Frayser is found dead with a poem written in the style of Lord Byron. Through investigation and flashbacks, the reader finds that Frayser becomes possessed by Lord Byron, a distant ancestor, who senses that a lich named Catharine Larue has risen from her grave to kill Frayser. Lord Byron takes possession in order to finish one last poem before Frayser's death. At the end of the story, the men investigating the murder conclude that Catharine Larue was Frayser's heartbroken mother, who had died some time before the murder. Bierce describes liches thus:

"For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether."

In religion and mythology

In Roman Catholicism and the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

, the word "lychgate

Lychgate

A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, or as two separate words lych gate, is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style churchyard.-Name:...

" refers to a covered area at the entrance to the cemetery where the casket

Coffin

A coffin is a funerary box used in the display and containment of dead people – either for burial or cremation.Contemporary North American English makes a distinction between "coffin", which is generally understood to denote a funerary box having six sides in plan view, and "casket", which...

awaits the clergy before proceeding into the cemetery for proper burial, lych being a word derived from Old English lic meaning "body" or "corpse".
The word has cognates in most other Germanic languages, like Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

and Old Frisian

Old Frisian

Old Frisian is a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries in the area between the Rhine and Weser on the European North Sea coast. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland also spoke Old Frisian but no medieval texts of this area are known...

lik, Gothic

Gothic language

Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...

leik, Dutch

Dutch language

lijk, German

German language

leiche and Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

lig, ultimately being derived from Proto-Germanic *likow.

Liches in Dungeons & Dragons

In the Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

game (and other works of fantasy fiction that draw upon Dungeons & Dragons for inspiration), a lich

Lich (Dungeons & Dragons)

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the lich is an undead creature; a spellcaster who seeks to defy death by magical means.-Dungeons & Dragons :...

is often a spellcaster or someone assisted by a spellcaster who seeks to defy death by magical means. They are necromancers

Necromancy

Necromancy is a claimed form of magic that involves communication with the deceased, either by summoning their spirit in the form of an apparition or raising them bodily, for the purpose of divination, imparting the ability to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge...

who are unsatisfied with the level of power that they currently have, wish for longer lives, and seek to unburden themselves from the necessities of bodily functions (such as eating and sleeping) so that they might dedicate every moment of their existence to the attainment of knowledge and power. There have also been descriptions of highly powerful spellcasters that force the conversion on mighty creatures to wreak havoc. Liches convert themselves into undead

Undead

creatures by means of black magic

Black magic

Black magic is the type of magic that draws on assumed malevolent powers or is used with the intention to kill, steal, injure, cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences. As a term, "black magic" is normally used by those that do not approve of its...

, storing their souls in magical receptacles called phylacteries, leaving their bodies to die and wither. With their souls bound to material foci, they can never truly die. If its body is destroyed, a lich can simply regenerate or find a new one. According to the Dungeons & Dragons mythos, the only way truly to destroy a lich is first to destroy its phylactery, thereby removing its anchor to the material world, and then to destroy its physical form.

In literature

In religion and mythology

Liches in Dungeons & Dragons

See also