---

The sun had long since set, leaving this land ripe for conquest by the darkness and storms. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, foreshadowing the events soon coming, as if the nature itself was aware of the mighty battle that would ensue within minutes in these lands. Elia's long, golden hair fluttered in the wind, the night chill making him shiver all over, but he pressed on.

He was a young human being, over six feet tall and extraoridinarily handsome, with perfect face, shining blue eyes, well-cared goatee, and golden hair magnificent enough to deserve a second mention. He wore the fancy clothing of a nobleman, dark red coat and pants, with much frills and assorted decorations all over, quite unfitting for the long travel in the wilderness, and for some reason quite clear and in very good condition, despite the journey. His boots were made of leather, likewise fashionable and far more suitable to city life than these wastelands.

And there was the tower. It stood in the landscape like a black bony finger, hundreds of feet tall, pointing at the black sky. In the flash of lightning, he saw the lone figure in its doorway: the lich had come out to face his challenge, its pervading aura of evil radiating at Elia and making him shiver. He didn't particularly care about the horrifying evil of the undead being, not seeking to destroy him for what he was: instead, he knew that the lich held vast knowledge and treasure, of particular subjects of his interest, and they would be his.

Abraxus surveyed his opponent with much fascination. It was clear to him that this mortal was mighty indeed - even powerful enough to defeat him, perhaps. It had been decades since he had felt like this, decades since his last true challenge. Being a lich was boring, he had found long time ago: they never told him how boring it would be. These encounters were his only amusement these days, and perhaps one small part of him was also waiting for the inevitable defeat at the hands of some mighty adventurer.

He was not wearing robes, nor mighty magical jewelry, as most others of his kind would have. No staff was he armed with, no wands of awesome power or black blades dripping with unholy energies. He was wearing a dirty, ragged outfit, consisting of a jacket, pants, and boots, all made of leather and all black as night. A dark red headband, old and dusty, circled around his skull. In one of his hands he carried an old, strange device, unknown to the uncivilized kingdoms of today, the means of its manufacture long since lost, and crackling with powerful magics that manifested themselves as an aura of purple.

His other hand had rested in his pocket, until it came out, carrying a pair of sunglasses, which the lich placed upon its empty eye sockets. He spread his feet into the battle stance, firmly gripped his guitar with two hands, produced a pick from somewhere, and began to play.

>>7553067
This is going places.

The very first note struck like lightning, sending a minor but fierce electrical current through Elia, nearly throwing him off-balance. The music began relatively calm, and the winds likewise calmed down briefly, only to quickly pick up speed, throwing the weather back into the state of near-storm as well. Lightning flashed and struck the ground in an increased frequency, but any sound of thunder was utterly covered under the loud, fast-paced noise that the lich was doing. It was beautiful, in its way: fantastic, wonderful music, quite different from anything Elia had ever heard before, and also quite a bit louder. Despite the unholy energies that pervaded the very core and being of the lich, the stuff it played was utterly devoid of anything profane: it was magical and pure, almost holy.

After less than a minute of playing, the undead bard began to sing. It was not the kind of voice one had learned to expect from one of his kind, not a croaking whisper uttered with great difficulty: no, it was a powerful, booming sound, one that echoed across the wastelands with tenfold power compared to the thunder around it. He sang of his conquests while he was still alive, how he had ruled entire kingdoms with his power, how his presence and his music had left people trembling in the ancient times. He sang of how he had defeated the aspect of a dwarven god of rock, how he had annihilated continents with an army of enthralled dragons, how he could shatter mountains and drive ocean to retreat, how he had conquered death itself. And he sang of his opponent, of the inevitable destruction of this mortal, how he would be less of a threat to him than a bug to a giant.

The ground kept shaking for a long time after he had stopped, and it took a while for the wind to quiet down. Elia had been brought to his knees, breathing hard, panting and sweating, in front of the laughing lich. Getting up after the attack took an intense effort from him, his whole body aching and chilling, but his opponent generously waited for him to rise, observing him the whole time. Now back up and balanced, the young man raised his own weapon, an old, darkwood violin, and his counterattack began.

It was indeed powerful, but in a very different way than what his opponent had played. Whereas Abraxus had done music that could shake the ground and conjure massive storms, Elia's playing calmed the world down once more, slowly driving away the storm clouds and exposing the light of moon and stars to bathe the ground and the musical duelists. His bow, and the hand guiding it, became like blur as he increased the speed and pace: 'twas a fast and happy tune that seemed to banish the darkness and death from this entire valley. The illumination cast by the moon was further enhanced, empowered beyond its mundane limits, casting no shadows to the barren, flat world, only shining its light as bright as the sun, but much gentler and sweeter.

He did not sing: his music spoke for itself. The message was more unclear and abstract, depending upon its receiver to make up what it meant. And Abraxus did not hear words of conquest or death in there: the music carried him words of life, and living, and joy, the words of beauty and bliss instead of death and torment. The words reached him as well, and touched him in a way he had not felt for a long, long time indeed. He had dropped his instrument and fallen down without noticing it himself... and despite the discomfort, he almost laughed. Here was a challenge worthy of him, one the like of whom he had not met for centuries. He was having so much fun!

He picked up his guitar from the ground once more, and stood up. Elia likewise stood at the ready, having stopped his playing to wait for his opponent: once the other was ready and began playing once more, so did he. The warm-up was over now: it was time for the true battle.

And so the fiddle and the guitar made their duel. Living against dead. Bow against pick. Two warriors met at the fields of glory, two musicians played until destruction, and only one would ever survive. Like the two blades of mighty swordsmen would quickly become blur in the battle until they were completely indistinguishable from each other, the wonderful performance of the two instruments mixed up and became one. Neither tried to overshadow the other: instead, they completed each other, worked together in perfect harmony to create fantastic music worthy of gods.

Indeed, to a casual observer, it did not look like a duel at all. Often, one player would willingly step down, silencing and toning himself to the background, allowing the other to take the lead: the loud and magnificent music played by the lich would all so suddenly decelerate, until it was but barely distinguishable - yet still essential - and merely accompanying the violinist in his epic solo, only to just as suddenly switch places, as the guitar would pick up again and the fiddle tone down in its turn.

Once, even, both instruments stopped entirely, and there was only silence for many moments, occasionally broken by dramatic and very appropriate thunder. And then, for the first time that night, the living bard broke the silence of his mouth and sang: his was a tenor, somewhat more high-pitched than his opponent, but no less powerful, and it sang of glory, of victory and wealth, silently at first but quickly picking up. The dead bard joined in, himself about death and pain, but also about challenges to overcome and living in the moment. And the bow found itself on the strings again, slowly adding more to the performance, with the pick not coming far behind. Both began silent, but they did not slowly work themselves back to the loudest setting: instead, they went there immediately, at one moment serene and calm, at the next boisterous, louder than hell.

And as both instruments and both singers quickly approached crescendo, so did the nature itself join in. It had not been silent at all during their battle, of course, the thunder and lightning contributing for its own part, but until now it had refrained from shaking the earth and loudly cracking the ground with great fissures, spilling forth clouds of toxic fumes with great power and might, the red-hot magma glowing from the depths and shining on the battleground in bright red. Wind billowed the hair of the bard, and the jacket of the lich, guiding the mighty black storm clouds across the fields, and allowing the moon to bask the earth with silver gleam, here and there, quickly changing place, teaming up together with the now very frequent flashes of lightning, and the hot red from the deep, to conjure a mighty lightshow upon the land and the sky.

...And it was over. Almost too quick to fathom. There was no quick fading out in their music: both the playing and the singing had ended abruptly, at their greatest apex, and aside from an occasional thunder, the wastes were silent once more. Elia was facing the ground, as if bowing to an invisible audience, as if listening for the applauds of hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of phantoms and ghosts. Abraxus, for his part, was standing in full, holding his guitar with one hand, while the other was raised high up to the sky, his index and little fingers fully extended, his head likewise thrown back to face the high heavens...

And then, agonizingly slowly, his knees bent, and he fell to the ground with nary a sound, without otherwise breaking his stance in the slightest. There was a loud, blissful sigh, and the lich's jaw dropped, his fleshless mouth opening full, and he breathed out, for the first time in centuries, and for the last time in his life. The breath was coloured in silver, and glimmered as if stars, lingering in the air for a long while, before falling back to the ground next to the undead bard. And he allowed himself collapse in full, and was gone.

Elia approached his body leisurely, without hurry: by the time he had reached it, it was fully gone, only dust remaining of the might of Abraxus. Only dust, his guitar, and his fiddle. It was the last one the bard now picked up, looking into it, almost sadly, and said he:

CONTINUE GODDAMNIT!

"I do not understand: For thy final resting place,
why pick the pick?
Why not the guitar, thy most precious tool?
Why, 'tis the most perfect instrument I have ever set my eyes upon!
So why, lich? Why not inhabit it?"

The wind howled as a response, like a pack of wolves, or a horde of restless dead. The thunder had ceased, the ground shook no more, it was but the bard, his thoughts, and the howling wind. And then, the whisper came, barely audible to his ears... from the pick:

>>7553913
>This is the PICK....OF DESTINY!

I AM HITTING F5 BUT IT IS DOING NOTHING

"Indeed, young bard, 'tis a magnificent piece!
Yet my soul can not settle upon it,
I could not put my spells in it,
I could not make it my phylactery.
The reasons are twofold:

"One, the lich is an unholy being, and so am I.
Yet the guitar is a holy, sacred artifact,
One of the most blessed upon this earth!
Once I became this thing of horrors, I could barely wield it,
let alone inhabit it.

"Two, even this life is not eternal.
One day one like you would have defeated me,
and were I living in that guitar at that time,
its destruction would have been guaranteed.
Thou, as a fellow musician, must understand:
Oh, the sin and shame that would have been!"

He did understand, and he nodded. And with that, the pick that held the being's soul cracked, and shattered... a loud, long sigh followed, and the undead horror was finally gone from this world, for good.

The lich's undead servants, and all trace of his pervasive presence, had left from his tower. Elia spent the remainder of the night there, slumbering peacefully: in the morning he left, returning with a massive cart and servants and henchmen, loading them full with treasure, most of them the notes Abraxus had scribbled during his days of loneliness.

And so the story of Abraxus the lich bard ended, but a new story spawned from it, its protagonist leaving the tower for the last time, his new guitar on his shoulder, the sunglasses looted from the dead being covering his eyes from the light of the sun.

Fin.

Good job.

Jolly good show

So what were they playing, anyway?

>>7554252

They PLAAAAAYED THE BEST SOOOOONG IN THE WORLD

>>7554252
You know what? I don't even want to know. Because the truth couldn't possibly be as awesome as how I imagine it.

Archive for great awesome?

>>7554597
Feel free.

Gloriously, OP.

Fantastic. Bumpan for justice.

HEY OP!
YEAH, YOU!
LISTEN TO ME.

SEND THIS STORY TO EVERY GOD DAMN MOVIE STUDIO YOU CAN FIND AND EVERY RESPECTABLE MOVIE DIRECTOR YOU KNOW AND DO IT NOW.

This was great


I now see the awesomeness in bards.

Drawfags?

Where art thou when thou art the most needed!

that looks like it was fun to write OP, times like this make me wish i had persued what glimmer i had at this.
if only we could have heard it instead of having to imagine it!

So how will I stat a lich bard?

>>7555257
overpowered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n0vmCqv5yo

>>7554949
I'm on it. Will post when finished.

>>7556342
Dude, awesome.

>>7556342
Preparing for win here.

>>7556342
Oh man can't wait.

Awesome drawfaggotry for awesome writefaggotry.

I'm afraid patience will be a necessary virtue, Dear anons; I'm not the fastest drawfag, and it's getting a bit late here in Europe; I don't foresee this being finished before this time tomorrow.
WIP pic related; anyone who wants to work on it as I sleep is welcome to.

I'd imagine the violinist playing Vivaldi Four seasons spring, summer, fall and winter in sequence.

>>7557096
Now I'm imagining it too.

>>7556342
>>7556833
That's pretty neat.

Another concept for a Bardic Lich:

Instead of combatting his foes, the lich and his cronies have rap battles with the protagonists.

>>7558302
Depends on the individual lich. Some like to rap, others would rather form a rock band to plague the forces of good, some would threaten the balance of the world with a blue group, etc.

>>7558302

The Eternal Rap Battle of the Wicked Mind

>>7556833
Take your time, man. Good + Free means that Quick is not expected.

This was pretty great, I say. Pip pip old chap.

>>7558302

Been done, check sup/tg/

>>7559404
It's a good concept and can be done again.

OP is a winrar. Greatly written MOAR

Fucking awesome and badass. Sunglasses and all.

>>7558302
Like this?

>>7560341
Damn, I wish this story got similar awesome shit.

So how do you archive, again?

>>7560348

SUMMON THE DRAWFAGS

>>7560400
Well there is one, but it's not done until like tomorrow or something.

>>7560341

Is that a lich lil john? Intriguing.

two pictures sprang to mind at the lichly description

this

>>7560783
...and this

>>7560783
Wow, this actually looks pretty damn accurate. Eerie.

>>7561213
ya know, thats what I thought

I got no source though

>>7560788

sauce

>Elia was facing the ground, as if bowing to an invisible audience, as if listening for the applauds of hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of phantoms and ghosts. Abraxus, for his part, was standing in full, holding his guitar with one hand, while the other was raised high up to the sky, his index and little fingers fully extended, his head likewise thrown back to face the high heavens...

>a new story spawned from it, its protagonist leaving the tower for the last time, his new guitar on his shoulder, the sunglasses looted from the dead being covering his eyes from the light of the sun.

these two have to be drawn before this thread 404's.

>>7561582
Dude, that's pretty cool.

>>7560783
That's pretty sweet, I thought of this little memento from /co/.

>>7561655
If you think so, then it was worth it.

>>7561582
>>7561713
yeah man it's great, good job.

Well I'm going to bed. Kindly keep the thread alive till I wake up. Would be cool.

Bump for awesome. Vote it up on the archives, gents!

>>7561582
Drawfag, you're a king amongst men. Hats off to you, sir.

>>7561582
Fiddles use the left hand on the bridge and the right hand to bow

>>7552975
I feel like I have been blessed by your work, OP.

Thank you.

Never an epic bard story that features a trombone, or a tuba, or a bass clarinet

;_;

>>7562160

>>7562176
but now the guitar is crazy

>>7562213
Lich plays left handed. He's just THAT evil.

>>7562213
I was trying to be diplomatic here, but you just have to insult us left handed people no matter what? Shame on you.

>>7562296
There are left handed guitars

There's no such thing as a left handed fiddle, bar custom crazy jobs. It just isn't done.

>>7562315
one of my cousins in law plays one

>>7562315
Bass guitars, too.