+BISHOP’S TOMB+

Beneath alabaster stones, sarcophagi are placed against the walls, lined. Each one bears an effigy of a deceased cleric. Most of them bear the traditional mitre and crosier staff – like skeleton who gestured you here. A few more ornate tombs – and two simple chapels break with the tradition – along with some more modest prelates- deigning to cover the remains in nothing but a simple slab.

As you enter this opulently clad tomb, you can tell the owner was a man of means. Someone had poured vast sums into marble walls, and colorful hard-stone slabs to cover his chapel – and yet the coffin holding his remains bore no effigy.

Stranger – in stark contrast to the open gates and glorious luminous marbles – there is no effigy on his tomb. Even the deceased’s name is scratched out from his own memorial. What remains is restrained – but stylized box, eerily left open.

Investigating the box, there are no trace of human remains – no shroud – just yet another container, wrapped in cloth.

Taking the box from the coffin – you find not ashes or reliquary bones but a small crystal – embedded on a box. And touching it makes your skin crawl –and then melt off.

Dark energy surges from the phylactery into your body, stealing your flesh, and blood - leaving you a skeleton – but no ordinary skeleton. Recognizing this heretic’s tomb as one of a man who sold his soul, touching the phylactery passed on his contract to you now. You traded your mortality, your flesh and blood took his soul – binding yours to the phylactery.

Dark robes and a staff of power materialize. You have services to provide the castle’s dark master. Rising into the air with unholy might, you have become the LICH.

———
September Patreonsketch: digitalpotato
Theme: THE CASTLE
Digital
2019
~Age