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<blockquote data-quote="Prince Atom" data-source="post: 3311888" data-attributes="member: 6046">I'm not sure how much of Koschei made it through to the D&amp;D lich, however. Yes, he is an undying skeleton-sorcerer who keeps his &quot;death&quot; in some other thing than his body; but he has problems with women, specifically, he can't help loving them. Quite often a canny woman will use his infatuation to get the better of him and exploit his power for his own ends. <a href="http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/russia/" target="_blank">GURPS Russia</a> has some interesting info on this old Russian legend, including the observation that it was often Koschei who needed rescuing, not the women. Koschei also features in <a href="http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/cabal/" target="_blank">GURPS Cabal</a>.A recent Demonomicon article in Dragon was about a demon, Kostchtchie, who shares a similar name but is a demon, not an undead (my wife thought that the name was a total rip-off, but she's hardly unbiased when it comes to Russian folk tales).I think that the modern concept of Lich has some roots in Koschie, but it's been expanded and made more generic. Vecna certainly has fed back into the idea.As far as the old pulp weird tales go, perhaps the authors were looking for a more challenging sorcerer for their thewmongers, since Conan et al. were certainly capable of cleaving your run-of-the-mill living sorcerer in twain without even breaking a sweat. But this thing's already dead! It's going to take at least two whacks with your sword.TWK</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Prince Atom, post: 3311888, member: 6046"] I'm not sure how much of Koschei made it through to the D&D lich, however. Yes, he is an undying skeleton-sorcerer who keeps his "death" in some other thing than his body; but he has problems with women, specifically, he can't help loving them. Quite often a canny woman will use his infatuation to get the better of him and exploit his power for his own ends. [url=http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/russia/]GURPS Russia[/url] has some interesting info on this old Russian legend, including the observation that it was often Koschei who needed rescuing, not the women. Koschei also features in [url=http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/cabal/]GURPS Cabal[/url]. A recent Demonomicon article in Dragon was about a demon, Kostchtchie, who shares a similar name but is a demon, not an undead (my wife thought that the name was a total rip-off, but she's hardly unbiased when it comes to Russian folk tales). I think that the modern concept of Lich has some roots in Koschie, but it's been expanded and made more generic. Vecna certainly has fed back into the idea. As far as the old pulp weird tales go, perhaps the authors were looking for a more challenging sorcerer for their thewmongers, since Conan et al. were certainly capable of cleaving your run-of-the-mill living sorcerer in twain without even breaking a sweat. But this thing's already dead! It's going to take [i]at least[/i] two whacks with your sword. TWK [/QUOTE]

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