TL:DR, after some bad times IRL a friend finally convinced me to sit down and binge-watch the 'What If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device' series.

And as usual for my defective grey-matter, it got me thinking.

Technically, a Lore-Bard could learn, and actively use, the spells and rituals required to achieve Lichdom.

And I'm consumed with the concept of a sassy skeleton on a throne, manipulating the fanatically loyal descendants of its former companions who now worship it as a God and humiliating and playing mind-games with the 'heroes' who come to plunder its tomb.

I'm just imagining the Lich opening up with Vicious Mockery to roast the Paladin on their supposed honor, and being able to actively use Diplomacy and Deception to talk openly hostile or belligerent minions/NPCs/PCs down, or convince them to defect to their side.

Anyone else think this might be a surprisingly fresh twist on the stale, old 'wizard seeking ultimate power' story of a Lich? Instead of some isolated all-powerful hyper-nerd with objectophilia and reality-warping powers, it is a charismatic individual who is multi-talented, has a extremely flexible bag of magical tricks ... and reality-warping powers. And how would you make the Lore-Bard become a Lich? The biggest challenge would be figuring out how the Bard could learn the Imprisonment spell, but I figure if we're going that far, having the Lore Bard either possessing an artefact that allows them to cast the spell once a day, or having managed to learn it on their own, would also work. Best of all, access to Charm and Dominate spells, as well as a high Diplomacy, Deception and Intimidate skills, even if they don't choose to make those skill their Proficient ones, means the Lich-Bard can quite easily manipulate others into either obeying it freely or eventually mentally condition them to believe everything coming out of its mouth-hole.

If you could, some feedback. I'm quite intrigued with the concept of a sassy lich as something new to throw at the players, and with an entirely new skill-set that's more than "I can DIEDIEDIE at 7th level" when combat inevitably breaks out against my murder-hobos.

I think it sounds potentially very cool. Worth noting, too, that bards don't have to be memes. The idea of a great scholar and tale-teller delving into ancient stories and becoming obsessed with the secrets needed to become a living legend...that could be a very intriguing one.

Absolutely. As noted, a bard doesn't always have to be the memetastic tavern singer with the dirty jokes and the wandering libido. A lore bard could also be professorial collector of ancient odes and heroic epics, citing Herodotus and reciting Ozymandias. Rather than strumming a lute to grant bardic inspiration they could be shouting rallying cries or making inside jokes like Dienekes ( "...then we will fight in the shade." ). So maybe the bard spent so many years studying all those ancient tales and epic poems of kings and heroes that he began to wonder whether HE would be remembered so many centuries hence. Well, the best way to ensure that your tale does not die with you is simply not to die at all. If you achieve immortality, then you won't have to worry about being forgotten. 

So after achieving the immortality of lichdom, the bard is not the typical necromantic rotting corpse of a lich that we're accustomed to seeing, but rather is a suave, charismatic, and eminently erudite loremaster. He welcomes the party in with wine and song and promises of immortality. He is gracious and polite and engages them in sparkling conversation on any number of topics. Only when the room darkens and the cleric finally succeeds on an Insight check does the party realize that the lich only meant to grant them "immortality" in the tales he will tell of their deaths. 

It's a beautiful and refreshing take on a classic monster. Go for it!

Oh, I agree Bards don't have to be memetic, but the original inspiration was the TTS Emperor, of this Godly-powerful entity stuck on what was the world's most intricate and uncomfortable porta-potty and I was going off of that theme.

But the concept of a Bard who sought to understand just how the Words of Creation tied in to the fundamentals of the universe, and who refused to allow something as pitiful as mortality to stop them, who bargained with and out-witted a Fiend for the knowledge of Lichdom, who now rules from the shadows an empire of adventurers, minions and monsters, all of whom act as eyes and ears while the Bard-Lich plays the role of several individuals who support and seek out talented individuals and form them into adventuring parties to fulfill that desire sounds like an interesting plot hook.

The Dark Lord the Adventurer's Guilds were created to help fight? They run the Guilds. The Paladin Orders that seek out heretical cults and the Inquisitorial Orders that collect and catalogue that dark, forbidden lore? Unwittingly work for the Dark Lord. The Thieves Guilds, Assassins and Smuggling Rings that operate in the shadows? All of them, through layers of deception and middle-men, work for the Dark Lord.

The irony that the very stability that the players want to protect only exists because the Bard-Lich wants it to, because it makes the study and exploration of the Words of Creation far less troublesome, and if they even do manage to pierce the multiple veils of secrecy, mis-direction and subterfuge, there's no guarantee the Bard-Lich can't use those connections to just turn around and get them falsely accused, or just straight up 'vanish' them from the public eye until they change their minds, or are made to change their minds.