Overview
The Ossuary-Sense Lich is the tall, bone-clad shape of the ossuary — the ribs showing through the pale hide, the hand a little too long for the body, and the whole of it reading as one line from crown to toe that is a promise, and the promise is the anchor, and the anchor is the word the ossuary keeps for it. It is the first of the Liches a stranger meets in The Bone Ossuary, and the one the ossuary keeps for the anchor no one else is true enough to hold. Where the other liches of the ossuary are the spell, the Ossuary-Sense lich is the standing behind the spell: the ossuary speaks to it, and it answers with the anchor.
Habitat
The Ossuary-Sense Lich keeps the old ground of The Bone Ossuary, an ossuary of pale bone where the anchor is the only honest promise. It needs three things: an ossuary old enough to hold the anchor, a soul-debt wide enough to feed the lord, and a stranger who is worth the spell. The ossuaries are settled around the bone-rings, with anchor-lines across the mapped current, and a lich who has not kept an anchor in a season is called "the one who forgot the ossuary," and the ossuary keeps that name for it, and the name is the ossuary's way of saying the anchor has forgotten that the soul is the word.
Appearance
The silhouette is the tall, bone-clad line — the ribs showing through the pale hide, the hand too long, the whole of it built to read as one held promise. Males stand 1.83 m, bone-clad, with the hand too long for the body; females stand 1.68 m, leaner, with the longer memory of the spell. The hide is a pale bone-cream over the ribs with sea-black at the throat and a phosphor-green light in the eye, the green being the anchor made light, and the depth of the green is the truth of the soul. The anchor-mark of the line is a fine bone-white line down the spine, and the white is the word the ossuary keeps.
Behaviour
The Ossuary-Sense Lich does not move first; it stands, and the standing is the anchor, and the anchor is the behaviour. It moves 6 m/s across the bone-chamber, deliberate and certain, and it does not hurry, because the anchor is the only thing in the ossuary that is worth the hurry, and the anchor is never in a hurry. It reads the ossuary before it moves in it: the shape of an anchor by the bone it stirs, the cold of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a soul that has been spoken and not kept, all of it arriving before the step is made, and the arrival is the anchor.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the spell, and the spell is the promise: the Ossuary-Sense lich remembers every spell, and the spell does not come back until the anchor is kept, and the Lord's Word is the last word of the ossuary. The second weapon is the hand, because the spell is not always the word, and the hand that is a little too long for the body is the word the spell is too patient for. The defense is the anchor, because the bone-clad hide takes a blow the way the pale bone takes the word, and the ribs are the one part of the body that has been hit the most, and the ribs are the part that has never given.
Magic Alignment
The Ossuary-Sense Lich stands in the service of Khorvane, the Endless Hunger, the god of the ripening as law, and its magic is the keeping of the anchor — the power to make the soul into a promise and the promise into an anchor. Ossuary-Sense is the primary gift: the bone reads the ossuary, every anchor in it, kept and known, and the knowing is the anchor, and the anchor is the point. The secondary gift is the Bone-Sight of the Liches, and in the Ossuary-Sense line the sight is the anchor made light, the phosphor-green of the eye, and the green is the one thing the dark of the ossuary has never taken.
Society
An Ossuary-Sense Lich stands in an ossuary of four to a dozen, and the ossuary is run by the one whose soul is truest, the ranking of the Cult-of-the-Vine, because the ossuary is the only ground in the world where the truth is the law. The hierarchy is by the depth of the anchor: the one whose anchor holds longest eats the soul-debt first, and the one whose soul is truest keeps the anchor-wall. The young liches share the anchor-line and share the standing, and the standing is the only school the ossuary has, and the school is the ossuary, and the ossuary does not grade, the ossuary only keeps.
Culture & Lore
The Ossuary-Sense Lich keeps its lore in the anchor, and the anchor keeps it better than the spell does, because the anchor is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone dies. The old liches say the first Ossuary-Sense lich was a promise that learned to stand, and the ossuary gave it a body because the ossuary had no other way to keep the anchor. They call the strangers who cross the anchor-line "the ones who were worth the spell," and they keep the best of the anchor-walls — the bone-white of the ones who were true enough to be an anchor — in the ossuary, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Bone Ossuary, an ossuary of pale bone, its chambers lit by the phosphorescence of the soul, its silence broken only by the anchor and the spell. The Ossuary-Sense Lich is the ossuary's first voice, and the ossuary is the lich's first anchor, and the two of them keep each other the way a promise keeps a soul. The soul-debt is fed to Khorvane, the Endless Hunger, the anchor-lines are kept true by the young, and the dead are kept where they fell, which is the one law the ossuary does not break.
Relations
The Ossuary-Sense Lich keeps a cold, true peace with the rest of the Liches of The Bone Ossuary, a peace of kept anchors that has held as long as the ossuary has been standing. To Khorvane, the Endless Hunger, the Ossuary-Sense line is the first ripening made bone, and the line keeps a single phosphor-green scale at the anchor-wall for the god, which is the one offering the hunger has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the ripening.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Ossuary-Sense Lich is the first pale test the ossuary offers, the anchor that asks which of them the soul will keep and which of them the soul will spend. It is the figure that keeps the anchor-line while the oaths are made on the ground, and the figure whose anchor is the map the war is kept by, because the bone has read every approach the warrens have taken, and the bone has kept them, and the bone is the one page in the world the war cannot break.