2.0 KiB
[HF] Rutskarn’s GMinations: The Lich
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Author: u/Rangi42 *
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Score: 9
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Created: 2016-06-22T04:11:11
Post:
Comments:
u/UltraRedSpectrum [+11] (an hour later)
While I do appreciate the image of Lich as fanatical magician/scientist, I've always felt undead are better characterized by what they give up. Liches can't eat, drink (or get drunk), have sex, do drugs, or participate in most other strictly physical amusements like a king or Conan-esque barbarian might. They sacrifice the entirety of their physical experience to protect themselves from death, which, in my opinion, would seem to suggest someone who lives mostly in their heads to begin with. Not that this really contradicts the magical researcher angle, but I imagine liches spend an awful lot of time reading.
Unrelatedly, I always got the impression that most people who write about vampires haven't tried to imagine what it'd be like to be always thirsty. Maybe I experience thirst more strongly than them, but I find it distracting and very unpleasant, and it seems like the sort of thing their entire unlife would revolve around, not a convenient source of angst easily shoved to the side in favour of whatever the plot is about.
u/alexanderwales [+9] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
With (modern) vampires, thirst is usually just a proxy for lust, which is why it seldom reads as more literal thirst. If their thirst is much more like sexual appetite, then a lot more of their common psychological and emotional features naturally fall into place.
u/vakusdrake [+2] (an hour later)
Plus there's the fact that the thirst vampires have is always depicted as far worse than pretty much any desire a human is capable of experiencing.
After all vampires being driven to go berserk by their thirst, either by starving too long, or by seeing blood and failing a will save is pretty much a universal trope for them.