Levels of Undeath

I'm not sure if this topic has been discussed because the search option times out and I'm not a very patient person.

OK, the Lich is undead. “Killing” an undead creature is somewhat disturbing, it being dead in the first place. At the end of Prophecies the Lich is destroyed – it is a well known fact that undead can be destroyed and I am ready to believe that the Lich King has been, through the use of extreme violence, removed from the land of the living.

In Nightfall however we meet the Lich King in the Plain of Torment (which exist in the Mists where the souls of the dead li... exist). My first question is: how did he get there? To get to the Mists one must be either a) a ghost or b) ascended. I don't think that the undead that un-live in FoW were undead in the living world as well, I suspect they have been created/raised in FoW. That makes the Nightfall Lich a kind of a ghost of the Lich King, as his physical shell was annihilated at the end of Prophecies... does that make him an un-undead?

Right, when we kill him in Nightfall... what does he become? An ununundead? An undead to the power of 3? The deadest thing ever killed?

i think he becomes a pile of bones and his soul has finally left physical form and hes no roaming in heaven hell or w/e they have in guild wars when they die.

That's pretty deep...just think of it as the lich being sent to another realm once you kill him the first time in Prophecies, and not as actually being dead (again). It'll make your head hurt less

Just tossing this out for consideration, but in Prophecies we destroyed the Lich's physical manifestation, in Nightfall we destroyed his spiritual manifestation. Or maybe Abaddon had his phylactery and could bring him back whenever he wanted - until we killed Abaddon...

Actually i would just sort of deem him the same as he was in Prophecies. All those that get tainted by Abaddon end up in the RoT. The Lich had been tainted and therefore his spirit would of gone to the RoT. Seeing as Abaddon himself has been slowly gaining power over the years its plausable that Abaddon simply gave him a physical form again making him serve as a general.

When he dies again i would think he stays in the Realm Of Torment as a broken spirit (Abaddon being ocupied by the force of heros).

I'll take a quote from the first episode of Seinfeld:

"Let's just say you die and I shoot you. You're not gonna die, you're already dead. You can't over-die you can't over-dry."

Probably irrelevant but it was a great bit.

Anyway, when he 'dies' on the Bloodstone, his spirit is supposed to fuel the Door of Komalie. Maybe Abaddon grabbed his spirit afterwards to help him out.

Look at the destruction of Orr,I guess the powerful spell did not KILL Vizier, it just transfered him into a powerful creature, the Lich lord. After get killed by us, his spirit was sent to the Realm of Torment by the Envoy like Shiro. In there by using Abaddon's power and Varesh opened the Relam, he got his new body.

No, you're getting it wrong. It's as Free Runner said. After we destroyed the Lich in Prophecies, he was (like all souls who are tainted by Abbadon) sent to Realm of Torment.

And in Nightfall, we battle him again IN the Real of Torment, so that's not a big deal.

When his spirit went to power the Door of Komalie, it was most likely linked to the Foundry of Failed Creations(the area behind the door) which is right next door to Abaddon! He most likely just used his godly powers to bring him back so we could kill him again. Where they are now though... Maybe the next-to-the-last mission of GW:EN will involve every major boss from the last 3 games? :P

Personally i beleive the Lich in prophecies was the corpse of the Vizier reanimated, the Lich in Nightfall is the Soul of the Lich after his body is shattered (meaning he can no longer be in the physical Realm) Hence the Lich is gone for all time now since his soul has been destroyed the same as Shiro. From looking at the Margonites ive concluded that they too are Souls of the of original Margonites (there bodys were destroyed in the battle with the gods) the only reason the Lich/Shiro/Margonites/Titans returned to Physical form over the course of the events were due to the Power of Abaddon granting them physical bodys temporary or otherwise. Everything in the Realm of Torment is dead, making everything there souls or demons. (including the afore mentioned Lich)

*OMG ive having an idea*

That makes our characters Dead when they go to the RoT, the tentacles must have killed us. The reason we can return to the physical Realm after the fall of Abaddon is because Koromir used her new powers to restore our bodys to life, much like Abaddon did for all the undead etc. over the 3 campaigns so far. Because our bodies havnt been dead long they havnt decayed or such like, the reason Margonites have only little bits of armour and such on them is because thats all that left of there bodies. Thus explaining why the undead look like corpses etc. And the titans have a more unique way of gaining physical form by absorbing the environment around them since they havnt ever had a physical form. (that we know of)

A Celestial vision reminded me of Lord Odran visiting the realms of the gods resulting in my thinking of this:

True he did indeed go to the Gods realms but there is no mention of him going into the the Realm of Torment aka. aka the realm of tainted souls, aka the eternal prison etc. etc. However ignoring that, unlike Abaddons Minions he had used Souls in the physical realm to power/depower the Gateways, (kinda like the Lichs soul re-powered The Door of Komalie etc.) This is the only way to pass through the realms physically, since the Titans are unique in there method of forming bodies (possibly due to the Scepter of Orr) they could cross through the Door way while none other of Abaddons forces could.

The way I understand it is that when one physically "dies" and is not resurrected, they will pass to the mists. This includes the realm of torment. So they arent really dead, just not in our world anymore. However, it is possible to traverse into the mists without being dead. Therefore, the mists are not heaven or hell in a real world religious sense, but merely a place where one goes when the physical body is killed. Now, the ghosts sitting around in the realm of torment have obviously lost their physical bodies. However, the fact that our characters can enter the realm of torment indicates that a physical body occupied by a spirit can exist there. Therefore, it is possible for a spirit which has lost it's body in the physical world could be given a new body.

When the lich was killed by us in prophecies, he moved to the mists. Being tainted by Abaddon, he was sent to the realm of torment. The same thing happened to Shiro. Once there, Abaddon, in his growing power and his lessening control on the part of the forgotten, gave them new bodies, or a reincarnation of their original physical bodies. They have died in the same sense that any other being which travels to the mists has died, BUT they have been given a body. Therefore, killing them is the same process as before, just in a different setting. They are no more dead than before, just in a different area.

What happens after that is guesswork. I assume that a spirit destroyed in the mists will cease to exist. If not, perhaps they are just weakened. Perhaps we simply destroyed their physical body again and left them as wandering spirits.

The Vortex sends us to the Realm of Torment, it's like an Dimensional fissure, we're not dead.