Lictor Shokneir

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Description

Male human graveknight fighter 5/Hellknight 10 (Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide 278)

Channel Destruction (Su) Any weapon Lictor Shokneir wields deals an additional +3d6 points of damage on a successful hit.

Devastating Blast (Su) Three times per day, Lictor Shokneir may unleash a 30-foot cone of destructive force. This blast deals 10d6 points of fire damage (Reflex DC 22 half).

Phantom Mount (Su) Once per hour, Lictor Shokneir can summon a skeletal horse similar to a phantom steed (CL 15th). This mount is more real than a typical phantom steed, and can carry one additional rider. If the mount is destroyed, it can be summoned again with full hit points 1 hour later.

Rejuvenation (Su) One day after Lictor Shokneir is destroyed, his armor begins to rebuild his body. This process takes 1d10 days—if the body is destroyed before that time passes, the armor merely starts the process anew. After this time has elapsed, Lictor Shokneir wakens fully healed.

Sacrilegious Aura (Su) Lictor Shokneir constantly exudes an aura of intense evil and negative energy in a 30-foot radius. This aura functions as desecrate, which the graveknight constantly gains the benefits of (these benefits are included in the stats above). In addition, this miasma of fell energies hinders the channeling of positive energy. Any creature that attempts to use positive energy in this area— such as through a cleric’s channel energy ability, a paladin’s lay on hands, or any spell with the healing descriptor—must make a DC 25 caster level check or the attempt to use positive energy fails.

Undead Mastery (Su) As a standard action, Lictor Shokneir can attempt to bend any undead creature within 50 feet to its will. The targeted undead must make a DC 22 Will save or fall under the graveknight’s control. This control is permanent for unintelligent undead. An undead with an Intelligence score is allowed an additional save every day to break free from Lictor Shokneir’s control. A creature that successfully saves cannot be affected again by Lictor Shokneir’s undead mastery for 24 hours. Lictor Shokneir can control up to 75 Hit Dice worth of undead creatures at a time. If he exceeds this number, he loses control over some of his minions, as per the spell animate dead.

During the Chelish civil war, several bands of mercenaries were dubbed Hellknights by the besieged Chelish royalty, but many of these “lesser” and unsanctioned orders refused to disband after the war was over.

One of these was the Order of the Crux. Hunted down and destroyed by the Order of the Scourge in 4663 ar, the butchers of the Crux were wiped out, and their fortress of Citadel Gheisteno put to the torch. Yet 25 years later, three graveknights clad in scarred Hellknight armor rose from the ruin. They gathered together lesser undead under the banner of the Crux, and now seemingly bide their time in the shadows of their fallen citadel.

As he was in life, so is Lictor Shokneir the leader of his band in death. Always a grim and merciless man, Shokneir’s rebirth as a graveknight has only strengthened his certainty that his is the only valid interpretation of the law, and that those who question it are best put to the sword. Though his two subordinates may not share his wisdom, he sees them for what they are: competent minions sent to help him on his quest.

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Undead Revisited Lich We confronted the Jester of Years in his hidden lair and held up the phylactery we’d spent ten months hunting for, shouting something heroic about ridding the world of his evil.

“With that?” he replied. “I think not.” Then he stretched out one bony hand, and the gem crumbled to dust in our fingers. “Now do your best to destroy this body,” he hissed. “Make it amusing this time.” We rained down fire and acid, sword and holy power, and as he crumbled beneath our assault, he only laughed and said, “Come back next month with something better.” We’ve been killing him for years now—we’re running out of ideas. —Last letter from Maris Jonachsen, priest of Iomedae Lich T hough the lure of immortality is strong in all who fear death, few creatures can avoid life’s natural end. Bodies become frail, minds crumble before the onslaught of age, and all the structures one has built come tumbling down, leaving one’s name in ruin, forgotten in the dust of history.

Those who would follow the path of the lich seek to halt life’s inevitable conclusion. Drawing on the powers of their faith or dark knowledge, the greatest spellcasters of the world transcend the boundaries of life through mysterious techniques unknown to the living.

One does not become a lich by accident or stumble into this form of undeath through misadventure. A lich is not a puppet, a blood-mad monster, or an accident of rage or despair. The lich is instead a creature of design and ultimate will, carefully and rationally planning its transition from life into undead immortality. Of all the undead, the lich is perhaps the most terrifying precisely because it chooses its own fate. The lich is a dangerous opponent: cagey, prepared, ambitious enough to want to tear its soul from its body, and smart enough to figure out how to do it.

It is not merely force of will that propels one to lichdom, nor is it the simple desire to avoid death, though these are certainly factors in the mindset of the would-be lich. Instead, those who would follow the path of the undying mind must seek out tomes of forbidden magic and lost lore. Though the initiates might not be evil when they begin, the process under which they become liches drives them slowly into the arms of corruption—the focus they must develop drives out all other concerns, including the civilized needs of friendship and love.

The final and most important aspect of a lich’s transformation involves creating a new home for its soul called a phylactery—this is often something strong and impressive, such as a gem or box of unparalleled quality, though almost any object can serve. Once the soul has been safely transferred over, the phylactery is then hidden through means cunning and wise. A lich can never be destroyed as long as its phylactery remains intact. Though its bones might be crushed to dust and scattered to the winds, the lich returns as strong as ever a few days later, burning with vengeance and marshaling its might to bring utter ruin to its enemies.

The magic (whether divine or arcane) that powers a lich’s unlife keeps its mind sharp and spirits fresh. Indeed, those liches who still deign to share their thoughts with others have often noted clarity unlike any they experienced in life. They never require sleep, and can devote their fullest attentions to their labors. Yet for most, these pleasures eventually begin to pale. Though they may start out simply seeking more time in which to continue their work, with no true predilection toward evil, in the end, all liches inevitably cycle down into madness or a paranoia that mortals seek to annihilate them—the latter, of course, often being true. Through the endless centuries, the cycle of time speeds ever faster, and the faces of those lesser beings still trapped in death’s plan become a blur, nameless and forgettable, with the lich remembering only those who seek to destroy it. Is it any wonder then that most liches grow to nurture a generalized hatred for life, or that they surround themselves with horrific magic to destroy interlopers? Liches often build fabulous fortresses, filled with traps and deadly devices to eliminate intruders. Choking gases, bottomless pits, intricate magics that draw upon unknowable reservoirs of power and devoted solely to the horrors of the living—these are but a fraction of the destruction liches rain upon those who seek to disturb their great works.

Sometimes, however, liches roam. They grow weary of their self-imposed confinement and travel in disguise to see what new delights the world holds. Perhaps they need to find the particulars of long-lost details recorded on scrolls in ancient cities buried under the dust of centuries, or maybe they must gather precious and rare ingredients under the moon’s light in a stinking bog far from their home. But whenever they leave the safety of their homes, they travel with the security of their own tremendous magical might. Liches in History The word lich is derived from the Old English word lic, meaning “corpse” (as it was later used by Jack Vance in his widely influential tales of the Dying Earth, where he describes the earth as being covered by “lich-mold”). The town of Lichfield in Great Britain was long claimed to be named after a great martyrdom of 999 Christian faithful by the Roman Emperor Diocletian (wrongly, as it turns out; the English name for the place evolved from Welsh or another Celtic language, rather than Old English). At that point, the corpses did not walk.

More recently, the lich appeared as a revenant bent on revenge in Ambrose Bierce’s “The Death of Halpin Frayser.” From there, the word took root in countless fantasy stories, denoting sorcerers and wizards who sought to cheat death through magic and appearing in the works of such authors as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Gardner Fox.

Koschei the Deathless from Slavic folklore is one of the most famous denizens of mythology to hide his soul away in a proto-phylactery. The word “phylactery” derives from the Greek phylassein, meaning “to guard”; a number of traditions suggest that one’s spirit can be severed from the body and hidden away, the effect of such a severing being the loss of humanity and empathy.

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Undead Revisited Some of their kind return to the mortal world to serve as rulers, often wielding their magics to drive slave populations in the creation of some vast work or arcane experiment. Liches are timeless and often patient in a way few mortals can understand, playing to the long term and thinking nothing of laying plans—often of vengeance—that take several human generations to come to fruition. Some of them seek divinity (and perhaps some even find it, after a fashion), but most are so wrapped in their visions that they care little for accumulating the worship of mortals. Their work is more personal and more introspective, a great becoming.

Source: Undead Revisited, p. 21