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Liches
Man, I love liches. (No, not like that.)
Liches are great. They sure have come a long way from their DnD roots. From LICH in FF1 to Voldemort in the Harry Potter books (Come on guys, he was a lich. Check the definition of phylactery and tell me that doesn't sound like a Horcrux), these skeletal mages have warmed our hearts, usually before making them explode in a burst of negative energy. Who doesn't love liches? Well besides RPG heroes and people who are generally against sorcerous abominations that pervert the natural order anyways.
Comments
Also, I think OOTS' use of lichdom is really interesting. Long essay short Xykon is a total posturer and I can't wait for that to finally pay off.
Itsa purgin' time.
I'll take this opportunity to express my views on undead and stuff. Thou hast been warned.
My essential problem with undead is the systemisation that's come with games like D&D and its many, many offshoots, be they official or otherwise (I mean, Dragon Age is essentially an offshoot of D&D, right?). One of the cool things about undead in European folklore is the lack of this typing. There were different names and some vaguely different standards applied to the undead, but all these essentially referred to the same thing. Be it called a "revenant", a "wight", a "draugr" or a "vampire", every undead being was an individual of horrific power. They may not be conscious of their power or abilities, or even the fact that they're undead, but they would bring misfortune and suffering wherever they trod. The general psychological state of a European folkoric undead being is somewhere between standard lucidity and complete dedication to some kind of personal need, which could be expressed in any number of ways. Sometimes, the only way to rid oneself of the undead was to solve the problem that caused their undeath in the first place; other times, one needed the right prayer; some undead were considered entirely indestructible, and had to be permanently linked to their coffin in some manner.
The liche is a name given to something that I feel might not benefit from having a name. Look at how effective the Ringwraiths were in The Lord of the Rings while lacking any solid definition. Yes, they were "wraiths", but that only means they were undead that lacked a conventional, physical body. But they still wore armour into battle and rode horses and other things. How they behave and what they do makes sense from a human perspective, but contradicts what they have become (or unbecome?) physically. So they lack definition apart from being beyond general comprehension; any other information is moot. They simply exist on a vague point in an organic continuum of undead beings, sharing a vague typology with wights, lesser wraiths and the army of the dead that Aragorn summons. The relationship between these distinctions is not immediately or even distantly clear, but nor does it have to be. It works better for our lack of knowledge, because as mortal beings, we're incapable of conceiving of a post-death existence.
So the liche is a factor of systemising the undead, which demands a kind of "pecking order", which in turn demands that some undead are classified as weak or as more standard enemies. And I don't really like that, because it wastes a lot of potential when it comes to making the undead as fearsome as they should be. All we need to know is that a liche is a human being who has transcended death and fallen prey to it at the same time, and our own ignorance and imagination will fill in the rest. What makes a liche different to a revenant, or wight, or whatever? Who knows? We can speculate all day long and be both wrong and right, and that's part of the fun of this kind of organic mythology. Not knowing means that the possibilities are endless.
I read that as "lichens".
Well, to fully deal with the systematisation of undead, you have to deal with the divide between the kind of undead that acts on their own (e.g. liches), and the kind that's a particularly gruesome puppet of some other power (e.g. vanilla fantasy skeletons and zombies). The other thing is that Arda didn't really have a high level of magic and droves of undead, so no systematisation was needed. When you get a highly magical world where systematisation is a result of a need of high variety of enemies for your players' characters, then it's something else.
I get your problem with systemizing undead, but it's necessary to an extent for anything with a solid rules system.
I think randomisation is a good potential option here. It enforces the same kind of unpredictability on potential players as it does on victims of medieval folklore and the protagonists of mythology.
Ooh, interesting.
Where's Milos when you need him, anyway? His parts of the world, if I remember right, were kinda crazy on the vampire hunts thing. I bet he knows a fun story or two.
Well, that's kinda the thing. The vampire isn't as unique to Eastern Europe as our modern understanding of literature implies; the vampire is a sort of name and codification of the undead concept unique to Eastern Europe, and it certainly has traits courtesy of those cultures that make up the region, but similar patterns can be observed across the continent. For instance, a vampire and a revenant are almost entirely identical, except a revenant is often credited with spreading disease and plague whereas a vampire is more often considered to be a shapeshifter or cannibal. But neither of these factors are set in stone; no doubt there are versions of the vampire myth that have plague-ridden vampires, and I know for a fact that some accounts of revenants detailed them engaging in cannibalism.
One thing I really liked about Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines was the involvement of vampires from a more Asian tradition, just to remind you that the European vampires the game mostly concerns itself with aren't the only kind around.
That's a good example, although even calling those Asian creatures "vampires" imposes a kind of modern understanding on them related to the tropes we've been given through staple fiction like Dracula. The pre-enlightment world is one where a lot of the divisions we impose on fantasy elements don't exist, so our systems of understanding redefine those things. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, it's just that I'm disappointed that the modern understanding has supplanted the romanticist understanding so entirely, despite the influence of "modern" romanticist authors like Tolkien and Lovecraft.
It's because nerds make much of the fandom. In the (Anglophonic) West, at least; here it's girls and libertarians.
It kind of goes out of its way to avoid that. They follow completely different rules, and are called something different. "Vampire" is used as a generic term for formerly-human creatures that feed on humans (not necessarily through blood). The European vampires are more specifically called "Cainites" or "Kindred" and even they come in at least ten or twelve distinct varieties (with the implication that there are many more obscure types), while the eastern ones are called "Kuei-Jin."
I think that's partially true, but I also think it's going far beyond nerds now. With the rise of gaming, both "hardcore" and "casual", more and more people are being exposed to systemised versions of mythology. Not to mention how explosive fantasy become when the Lord of the Rings films turned out to be this generation's Star Wars.
I'm here!
Vampires in Western culture, as well as the word vampire itself (originally vampir) originate from Serbian folklore.
Namely, in the early 18th century, when Austria briefly took posession of a part of Serbia, there were two recorded cases of mysterious mass epidemics and deaths that the locals blamed on vampires. The first case was a peasant who died of a mysterious illness. Within eight days, nine of his fellow villagers died of sudden illnesses - on their deathbeds, they allegedly claimed that the night before he had shown up at night and choked them. Another was a travelling mercenary and adventurer, who claimed that he had fought a vampire and fell sick afterwards. He died in a village, and over the next five years about twenty people died in similar conditions. When exhumed, the bodies of alleged vampires and their victims were all claimed to fulfill the criteria for vampirism (ruddy skin, blood dripping out of their mouth, nails peeling off). The Austrian authorities genuinely believed that the deaths were caused by vampires, so they wrote entire reports about it and spread them across Europe.
Still, the people of the time didn't think of vampires as we do now. In original folklore, vampires were more similar to zombies in behaviour - flesh and bones replaced with a foamy substance, ruddy skin, huge strength and an animalistic urge for killing. They could be killed with a hawthorn stake. Vampirism could be prevented by simply burning the body - before Serbs accepted Christianity, cremation was the default way of dealing with the dead and it was believed that anything else would result in the person rising as a vampire. This was one of the main reason why Serbian peasants were very reluctant to give up their old Pagan beliefs and accept Christianity all the way to the late Middle Ages - they were afraid that replacing cremation with burial rites would result in a whole vampire invasion. Naturally, that didn't happen, but the vampire folklore persisted.
The elegant, aristocratic vampire is a product of the Romantic Era, or to be more precise, a 1819 English short story called The Vampyre. It was the main inspiration for later vampire fiction, including Dracula.
Being a vampire is merely dying of consumption, isn't it?
Xykon's more of a plot device than an actual villain.
Most D&D villains are plot devices than actual villains. Given that they only tend to exist for the encounters they are expected to be beaten in.
I like mystery only when there is some attempts to make sense of it. People impose structures and investigate shit. Seeing people look at supernatural nonsense and just up and go "welp, this makes no sense, no way we could figure out how it works" annoys me.
Take note, I'm not saying they have to find the answers to the mysteries. Just that they have to look for the answers.
What about in horror?
For practical reasons the investigation would usually be related to "how do I kill it?" or "how do I get away from it?".
Take Silent Hill as an example then.
It's all run by dogs and aliens. Answer right there.
But I dunno, it does seem to have some pattern. The town itself exists as a malevolent entity and it uses the baggage people bring in to warp itself to hurt them. Like you don't know what it is, but you have a rough idea how it works.
So a very, very vague pattern is enough?
Yeah. Like the Ring Wraiths earlier. I don't need to know the exact mechanics of their undeath and how they got there. Just that they fucked up and are stuck that way and they generally ruin people's days.
What Alex, Alkthash and Kraken said all appeal to my warped sensibilities. Like magic is (generally) supposed to be mysterious, weird, and freaky, things that don't stay dead should be mysterious, weird, freaky, and fucking terrifying. Hell, that's what makes the Lich from Adventure Time "fun" (for whatever value that word has here): He's undead, inexplicable, and wants to kill everything, no further explanation needed. That said, I don't object to minor specifications, as long as those specifications don't detract from the general "what is this awful thing" factor.
Ironweaver's bit about Serbian vampire lore also intrigued me. Especially the bit about Christian burial. I need to use that in a story or something.
I don't mind mysterious magic, and I don't mind classified magic. Whatever works for the story.