Ella's Arcanum - RPG Essentials #2 - Lich - DnD/Pathfinder/TTRPG

Some nefarious magic-users carry out forbidden necromantic rituals that sever their souls from their bodies to turn themselves into liches, masters of magic and undeath. With their souls preserved in hidden relics, liches puppet their own corpses as they pursue ambitions free from mortal bonds.

Liches possess exceptional cunning and magical prowess, and they use their unnatural immortality to pursue arcane secrets few could grasp in a single life. Uncanny agendas lead them to plumb the secrets of life, the multiverse, godhood, and less fathomable topics. Careless of mortal lives or desires, liches go to any lengths to achieve their goals.

A lich's age and origin influences its form. Older liches appear as little more than brittle skeletons clad in the rotten finery of forgotten empires, while younger liches more closely resemble living creatures and are clad in contemporary garb. Many cloak themselves in illusions of their idealized mortal forms.

Although liches don't fear death, they're not free from the ravages of time. Over ages, some liches lose their connection to time and the physical world, degenerating into demiliches.