The Lich Keep Getting Licher

 I've been in love with Liches since 1979. It was this picture, from the Official Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Coloring Album that caught my eye. 

It was love at first sight. And I was reunited with this, my first undead crush, a few years back. Curiosity got the best of me in the years between, and I . . . um . . . got to know others: Vecna, Vlaakith, and Acererak, to name a few. I learned to love them for who they were (and eternally are). Don't judge. There's nothing worse than Lich-shaming . . . 

But I sometimes grow weary of the old story: crazed mage/priest decides to seek eternal life through elaborate and expensive magic rituals that cause them to become even more crazed (and undead). You know all the tropes. Here, I'd like to propose a few alternate ideas for how certain ex-people (and ex-non-people) became liches. You can figure out how their powers manifest, stat them out, etc. These are just ideas of origin-stories, if you will. Consider this a surprise gift to kick-start your imagination, your campaign, or whatever. The details are all up to you.

Variant Liches:

1. A young boy with an oversized nose wishes upon a star. That star happens to be a manifestation of Orcus (a gleam in his eye, to be exact). The boy gets his wish and lives forever in undeath. Orcus even gives him a pet, a sentient cricket wearing a tuxedo and top-hat whose initials are the same as one very famous religious figure. The cricket is not as nice as he seems. And the boy . . . well, let's just say he's not like all the other boys.
2. A young maiden waits for the perfect lover. She is saving her love for them. She has been searching for a long, long time. She is . . . er, charming. Nearly irresistible. This would explain the dense pile of bones in her cottage's basement. Who knows? Maybe you are The One. She's going to do everything she can to find out. She keeps searching for a heart of gold, and she's not getting old.
3. Fido has been waiting for his master to come home. But the master of the castle will not be returning. So the dog waits. And waits. And waits. Visitors come, but not his master. And the visitors never seem to leave. At least Fido has a good supply of bones to gnaw on. He's been thinking, lately, that maybe he should leave the castle and go hunting for his master, come what may.
4. A certain merchant wants nothing more than to keep the wheels of commerce turning. And he does. He's been in business longer than he can remember, going from city to city in his horse-drawn wagon. He's gone through a lot of horses . . . He's a powerful trader, buy low, sell high, or sometimes don't sell at all. He admits to keeping a few things he's bought (though, again, he can't remember how long ago he bought them). There's that silver amulet with a certain aura. And the colorful scrolls he reads nightly before going to bed. The gold ring he bought from a gravedigger. And that strange mummified hand with the sigils tattooed in the palm. These are things he will never sell. Never.

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