For a little back story, the villain is a lich. He is not just any lich though, he is the first lich. (using a modified Vecna dossier stat block) When the world was still new, and the gods just as fresh, they created man kind. The villain died, but was ressurected by one of the gods. The resurrections had failed and turned him to said lich. Any who his goal is to some how take revenge on the gods. How on earth would he do that? Maybe ascension to godhood like Vecna did, but that just seems cliché at this point and I would like to try something different. I'm willing to hear all ideas.
He could plan to cut the gods off from the world , or to destroy the faith in them so they lose all their power, or he could send false prophets, that try to warp the virtues the gods represent among common people. He could funnel all the souls that would go to the realm of their gods (and maybe even those that would go to the hells of your setting) away, to create planeshifting spiritual bombs that can destroy the gods and their realms... Depending on how the gods, their powers, faith etc. work in your setting.
A good Question is, what do you want your party to be doing?
If you want them to be performing great feats, impossible tasks, and amazing quests, then go down the Belief route. Gods need belief to survive, so Notvecna has made things so bad that the people are stopping believing. The party become named champions of the gods and have to perform tasks to prove that they have holy power, thus proving that the gods exist and simultaneously screwing up Notvecna's plans.
If you want them to be planehopping, create a plane or planes which link the Gods to the material plane. The Lich is set on destroying these planes, using an ancient power which the party needs to quest to thwart, saving the link between the Gods and the Mortals.
If you want a political intrigue campaign, the Lich has agents disproving the mircales - think the opposite of telly-evangelists, where the gods are real and professional con-men are trying to disprove them. Technological advances, fuelled by the Lich, mean miracles aren't needed. The party have to decide whether they want to stop the Lich, who is actually helping the mortals rely less on fickle gods, or if they want to stop him - and if they do stop him, when? Do they let him finish his cure for Rickets, or do they just stop him outright out of principle?
When the lich was a human, he died because his sister killed him. I went a type of Cain and Able route. She was jealous of the love the gods gave him specifically. (she was made into the first vampire as punishment)
The gods brought him back because he knew about his sisters plot to kill him so he asked the goddess of death for protection.
The resurrection did not work correctly because of the lack of experience the gods had with their power.
He was more or less a good person, he was the fourth person to exist on the planet.
The gods btw, I have taken great inspiration from the Greek pantheon. They are not stuck in other realms like the classic dnd gods. They usually just live in another realm to manage the forces of the universe.
The gods were pretty much just as as their human creations at the start of time because they were not much older than them.
He could try to open a portal from the abyss to the gods realm to let demon/titans/whatever in. He made an alliance with other enemies of the gods to give them a chance to strike directly against their enemies and while the gods can probably win, you did say that they manage the forces of the universe so if some of them die...
Or he could try to make them fight each other, though that is harder to plan. I mean, the lich wants revenge because the gods screwed up when his sibling tried to kill him out of jealousy because of the gods' favor. So the lich wants the gods to grow jealous and end up killing each other after they screw up because they didn't notice his manipulation. A punishment fitting the crime, achieved by having the different religions fight each other and blame it on orders from their patrons.
I would think if he hates the gods for turning him into a lich, he could be motivated to turn all people, the children of the gods as it were, into liches. This could be done with many steps to spread out the campaign but seem like the motivation I would go for.
While there are exceptions, good villains start with love. Dracula being the prime example, but it borders on universal.
So, for this lich guy, here's an example: Lichguy was an ordinary guy who loved his wife and children, and he was happy. Propably he tilled the earth, he built a house, he had sheep and pigs, and on fine days he'd climb the little rise behind the house and gaze out over all that he loved.
Then, war came. Somegod went mad, and his followers ravaged the earth. Ordinaryguy fought the mad followers of Somegod, and became powerful, a great hero - but eventually, the tide of battle turned sour, and Ordinarguy fell - and along with him, his family, his home, everything he loved.
For long ages, it looked like Somegod was going to win. But finally, Anothergod was able to recover the remains of Ordinaryguy. He was quite badly burned, and it had been a long time. But Anothergod felt that if only Ordinaryguy could be returned to the battlefield, all might still be saved. He tried to ressurrect Ordinaryguy, but failed. Instead, he resorted to ... other magics, and Lichguy was ... 'born'. Anothergod explained that he'd try to ressurrect Ordinaryguy, but that the magics had somehow been twisted - propably by Somegod and his mad followers.
And so Lichguy returned to the fight. Eventually, Somegod and his goons were eradicated, and peace returned to the land.
Lichguy went home, but nothing awaited him there. For a while, he tried to find love again, but such things are hard when you're a lich - you lack all the glands and stuff. For a while, he sought knowledge and power, but eventually, he knew everything. Then, he sought silence and solitude for a long time.
Eventually, a dark voice whispered in his ear. It told him how long had passed from his death to his ressurrection. Lichguy was smart, and educated: He knew ressurrection would fail. Piece by piece, he put the truth together: Anothergod had made him this undead thing, this hollow husk - Anothergod had doomed him to this eternity of loss and suffering and emptiness.
There. Lichguy wants to rewind the world to just before Somegod went mad, and kill him there, or then I guess - before that happens. So he can live out his life with the wife he still loves, and children he never get to watch grow up and thrive. To do so he needs the power of the Creatorgod - power that is now shared by all the lesser gods. So, the way forward is simple: Kill them all, take their power, redo the world and be happy again.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
If I were doing the "first lich" I would probably play him as someone who is just tired of existing. Since his immortality stems from the gods who resurrected him, the only way to break it is to kill the gods. Or he could just go all in and want to end everything. Either way, I think it's fairly relatable that he might be bored of living at this point.
A revenge story. That is a great idea Scatterbraind. The Lich is going mad from living so long. He never wanted to stay alive forever and now he is on a track to kill the God that resurrected him. Not all of them he just needs the one. Somehow in his resurrection, he became bound to that god, and even though many have tried to destroy the Lich over the years the god in question is like his Phylactery. It's kind of a Hair Potter thing.
In any case, the Lich is trying to find anything to get him to a God status so he can be on a power level to destroy the one God who created him. He does not want anything else but he does want to eventually die. So he can join his brethren in the hereafter.
Now you have a sympathetic villain with a very strong motivation. That's a good one too if I don't say so myself. I will be using this in one of my games for certain.
The players can figure this out over an adventure but then have to decide is going after a well-intended god to destroy a horrible Lich worth their souls. Kill the god then kill the Lich. But if you kill the Lich and not the God the Lich shall return.
This is how I would play it out. A Lich causing lots of trouble in the kingdom. First run-in with the Lich they defeat him when he's trying to complete some task (perhaps his final spell that will kill the God in question but the players stop him). The Lich returns not long after to start again but now with a hatred toward the party as they thwarted his initial plan before it could be completed granting him sweet abyss. But you can't let them know this the first time. They learn it all on the second go-round.
Another idea is you could repeat the Lich as a reoccurring Villian that ends up being the final villain of your story as well.
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I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
How does your Ur-Lich relate to the later liches? Did he have a hand in their transformation or did they learn the secret of lichdom in order to emulate him? He is clearly different from the later liches in that his lichhood was involuntary.
Did he discover the discipline of Necromancy? If so, what was his motivation? Purely trying to understand his altered state of existence? Did he try to raise any of his loved ones to Undeath? Can you imagine the horror of knowing that you tried to resurrect your wife into your eternal existence but instead transformed her into a mindless zombie?
There are some great suggestions here but the problem becomes how to tie it to the characters at a level they can participate. A lich killing gods is a story line for the end of a campaign so the beginning and middle have to be the actions the lich takes to make it happen.
Building on Acromos suggestion, the lich wants to kill the gods, take all their powers and reset the universe by killing Somegod before they can become a problem and ultimately destroy OrdinaryGuys life - thus allowing the lich to live the life he was meant to with those he loved.
1) Decide how many gods there are and how many the lich needs to kill to achieve his goal.
2) Decide how gods can be killed in your world. I would suggest ...
- kill most or all of a gods followers so that they lose the powers of worship. Decide on lore that makes a god vulnerable when they lack sufficient worshippers.
- lich plans some event to trick the god to come to the material plane.
- lich brings about the death of the god, ideally not by his own hand (perhaps he has convinced another lich or villain to attempt to kill the god) - however, the lich is on hand when the god is killed to absorb their power - perhaps an artifact is needed to accomplish this.
3) This scenario is repeated with variations and twists as the lich uses the ambitions of others to create separate BBEG to take the lead on killing each weakened god.
The characters are perhaps involved trying to foil the plans of the dupes of the lich - perhaps employed by the gods who can't foresee the lich's plans but only the indirect influence.
The lich could even create an alternate persona of itself which they use as an imitation diety. They have cults to kill the followers of other gods and sacrifice them in the lich's name so that the souls and the additional powers of worship of the cult are directed to the lich enhancing their power. This is not because they want to be a god but because the lich needs all of a the god's powers to achieve their goal of wiping out the existing universe and restoring it to a point where the lich would be happy.
The lich became so changed with time that everyone he loved died as he continued living and that messed up something in his noggin so he has become changed with time and wants peace so he makes a deal with a kronos type god to bring him to the afterlife and he then starts serving that god/titan and there you have it
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Mythology nerd. 300 is one of my favorite movies. 1 and a half years experience. Make some homebrew magic items and subclasses. Will make magic items for free just message me
Maybe the gods didn’t intervene when he expected they would. That could have cost him a loved one, and so he crusades, killing and destroying temples and people who follow gods.
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I need some help with my BBEG's motivations.
For a little back story, the villain is a lich. He is not just any lich though, he is the first lich. (using a modified Vecna dossier stat block) When the world was still new, and the gods just as fresh, they created man kind. The villain died, but was ressurected by one of the gods. The resurrections had failed and turned him to said lich. Any who his goal is to some how take revenge on the gods. How on earth would he do that? Maybe ascension to godhood like Vecna did, but that just seems cliché at this point and I would like to try something different. I'm willing to hear all ideas.
Thanks
He could plan to cut the gods off from the world , or to destroy the faith in them so they lose all their power, or he could send false prophets, that try to warp the virtues the gods represent among common people. He could funnel all the souls that would go to the realm of their gods (and maybe even those that would go to the hells of your setting) away, to create planeshifting spiritual bombs that can destroy the gods and their realms... Depending on how the gods, their powers, faith etc. work in your setting.
A good Question is, what do you want your party to be doing?
If you want them to be performing great feats, impossible tasks, and amazing quests, then go down the Belief route. Gods need belief to survive, so Notvecna has made things so bad that the people are stopping believing. The party become named champions of the gods and have to perform tasks to prove that they have holy power, thus proving that the gods exist and simultaneously screwing up Notvecna's plans.
If you want them to be planehopping, create a plane or planes which link the Gods to the material plane. The Lich is set on destroying these planes, using an ancient power which the party needs to quest to thwart, saving the link between the Gods and the Mortals.
If you want a political intrigue campaign, the Lich has agents disproving the mircales - think the opposite of telly-evangelists, where the gods are real and professional con-men are trying to disprove them. Technological advances, fuelled by the Lich, mean miracles aren't needed. The party have to decide whether they want to stop the Lich, who is actually helping the mortals rely less on fickle gods, or if they want to stop him - and if they do stop him, when? Do they let him finish his cure for Rickets, or do they just stop him outright out of principle?
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I have questions.
Why did the now Lich die? Or how did he die?
Why would the Gods want to bring him back?
Why would the resurrection not work correctly?
Was he a good person to begin with?
Did time Corrupt his mind?
These are the essentials to your question plus they provide the answer.
If you can answer these for me I can give you a better answer that would fit your story narrative.
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
When the lich was a human, he died because his sister killed him. I went a type of Cain and Able route. She was jealous of the love the gods gave him specifically. (she was made into the first vampire as punishment)
The gods brought him back because he knew about his sisters plot to kill him so he asked the goddess of death for protection.
The resurrection did not work correctly because of the lack of experience the gods had with their power.
He was more or less a good person, he was the fourth person to exist on the planet.
The gods btw, I have taken great inspiration from the Greek pantheon. They are not stuck in other realms like the classic dnd gods. They usually just live in another realm to manage the forces of the universe.
The gods were pretty much just as as their human creations at the start of time because they were not much older than them.
He could try to open a portal from the abyss to the gods realm to let demon/titans/whatever in. He made an alliance with other enemies of the gods to give them a chance to strike directly against their enemies and while the gods can probably win, you did say that they manage the forces of the universe so if some of them die...
Or he could try to make them fight each other, though that is harder to plan. I mean, the lich wants revenge because the gods screwed up when his sibling tried to kill him out of jealousy because of the gods' favor. So the lich wants the gods to grow jealous and end up killing each other after they screw up because they didn't notice his manipulation. A punishment fitting the crime, achieved by having the different religions fight each other and blame it on orders from their patrons.
I would think if he hates the gods for turning him into a lich, he could be motivated to turn all people, the children of the gods as it were, into liches. This could be done with many steps to spread out the campaign but seem like the motivation I would go for.
#OPENDND
While there are exceptions, good villains start with love. Dracula being the prime example, but it borders on universal.
So, for this lich guy, here's an example: Lichguy was an ordinary guy who loved his wife and children, and he was happy. Propably he tilled the earth, he built a house, he had sheep and pigs, and on fine days he'd climb the little rise behind the house and gaze out over all that he loved.
Then, war came. Somegod went mad, and his followers ravaged the earth. Ordinaryguy fought the mad followers of Somegod, and became powerful, a great hero - but eventually, the tide of battle turned sour, and Ordinarguy fell - and along with him, his family, his home, everything he loved.
For long ages, it looked like Somegod was going to win. But finally, Anothergod was able to recover the remains of Ordinaryguy. He was quite badly burned, and it had been a long time. But Anothergod felt that if only Ordinaryguy could be returned to the battlefield, all might still be saved. He tried to ressurrect Ordinaryguy, but failed. Instead, he resorted to ... other magics, and Lichguy was ... 'born'. Anothergod explained that he'd try to ressurrect Ordinaryguy, but that the magics had somehow been twisted - propably by Somegod and his mad followers.
And so Lichguy returned to the fight. Eventually, Somegod and his goons were eradicated, and peace returned to the land.
Lichguy went home, but nothing awaited him there. For a while, he tried to find love again, but such things are hard when you're a lich - you lack all the glands and stuff. For a while, he sought knowledge and power, but eventually, he knew everything. Then, he sought silence and solitude for a long time.
Eventually, a dark voice whispered in his ear. It told him how long had passed from his death to his ressurrection. Lichguy was smart, and educated: He knew ressurrection would fail. Piece by piece, he put the truth together: Anothergod had made him this undead thing, this hollow husk - Anothergod had doomed him to this eternity of loss and suffering and emptiness.
There. Lichguy wants to rewind the world to just before Somegod went mad, and kill him there, or then I guess - before that happens. So he can live out his life with the wife he still loves, and children he never get to watch grow up and thrive. To do so he needs the power of the Creatorgod - power that is now shared by all the lesser gods. So, the way forward is simple: Kill them all, take their power, redo the world and be happy again.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
If I were doing the "first lich" I would probably play him as someone who is just tired of existing. Since his immortality stems from the gods who resurrected him, the only way to break it is to kill the gods. Or he could just go all in and want to end everything. Either way, I think it's fairly relatable that he might be bored of living at this point.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
A revenge story. That is a great idea Scatterbraind. The Lich is going mad from living so long. He never wanted to stay alive forever and now he is on a track to kill the God that resurrected him. Not all of them he just needs the one. Somehow in his resurrection, he became bound to that god, and even though many have tried to destroy the Lich over the years the god in question is like his Phylactery. It's kind of a Hair Potter thing.
In any case, the Lich is trying to find anything to get him to a God status so he can be on a power level to destroy the one God who created him. He does not want anything else but he does want to eventually die. So he can join his brethren in the hereafter.
Now you have a sympathetic villain with a very strong motivation. That's a good one too if I don't say so myself. I will be using this in one of my games for certain.
The players can figure this out over an adventure but then have to decide is going after a well-intended god to destroy a horrible Lich worth their souls. Kill the god then kill the Lich. But if you kill the Lich and not the God the Lich shall return.
This is how I would play it out. A Lich causing lots of trouble in the kingdom. First run-in with the Lich they defeat him when he's trying to complete some task (perhaps his final spell that will kill the God in question but the players stop him). The Lich returns not long after to start again but now with a hatred toward the party as they thwarted his initial plan before it could be completed granting him sweet abyss. But you can't let them know this the first time. They learn it all on the second go-round.
Another idea is you could repeat the Lich as a reoccurring Villian that ends up being the final villain of your story as well.
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
How does your Ur-Lich relate to the later liches? Did he have a hand in their transformation or did they learn the secret of lichdom in order to emulate him? He is clearly different from the later liches in that his lichhood was involuntary.
Did he discover the discipline of Necromancy? If so, what was his motivation? Purely trying to understand his altered state of existence? Did he try to raise any of his loved ones to Undeath? Can you imagine the horror of knowing that you tried to resurrect your wife into your eternal existence but instead transformed her into a mindless zombie?
There are some great suggestions here but the problem becomes how to tie it to the characters at a level they can participate. A lich killing gods is a story line for the end of a campaign so the beginning and middle have to be the actions the lich takes to make it happen.
Building on Acromos suggestion, the lich wants to kill the gods, take all their powers and reset the universe by killing Somegod before they can become a problem and ultimately destroy OrdinaryGuys life - thus allowing the lich to live the life he was meant to with those he loved.
1) Decide how many gods there are and how many the lich needs to kill to achieve his goal.
2) Decide how gods can be killed in your world. I would suggest ...
- kill most or all of a gods followers so that they lose the powers of worship. Decide on lore that makes a god vulnerable when they lack sufficient worshippers.
- lich plans some event to trick the god to come to the material plane.
- lich brings about the death of the god, ideally not by his own hand (perhaps he has convinced another lich or villain to attempt to kill the god) - however, the lich is on hand when the god is killed to absorb their power - perhaps an artifact is needed to accomplish this.
3) This scenario is repeated with variations and twists as the lich uses the ambitions of others to create separate BBEG to take the lead on killing each weakened god.
The characters are perhaps involved trying to foil the plans of the dupes of the lich - perhaps employed by the gods who can't foresee the lich's plans but only the indirect influence.
The lich could even create an alternate persona of itself which they use as an imitation diety. They have cults to kill the followers of other gods and sacrifice them in the lich's name so that the souls and the additional powers of worship of the cult are directed to the lich enhancing their power. This is not because they want to be a god but because the lich needs all of a the god's powers to achieve their goal of wiping out the existing universe and restoring it to a point where the lich would be happy.
The lich became so changed with time that everyone he loved died as he continued living and that messed up something in his noggin so he has become changed with time and wants peace so he makes a deal with a kronos type god to bring him to the afterlife and he then starts serving that god/titan and there you have it
Mythology nerd. 300 is one of my favorite movies. 1 and a half years experience. Make some homebrew magic items and subclasses. Will make magic items for free just message me
Maybe the gods didn’t intervene when he expected they would. That could have cost him a loved one, and so he crusades, killing and destroying temples and people who follow gods.