The Lich - The ideological origins

Liches are among the most feared undead monsters in the role playing universes. They are ancient and powerful mages who transferred their souls into a receptacle called a phylactery to attain the state of the living dead on their own. Thus, they obtain a form of eternal life accompanied by a significant increase of power, often achieved by the centuries of magic studies that follow their "rebirth". The big particularity with them is that they are one of the few undead (along with the vampires) able to retain their will, which makes them much more dangerous than an army of mindless zombies.

Creatures that appeared very recently in the fantastic bestiary, liches are still little known to the general public. They were created by Gary Gygax alongside the first edition of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons in 1975.
Described as tall wizards often partially decayed, they are generally among the most powerful and dangerous creatures in fantasy universes.

Trapped dungeons, multiple layers of magical protections, summoning an army of powerful servants, sadistic tendency to psychologically torture opponents, knowledge of the most powerful spells including the ability to stop time, removal of all opposing magical support are nothing compared to their ability to return to "life" in full possession of their powers shortly after the destruction of their carnal envelope.

Although most prefer to live in seclusion, some of the most powerful liches manage to conquer entire countries with their armies of undead. They are usually the final enemy of a long epic quest, but they remain open to negotiation in order to be able to manipulate or recruit the heroes who know that they have no chance of survival. Their assurance of being able to kill anyone, anytime, does not encourage them to attack blindly, despite a certain inclination to take lives at the slightest annoyance. This restraint makes them all the more unpredictable and therefore more disturbing than other monsters whose behavior is more violent but predictable.

However, if the official name of this monster is recent, its inspirations are multiple and come from many sources. 

The word "lich" comes from "lich", an archaic English word designing a corpse. Gary Gygax confided that he was inspired by The Sword of the Sorcerer (1969), a short story by Gardner Fox (1911-1986) where he regularly used this term. The book will later be entitled to a film adaptation in 1982 which has today become a classic of fantasy genre. This author's fantasy novels were also among Gary Gygax's favorites, and his influence is palpable throughout the atmosphere of the early Dungeons & Dragons universes.

For the record, it is the same Gardner Fox from the golden age (1938-1954) and silver age (1956-1970) of comics who will notably create the character of The Flash and Hawkman as well as the first parallel universes and the Justice League of America in the DC Comics superhero universe.

-You have gone far there! Shall we come back to our subject?

Far from being just a powerful antagonist, the lich creates an atmosphere of fear and doubt by its mere presence. And this, long before fighting it. It is there to lead the reader or player to question the pertinence of his choices. What drives him to fight such a deadly opponent? Will he have the physical and moral strength to assume the consequences of his choices? And above all, if he had had the same story as his opponent, would his story have the same outcome?

He is a monster, yes, but he was not born that way and the reader must understand that it would have taken very little for the positions to be reversed.

Let us recall here that the lich was created less than a generation after the Second World War in a still shocked context where the responsibility of German soldiers (then United States soldiers during the Vietnam War) was increasingly studied through experiments in psychology and sociology.

Furthermore, the lich rarely attacks first and often tries to win others over to its cause or point of view through question-laden discourse about their differing worldviews. If these are, of course, extreme, they are often not devoid of a real fundamental questioning on the validity of certain taboos related to death.

But the most essential link connecting these creatures remains a fear that has always been present in humans: the fear of lack of time.

If a lich gains by nature a number of powerful powers (terrifying presence pushing weak minds to panic, often unstoppable mental powers...), the power of these creatures comes mainly indirectly from the immortality they acquire. Once freed from the limits of their existence, they immerse themselves in an eternity of study and, with their new knowledge, come new abilities that accumulate over time.

The reason for their transformation is typically stubbornness taken to the extreme. A goal to achieve, something to prove, the lich is usually consumed and isolated by this fixed idea long before its transformation which is only a way to buy time to reach its final goal.

This point is crucial because it is the link between all the "intelligent" living dead of the mythologies. In these, many adventurers seek eternal life, but it is more about fear of the unknown "after" than a goal in itself. Scholars who seek it usually have another far too ambitious goal first and cannot bear the thought of not seeing its completion.

The reasons are numerous and not always bad: the understanding of the universe, the culmination of experiences, the protection of a heritage, revenge, proof of their superiority... Whatever it is, this goal consumes and pushes them to reject the rules of society and their humanity to gain the time they need.

It should be noted that there are a extremely small number of liches possessing a "good" moral alignment that also help illustrate the destructive nature of obsessions in their own way. Transformed for a noble purpose like an eternal protection (but in the shadow) of their people, these creatures suffer forever from loneliness and their place out of time. They did not want to trust the new generations and excluded themselves from their society.

Contrary to popular belief, fantasy stories are rarely Manichaean if one is interested in the motivations, goals or roots of the protagonists. The fictional universe makes it possible to transpose human behavior into a different context to make the story more attractive and light for those who do not want to think about it too much. But it is rare that no reflection is hidden in this kind of work.

If science fiction lingers more often on a critique of society, fantasy focuses more often on humans and their motivations. On what distinguishes a hero from a monster.

-The subtlety of the characters and the message of the story lies precisely in the fact of not making everything obvious. You will rarely have the biography of your interlocutor available and yet, that should not prevent you from trying to understand him. By making the effort to reconstruct his journey, his experiences, you put yourself in his place and you can understand him better than with a quick descriptive sentence flying over a full life.

If we assume that these ancient humans who succumbed to "evil" were not necessarily so at the time of their transformation. By putting ourselves in their place, we can understand that, from the point of view of someone who has sacrificed everything for a purpose, the end ends up justifying the means. In addition, confinement in a single point of view for a certain time ends up isolating to a point of rejection of external opinions while gradually pushing the limits of "socially tolerable".

-"I know I'm right and they will understand once I've succeeded", "after all, why bother with other people's opinions, they don't understand", "after all, I can impose on them a small contribution, it's for their own good", "after all, why should I try to be understood? Might as well do what needs to be done without asking them, it will go faster and if they oppose it, it's that they don't deserve it", etc... It reminds me of two or three very real humans.

Obsessions can consume lives and often lead to extremes, even with the conviction to do what must be done. Far from approving these choices, the creation of monsters like liches allows us to reflect on how to understand these biases and better prevent them or better prepare to fight them.

See you very soon for the second part on the cultural origins!