《Dungeon Lich's Memoir》 Chapter One: To Start a Lichs Memoir
There must always be a Lich overlooking the dungeon. A dead but yet undying heart at the core of our home. Let this testament serve as your guide and inspiration, my daughter. To teach you how to ¨C and, more importantly, why ¨C we must stay here. Why we must dissuade, and slay if need be, trespassers to our subterranean abode. When my story is over, my darling daughter, perhaps you will understand why your nursery attendants were skeletons. Why surface-dwellers had pet dire-dogs while you made do with barrow-spiders. And even why your mother¡¯s eyes glow red in the lightless corridors of our darkest dungeon. We will start from the beginning¡­ It all starts with I ¨C your dearest father¡¯s ¨C death.
¡­ Worry not, for the beginning starts with a fight. I was not going to bore you with the circumstances of my birth out in the Rift Valley, of long years spent learning to endurance hunt on the plains. Five we were. A party of heroes. Armed with the finest reed-woven armor, grooved wooden war clubs, and daggers with iron tips taken from a fallen star. A great rock had fallen from the heavens directly into our village hunting grounds. Using the metal from this rock we had forged rudimentary weapons with which we¡¯d vanquished all other opposing villages for three valleys over. Our ancient rivals were still using stone mallets, and we slew them with impunity. It was after driving the last rival village from our land that we discovered the Barrow. A mound old even in those ancient times, partially built into a mountain. A single, jagged opening offered access. The stone-carver villages had displays outside, all pointed towards the entrance. They¡¯d at once worshipped the spot and feared it. But now they were dead, and our iron tools could surely best whatever paltry gods the stone carvers worshiped. Five volunteers went into the barrow, me included. They were: Gavrin, he who excelled at dire-deer hunts. He wielded a handheld club and was one of our village¡¯s best healers. Yona, particularly skilled at chasing dire-dingoes away from the village storerooms. Yurt, Yona¡¯s half-brother. A practical joker and a bit of a klutz. Not bad with a bow. ¡­ I cannot quite remember the penultimate fellow¡¯s name. Good with a spear though. And myself. Your dad. It has been centuries; I looked much different back then. Had more skin clinging to my bones. But I digress. Onward we marched. Only, I did not have a torch with me, carrying both a shield and a meteoric iron-enhanced blade. The war band wielded the best weaponry in the entire valley and more than prepared for anything we could face. There were traps ¨C a false floor leading down to a pit I nearly fell in, saved only by timely intervention from Yona. Gavrin stepped on another tile that sunk in, sending him off balance. Then, a trio of stone-etched arrowheads tied to wooden bolts flew through the wall directly ahead of us. I ran to the front and blocked it with my wooden plank shield, saving the party.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Though the mound lay embedded in a mountain the corridors looped around in a circular pattern. There were few dead ends, more a gauntlet of traps, funneling us into a central burial chamber. There, we encountered a slew of open sarcophagi and, dead in the center, a fetid she-lich! This mistress of the dungeon was dressed in furs from animals we¡¯d never seen. She was squat but muscular, and with a hefty brow quite unlike the people of our village. It was as if this rotting creature sitting on a simple stone throne was a relic of an older era. Dead emerged from the sarcophagi, from holes in the ground, and even fell from the ceiling. Now, this sounds perfectly natural to you, born in the dark such as you are. But we had never seen a walking corpse. Nor a lich. Yurt¡¯s arrows did nothing to stop these barrow wrights. Gavrin¡¯s club did some blunt damage, though only crushing the skulls proved remotely effective. Yona and I hacked at the oncoming horde with our blades. We sliced brittle limbs off the desiccated corpses, but even a severed arm or leg would not stop them. Our nameless forgotten friend impaled one with his spear, only to have his weapon stuck in the chest cavity of a creature that was still crawling at us. Others swarmed him and tore him apart. Fire. Fire was our only defense. Yona set one of the walking dead alight with her torch. Though the barrow was cold and damp, the corpses were long-dead and bone-dry. Still, for every wright we felled two more crawled out from the depths. ¡°That thing is controlling them!¡± I said. We made for the she-lich. My shield physically pushed the horde back ¨C as corpses, they were light on mass. The lich had an ¡®honor guard¡¯ of sorts. They wore hefty metal garb stronger than even our iron blades. And their weapons ¨C great stone axe heads with ornate carvings ¨C were unlike anything our paltry village could hope to develop. Still, iron proved superior, while flames would still burn them with time. Yona and Gavrin took to this task, while I pushed through with my simple shield and made for the lich. A great blasting scream and a fell glowing green light emanated from the she-lich¡¯s hand. Intimidation tactics, but we were past her guards and with knives drawn at that point. I ignored the psychic nightmare visions she imposed on all who came within ten paces of her. Acting on instinct, I thrust my iron blade into her heart. There was nothing to pierce. The lich was farther gone than even its minions. It could have just as easily reached over and raked my face off with its knife-sized nails. And yet, instead, something happened¡­
A gurgling sound came from the Lich. A forgotten, ancient tongue. I pulled my blade out of the lich¡¯s chest. The entire cavity was barren. Again, the creature spoke. This time, its barbaric blather warped into something I could almost understand. ¡°Your weapons¡­ strong. Bond. My time is done. You must¡­ bond with the dungeon. In my place.¡± I moved away from the rotting creature, but it grabbed me with its clawlike nails and dug into my skin. A purple miasma burst forth from the gaping chest wound on this she-lich. It surrounded me, and I breathed in a deep wafting breath before I was able to break free. Muscles seized, paralyzed. I tore my reed armor off just to breathe, to no avail. I fell to the floor, letting out a death rattle. All around, the barrow appeared in a state of collapse. Archways fell, tombs toppled over. Yurt took off running for the exit without further prompting. Yona lunged for me, which I could still just barely register with my failing senses. But Gavrin held her at bay, for the purple miasma was only spreading. He dragged her out through the exit as dust and tomb-mold were kicked up by the collapsing chamber. What happened next? Well, I died, my dear. Years before you were born, my mortal form breathed its last. But the beating heart of that she-lich was not done with me yet. It had designs for this new intruder with superior weaponry. The barrow¡¯s halls and central chamber collapsed. Yet, in some small hidden divot beneath the throne, the lich¡¯s will still reigned¡­
Chapter Two: If I Only Had a Heart
I died, certainly. And yet, that was not the end. Silence filled the collapsed tomb when I next gained ¡®consciousness.¡¯ The only pathway out had collapsed. A narrow vertical shaft dead center in the chamber had also collapsed. That would cause problems with the air supply eventually, though just as I thought this I noticed a lightness in my chest. There was nothing there. I looked down to discover a wound in my chest, all blood having long-since flown out or coagulated. A trail of dried blood led over to, then underneath, the throne. The throne itself jutted out and aside, revealing a small crawlspace. I pulled myself over with my arms, noting a rather numb feeling and no sense of fatigue in my muscles. With no clue how much time had passed, I was trying to use my dying breath to ensure my friends and allies made it out of the barrow. Within the crawlspace, there were two still-beating hearts, as well as the remains of the she-lich rapidly crumbling to dust. She¡¯d taken the liberty of removing my heart from my body and using it to replace her own within an elaborate magical interface. She held her own heart ¨C smaller and with a grey coloring to it, in her remaining hand. Though the she-lich was mostly bone dust, an apparition of the lich as she once was presented itself in front of me. It was of an almost human woman with a thick and furrowed brow. We still had stories of these ¡®other¡¯ creatures, long since extinct, who had villages and communities in the valley before our forefathers had come in and bested them with stone tools. ¡°For untold centuries, I have ruled the crypt.¡± The lich spoke a barbarous tongue, but within my mind, it assembled itself into something legible. ¡°To provide a burial and testing grounds. But my people have not been seen in this land in ages. To be immortal is to become a relic. Your people, your tools, are far more advanced than those with which I first built this dungeon. Bond with the dungeon in my place. Expand it, dangle treasures in front of outsiders to lure in new meat. Rule in my place. Lord over this barrow through the ages, until those arrive with tools strong enough to best you.¡± With that, the vision of the she-lich faded. I was left alone, watching my own heart beat lethargically at the center of this barrow. I could reasonably puzzle out that the buried chamber was impossibly, unsurvivably cold. But the cold didn¡¯t register for me anymore.
Long before I discovered the extent of my confinement to this place, I had to master the art of shaping the barrow. With nothing but time on my hands, I spent untold days sitting on that throne. I found, through much trial and error, that I could shape the basic paths and chutes through the barrow in an act of pure concentration. I¡¯d been trying to think about how to escape ¨C before I realized the particulars of my predicament. I thought of trying to force my way through that narrow vent dead center above my new abode. The more I thought, the more the collapsed trestles and supports brought themselves back into serviceable order.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. A faint breeze flowed through the chamber once more, not that I could feel its touch on my skin, nor had any need for fresh air any longer. Once I realized that I could shape the air shaft via pure will, I got to work on clearing open a path through the barrow. This took days ¨C which I could now measure by the cycling of the faintest trickle of light through the air shaft. I sat there, watching, as the barrow tunnels ever-so-slowly reassembled themselves. Tressels came back into place. Dirt physically scooped itself up and packed itself into the walls. Perhaps with some manual labor, I could renovate the premises further. But the army of barrow wrights had disintegrated to dust, decay of ages catching up to them now that their mistress was gone. A week passed, as judged by my limited timekeeping abilities. But through an act of pure concentration, I had bent the barrow¡¯s tunnels back into working order. With the path clear, I took my first steps out of the central chamber in some time. I walked through the halls, which were now cleared free of much of the refuse and even traps that had plagued our path to confront the lich. I walked through the winding halls ¨C I could straighten them with a few weeks more concentration, but this seemed a waste of effort at the moment. What I found was that my consciousness began to wane some three hundred paces away from the throne. Not even within view of the barrow entrance. I was tethered here. Permanently. At the very edge of my limited range, I discovered that which I feared most. The collapsing barrow had tripped every trap in the tunnel. There, at the bottom of a spiked pit, were the corpses of Yona and Gavrin. Scuffs on the pit¡¯s edge indicated where they¡¯d fallen, held on to the lip, tried to help themselves back up. Yurt couldn¡¯t have been too far ahead ¨C he must have abandoned them, even as they called for help. His own sister, left to fall into the spikes, buried with the dungeon. Buried with me. No tears flowed from my dead, dried tear ducts. Indeed, there was some intellectual sense that I should be sad. Devastated, even. But my heart just wasn¡¯t in it. Take that literally; it was still back in the throne room. Every reaction was numb. Months had passed since our confrontation with the barrow mistress and my allies¡¯ attempted escape. Their corpses were decayed. Had I not known what gear they were wearing, the club and knives down in the pit with them, I would¡¯ve had trouble recognizing them. Instincts inherited from my predecessor urged me to act. I lifted my left hand. The air in the hallway grew still, then swirled with a faint breeze. A greenish haze emanated from my hand. Lich magic. I found myself muttering in the old she-lich¡¯s tongue, and the haze surrounded Yona and Gavrin¡¯s corpses. Two dissected dungeon victims rose out of the pit and were placed daintily back on their feet. The corpses stood, hunched over. I looked into Yona¡¯s eyes. There was nothing left. There would be no spirited conversation with these new wrights. No reminiscing about old times. Reanimation was not resurrection. Indeed, my first two barrow wrights were mere extensions of my will. As I could alter and repair the dungeon, so too could I order them to patrol areas of the dungeon where I could not tread, or to hold down a hall or chamber while I was busy back in the throne room. Perhaps there was some solace to be had in the fact that their bodies were not forgotten down in that pit. My predecessor¡¯s wrights were gone ¨C all disintegrated into bone dust that still caked the floors. These shades of my former friends were the only minions I would have, for the moment. Mentally, I ordered the pit to close itself off. It would happen glacially. Renovation would be required to bring this paltry barrow into ship-shape. That would require practice. And so, I returned to the central chamber, two new bodyguards in tow, ready to while away the days learning just how much control I had over my tomb, abode, and home.
Chapter Three: First Tentative Steps
Over the next month or two, I perfected the art of the pitfall. From the throne room, I concentrated on recreating hidden pits here and there throughout the barrow. The halls were shaped by my will, just as they had been repaired previously. I could alter the positioning, create side-chambers and form spiked pits underneath false floors. My former friends could serve as grunt labor. Shaping the dungeon from the throne proved more efficient. Instead, Yona and Gavrin guarded the central chamber. I¡¯d had them retrieve their club and blades. Neither¡¯s condition was getting any better, though. Necromatic magic would arrest their decay somewhat, but the day would come when they were too ruined to function even as puppets. And they wore only the battle-damaged reed vests we¡¯d brought with us. It was the best weaponry and armor our village could muster, but for how long would it suffice? After a slow month or two of quiet contemplation and trap laying, we got our first bite. Some hunter or gatherer ducked into our barrow to escape the rain. Much of the exterior decorations ¨C the stone carvers¡¯ warnings, some remaining supplies we¡¯d left outside ¨C had collapsed and had not yet been restored. My powers waned near the entrance of the barrow. Our uninvited guest likely mistook our domain as a simple cave. My wights stirred. I held them back. This was no fighter, just a lost soul. With all the pits I¡¯d buried near the entrance, soon this lost soul would be mine to do with as I wished. No sooner did I think this than a great crash echoed through the halls and chambers of my burrow. A pit had been sprung. The two wights lumbered through the halls by my command. They returned having fished our latest victim out of his pit. Thoroughly dead; the spikes I¡¯d manifested at the bottom of each pit had done their job. This was just a simple traveler. No weapons, minimal combat potential. Walking into a slaughter either way. With the trap, death was quick, with minimal surprise and minimal pain. Really, I¡¯d done him a favor. Again, the itch arose to raise my hand and get reanimating. There were ways in which this nameless traveler could be useful. The magic took hold. A third wight stood in the central chamber. Wordlessly, I gave my command. The traveler marched back out through the halls of the barrow. I felt what happened next without laying eyes on it. Sensed my new wight step out of the cavern and into the light of day just as the storm outside cleared up. The light scalded the walking corpse, frying my magic away and leaving it dead, just another body no more than ten paces from the barrow entrance. No matter. I returned to focusing on setting up new and more advanced traps in my realm. Our new arrival would have been of little use in a fight either way. And as a front lawn decoration, well¡­
Sure enough, it wasn¡¯t long before someone came looking for the traveler. A band of six. More numerous even than our original war party. Though I was tethered to this throne, I could sense the world outside the barrow with effort. They knelt to examine the corpse of our nameless friend. Days had passed. Residual necromancy kept animals from devouring the cadaver. As far as these outsiders knew, this was a fresh corpse. The wounds, too, were all over the place. There were the true deathblows through the chest cavity from the floor spikes, as well as burn marks from where the sun had scorched the necromancy away.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Their natural conclusion was that he¡¯d been slain by something in the barrow and died trying to flee. A fair interpretation. Partially true. The party advanced, war clubs out. I¡¯d spent the past days nonstop crafting some new surprises. Getting the barrow up to the condition we¡¯d found it in during our ill-fated raid. The words of the she-lich echoed in my mind. I would be ruling this place until someone with far greater power and weapons deposed me in turn. While I was still ruefully contemplating my fate at this point, I wasn¡¯t about to just roll over and die. Let someone else be saddled with this lonesome fate? Allow this burial mound to lie fallow, become used as some bandit camp? Perish the thought! So, I sat, brooded, and waited. Only two former friends and a gauntlet of traps for protection. I waited, and listened, feeling the intruders creep through my dungeon as if it were an extension of my own self. The path around was winding ¨C intentionally so. It wouldn¡¯t do to give interlopers a straight shot to my inner sanctum now, would it? This also provided an important bonus of maximizing the time spent in a gauntlet of traps. No sooner did I think about the bevy of pits and tripwires awaiting our guests than I heard a ¡®twunk¡¯ from the compressed air of a deadly spear thrust out from a divot in the wall. This was another gift from the former occupant. We¡¯d encountered many in our storming of the barrow. It was part of my ¡®move set¡¯ such that it was, and I needed only will the mechanics into existence. The tripwire, the false divots in the walls, and the spear would all assemble themselves from existing dungeon refuse. There was a moment¡¯s delay and then came the screams. One of the intruders had taken several hits to the chest. The shouts were short-lived, as the wounds were too deep and extensive for a barely-armored human to survive. After a time, I sensed the remaining party of five continue their advance, glacially slow this time. They left their fallen comrade where he lay. The avaricious hope of treasure tucked in this burial chamber winning out over the desire to bury and mourn a comrade. I got an idea. Again, those lich instincts kicked in. Still on my throne, I reached out to the segment of barrow where this dead man still lay. I summoned forth necrotic powers and began assuming control of the fallen treasure hunter. The process was slower without direct access to the body, but my magic worked its, well, magic all the same. Soon another fresh wight stood in the halls. One with intact musculature. I ordered it to sprint with a thought. It took off running. Again, shouts echoed from the hall ¨C closer, this time. The wight pounced on the fellow in the back. Another wheeled around and leaped back, plunging to their death in another pit trap. A newly-dead wight was swift and vicious, tearing apart his former ally quickly and efficiently. In an instant the party went from 6 living, then five, and now down to three! These were no warriors. Upon seeing their comrades die, with one even rising to kill their friends again, the survivors broke and fled. One of the remaining three fell into another pit. I snapped my fingers, and all further traps went inert long enough for the remaining survivors to flee the barrow. Only when I was sure they¡¯d fled clear out of my range of dungeon sense did I snap again to reactivate my defenses? My magic wound through the dungeon, picking out and reanimating the remaining three corpses. Six flesh and blood humans had entered the barrow, and now four new wights stalked the halls of my domain. As for the two survivors? Again, those inherited lich-based instincts, a housewarming gift from my predecessor, begged me to let them leave. The better to tell others the tale. Sure, any normal clan-mate would stay well away from this death trap, but rumors of a trap-laden barrow, and speculation about what treasures could be held in here, would send more fortune seeks walking into my grasp.
Of course, there were no treasures here. Not yet. A deer walked into the barrow and fell victim to a pitfall. I reanimated it ¨C could be useful as an intimidation factor. As days turned to months, I focused on morphing further turns and dead ends into my barrow. Traps other than the ones the old she-lich had wielded proved harder to develop. It¡¯s like I was missing some ingredients. Perhaps I required additional power by adding to my wight collection? Or maybe I would grow in strength by building and deepening the barrow? No instructions were provided, so I just did as I felt best. Still, the wights walked the halls, I sat upon my throne, and the barrow gradually developed. I lost track of how long I¡¯d been stuck here. My squad of wights ¨C Yona and Gavrin included ¨C offered no company. Indeed, Yona and Gavrin were beginning to rot. It was questionable how long they would remain viable even as undead muscle. So, I sat and waited. For months, maybe a year. Things grew quiet, with little happening at all from day after day. The first real test came when a band from the old village arrived just out of range of the barrow entrance.