In the present time, there is a Lich who recently achieved godhood. After doing so he sent his three most powerful and loyal disciples back in time, 650 years, to when he first became a lich.
At the time he was under siege from a more powerful enemy and only managed to achieve lichdom due to the arrival of the 3 disciples.
Before returning to the present, the lich gave them each a gift and a gift to take to himself in the future. Upon returning to the present, they discovered it was his phylactery.
:fin:
I’m pretty satisfied with it but I want to get a commentary from the masses. Does the time-travel make sense, as much as it can? Do you think it’s too much of a vulnerability giving the phylactery to the disciples?
Pro and cons, I’d love to hear it all!
It's very difficult to determine this without some context. Is this just a story you're writing? Is this background for your BBG in a campaign you are GMing? What world is this set in?
Sounds like a variation of All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein
If there is one game that liches play well, it is the waiting game and the game of time. A smart lich can realize that he can just wait until his enemies have died of old age before he strikes form anonymity once more.
So a lich that plays a thousand year game, which includes the ability to one day use time travel, is not that far fetched.
It also leaves a lot of room for complacency (which is a lich's greatest weakness). He trusts his three disciples since they had already succeeded in loyally protecting his phylactery until it was properly put into his hands once more.
But time is a mass of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. A lich that just believes in fate and the linearity of time (the first one might be a hubris thing- the universe just twisted itself backwards to help him succeed) is not going to question things too much. Even if this whole mess is as unstable as hell, and doomed to fail.
Infinitely repeating a time pattern just invites it to destabilize and get off kilter. Eventually, something is not going to go the way it was 'supposed' to. Maybe one of the disciples suddenly decides to do things differently, and he hides how he changes the scenario. Maybe this loop, some intrepid....Kyle Reese... decides to go back and try to stop thing. No matter what, the other disciples notice that something has gone wrong from the 'story'. They try hide it...the lich finds out, they are forced to fess up...and then the lich gets paranoid.
Maybe this is a test from his future self. Maybe his disciples had always lied about the future, that they have always betrayed him in secret, using him to steal godhood. Maybe there is some outside force. Something is wrong....and something must be done to protect HIS DESTINY.
This can provide an interesting chance for juxtaposition. You can first introduce the future lich, who is cold and calculating due to the wisdom of centuries and the assurance that what has been always shall be. And then, you can have the past lich, a nervous wreck that is slowly burning all his bridges because he thinks there are enemies on the other side.
You can culminate this with the creation of an aborted god. The lich eventually ruined his path to godhood. The dying embers of a divine fire that was never lit mix with the twisted fabric of a time that was tied into knots. The dying god lich becomes one with the self that will never be him, and his death throws mix with the young liches' madness.
And then...you fight Garland, basically...yeah, noticed the final fantasy 1 vibes from the way I have been going on(although that had our big bad going into the past to create the world that would birth his twisted early self)- I would run with it personally- I have been going on about many more interesting plot threads that make this unique than a mere accidental reference. Anyway, yeah, final boss that carries a lot of weight. The fact that you can fight it at all shows that you have made a ton of progress. It might just end up as a big dumb brawl...but the fact that you could bring it to that at all shows that you have struck down a time entity of divine proportions, and you are just doing the coup d'grace.