Dear Osvaud,

This is Osvaud. You can be sure it is me because I’m the only one who knows about our phylactery’s super-secret hiding place. Keep reading, and you’ll see I’m telling the absolute truth. For any sneaky protagonists taking a gander at my private thoughts, I’d say it is a bad idea to sneak a peek at an ancient lich’s diary. You never know when he might throw an explosive runes in the middle of a paragraph to teach you a valuable lesson about etiquette. Hah! Did I get you…? I suppose if that did work as planned, you aren’t reading this now because both you and this diary are on fire.

I’m going to take a moment to bask in the mental image.

And you can be quite sure I’m not going to write down where my phylactery is! Yeesh. What sort of idiot leaves a trail of clues to his only weakness? Not to mention one easy enough for any semi-literate numskull to follow.

That brings me to today’s topic—arrogance.

Here’s the big secret to not ending up un-undead… don’t actually get overconfident. Its fine to think we are awesome (especially since it is so darn true in our case), but never really let yourself get conceited. You probably don’t remember this, but we spent about a decade testing out a theory about “lucky shots” after we got beaned once too often. As it turns out, about 5% of the time, even the most incompetent doofus farmer in the land gets a hit past the thickest armor and stoutest spells. When you apply those odds to someone with actual skill, magic, and training, it means sooner or later, we get smacked upside the skull. On a long enough timeline, we’ll have a really unlucky day, and suddenly, whatever we were planning gets ruined.

The thing that gets most unholy abominations is after murdering a couple hundred paladins over an eon or two, we start thinking that it’ll always go our way. We’re immortal, command vast arcane power, and can turn great heroes into lawn ornaments with a touch. Maybe one day we neglect to cast all of our defensive spells, decide to mix it up in melee, or even make a stupid tactical decision because we think it’ll be more dramatic. I get it… stuff happens. You get caught up in the moment or bored and think, eh, why not. The key is not letting it become a bad habit that you start slipping down the slope into carelessness. Always have an exit strategy, never stick out a losing situation, and make sure you’ve got some minions around to absorb the punishment.

Also… magically bury your phylactery in a random unimportant location, deep beneath the earth, in an airless, ten-foot-cube room with permanent wards against scrying. Then forget where it is exactly. The only thing we ever need to do to find it is jump in a volcano or something.