Pathfinder 2E Paizo drops use of the word phylactery

[darjr]

This has a long list of possibilities.

A Visual Glossary of Greek Pottery

Alabastron (pl. alabastra) - a small jar for storing perfumes, named after the material (alabaster) the first examples were made from. They were often carried by a string looped around the neck of the...

www.worldhistory.org

What about amphora?

 

[darjr]

Pneuma Amphora?

 

[darjr]

Pnuamphora?

 

[Ry]

It's a gosh-darned horcrux in the original fake latin

 

[darjr]

It's a god-damned horcrux

It is but that term is someone’s recent invention.

isn’t it?

 

[J.Quondam]

"Soul bowl"
It's a bowl for your soul!

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Soul Link. It's not a container, it just draws a lich's soul to it and holds on to it.

 

[James Jacobs]

The idea is that they're imprisoning their own soul in a cage, so "soulcage" is a great word for it (and it has the advantage of immediately evoking the right idea in the reader as to what sort of thing it does). To a lich, a soul is not something to be valued. It's a liability. It's the key to their destruction. And it's the thing that binds them to the cycle of life and death. By putting their soul in a cage and locking it a way, they're not only protecting their weakness from enemies, but they're shedding the part of their own existence that lets them transition from life to death.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I second Bill91's suggestion, reliquary. It's got some heft but is a neutral word in that it doesn't refer to any particular culture/religion.


Edit: that or a little birdhouse in your soul.

 

[James Jacobs]

Reliquary was considered, but we use that word too often for its real-world usage in adventures, and also it suggest ties to relics (a type of magic item we introduced in the Gamemastery Guide) that aren't appropriate, so we went with soul cage instead.