Café de Nuit

If you were to make a Children of the Night: Liches book, who/what would you include?

For preexisting characters, I would use Master Ulathar (as an example psionic lich), Moonbane, Nature's Sorrow (from the Kargatane's Book of Secrets), Nightblood, Yako Vormoff (as an example vassalich), and the unnamed Valachani bone-animated lich mentioned in Van Richten's Guide to the Lich.

For new characters, I would likely include
-a classic evil overlord wizard type humbled by a few humiliating salient weaknesses/curses
-a clerical lich from a Neutrally aligned deity (as per VRGttL)
-A corrupt baelnorn (from Forgotten Realms lore)
-A person who would be an eternal lover for an immortal being like a shadow fey (alternatively, a pair of lovers who would be together forever)
-An pseudo-enlightened philosopher type, whom views lichdom as a state of spiritual transcendence and cares a lot about abstract, esoteric philosophy but little for individuals in the real world
-A sinister mastermind, working from behind the scenes with a pathological aversion to attention by the public
-A spellcaster that filed to become a full lich and is trapped in the phylactery, effectively making it an intelligent magic item. Can animate dead corpses by touch or possess the living that touch the phylactery
-A living spellcaster and lich fanboy in the process of becoming a lich himself
-A warrior lich, mixing martial skill with magic

I would include Baenlorn uncorrupted and several other example of good aligned liches, like the Eternal Savant Archibald Everlast.

How about FoS's own Erik van Rijn?

Lich Monk, you could make it ravenlofty, but I like it for all the wrong non-Ravenlofty reasons though. (The comedy of hand-to-hand melee wizard builds)

The Collector. The lich was a social and natural historian in life, and in death their obsession is to build a museum/zoo with one of everything, either alive or in life-like animate-able condition. The lich's lair would have greenhouses, aviaries, walls of nothing but drawers of birds and pinned insects, tribal masks, etc. This lich wouldn't dare allow undead minions to decay into skeletons - they would be maintained and cared for to look exactly as they were in life - with period weapons and location-correct clothes not a stitch out of place. This sort of lich would collect people, considering them merely another type of animal.

Hunter Lich. A lich with a predator twist. It doesn't even have to be strong - and often it deliberately handicaps itself. The lich is simply persistent and able to come back if slain. It forever seeks a new prey to hunt and add to its trophy collection. Only the lich's insane mind can decipher how targets are selected.

Tragic Art Thief. A talented apprentice artist was taken advantage of by their master, all their works were given the master's signature rather than their own. The master became famous, locked the apprentice away, and forced the artist to work until they perished. The wronged apprentice's ghost lingers in the studio attic, slowly going more insane. The apprentice's wizard lover vowed revenge: Steal back all their lover's beautiful works, restore their rightful name, and show them to the ghost in a great gallery - believing that would set the lover's spirit free. This would be the task of several lifetimes as the number of wrongly-attributed pieces number near a thousand and have been sold to all corners of the mists.

Clockwork Lich: A lich who became mentally broken upon transformation. The insane lich holds a whole town captive with its precise routines. The people are too impotent to get rid of the lich but life goes on since the lich has stabilized into a mostly harmless, predictable order of affairs if not interfered with. You could play this many ways. Maybe the lich isn't as broken as thought, maybe the village doesn't realize the purpose of the routine - the ticking clock will eventually ring, or maybe the town uses the lich as a resource and lures outsiders in to feed to the lich's phylactery to keep it going!

If you want some 5e lore, a boneclaw (MordToF) is what happens when a lich transformation fails.

A wizard who tries to become a lich but fails might become a boneclaw instead. These hideous, cackling undead share a few of the lich's attributes-but where liches are immortal masters of the arcane, boneclaws are slaves to darkness, hatred, and pain.
  The most important part of the transformation ritual occurs when the soul of the aspiring lich migrates to a prepared phylactery. If the spellcaster is too physically or magically weak to compel the soul into its prison, the soul instead seeks out a new master-a humanoid within a few miles who has an unusually hate-filled heart. The soul bonds itself to the foul essence it finds in that person, and the boneclaw becomes forever enslaved to its new master's wishes and subconscious whims. It forms near its master, sometimes appearing before that individual to receive orders and other times simply setting about the fulfillment of its master's desires.
  Dark Reflections. A boneclaw's master might not want such a servant or even know it has one. Boneclaws bind to petty criminals, bullies, and even particularly cruel children. Even if the master is unaware of its new, horrid bodyguard, its local area will be plagued by disappearances and grisly murders, tied together by the common thread of the master's envy or hunger for revenge.

A vassalich of Azalin that got trapped in Il Aluk, which seperated the hold Azalin had on him. Now he tries to get Death's ear thinking he can control it

KingCorn wrote:A vassalich of Azalin that got trapped in Il Aluk, which seperated the hold Azalin had on him. Now he tries to get Death's ear thinking he can control it

I had one of those, sort of, in my campaign. Maybe I should write him up sometime...

KingCorn wrote:A vassalich of Azalin that got trapped in Il Aluk, which seperated the hold Azalin had on him. Now he tries to get Death's ear thinking he can control it

"All I'm saying is, there are two things in life that are certain. We've already covered the first, and taxes just make so much sense!"

I would make a mechanical liche, as in the Iron Kingdom, fuelling her mechanical body with souls and i would make references to the few official liches in the canon, as Nightblood (Book of Crypts) and the elemental liche in the bestiary.

Beside this i like your concept of a warrior liche, even if i would make it a monk.

The Storyteller Lich; a good aligned bard lich which travel the world telling the right story at the right moment.

Mistmaster wrote:The Storyteller Lich; a good aligned bard lich which travel the world telling the right story at the right moment.

You remind me of the Morts Qui Dancent

Mistmaster wrote:The Storyteller Lich; a good aligned bard lich which travel the world telling the right story at the right moment.

Don't we already have that in canon?

I hightly doubt there is a good aligned bard lich in canon;

Mistmaster wrote:I hightly doubt there is a good aligned bard lich in canon;

Found him https://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Andres_Duvall

I stand corrected, even if my idea was a bit different.

The Winter Queen: A druid who became a lich personifying the ability of the environment itself to chill and kill. An outright ecofascist, she feels she was driven to her state, and fundamental betrayal of life, on a nearby city and the "parasites" she blames for its rapid expansion and pollution of the environment. Of course, the issue is her definition of "parasite" resembles "a religious minority that's become rich", and the rampant industrialism they support is due to the fact it was the only form of income they could legally have. She's the only person who hasn't realized the system itself is to blame, because she benefits from it and would rather there be scapegoats for her own problems - people know the old guardian of the grove is the undead source of the cold snap, but they don't want to admit her bigotry is a sign of something deeper and darker that was there before she turned herself into a monster.

Master of the Dungeon: A lich whose phylactery is nothing less than the shrine in which he performs his experiments; an accident trapped his mind in the stones, but he likes having the capability of an entire building, and instead wants to assimilate a noble, stupid adventurer into a new proxy body for himself so he doesn't have to give up his current one.