Finding Phylacteries

[drnuncheon]

Legend Lore: There must be legends in the first place. If the item is a secret known only to a select few (like a phylactery would be), the spell will fail.

Well, the point of the bit that I quoted was that there are going to be legends about characters of that level that legend lore could pick up. It may not be anything so blatant as 'Bob the Lich's phylactery is hidden in locker #2204 in Grand Central Station', but it might be something that would indicate where to start looking: 'the legendary mage Bob traveled to the fabled city of Nhu Yhork - when next he was seen he was a lich'. Bingo! You've got a place to start. Then you seek out an interdimensional portal, talk to the strange Nhu Yhorkers, find out that Bob purchased items X, Y, and Z and went up to the Catskills. You track down the hideout, etc, etc. I mean, make an adventure out of it.

J

 

[sithramir]

My wizard is almost on his way to lichdom in a campaign . Lets just say i've found a few items and ways to make it hidden to the point that even if you KNEW it was in a certan room you wouldn't be able to find it.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I had an idea once that went something like this --

I am an uber-lich. I make a clone of my most loyal and powerful flunky. Later, I give said flunky my phylactery, which he hides somewhere obscure and surrounds with fiendish traps. Still later, I slay my flunky and his soul enters the clone... which has no memory of hiding the phylactery (since it happened after the clone was made).

Now, no one -- including me, the lich -- knows where the phylactery is located.

 

[Tonguez]

Yep IMO Liches are (or should be) Legendary and the hiding place of its Phylactery is part of the legend - so Legend Lore works (as does Bardic Knowledge)

"They say the Grandmother of Lord Eric can never die - her heart is hidden in a deep and unknown pool beneath the Morass of En protected by a great Half-fiend cat and its many spawn"

of course the Legend could be wrong - perhaps she actually keeps it tucked down in her (CR 10 trapped) corset! eeewww!

 

[drnuncheon]

I had an idea once that went something like this --

I am an uber-lich. I make a clone of my most loyal and powerful flunky. Later, I give said flunky my phylactery, which he hides somewhere obscure and surrounds with fiendish traps. Still later, I slay my flunky and his soul enters the clone... which has no memory of hiding the phylactery (since it happened after the clone was made).

Now, no one -- including me, the lich -- knows where the phylactery is located.

Except the flunky - being intelligent, you wouldn't want to give it to a /stupid/ flunky after all - probably left records for himself. Or someone else. Just in case. I mean, how loyal can you really be to a guy that's going to kill your original and wipe you out? (And believe me, being a clone, I'd wonder about the reason for my creation...)

J

 

[jgsugden]

Yep IMO Liches are (or should be) Legendary and the hiding place of its Phylactery is part of the legend - so Legend Lore works (as does Bardic Knowledge)

Take a step back and think about what a legend is. It is a story. A tale. Something told by one person to another.

If the lich hides his phylactery and never tells anyone where he hid it, there is no legend about the phylactery for the legend lore spell to reveal.

Might there be legends about the lich? Probably. Might some of those legends give hints to places where the lich *might* have hidden the phylactery? Yes. It might be a starting place to begin a search for the phylactery, but it won't reveal the location of the phylactery unless there are legends about it to be uncovered. That is why the spell specifies that it finds legends only if there are legends.

Legend Lore is a short cut that allows PCs to gather information and do research without the PCs having to actually gather the information or do the research themselves. It does not fabricate answers from nothing, it only finds answers if they are available. It is a super research assistant, not a research scientist that finds new information never before known.

 

[Caliban]

I am intrigued.

My gut instinct says this is not going to be a happy set of circumstances for our heroes, the Lich, or the Tarrasque.

Maybe someone should write a Soul Miscibility Table?

Well, it's kind of involved in this case. The lich is actually the ancestor of one of the PC's, who was killed by the Tarrasque about 2,000 years ago, but survived as a Jahvi (a powrful incorporeal undead from MM2) due to some magical preperations he had made (including nearly completing the ritual for Lichdom.)

I'm running in the Forgotten Realms, and in my campaign the Tarrasque is known as the Beast of Malar. It was created by Malar to slay the avatar of a giant deity who pissed him off (Ulutiu for those who know the realms). The ancestor was from a tribe of human barbarians who had traces of the avatar's blood running through their veins. He had also managed to steal a trace of the giant deities power, which attracted the Beast of Malar and killed him before he could make full use of it.

When he came back (by possessing the PC's sister, who had traveled to his crypt and awakened his spirit to learn sorcery), it awakened the Beast of Malar again, and it went after him. It couldn't catch him, because by this point the PC's sister was a high enough level sorcerer to fly and teleport, so he led the Beast around, leaving a trail of destruction. He told the PC's that he would release the sister and send the tarrasque away if they recovered this 50,000 gp gem (called the Heart of Malar) and a scroll that was kept with it. They did so, and he used the scroll to cast "Trap the Soul" on the gem and stood there while the Tarrasque ate him, which triggered the spell and trapped the tarrasque in the gem. His last act while possessing the sister was teleporting the gem to his crypt, where it served as his lich phylactery and he reformed his undead body.

The PC's aren't aware that the ancestor has re-incarnated himself as a full lich, or that the gem is being used as his phylactery. They have a prophecy that I handed out several months earlier that makes references to it though, so hopefully they will figure it out before they are high enough level to tangle with the lich, who will be a 16th or 18th level Sorcerer/Cleric Mystic Theurge when I stat him out.

The PC's are currently 7th-10th level, so hopefully that will be awhile (they have already inadvertently caused the creation of one dracolich by disrupting a ritual being used to ressurect an ancient ghost dragon. So they have that to look forward to as well. )

If they try anything tricky like disposing of the phylactery by the "bag of holding in a hewards handy haversack" it just means the lich will come back as a Kaorti from the "Far Realms" as described in the Fiend Folio. Hehehe....

As for locating his phylactery, I think I have given the group enough clues to eventually figure out what his phylactery is, and as they have actually touched it themselves, they should be able to track it down with the appropriate magics when the time comes.

 

[Norfleet]

I've hidden phylacteries in the most amusing places before. I've hidden them in plain sight, so the players had no clue they were looking at it. They looted the place, took it, and sold it off as a shiny gem without ever realizing what they had found. I've even hidden it INSIDE OF A PC, who was firmly under the belief that it was a magical item that gave him powers from where it was, namely, inside of his body, and in order to have remove it in any case, he'd have to disembowel himself fatally to get it out. The lich thus became a recurring character that appeared over and over, taunting the PCs with lines to the effect of "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I'll just come back and pick up all my stuff."

 

[AuraSeer]

They looted the place, took it, and sold it off as a shiny gem without ever realizing what they had found.

This is why no adventurer worth his salt will sell an item without casting detect magic on it first.

(I wonder what the shopkeeper thought when he saw a lich show up in his display case?)

I've even hidden it INSIDE OF A PC, who was firmly under the belief that it was a magical item that gave him powers from where it was, namely, inside of his body, and in order to have remove it in any case, he'd have to disembowel himself fatally to get it out

That one is kind of a neat idea. Fatal disemboweling isn't all that heinous, in a world that has true resurrection. Even if the PC is too squeamish to slice himself open, he probably has plenty of chaotic friends (or enemies) who'd be more than willing to gut him if it meant permanently destroying the lich.

The downside is, it'd be damn hard to avoid making the character suspicious. "Good work guys, the lich is defeated for now. But wait... what's this weird skeletal thing materializing in my transverse colon?"

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Caliban,

I love details regarding the ancestral blood tie. I can't get enough of that kind of thing. It is a wonderful way to thrust the PCs into something epic. What player can complain about finding out that they have the blood of an Avatar running through their veins? It is also a somewhat logical fantasy reason for Godzilla to stomp Tokyo.