Other Liches

I'M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!

There are more ways to immortality than just undeath, you know. Spellcasters have been trying to extend their lives since time immemorial, and they've come up with a fair few more methods and just "Become a Spooky Scary Skeleton Man".

(\\Digression - I say spellcaster, but it really means anyone. It's a ritual, and like all rituals, it's theoretically possible for anyone powerful enough to preform it, its just that most fighters and the like don't have the resources or the inclination to do the research and preparation necessary to make it happen, while that is kind of a spellcaster's whole job.)

The Worm That Walks

You're probably already aware of the Worm that Walks, but for those of you who aren't, here's the gist -

Lichdom isn't the only path towards immortality, nor are necromancers the only ones who ever seek to escape death. When an exceptionally powerful spellcaster decides that they want to preserve themselves forever, they have a whole myriad of ways to do so. I'll definitely write a post about some of the more interesting ones sometime, but that's not right now. Anyway, our future Worm that Walks decides hey, you know what's better than become immortal as a person? Becoming immortal as a bunch of fucking worms! So this individual, who is doubtlessly both sane and extremely intelligent, does some ritual left unspecified so you can come up with it, and then a bunch of worms eat his corpse, and then he takes over all the worm's minds and now he's a bunch of worms. Also, he can incorporate new worms into the mix so he doesn't die when all the original get old. 

"Worm that Walks" is a stupid name, and also an innaccurate one. I'm going to call them "Swarmborne". While still stupid, this name is at least accurate, because they don't have to be composed of specifically worms. As long as the mix is homogeneous, they can use basically any creatures, as long as they're small enough. Ants, roaches, locusts, there are even rare examples of rats, and at least one giant has transformed himself into a pack of wolves. Worms are just the most commonly used ones because worms are common, versatile, and hardy.

Transmetallics

Oh look, another thing I built off of a concept stolen from, apparently, the only blog I know.

Transmetallics are people who pursue the immortality of metal. Metal isn't technically immortal, of course, but they figure they can patch up the damaged parts and be good as new.

Theoretically, there are as many different types of transmetallics as there are metals, but most of them are steel, because steel is both strong and easily found. The dream of every transmetallic is to turn themselves into pure adamantium, but this is not something that's ever been done before. Most people would say it is either impossible or close enough to impossible that it isn't worth trying, which is why most people aren't transmetallics.

The minority who transform into mercury are almost always driven mad. It's rather hard to hold on to a coherent identity when you've just made yourself liquid at room temperature.

Burners

You know the drill.

Burners are people who link their souls to a furnace. If the flame in that furnace ever goes out, the Burner dies. As a consequence, they tend to burn a lot of things, hence the name. The flames in these furnaces consume well more fuel than they have any right to, and the requirement just gets higher the longer a Burner's life is sustained. Sustaining life takes a lot of energy, man.

The longer a Burner lives, the less they look like a human, and the more they look like a walking piece of charcoal. They can become very combustible, but because they're totally immune to fire, it tends to be a lot more dangerous to other people than it is to them. 

If you wanted to be horrible, you could have them look like an actual burn victim, but that is so genuinely horrific and disgusting to me I will not set foot anywhere near it.

The size of a Soul-Furnace varies drastically. A bigger flame means more power, but also more fuel, and a higher risk of getting noticed and being heroically slain by adventurers, or possibly just having their heads bashed in by some very angry druids.

Chainers

Chainers are people who siphon off the immortality of naturally immortal (or very long lived) creatures they manage to imprison. Most commonly, those creatures are dragons.

Despite the rituals needed being the simplest of all the immortals, Chainers are by far the rarest.

This is because only an idiot thinks they can tie up a dragon and leach immortality from it without it, breaking out and eating you, one of its friends breaking it out and eating you, or one of its enemies breaking it out and eating you.