Lich

Liches are powerful undead mages whose souls are bound to artifacts known as phylacteries. As all souls are unique, the process for creating a phylactery is unique to each individual; however, rituals typically require the destruction of material possessions, the slaughter of innocent lives, and the sacrifice of loved ones. While these rituals are already dehumanizing in their own right, liches quickly lose touch with mortals through the course of their endless existence and almost inevitably grow to completely despise life itself, assuming that they did not already despise it before they decided to turn. Liches cannot experience any physical pain or pleasure, delighting purely in the expansion of their knowledge and the destruction of their enemies.
== Psychology ==
Scholar Charon Brodeuse notably wrote on Liches:
The pursuit of Lichdom is the epitome of mortal desire through the rejection of mortality. By preserving the spirit and intellect of their being while simultaneously desecrating their own body, Liches are stripped away of worldly wants and needs whilst intrinsically binding themselves to the physical world. In doing so, they deny themselves of traditional sources of the immortality of essence that all mortal beings appear to be drawn to, the most primal of which is the universal drive for reproduction and the propagation of one's kin and the holiest of which is achieving salvation through the work of the divine. Indeed, a Lich's denunciation of the immortality achieved through divine salvation is inherent to the process of the creation of the phylactery as the deeds that must be performed are so repugnant that eternal damnation would be the only form of afterlife left for Liches to hope for. What remains then for Liches is only the ultimate aggrandizement of their own ego.
It has often been noted that Scientific and Alchemical pursuits are common among Liches; this is by necessity due to their divorce from all things heavenly and their everlasting union to the physical world. While one may imagine that Aesthetic desires and the advancement of Culture would also be prevalent among their kind, their incongruous existence in the world almost inevitably detaches them from greater civilization; the Creative pursuits that Liches do engage in tend to be internal ones.