Blog

The Lich Historian: What Does a Lich Do When Adventurers Aren’t Around?

Monsters have lives of their own, not always poised to fight adventurers. Last week we took a glance at the Gelatinous Cube Janitor in our D&D Monster Jobs series. But lets move from mindless to brilliant.

When most adventurers hear that a lich has been spotted in an ancient ruin, they tend to reach for their weapons, check their spell slots, and start wondering whether they should have spent more time preparing for the possibility of fighting an undead spellcaster. After all, liches are among the most dangerous creatures in Dungeons & Dragons, notorious for their pursuit of immortality, mastery of magic, and willingness to do just about anything to achieve their ambitions. But what happens when a lich has already lived for a thousand years, conquered everything it ever wanted to conquer, and discovered that eternal existence leaves an awful lot of time for other pursuits?

Perhaps it becomes a historian.

Not just any historian, mind you. This is an immortal scholar who personally witnessed the rise and fall of ancient kingdoms, attended the coronations of forgotten emperors, watched legendary heroes make terrible decisions, and remembers when the ruins adventurers are exploring were brand-new buildings. It has spent centuries collecting documents, interviewing the dead, and piecing together the truth behind events that everyone else has forgotten. Unfortunately, it has also spent centuries watching historians get everything wrong, and it has finally decided that somebody needs to do something about it.

Welcome back to our series exploring what monsters do when they aren’t busy serving as encounters for adventurers. Last time, we met the Gelatinous Cube Janitor, a hardworking ooze that keeps dungeons clean while adventurers leave destruction in their wake. This time, we’re visiting a creature with a somewhat different approach to preserving the past. The Lich Historian isn’t interested in cleaning up after history. It wants to make absolutely certain nobody gets the facts wrong again.

The Problem With Living Historians

The Lich Historian has a serious problem with modern scholarship, and it isn’t difficult to understand why. Imagine spending centuries studying a particular civilization, only to discover that every book written about it contains at least three glaring inaccuracies. The dates are wrong, the kings are listed in the wrong order, and some ambitious scholar has decided that an entire war was fought over a disputed inheritance when the lich distinctly remembers that the real cause was a disagreement about agricultural taxes.

The worst part is that the scholar’s book has become wildly popular.

The lich is furious.

It has written letters to the publisher, submitted corrections to academic journals, and personally visited several universities to explain why their history departments are teaching nonsense. Unfortunately, the lich has discovered that being technically correct doesn’t necessarily make people want to listen to you, especially when you look like a walking corpse and keep threatening to curse the faculty if they refuse to amend their textbooks.

This has not improved its professional reputation.

Nevertheless, the lich remains committed to its work. Someone has to preserve the truth, and if the living refuse to do it properly, the undead will simply have to take over.

An Eyewitness to History

The Lich Historian’s greatest advantage is also the source of its greatest frustration: it was actually there.

While other historians rely on surviving documents, archaeological discoveries, and secondhand accounts, the lich can describe events from personal experience. It remembers the faces of forgotten rulers, the speeches delivered before legendary battles, and the actual reasons certain civilizations collapsed. It knows which famous heroes were genuinely courageous, which were lucky, and which became legends because the people writing their stories had a vested interest in making them look good.

Of course, immortality doesn’t automatically make someone a perfect source. The lich has its own biases, its own grudges, and its own interpretation of events. It may remember the past vividly while conveniently overlooking the parts that make it look bad. Perhaps it insists that a particular emperor was a visionary because they were close friends, even though every surviving record suggests the emperor was an incompetent tyrant. Maybe it refuses to acknowledge the achievements of a rival kingdom because the lich spent two hundred years trying to destroy it.

The result is a fascinating contradiction. The Lich Historian possesses knowledge nobody else can access, but convincing it to present that knowledge objectively is another matter entirely.

The Library That Time Forgot

Naturally, the Lich Historian needs somewhere to store its research, and its library is an extraordinary place. The collection occupies an entire subterranean complex filled with scrolls, books, tablets, maps, journals, paintings, magical recordings, and documents rescued from civilizations that no longer exist. Some of these records are hundreds of years old, while others predate the founding of the oldest kingdoms in the region.

The library is organized with obsessive precision. Every document has a catalog entry, every artifact has a reference number, and every historical claim is linked to whatever evidence supports it. The lich has spent centuries refining this system, and it considers the arrangement a masterpiece of scholarly achievement.

Visitors, however, may find the place bewildering. The library contains entire sections devoted to disputes over royal succession, agricultural practices in the Third Age, and the evolution of military uniforms among a civilization whose name nobody remembers. There is a room containing nothing but competing accounts of a single diplomatic meeting, and another dedicated to determining whether a famous wizard actually invented a particular spell or merely stole the idea from someone else.

The lich knows the answer to that second question, incidentally. It has the original correspondence proving it, but the document is filed under a classification system that requires three separate cross-references and a knowledge of a long-dead language to navigate.

The lich considers this perfectly reasonable.

The Interview With the Dead

Most historians would love to interview people who witnessed the events they’re studying. The Lich Historian can do something even better: it can raise the dead and ask them directly.

This makes research considerably easier, at least in theory. A long-dead general can explain the strategy behind a famous military campaign, a royal advisor can clarify what actually happened during a disputed succession, and a forgotten artisan can describe the techniques used to construct a legendary monument. When the historical record is incomplete, the lich simply finds someone who was there and asks a few questions.

Unfortunately, the dead aren’t always cooperative.

The general might insist that the campaign was a triumph despite having lost the war. The royal advisor could be more interested in complaining about the king than answering questions. The artisan might have forgotten the technical details after several centuries of being dead, while the court musician refuses to discuss anything until the lich acknowledges that their compositions were criminally underappreciated.

The lich has developed techniques for handling these situations, including carefully prepared questionnaires, magical compulsion when absolutely necessary, and a strict policy against allowing resurrected witnesses to wander off before the interview is finished. It has also learned that sometimes the dead lie just as readily as the living, which means every interview must be cross-referenced with other sources.

The lich calls this responsible scholarship. The witnesses call it a terrible afterlife.

The Worst Academic Conference in History

Eventually, the Lich Historian begins publishing its findings, and its work attracts attention from scholars throughout the world. Its books are authoritative, its research is meticulous, and its knowledge of ancient civilizations is virtually unmatched. Naturally, it is invited to academic conferences.

This is where things become difficult.

The lich arrives at a conference on ancient warfare and discovers that the keynote speaker has built an entire career around a theory that is completely wrong. Rather than quietly disagreeing, the lich stands up, identifies seventeen errors in the presentation, and proceeds to explain the correct sequence of events in excruciating detail. It then produces an original document proving its claims and asks why the speaker failed to consult the relevant sources.

The speaker attempts to defend their research. The lich produces another document.

The discussion continues for six hours.

Eventually, the conference organizers ask the lich to stop, at which point it accuses them of suppressing historical truth. The lich then publishes a book about the incident, including a detailed account of every factual error made during the conference and a chapter explaining why the academic community has become intellectually complacent.

The book becomes a bestseller.

The conference organizers never invite the lich back.

The lich considers this further evidence of the decline of modern scholarship.

The Lich’s Most Hated Historical Myth

Every historian has a particular misconception that drives them mad, and the Lich Historian is no exception. Perhaps it has spent centuries trying to correct the popular belief that a legendary king was murdered by his brother, when the truth is that the king died after attempting to ride a particularly aggressive wyvern. Maybe an entire civilization is remembered as barbaric because its enemies destroyed the surviving records, despite the fact that it developed sophisticated medicine, engineering, and democratic institutions.

Or perhaps the lich is obsessed with correcting a much smaller detail that everyone else considers irrelevant.

A famous hero is always depicted wearing a red cloak, but the lich remembers that the cloak was blue. Every statue, painting, and theatrical performance gets it wrong, and the lich has spent the last four hundred years trying to convince artists to change it.

It has published papers. It has commissioned paintings. It has written angry letters to playwrights. It has even threatened to haunt a sculptor who refused to amend a statue.

Nobody cares about the cloak.

The lich cares deeply about the cloak.

This is one of the reasons immortality can be such a strange burden. When you have centuries to pursue your interests, even a minor grievance can grow into a lifelong obsession. And when your lifetime is effectively endless, a four-hundred-year argument about a cloak can start to feel like a perfectly reasonable use of your time.

The Historical Revisionist

Not every Lich Historian is committed to preserving the truth. Some have discovered that history is a remarkably effective tool for manipulating the present.

A lich that understands how kingdoms rise and fall can recognize the warning signs of political instability long before anyone else notices them. It knows which alliances are likely to collapse, which families have unresolved claims to the throne, and which ancient treaties could still influence modern borders. With that knowledge, the lich can influence rulers, manipulate scholars, and reshape public opinion without ever raising an army.

Perhaps it quietly funds archaeological expeditions that uncover documents supporting a particular royal family’s claim to the throne. Maybe it publishes a carefully researched history that exposes the crimes of a powerful noble house. Or perhaps it suppresses evidence that would reveal its own role in a devastating war centuries ago.

The lich might even believe it is doing the world a favor. After all, if people keep repeating the mistakes of the past, someone needs to guide them toward a better future. The fact that the lich’s definition of a better future involves restoring an ancient empire under its own control is, in its mind, a minor detail.

This version of the Lich Historian can become a dangerous political force whose greatest weapon isn’t necromancy but knowledge. Adventurers might spend an entire campaign trying to understand why a kingdom is suddenly obsessed with reclaiming an abandoned territory, only to discover that an immortal scholar has been carefully feeding its rulers selected pieces of history.

What Does the Lich Do When Adventurers Arrive?

Imagine the party finally discovers the entrance to an ancient crypt, expecting to find undead guardians, cursed treasure, and a terrifying final encounter. Instead, they enter a vast library and find a lich sitting behind an enormous desk, surrounded by stacks of manuscripts and several floating quills.

The lich looks up, clearly annoyed by the interruption.

“You’re early,” it says. “The next appointment isn’t for another three centuries.”

The party draws its weapons. The lich sighs and explains that it has been preparing a lecture on the collapse of the ancient dwarven kingdoms, and it would appreciate it if the adventurers could stop dripping mud on the original manuscripts. If they insist on staying, they can either help with the research or leave immediately.

One of the characters notices a familiar name in a book on the desk. Another spots a map showing the location of a lost city. The wizard realizes that the lich possesses original spell research from an age when magic worked very differently. Suddenly, the party has a difficult decision to make. Do they attack a potentially dangerous undead spellcaster, or do they try to persuade it to share knowledge that could change the course of their adventure?

The lich, meanwhile, is already preparing a list of questions about the world beyond its library. It has been underground for decades, and the characters might be the first people it has met who can provide firsthand accounts of recent events. It is particularly interested in learning whether historians have finally corrected the spelling of a certain ancient king’s name.

They haven’t.

The conversation takes a very different turn.

Using the Lich Historian in Your D&D Campaign

For Dungeon Masters, the Lich Historian is a wonderful way to introduce ancient lore without relying on conveniently placed books, forgotten inscriptions, or mysterious NPCs who somehow know everything about the past. This lich has spent centuries collecting information, and it has the resources to answer questions that would otherwise require an entire adventure to investigate.

Perhaps the characters need to learn how an ancient magical barrier was constructed, and the lich possesses the original research. Maybe they are trying to identify a legendary weapon, understand the history of a disputed kingdom, or discover the true name of an entity that was erased from every surviving record. The lich may be willing to help, but it expects something in return. Perhaps the characters must retrieve a lost manuscript, verify the location of an ancient battlefield, or interview a ghost who refuses to speak to anyone else.

The lich can also become a recurring NPC whose knowledge grows more valuable as the campaign progresses. Early in the story, it might provide a clue about a forgotten ruin. Later, it could explain the origins of the villain’s magical abilities or reveal that a supposedly ancient prophecy was written only a few decades ago. The characters may even discover that the lich has been quietly documenting their own adventures, carefully recording their victories, failures, and questionable decisions for the benefit of future generations.

Naturally, the lich will insist on reviewing the final manuscript before publication.

The best part is that the Lich Historian doesn’t have to be a villain. It might be eccentric, arrogant, and difficult to work with, but its interest in preserving knowledge could make it a valuable ally. On the other hand, its obsession with historical accuracy might lead it to do terrible things in pursuit of the truth. If a witness knows something important, the lich may be unwilling to accept that the witness simply wants to be left alone. If a historical artifact is being destroyed, the lich might sacrifice lives to preserve it.

That tension makes the creature interesting. Its goals may be understandable, even admirable, but its methods can still be deeply troubling.

The Past Is Never Really Dead

The Lich Historian also offers Dungeon Masters a chance to make history feel like something more than background information. In many campaigns, the ancient empire collapsed a thousand years ago, the legendary war ended centuries ago, and the mysterious artifact has been missing for generations. These events provide context, but they rarely feel immediate to the players.

An immortal historian changes that relationship with the past. The lich remembers the empire before it fell. It knows the people who fought the war, remembers the arguments that led to the conflict, and may even have been present when the artifact disappeared. Its recollections can make ancient history feel personal, complicated, and occasionally much less heroic than the legends suggest.

Perhaps the characters discover that the famous founder of their kingdom was a ruthless conqueror whose crimes were carefully erased from the official record. Maybe a supposedly evil civilization was destroyed because its neighbors feared its growing influence. Perhaps the villain the party has been hunting is attempting to repeat a magical experiment that caused a catastrophe centuries ago, and the lich is the only surviving witness who understands what went wrong.

The past becomes a source of adventure rather than simply a collection of dates and names. And if the Lich Historian has anything to say about it, those dates and names will be correct.

Final Thoughts: Immortality Is a Long Time to Be Right

The Lich Historian is a reminder that even the most terrifying monsters in Dungeons & Dragons can develop interests that have nothing to do with destroying adventurers. A creature that has lived for centuries might have accumulated knowledge, developed passions, and discovered a purpose that keeps it occupied long after its original ambitions have faded.

For this lich, that purpose is preserving history. It wants the truth recorded, the evidence protected, and the mistakes of the past understood before they happen again. Unfortunately, it has also developed a deep and abiding contempt for anyone who gets the details wrong, which means a simple request for directions might turn into a three-hour lecture about the political history of the road you’re standing on.

The next time your players encounter a lich, consider what it has been doing with all those centuries. Maybe it has been plotting to conquer the world, or perhaps it has spent the last five hundred years correcting a popular misconception about an ancient battle. Maybe the lich isn’t guarding a treasure vault at all, but protecting a priceless archive that contains the only surviving records of a lost civilization.

And if the party happens to discover that the lich’s historical research could save the kingdom, they might find themselves negotiating with an undead scholar who is more interested in getting proper credit for its work than receiving a reward.

After all, immortality gives you a great deal of time to accomplish your goals.

It also gives you a great deal of time to hold a grudge.

What’s Next? The Kobold Safety Inspector

We’ve met monsters who build things, invent things, preserve history, and keep dungeons clean, but there’s one profession that deserves special attention in a world full of traps, collapsing ceilings, and questionable construction practices. Somebody has to make sure all those dangerous devices are actually safe to use.

Next time, we’re meeting the Kobold Safety Inspector, a creature who has spent its career examining dungeon traps, identifying structural hazards, and issuing citations to dungeon owners who fail to meet the minimum requirements for responsible adventuring infrastructure. If your players think kobold traps are dangerous now, wait until they discover what happens when the inspector finds an improperly installed pit trap without an adequate warning sign.

Thanks for reading. Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!!