Baelnorn

Baelnorn are liches who chose to be protectors of mortals and have a duty to protect those of their kin and life itself even beyond death. These undead defenders unwaveringly protect their clans and homes for eons. Only elves can become baelnorn through a specific ritual conducted when they were alive. During this ritual they receive the blessings of the elven ancestors and transcend their mortal existence, entering immortality through undeath. They keep all of the memories, personality, and abilities that they possessed in life and they can only become more powerful as they have an eternity to grow stronger. Baelnorn also have the ability to summon the spirits of elven ancestors to aid them in battle and have a paralyzing touch that mimics the effects of death when touching a mortal.

Since baelnorn lack the corrupting powers of unlife that other liches have and are hardly as "wrong" as other undead, they are not generally feared or reviled. They do not project the fearsome aura of the wicked and dreaded liches that terryfing stories tell about, and all baelnorn are either good or neutral in alignment. Some speculate that baelnorn receive their powers and their very nature from the Positive Energy Plane since they are not creatures of fell power and dark necromantic energies that is the signature of the other liches and the Negative Energy Plane. They also do not need to sustain themselves with souls as other liches do and are instead sustained by the magic of the very Material Plane and nature itself. Some scholars would also argue that their duty itself fuels them with the energy needed to exist.

Baelnorn resemble the visage they had in life. They are undead however and their nature is clear. Their once live characteristics turn more deathly; their eyes lose their pupils and appear all white, they get much thinner and their cheeks become sunken. Their skin also turns slightly translucent as time passes. Also, baelnorn do not have phylacteries but can use soulless clones of themselves that they create to avoid destruction. When a baelnorn is destroyed, its soul searches for one of its clones or a humanoid corpse near its lair or near the place it was destroyed and occupies the corpse causing it to reanimate. After a month most of the time, the possessed corpse of the humanoid starts to physically alter to match the appearance that the baelnorn had before. If the baelnorn does not find a humanoid corpse to occupy for more than five days, it passes to the afterlife.

Most baelnorn are spellcasters as the ritual needed to become a baelnorn is a complex form of incantations, prayers and rune scriptures. However, there also exist other extremely rare types of baelnorn who were once warriors that were helped by powerful spellcasters or spellcasting baelnorns in their achievement of transcending mortality.

The baelnorn are considered most sacred to elves of Aldmeer since they represent their faith and reverence of the ancestors as they are indeed living ancestors that watch over them. To disturb them in their homes and lairs for no good reason is considered extremely rude at best and sacrilege at worst. While the baelnorn do not mind and in fact welcomed mortal company, mortal elves prefer to respectfully keep their distance from these higher beings. Of course anyone who trespasses in a baelnorn’s home incurs its wrath, and the baelnorn will destroy trespassers who don’t leave after a solemn warning or those who would steal from its possessions.

Baelnorn are tremendously fewer in numbers than other liches generally, since becoming a baelnorn was not done under a personal and egotistical quest for everlasting power and immortality, but it stemmed from a sense of duty, love and caring for others as well as for the preservation of a clan or family. Not many elven clans and families decide to have a baelnorn guard their legacy and lives though, since becoming one is very painful and if the ritual fails there’s a chance that the person that tries to pass to undeath is overwhelmed by the raw power coursing through them and die. Another reason that not many do so, besides the reason above, is that the whole ritual is not known to many and while some do have knowledge of some of the ritual most of its parts are lost to time.