The Impersonation of Vlaakith

So, this is the further development of an idea I proposed elsewhere, about how easy it would be for someone to fake Vlaakith not actually being dead, and it is also my take on how the Githyanki liches are choosing to exert their power. Feel free tocomment on it.

Note: I have given the Liches chosen names of undeath, as suggested by Van Ritchen's guide to the lich, obviously they might pronounce them in Githyanki, but the meaning would be the name.

The Impersonation of Vlaakith
It took some time for the news to reach the negative energy plane, and further time for the reaction to take place, but such is the way the undead react to great change. The news was the most important thing to happen to a very small group in the distant plane in almost a thousand years. For the Githyanki Liches, largely forgotten exiles on a largely empty plane, the news of Vlaakith’s death represented both freedom and opportunity. Among the most powerful members of their race, Vlaakith’s paranoia and megalomania had long forced them to seek refuge where she could not reach, and now they were free of that restriction. Free, and no longer opposed by the one Githyanki with the ability to bring together opposition capable of defeating them. Furthermore, there was a sudden lack of leadership among their former people. Opportunity became very clear.

If the liches had heard sooner or moved faster likely no Githyanki would ever have believed Vlaakith was dead. As it was they failed to achieve the fait accompli, but their influence has nevertheless been made manifest. Though the Githyanki liches are hardly numerous, and only a fraction of them have any interest in controlling their old race, their power and undead ability make them a force to be reckoned with. Also, their chosen method of influence has allowed them to draw on a latent influence within the Githyanki population as a whole.

These liches have formed a cabal that puts forward a very simple fiction: adventurers from the prime material plane did not destroy Vlaakith, only her body was destroyed. It took some time for her to regain a suitable host form, but she has now returned to reclaim the rule of her people. This fiction is substantiated by Dread Vision, a female Githyanki lich who has taken on the role of Vlaakith and claims rulership of the entire Githyanki race. Dread Vision is an eleven hundred year old Githyanki noble, who during her first two hundred years of life was a close advisor to the actual Lich Queen. She has formed her host body into a perfect facsimile of Vlaakith’s, and reappeared in Tu’narath to take the throne. Dread Vision lacks the knowledge of precisely how Vlaakith behaved late in unlife, but knows exactly how to imitate her earlier personality. As a central part of the ruse she has put about that Vlaakith’s “death” caused her to seriously reconsider several major policies, including her destruction of subordinates.

This complex impersonation does not rely only on Dread Vision. Seven other Githyanki Liches support the endeavor full time, pulling strings in politics and influencing other Githyanki to believe the deception. Though the mass of the githyanki populace more or less wants to believe Vlaakith still lives, the unprecedented long absence has created many question marks. Many individual power groups, who seized authority of their own immediately after Vlaakith’s apparent demise, have not relinquished their authority, and remain sitting on the fence. While Dread Vision maintains the deception day to day, the other liches work to solidify their power using specific approaches for each major faction.

There are two principle approaches the liches use. The first is simply trying to prove that Vlaakith never died. For the common mass of Githyanki and many military leaders who seized authority in fear of instability or their rivals, this is all that’s necessary. For more dangerous plotters who held the seeds of possible rebellion in them even before Vlaakith’s death they have a different tactic. They identify targets they can manipulate by telling the truth. This is not as hard as it sounds, as the Githyanki do not possess the inherent horror of being ruled by undead that other races do. A key success for the liches has been among the Warlocks, many of who didn’t care what happened at the top once such obviously potent arcane masters as the liches gave them offers of training. Currently the liches are searching for a target for this approach among the squabbling claimants to be Vlaakith’s ‘heir.’ If they find a candidate who is simply willing to take the power offered by being official heir to the Githyanki throne without insisting on rule herself, they will make such an offer. Likewise if they find a general with the will to be Supreme Commander of the Githyanki military, without a desire to rule beyond his massive armies, they will provide him or her with such a position in exchange for support. In this way they hope to bind their rivals future to the continued survival of Dread Vision’s impersonation until such a time as no one ever believed Vlaakith was dead at all.

The Liches
There are eight liches directly involved with this impersonation, though many more trade favors and cast spells that may assist the plan from back in the negative energy plane. Each was once a Githyanki in life, and each one has his or her own motives for this plan, and skills to contribute.

Dread Vision
Born Lis’cian, the lich Dread Vision was once among the premier noble warlocks in Vlaakith’s court, and served as a companion for the young Lich Queen before the girl’s ascent to the throne following her mother’s resignation with the onset of old age dementia. A powerful spellcaster, Lis’cian served as Vlaakith’s right hand for several decades, providing her with sage counsel and watching with some dismay as the powerful queen became more and more suspicious of all those around her. This suspicion culminated in an assassination attempt that Vlaakith barely escaped with her life, and left Lis’cian dying of a bitterly powerful mystic curse. The githyanki queen commanded her servant to not die, using whatever means necessary, and so Lis’cian became a lich with great haste.

She did not expect Vlaakith to follow her into that state before she had even revealed the solution to her mistress. She also did not anticipate Vlaakith’s bloody purges of all those she considered a threat as the Lich Queen’s mind did not adjust easily to her new state. It took only a single threat from Vlaakith for Lis’cian to flee to the very edge of the multiverse, fearing for her existence. The former adviser became one of the very first Githyanki liches on the negative energy plane, and took the name Dread Vision to disguise her identity and to try and forget what she had been.

However, Dread Vision, with the time frozen mind of the undead, did not forget. When Vlaakith was finally reported dead she confirmed it with her most powerful spells immediately, for she knew took a grim satisfaction in it. When Lifeshriek Fury suggested they might take some part of Vlaakith’s former power for themselves, Dread Vision agreed eagerly, seeking a sort of sick revenge against Vlaakith’s memory. She was the perfect candidate to take on the role of the former Lich Queen, and revels in it now. Her long familiarity with Vlaakith gives her a familiarity with the Lich Queen’s more intimate mannerisms, which has gone a long way to convince many of the doubters in the court of Tu’narath.

Lifeshriek Fury
Youngest of the cabal, Lifeshriek Fury has existed for only some two hundred and fifty years, but he is no less dangerous for his relative youth among these liches. Indeed, in many ways he could be said to lead their interests, for it was his idea originally to take for themselves whatever they could of Githyanki power, and it was his inspiration to impersonate the dead Vlaakith.

Lifeshriek Fury has no other name; he has burned it from his mind with his mighty psychic powers, considering his mortal existence only a barrier in his path to power. For a lich he retains tremendous personal drive, and lets nothing get in the way of his ambition. Lifeshriek Fury seeks nothing less than to be the paramount mind in the whole multiverse, and will acknowledge none stronger than himself. Of course, no so young lich on the negative energy plane could overmaster all his rivals, and Lifeshriek Fury has been humiliated several times in his short undead existence. He seeks to overmaster those who oppose him by any means necessary, and intends to borrow the massed power of the Githyanki to do it.
His crazed ambition in the source of some impatience, which irritates some of the more stable liches involved in the plan, but his uncanny brilliance has aided them tremendously.

Gith’s Dark Foretold
The Githyanki have no gods, and those who come to find divine worship in their lives are cast out and separated from their people. This does not mean they cannot rise to great heights of personal power. For Gith’s Dark Foretold, the impersonation of Vlaakith and control of the Githyanki race is not simply an ambition. It is a crusade. He is a follower of the dark god Toldoth, one of the only powers so opposed to life as to make its home in the negative energy plane. Gith’s Dark Foretold sees the establishment of a Lich Queen as an essential first step in the gradual conversion of all githyanki to the worship of Toldoth. The goal is almost certainly impossible and the other liches think him mad for even planning it, but Gith’s Dark Foretold is patient, his timescale is set in many thousands of years, and so he can afford to be patient, his divine zeal has the long-term vision of the undead.

Regardless of his strange goals, Gith’s Dark Foretold, as perhaps the most powerful Githyanki priest anywhere has tremendous abilities no one else in the race can rightly counter, making him invaluable to the cause.

Black Eye Sky, Soul Creeper, and Fallow Dark
These three liches are the most alike, and in many ways form the heart of the endeavor. All three are potent arcane masters who fled the Astral when their power grew too great for Vlaakith, but who have never lost interest in their race even from the distant Negative Energy Plane. They are hungry for power both temporal and mystical, and long denied the first they have seized at this opportunity. They care little for dominance over the entire Githyanki race as a whole, but are greatly interested in controlling its warlocks as their own private legion of spellcasters.

The trio has agreed to maintain the charade so they can build their influence slowly, and support the overall plan because as stability increases their dominance of the warlocks will become more and more entrenched. They work fairly well together, as liches are measured, and have agreed not to start plotting against each other until the charade is no longer necessary and they can replace Dread Vision with a more controllable puppet. Until then they work to curtail the more loose cannons such as Gith’s Dark Foretold and Lifeshriek Fury. They are the least vulnerable and most calculating of all, with the possible exception of the mysterious Xeg.

Woc’nach
She was once a mighty general, wielding sword and spell and even mental power in the service of her mighty queen, until after a long campaign on Limbo she came back to honors too great and with a sword arm too strong for the Lich Queen’s paranoid assurance, and had to flee for her life. Yet Woc’nach refused to stop fighting for her people. Vlaakith was an indomitable foe, and she could see no way to oppose her, so the former general fled, first to the inner Planes, and when Vlaakith’s minions followed her there, she took the irrevocable step of becoming a lich and fleeing to negative energy. For three hundred years she sought to master skills and assemble the power to defeat Vlaakith and lead the Githyanki back to victory against their true enemies, with no success.

Now Vlaakith is dead, and a new opportunity has arisen. Woc’nach knows that while she could not defeat the tyrant there is a chance to lead the Githyanki to unbelievable victories to come. She is perhaps the only one of the eight liches who is actually acting with consideration of the race’s whole interests (though of course she would be enshrined in eternal glory for her great deeds) and wishes to strengthen the race under a new, better, leader, and lead them to utter victory against their deadly enemies the Githzerai, Illithids, and Psurlons. Woc’nach is somewhat unhappy about the methods her companions have used, as she would rather Vlaakith be forgotten forever, but she cannot argue with its effectiveness. However, should the plan fail, she has already marked out several generals she believes could serve as capable mortal agents against the true foe.

Xeg
The last of the eight is the most mysterious, and yet he is also certainly the most powerful. Xeg is called that only because he has no name and it seems most fitting. He, if indeed there is any gender to his existence at all, refers to himself only as “this entity.” Xeg is one of the strange phenomena of the negative energy plane, a unique lich, a being who undertook the transformation to undeath in a way never before seen and never used by another in known memory. In his particular case Xeg somehow cast aside his mortal form and took another as his soul’s host. His body is made up of nothing but the strange black tentacles of Xeg-Yi, the energons of negative energy. While vaguely humanoid, this form hides his origins, so the other liches can only assume he was once Githyanki.

What Xeg desires of their endeavor is unknown, but his incredible spellcasting power and utter command of the nature of negative energy as a substance mean that none of the others can refuse him. The strange being’s motives may be inscrutable, but he has served the cause well so far, annihilating some of the most powerful objecting warlocks so thoroughly most of their associates believe they never existed in the first place. Xeg has also confirmed, totally, that the real Vlaakith is never coming back, and wove a spell so powerful on a curious proxy of Tiamat inquiring into Vlaakith’s death that the proxy himself believes the deception. Currently Xeg has sent the other liches scrambling to find the remaining pieces of the Red Dragon Staff, because upon touching one tiny fragment he claimed, “it can be restored.”