The Lords of the Night: Liches

Game: The Lords of the Night: Liches
Publisher: Bottled Imp Games
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 2nd, February 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10   [ Really good ]
Total Score: 8
Average Score: 8.00

As I’ll tell anyone who foolishly gets close enough to listen I’m only just shaking off a long and linger sickness. As I’ll point out to any author, publisher or wyrdling who accidentally gets close enough to listen; this means that my whole GameWyrd schedule has been delayed beyond recognition. There have been some advantages to this. Some silver linings.

I first read The Lords of the Night: Liches around about Christmas when my review copy landed on the desk. Back then I was easily able to appreciate most of the book’s strong points and since then I’ve glanced over reviews from reviewers who all think Liches is a highly rated book. The delay between my first read and second read (I always read a book twice before writing anything down about it) was quite long (did I tell you I’d been ill) and in that time the limited edition score to Return of the King arrived on my desk too. Sometimes music and a book just go well together. Oh. Yeah; sure, the score to Return of the King goes best with Lord of the Rings (heard about that? Some fantasy novel they made into a movie, apparently) and memories of The Shire certainly don’t snuggle up against Liches… ah, but the majority of the CD is the perfect partner to the book. We have the sweeping epics, the spooky music, the spooky sweeping epics and the moments of high drama in the music. That’s just what this supplement manages to give to us.

Written by Karis. Ooh. A touch of mystery even on the front page… okay, so Karis returns out to be Stuart Renton, author of Lords of the Night: Vampires, and that’s explained on the very next page but if you were going to judge a book by its cover then Liches is off to a good start.

Vampires didn’t just enjoy the head start of being the first book in the Darkness Rising series as it could be argued that vampires enjoy being the most popular of the undead. There are roleplaying games just about vampires. There are novels where vampires stand tall as villains, anti-heroes and even heroes. The same is true of anime, comics and TV shows. Vampires don’t turn into unattractive skeletons and perhaps this is why they manage to seduce so many with their gothic charm. Liches have none of that. Aren’t Liches simply a powerful evil who take it on themselves to protect/haunt/keep some rather tempting magical artefact? Lords of the Night: Liches is 128 pages long so clearly Karis has found more than my little summary to write down about liches.

Lords of the Night: Liches is a d20 supplement and yes much of the page space is taken up with new spells and feats but no classes. We don’t need classes. We’ve lich types and lich states. Lich states, at their most simple, reflect the age of the lich. Roleplayers might be most familiar with the Necrotic or Skeletal Liches; bags of bones the pair of them, Skeletal Liches moreso. A Lich could age even further though and become a Spectral Lich. There’s a lot of flesh to rot through (especially with their much rate of aging) before a lich becomes Nectroic. The Death Touched are more or less human (less), the Living Dead certainly couldn’t pass off as alive any more and its here we find a lich state that most closely resembles the vampire. The Sunken Lich is caught between the last stages of a full set of flesh and the first stages of grave decay. And don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s just a matter of mundane age to move through these Lich States either, oh no. You’d better read up about The Ritual of the Arcane Displacement. This review mentions the Arcane a little later.

Then there are the different kinds of Liches. You’ve the Artifex Liches, the makers and craftsmen on their kin, the Darke Lich, spies and assassins with a taste for top hats and canes, the Dirge Lich necromancers, the Frost Lich, the Mors Liches, Prime Lich and Umbral Lich. Seven Orders of lich and each one subject to different insanities, with different powers and roleplaying angles.

Oh yes; Lords of the Night: Liches bravely sets off to offer up a d20 supplement where the Lich is a playable and balanced character type. Balance is purely subjective. A game with one halfling, two liches and a troll probably isn’t internally balanced but a game with a Mors Lich, two Dirge Liches and a Frost Lich probably is.

The mechanics in the book certainly offer up all the rules required to play a lich too; you can start of fairly weak (for a lich) and still enjoy being able to advance in power. That’s all well and good… but why would you want to play a Lich? Why would you want to play a lich? Why be tempted by a lich when the same publishers have already produced a shockingly good vampire supplement?

I think it’s here that Lords of the Night: Liches scores its biggest success. Liches are interesting again. Forget the mechanics and sit back to marvel in the epic backdrop to Lichdom.

Why are there liches? Where do they come from? What do they do? It’s easy to get cheeky about the average D&D fantasy Lich too. “Oh, you live in a crypt huh?”, “I see, you want to destroy all life. Just like the last one” or even “Poor you, another tragic curse”. A sensitive DM can be forgiven for worrying that the average Lich is just too naff to be allowed anywhere near his game. Lords of the Night: Liches answers all these questions and sweeps aside all the naff clichés.

With this supplement you’ve good answers to why so many liches seem to want to destroy life, why they hang around in remote places, protect items of power or engage in century long research.

In fact the history to lichdom is so good I’m only going to skirt over it. This is a background a GM can use in almost any d20 setting. It’s one that they can use on top and around plenty of other standard campaign worlds too. The uber plot could keep the players guessing for years. Or, on the other hand, if players read the book (and I think most d20 players feel they’re able to read all but a few d20 supplements) then the GM will be able to enjoy writing and running a game for a set of players who are likely to be enthused by the epic drama. Cue the Return of the King background music.

There are evil liches and they’re at war with… let’s just say other liches. Are these liches the good guys? Not really. They’re just not as destroy-all-life as the other group of liches are. Where did the first liches come from and why? We have answers but I’m not sharing them here.

There’s the Arcane. That’s not the arcane presented in the main rule books either. Bottled Imp Games has no qualms about shuffling around game mechanic terms in favour of flavour. I’ve been in games where players (not stupid people either) did honestly get confused when the same word had two different meanings or usages. Tough. I’d put the ambience of the game, the suspension of disbelief and great roleplaying above any belief that mechanics and game terms are sacrosanct.

There’s the Arcane and it’s not the limp wristed arcane that powers other spells. Oh no. This Arcane is something far more spectacular than that. This Arcane is fundamental to the lich and it is why they have to die. The Arcane is also responsible for a sizable chunk of Lords of the Night: Liches as there are plenty of rituals and spells to associate with it.

Kethak is the City of Lost Souls. Not wanting to give a way too much of the Lich Word and wanting to talk about Kethak, a significant chunk of the book, was always going to be tricky. Suffice to say that Lords of the Night: Liches also has information on pertinent planes. Ash and the Spectral Planes are two important ones. You’ve got two ways (at least) to use this supplement. Simply use it to add some more twists and turns to liches in your campaign setting or use it to add more twists and turns to your campaign setting. Both options are tempting. There is actually a campaign setting here – an adventure setting at least, one on an epic scale. As a bonus everything is entirely compatible with Lords of the Night: Vampires (both books are part of Darkness Rising). However, if you don’t have Lords of the Night: Vampires you might pout slightly at the occasional reference to it in Liches. You don’t need this other supplement but you’ll probably wish you had it.

I’ve barely touched on the new style of spells – Arcane, remember – and matching feats. There is /a lot/ in this supplement. It’s a sign of the book’s strengths that it’s so easy to pick favourite sections out and go on and on about them. Nevertheless, I didn’t quite enjoy Liches as much as I did Vampires. This isn’t a reflection on the writing or ambition of the book, in some respects Liches is an improvement, but a problem with the subject matter. Lords of the Night: Liches succeeds in making a lich into a viable player character. But a whole party of liches? That would take a dedicated GM with a very clear game idea. What about one lich in a mixed party? You could do this to and you’ll certainly need this Lords of the Night but it’s still a tricky option. Liches doesn’t really solve any problems either – until it came along I was content to leave the lich out entirely or save it for a one off encounter. If it doesn’t solve any lingering game problems it certainly opens new possibilities and for many experienced gamers that’s reason enough to buy the book and do a happy dance.