Welcome to the Memoirs of Van Venivel – A Lichdom Story: Sojourn into Darkness! Herein lies the record of my odyssey into the solo TTRPG adventure Lichdom. I greatly enjoyed my time with Lichdom. The well-crafted prompts inspired me and I finished with both a record of play as well as a new character to use in a future game. The subject matter is rather dark given that my protagonist seeks the power and opportunity of great necromancy. Altogether it was a enriching journey and a deeper experience than simply creating stats for a game ready lich. Instead, I created a story-ready lich.
The Beginning
My name is Van Venivel. I could not say who gave it to me. My earliest memory is that of the lash of my master. Slavery haunts me and perhaps always will. My master’s cruelty forged me, the scars across my back tougher than the skin they replaced. Straining against the shackles built my muscles. The secrets that the evil old librarian collected sharpened my mind. In an ancient journal, not unlike this one, I found the first secrets that would lead me on my path to greatness. My destiny called out to me from its brittle pages but it was many years before I was able to collect what I needed to truly begin.
In that time, I met a woman, beautiful beyond my reckoning. Dirty and beaten like me, but my eyes saw only a shining star in the desert night. My master saw the need to breed more slaves and neither he nor her owner saw the treasure buried in the sand. To my master, she only served as breeding stock. To me, she quenched my thirst like an oasis in the desert. The journal provided the illusion to trick the old fools. The price was a year of my life, but that would matter little in the ages to come.
We owned almost nothing but our dreams. Cruelty visited us often but we could see the future before us. She would rule at my side over a dynasty not seen since the two old warring empires whose ruins dotted the sands like cankers. Our children grew strong, holding defiance in their hearts as we bode our opportunity. The heavenly bodies came into alignment and I collected all of the unholy and unclean components. It was time to open the gates.
The Nightmare
The entities of chaos expect more than given. Always. Our success in opening the gate to power and knowledge of the chaos realms should have been cause for celebration. Perhaps I should have sent my wife and children away. Perhaps it would not have mattered if I did. Those from the other side violated my mind, reading my every thought, feeling, and memory like a cheap market flyer. They knew what I sought and what mattered to me.
To my never-ending horror, my wife and children were suddenly in my ritual chamber. My mind’s eye will never forget as they aged and desiccated, turned to dust. The journal gave not a warning of the cost of power, only the promise of desire’s fulfillment. I never thought that my desires might be chosen in order to enact another purpose and the rest burned away. Never forget that if you follow my path, you will never be more than a tool for something greater. Perhaps you are on your way to becoming my tool now.
The knowledge and power flooded into me but were poured into the empty chasm left by my family. I used them to imprison our old master, that vile librarian, in a jewel that he had received as payment for some obscure tome or other. He resides there still, awaiting the next time that I will pull him forth for an experiment or to relieve my frustration. His terror and suffering alleviate the pain of the past only a little, but I would rather that than nothing.
The Journey and the Cult
My family consumed, my master’s associates sure to come looking for him, I set fire to his manse and fled to the desert. My power grew but I did not yet know how to use it. I saw many wonders in my travels that men had not seen since before the Great Storm. Ignorant, I had never considered what lay in the world beside our city and the desert beside it. Beyond the desert I found a sea and in that sea countless islands. I learned that following the war of the two old cursed empires, a great storm rose up from an ancient sea full of magic and death. The storm raged for untold centuries, cutting the land and drowning most of the pitiful people left after the war. When the skies finally cleared, islands remained, isolated, pocked with ruins and meager settlements, and horrors.
I stole a boat so that I might leave this desert island and search for more power and knowledge. I crossed a cursed plain where there was no sound, only the beating of your own heart, seeming to shake the soil underfoot. In its burning lake I inhaled the toxic fumes that I might learn the secrets of Darj’s Etherealizing Wind. A mountain rose from the sea covered with petrified trees and acidic swamps in terraces climbing up it sides. I climbed that mountain and entered the network of tunnels beneath it to find a nexus of worlds where I learned the art of Roshmor’s Darkening Column. The cost stripped more from my soul, but I thought then that I had no more to lose.
In time, I returned to my desert homeland. I crossed the Red Wastes where I knew thirst that I could not and would not ever experience again. But the demons that I made pact with and the flesh-eating plants that I found were worth the suffering. While traversing the sands, I encountered a fledgling cult obsessed with serpents. The Cult of the Wyrm were they called and they sought out sacrifices to the large serpents of the wastes. Riev Tius was their leader. Although power mad, he was a true believer and he did not take much convincing when I appeared to them at their Temple of the Star claiming to be an emissary of the Great Dragon. My power quelled any opposition or doubt. With my direction, their abductions became sufficient such that their wyrms received their portion and I had plenty of fodder for my experiments.
Foundation
Years passed and the Cult of the Wyrm grew. I pulled from their sacrificial stables to experiment on the nature of life. One auspicious day, I confirmed what I had suspected for years. Life can be distilled from a living creature’s body into its Essence. Much of the energy is lost but what remains still rejuvenates and nourishes the imbiber. I had oft dreamt of this moment, when I could sustain life indefinitely. But the taste was bitter once I was there and the victory hollow. I could live forever provided that I forever had available sacrifices to my body’s insatiable needs and it did nothing to turn an assassin’s blade. Those who think themselves champions of righteousness would surely come for me. No, this is not victory but simply a foundational achievement. I had little choice but to continue searching.
I have traveled much of this world but the crux of what I sought is not to be found in the stones of the earth or in the strength of men. Its nature rests more with the attraction of heavenly bodies and the will of alien beings. And so I quested into the Dreamlands seeking the secrets of those whose reality waxes more fluid than our own.
In the Dreamlands, I discovered sights that few mortal men ever see and fewer still return from with their minds intact. I cannot describe it as your minds simply cannot comprehend fluid juxtaposition and… inside-outness of it. Light and matter interact freely and time often flows laterally and diagonally. Regardless, I found there a ritual overseen by those weird and unstable gods. Perhaps, on some scale, it is the ritual that binds the material universe to the immaterial that allows this world to exist and change with some degree of logic. For my purposes, it would allow me to bind my soul to my body in an irrevocable way.
Ever Seeking
I realized that I could have performed the ritual and then kept my body young and fit through the alchemical process that I had discovered. But in the boundless desert of time, the truly wise do not merely grasp at the grains of fleeting triumph. No, they seek the oasis of everlasting glory, where the waters of victory flow eternal and unyielding. I might achieve immortality this way, but what of the future when a great catastrophe kills most or all of the life on this world? Should I be condemned to drift amongst the stars hoping to encounter some other life that I might feed off of? No. I could not accept the possibility of a weakened state, a more potent prison than the chains of my old master. I would risk all and continue searching.
Next
I hope that you enjoyed reading part 1 of Van Venivel’s journey. I had originally thought to put it all into one post but I have a good number of journal pages yet to go. The prompts and events are varied enough that Lichdom would allow several playthroughs before I would expect to feel a lack of variety. Likewise, if anyone of you would have a wildly different story, especially when you consider how different your interpretations would likely be from mine. I leaned into the old Middle Eastern setting mostly after being influenced by reading Kent Kelly’s The Oldskull Necronomicon 1. He does a great job in the retelling. I used Knave 2e for the naming of the spells. Knave 2e brings a ton of useful tables for all sorts of game uses.
I mention Lichdom and other fantastic story generation games in my article Getting It Together to Play the Game.
Thanks for reading! You can find the next part here:
A Lichdom Story: Memoirs of Van Venivel Pt 2
If you’re interested in picking up Lichdom to see how your own story will turn out, you can find it here on DriveThruRPG:
