The arch nemesis Lich being done in by a familiar and exploding runes is too trite to actually work as a plot device.
This whole business is primarily about V’s redemption, which almost certainly won’t have anything to do with Xykon’s demise – if it did V’s megalomaniacal gambit would have paid off, which doesn’t feel like a direction the author is keen to take.
Most of you guys would benefit from Elan’s wisdom about how plots logically must unfold. ;-)
Rimbo
2682
I wouldn’t be surprised if the phylactery ate it, though.
Yeah, that would work. I don’t see where it’s going, but having nothing come of the whole scene wouldn’t fit any more than it being the end of Xykon. It’s a clever setup though, and there are lots of other angles open too.
willko
2684
Y’know, it’s like a Looney Tunes cartoon, I shoulda seen the punchline coming, but it still made me laugh out loud.
wahoo
2685
_scout
2686
So help me a bit out, if that thingy is now gone into the ocean (likely), is it “save” or does he has to retrieve it in one way or another soonish for whatever reasons and what reasons are those?
What a hilarious range of expressions that skeleton has.
A lich doesn’t need to be anywhere near his phylactery, they usually just keep it close in order to guard it. In the world of D&D, retrieving something from the ocean floor is actually fairly easy for a mid level party and an afternoon excursion for a high level party. For a high level party the sequence would be: scry the location, cast water breathing, teleport to location, fight off local sea life because the DM wanted a random encounter, pick up phylactery, teleport home. Takes 15 minutes tops.
If anything destroys the phylactery, Xykon dies permanently. If the phylactery ended up in a D&D ocean it’s not necessarily safe-- there are probably some Good-aligned civilizations and adventurers down there who would destroy it purposefully if they figured out what it was and a lot of magical accidents it could get into on top of that.
While most liches want to hide their phylactery very carefully to prevent adventurers and enemies from finding it, most liches also really, really want to know exactly where it is so they know with some certainty that it’s safe. Right now Xykon doesn’t know which is going to put him (probably) into a far worse and more desperate mood than usual.
Actually, if takes both destroying the phylactery AND Xykon for Xykon to be gone for good. If the phylactery survives, Xykon obviously comes back. If Xykon survives, he can probably construct a new one. I say probably because the rules on re-creating a phylactery are a little unclear. Heck, given that he didn’t make his current phylactery I’m not even sure he has the skills/feats to construct one.
SteveS
2691
I thought that since the soul was IN the phylactery, destroying the phylactery released the soul (which was then sucked to alignment appropriate lower plane) and left a lesser undead in place of the lich. In other words, the skeletal body is just a puppet and Xykon’s software is always in the holy symbol. Or am I reading the rules wrong and the phylactery is actually a soul anchor/filter that catches the soul leaving a destroyed lich’s body and holds it until a new vessel is grown?
If the later is true, Xykon talks about spending all day creating magic items so I’m sure he has Craft Wondrous Item and more gold than he knows what to do with.
Rimbo
2692
No kidding. And all this without the benefit of lips or eyebrows!
Dean
2693
I think you’re correct, otherwise why wouldn’t liches make multiple phylacteries so that if one gets destroyed they’d always have a backup?
Also, there’s no way that phylactery is going to the ocean. It’s obviously going to the Obligatory Sewer-Themed Labyrinth. I mean, duh.
I thought the deal was that if the phylactery was destroyed, the soul went back to the lich if the lich was still around. Hence a destroyed phylactery puts the lich in a potentially vulnerable position but doesn’t immediately destroy the lich.
I glanced at the online 3.5 edition DnD rules and they are pretty sketchy. About all they say about phylacteries is that if a lich is destroyed but the phylactery isn’t then the lich will come back in 1d10 days. They don’t mention anything bad happening to the lich if the phylactery is destroyed before the lich.
A lich converts itself into a skeletal creature by means of necromancy, storing its soul in a magical receptacle called a phylactery
Since a lich’s soul is mystically tied to its phylactery, destroying its body will not kill it. Rather, its soul will return to the phylactery, and its body will be recreated by the power keeping it immortal.
Thanks, Wikipedia, for never being self-contradictory or ambiguous.
It’s on the left side of the flow at the moment. A fish would have to eat it and then the fish would have to be eaten by a sewer monster for it to wind up in the OS-TL. And what are the odds of that happening? Really…
I think the OSTL is just a throwaway gag. I honestly think the phylactery will go out to sea and this will be what finally draws Xykon/Redcloak out of Azure city. Depending on how much filler Rich needs, maybe there will even be a retaking of Azure city.
Obligatory Disclaimer: My batting average is pretty much zero for predicting what the hell will happen with OOTS.
via the d20 srd
An integral part of becoming a lich is creating a magic phylactery in which the character stores its life force. As a rule, the only way to get rid of a lich for sure is to destroy its phylactery. Unless its phylactery is located and destroyed, a lich reappears 1d10 days after its apparent death.
Each lich must make its own phylactery, which requires the Craft Wondrous Item feat. The character must be able to cast spells and have a caster level of 11th or higher. The phylactery costs 120,000 gp and 4,800 XP to create and has a caster level equal to that of its creator at the time of creation.
The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. The box is Tiny and has 40 hit points, hardness 20, and a break DC of 40.
Other forms of phylacteries can exist, such as rings, amulets, or similar items.
This would lead me to believe you have to destroy the phylactery and then kill the lich. Or break the phylactery within 1d10 of killing the lich.
The phylactery is the place a lich’s soul goes when the lich is killed. If the lich is killed without a phylactery, it’s dead for good.
Back to the comic - i love how no matter the amount of feverish prognostication people give to what’s coming up (and the GITP forums are like a TB ward for ultranerds) he invariably does something different and cooler.
I also love that I had a wee internal frisson of ‘ALRIGHT!’ when I saw the new one was up.
I don’t know about this newfangled D&D, but it’s supposed to be the place where his soul actually is, all the time, not where it goes. This very separation of body and soul is supposed to be how evil mages managed to become undead in the first place, as I recall, using the old soul jar spell. Control of the item was the same as control of the lich for all practical purposes, assuming the owner was powerful enough to destroy the item, anyway.
