Qurit

> *See also: Lichhood*
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> "The lich is a ghost that feeds on memory and ambition, squatting in the lifespans of men to escape its own twisted and inept spawning. It consumes the past of its victim, his every waking minute, and all the days that God ever wrote for him, worming its way from the darkness and into the Light through the intestines of the blessed."
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The **qurit** species, otherwise known as **lichlings** or **wurms**, are a parasitic demon that takes possession of promafer hosts, body and soul, to extend its natural life through reincarnation. The collective of qurits is a **hydra**, referring to either a council of liches or a massing of lichlings sharing a pooled animus. The qurit is also sometimes referred to as an *ouroboros* or the *reincarnation snake*.

When a host's soul fuses with that of a lichling's, the resulting gestalt entity is called a **lich**, which embodies the legacy of hosts' memories over the centuries of its reincarnation cycle.

## Biology

Physically, the invertebrate qurit extends to about five feet in length, its flat, fan-shaped, serpentine body lined with flexible spines. When threatened, the qurit can fan its head into a hood.

The posterior end of the lichling's body ends in five prehensile tails which serve as its primary means for grasping. They are characteristically like tassels on a kite, and its grip can be strong enough to break bone.

The qurit is a psi promafer, like all the sorjachani, but are individually weak at producing their own mana. Instead, the lichling prefers to rely on the manageniture of a larger host, and thus arranges pacts with stronger beings to fuse their animus with theirs.

Regularly, the lichling will moult and shed and discard its old skin. The shed skin is referred to as *lichskin* and is traded in the Skirts for its rumored mystic properties in enhancing longevity and youthfulness in remedies.

## Reproduction

Once a lich has been created, it will designate a point in their host's natural life in which it will decide to multiply. The lich will halt its ability to safely ventilate mana from its animus, encouraging the coalescence of ioun pearls within the host's body. Once a sizable cradle has formed, the lichling will seminate the tumorous growth and allow the polyps to grow within the confines of the crystal, incubated within the organs of the host as they slowly expire. Gestating within the body of their creator secondarily exposes the nascent lichlings to the lich entity's animus. The manifesting lichlings will then burrow out from the host, killing them if they had not yet already died, and devouring the body.

### Reincarnation cycle

After being born, the newborn lichlings will be identical copies of their expired incarnation—inheriting the lich's mana signature and memories. According to the wishes of the lich, the multiple offspring may be culled in favor of a single heir to reduce the threat of identity competition. However, some liches do choose to have more than one manifestation, as guaranties or cohorts.

The lich is selective when deciding its successor incarnations, and will deliberate on the subject exhaustively before committing to any particular body. Some powerful liches have held tournaments to decide their next host, while others tend to review pedigrees and profiles of prospective hosts.

The ritual of lichhood can take up to two weeks or a month. The host must be in physical contact with the lichling for the entirety of the symbiosis for their souls to fully fuse after the telepathic link is established. In the interim of host selection, lichlings may rotate between thralls (called couriers) until it is prepared for the lengthy binding with its chosen incarnation.

### Lichhood

After fusion, the newly formed lich is entirely different entity than it was before, since the inclusion of the new incarnation's animus would overwrite some of the existing lich entity and its previous lives' memories. The personality traits and ambitions of both the Lich and its next host are inherited by the new entity.

This symbiosis of consciousness can have its unexpected drawbacks, as the unconscious mind of both are melded as well. In some cases, the host's repressed traumas reacted negatively with the Lich's goals, completely warping the new entity's rationale.

## Hydra

The term *hydra* is used interchangeably to refer to two instances of the qurit's manifestation.

When qurits are born, they will multiply and grow from a polyp to a full-bodied adult, coiling around the strongest font of renewable mana. As is the usual case in nature, when lacking a powerful promafer to leech from, the qurits will gather into a mass and pool their individually weak manageniture to produce a working animus. The mass is a hive mind of the multiple lichlings, a single mental entity composed of several intertwined, semi-entranced, semi-lucid bodies.

In the second instance, a hydra can refer to a council or league of a lich's incarnations, all aspects (or "heads") of a greater whole.

## Trivia

* The Lich is analogous to the aspect of Hinduism which describes their chief gods as a series of individual reincarnations of a deity, called an **Avatar**.