If you approach the bones or bone dust of the Lich, not including the skull, it will rise up in a vague man shape and begin threatening you, though it can't hurt you just yet. The more you attack it and deal damage to it, the stronger it gets until it takes on the form of a wraith, which isn’t really that dangerous compared to what comes next, but at least now it can hurt you. After you deal with the Lich-wraith, you then can’t touch the skull one little bit. Decorating this skull are a number of gems that are each worth about 50,000 gp, and you should keep the rogue away from it. By touching the skull, it lifts into the air and emits a horrifying howl that everyone has to succeed on a saving throw or they die immediately and permanently. The next round after the howl, it then picks the healthiest, still standing person and sucks their soul into a gem. No save, no stopping it, it just does it. It then floats back down and waits for you to touch it again. If you do, it repeats the process until everyone is dead, it runs out of free gems to store souls or you were smart enough to just leave it alone.

You can, of course, attack the Demilich skull, but it’s difficult and there are only a few ways of destroying it. You could cast shatter, dispel evil or holy word, but those aren’t going to destroy it immediately. If you want to ensure it is destroyed immediately, you have to cast power word kill from an astral or ethereal magic-user. Or maybe your party doesn’t have any of that fancy magic, you will need a variety of legendary magical weapons that are at least of a +5 magical weapon or similar, and just beat the skull up until it dies, though remember you are going to have to keep saving against its howl and one of you is going to get sucked into its gems every other round.

If you do get sucked into a gem, your soul isn’t gone forever unless the skull devours your soul immediately. If your party can take the gem you are trapped in and destroy it, thus making that 50,000 gp gem worthless, you have a chance of your soul escaping and going back to your soulless body. Once you get back into your body, hopefully, you have lots of holy water to pour on the bones, bone dust and anything else remaining of the creature or else it will reform in 1 to 10 days.

Now, what if your player wants to become a Lich? Luckily, Dragon Magazine #26 has an article titled, “Blueprint For A Lich” that goes into the deep process of a spellcaster becoming a Lich. First, you need a really expensive non-wooden object that it refers to as a jar, you then have to successfully cast enchant item and then trap the soul on it. After you do so, you can then cast magic jar to throw your own soul into the ‘jar’ and you have your phylactery ready. This has the unfortunate consequence of you losing a level and a hit die which then resides in the jar, but you can’t be a Lich without giving up a bit of your lifeforce for it.

Once you have the phylactery prepared, you then need to keep a fresh body, at least less than 30 days old, next to your phylactery at all times for the next time you die, your soul will get sent to your phylactery and then your soul can then inhabit the dead body. Of course, you can’t do that until you prepare your body first for this. In order to do so, you must drink the most disgusting potion in the world. This potion has nine ingredients to it, including belladonna, fresh phase spider venom, and the heart of a virgin humanoid killed by wyvern venom along with the blood of infants killed with a variety of different venoms and poisons.

Now that you have partaken of the worst potion ever, your body is ready to die. We should mention, at this point, that that potion has a chance to just ruin your life and feeblemind you or kill you outright, hopefully, it works though. The next time you die, your soul returns to the phylactery and then you inhabit the dead body next to the ‘jar’. Now, you aren’t truly a Lich yet, you must then find your old, true body and eat it. Upon devouring it, you are transformed into a Lich and… every time you die you lose a spellcaster level and keep getting weaker. If you can find a copy of this magazine, we recommend checking it out and reading it. This was the Wild West of the Dungeons & Dragons lore and people came up with a lot of weird ideas for their lore.