I've been deep thread-diving and I'm nostalgic for liches. My group's DM loved them, made a whole state of them (along with ghouls and other undead). Necropolitan mortals, too, studying to become liches using special gems (vampiric diamonds?) mined by the proletariat.
What I'm wondering is: Where the heck should a lich's phylactery be?
Order Of The Stick has Xykon hiding it (heh) away in an unthinkable (heh) corner of the astral plane. That seems like the obvious choice, even for a sorcerer-lich.
On the flipside, what makes for the best story?
My favorite was a story where the phylactery was embedded in the father of one of the PCs or something, for pathos. That might have been Penny Arcade and it didn't make much sense. I guess a ridiculously popular fantasy author who-should-not-be-named pulled something similar. But it's supposed to just be an object. Can finding a magic item make a good coda to defeating a lich, already a terribly powerful end-boss? I think it can, but it needs preparation.
In our campaign the society of liches just had a special vault for their phylacteries and we basically had no chance at true-deathing any of them. That mostly turned out fine, as we "ended" a high-ranking but spiteful lich general into greater and greater fury until he/it became a ragemancer.
I have no idea how he became a general in a geniocracy/technocracy like this. He was exceptionally stupid and impetuous. I think... I think he was just good at torturing and scaring people, honestly.
maybe a sorcerer
Edit: Haha 2013 but:
Don't you know? You never split the party!