Okay, so I am relatively new to Pathfinder and I feel like I’ve been missing something obvious in the current campaign. A bit of history...
We are an adventuring group that ran across an “evil” Necromancer, but one of our group decided to make friends with him instead. We left his city and accidentally set loose a powerful Druid. We headed back and were able to warn him but he was not able to escape and she killed him. However due to our warning he was able to tie his soul to an artifact and come back as a lich. He has since been a consistent side presence and helpful ally throughout the game so far, attempting to set up a sanctuary for the undead in the world to live in peace next to the living. Now however, the artifact has apparently reached a new power tier and has kind of taken over and suppressed his personality for its own goals. We know how to destroy the artifact but what I am looking for is if there is any way to separate his soul from the artifact before destroying it so he can be returned to his previous friendly lich form... any suggestions?