Lich and using a Divine item as a Phalactory


Homebrew and House Rules


Hi all,

First post here and new to the community :)

So I'm in the process of making a homebrewed campaign have a plan which I'm torn about regardless a 3rd act reveal.

Basically, the main antagonist the players will be facing off against will be a high-level Lich in a campaign loosely based around the mysterious disappearance of the old God Aroden.

The hook being that the Lich's Phalactory is going to be a key artefact needed in a ritual to bring back the estranged God. meaning the players will have to make the ultimate decision of destroying the artefact thus ending the rampage of this powerful Lich but in the process potentially destroying the only means of reviving this ancient being.

However, I'm torn because as cool as I think this will be I feel like a divine artefact like this would just be resistant to dark magic like this due to its divine properties.

Any thoughts?


Kmouse wrote:
First post here and new to the community :)

Welcome to the fray!

The hook being that the Lich's Phalactory is going to be a key artefact needed in a ritual to bring back the estranged God.I'm torn because as cool as I think this will be I feel like a divine artefact like this would just be resistant to dark magic like this due to its divine properties.

Actually, all artefacts are resistant to just about anything - they all have a specific ritual that's required to destroy one.

However, Liches are very vulnerable while regenerating. So your players might decide to revive Aroden while occasionally pummelling the reforming Lich into dust again. And again. And again...


Hello kmouse!

I am unsure as to whether this would work. Still, welcome, though!


Why can't they use it to revive the being and then destroy it? Be sure your players like those ("no win") sorts of plotlines.

Dark Archive

its your game you can do what you want.


I like it! Aren't real world phylacteries used in religious rituals, of some sort of other? Edit: I was thinking of refilling, in Judaism.

Possible twists: the historical record has been corrupted; Aroden is (or part of his soul, or corpse, whatever) was actually imprisoned in the artefact by the lich as part of his plan for his own ascension. Destroying the artifact may be the first step toward freeing Aroden, and/or it may release enough energy to let the lich begin his ascension rituals. I like the idea of it being both the best and the worst option for the PCs, but I'm not sure how they could go about learning this stuff.


there's little resemblance between real world phylacteries, likes Jewish tefillin, and a lich phylactery... while the original concept of the lich phylactery might have been a box filled with arcane writings, not unlike tefillin, ever since the fact that a lich in undestructible so long as the phylactery is not destroyed, younger liches have been working on ways to hide their phylacteries, or better, make them so they won't be recognized as such, or that people won't want to destroy them.

In the current case, I don't know how a lich could have worked a divine item into a phylactery (unless the phylactery later became tied to the ritual to revive/return Aroden), but that's good protection, until aroden comes back and only the lich wants the object intact...

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