The Beast Fears Fire - Liches

Lich [Want 5]
Impulse - To run things, dominate.  Of all the evil spirits, liches are probably the strongest and the most stable.  Becomming a lich is only moderately difficult but it does require a little more forethought and better planning than most of the other methods or spirit preservation.  The process also takes years of preparation to do properly, and, in a lot of cases, an assistant.

First, you need to plant a tree.  It doesn't matter what kind of tree, though ones with magical significance are better than those without.  Something strong but flexible, grown in a place that's somewhat protected from the local extermities of the elements.  And not ghostwood; that just does not work.  That stuff is magically and spiritually insulated, and you need to use both. 

Once the tree is in the ground, there are some rituals to follow, a few sacrifices to make, and things to brew and drink yourself or pour out on the soil, depending.  You have to spill some blood, a lot of your own, over time, and a lot of the blood of others, but if you're planning on becoming a lich, you're not really the kind of person who shies from that.  Then, at the end, as close to your natural death as you can manage, you have to go down to the tree, let your blood out on the roots and die at its base.  A smart would-be lich has an assistant bury the body next to the tree, because the roots will take your remains and incorporate them, but the roots move slowly, and if a hungry wolfpack drags you off, there you go.  All your work ruined.  From there, it takes a little while for the process to finish.  The tree grows, grows quickly, and takes your flesh and bones up into the trunk.  The animals in the area take on unusual coloration (melanism and albinism are the most common and the most normal changes). 

Once that's all done, you can manifest anywhere you want within a certain area around your tree, do what you want, exercise scary spirit powers, and you need never fear anything that does not threaten your tree.  The tree is pretty distinctive, pretty much screams EVIL TREE to anyone who lays eyes on it, so you will need to keep it hidden. 

Harm - 3 Injury or Peril.  Transformation into a lich gives command over one of the elements, depending on the rituals used and some other external factors.  Wood witchcraft is the most common, surprising no one, but the other elements are also available to someone becomming a lich.  A lich can focus their powers on where they manifest and their tree simultaneously, command the animals whose coloration their lichdom altered, and while their manifested spirit can be beaten back with magic, only damage to the tree harms the lich.  Destruction of the tree (fire, chopping down, etc) destroys the lich, also surprising no one.  Liches are quite good at influencing the territory around their trees, becoming the defacto ruler of any organized locals. 

The Hillside Thickets
When you are trying to get or learn something in a lich's territory, face Want.  You know something is very wrong in this place and...
On a Hit, you find what you want and stay or avoid hostile notice.
On a Hard Hit you get both.
On a Miss, you get neither.  If the Lich is aware of you, it can manifest where you are.


A Fine, Fine Tree was He.
The really fun part about liches is that, unlike other evil dead, they don't need to be where the people are.  Some are, but there are others, just out in the middle of nowhere, being evil, hatching plots, figuring out how to do more and more, and no one knows where they are.  This is even more the case in a land like Crickton, which lost a lot of its population and has left a lot of its roads and settlements to go feral. 

Wood witches really like to get their hands on lichwood, especially since there are so many variations, depending on the species of tree used in the original becomming.  Like ghostwood, you can hit spirits, manifested or not, with lichwood.