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What is the term for a group of liches?

In fantasy fiction, a lich (/ˈlɪtʃ/; cognate to Dutch lijk, German Leiche, Norse lík and Swedish lik all meaning "corpse") is a type of undead creature. [Wikipedia]

A group of unicorns is a blessing. So what is a group of liches?

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    African or European liches?
    – DVK
    Apr 20, 2015 at 18:19
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    @DVK - Laden or unladen?
    – Richard
    Apr 20, 2015 at 18:19
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    The plural if lich is lichen.
    – John Lawler
    Apr 20, 2015 at 18:32
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    You can always invent your own. It's not like "a blessing of unicorns" is some ancient phrase; somebody just thought it sounded right and used it, and it got popular. Most of these obscure terms for groups of things are just jokes anyway.
    – herisson
    Apr 20, 2015 at 18:58
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    Sounds like the OP has 99 problems, but a lich ain't one.
    – MT_Head
    Apr 20, 2015 at 20:45

3 Answers 3

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Terms of venery are a linguistic amusement from the Late Middle Ages.

The Book of St. Albans, printed 1486, offered names for 165 different animal groups, including a gaggle of women, and a diligence of messengers, and influenced the Standard English Lexicon through Gervase Markham's The Gentleman's Academic in 1595.

Modern group names often reflect an essential quality of the creatures, for example:

  • a flight of butterflies
  • an intrusion of cockroaches
  • a bask of crocodiles
  • a gaggle of geese
  • a pride of lions
  • a sneak of weasels

Wikipedia.org

Naming groups of animals is fun, and naming sci-fi creatures should be just as fun:

What if a blessing of unicorns ran into a:

  • curse of liches
  • graveyard of liches
  • Hydra of liches
  • morgue of liches
  • stench of liches

Use your goriest imagination of a lych.

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    You could have included apocalypse. No wait, that's for zombies.
    – Mr Lister
    Apr 21, 2015 at 17:22
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I don't think there is an established collective noun for this fictional creature. Unicorns have somewhat an established collective noun because unicorn is a well-known legendary/fictional animal. Blessing can fall under terms of venery and these terms are more prevalent when we are more familiar with the animal and if they are used more frequently in literature.

Having said that, one can use their imagination to coin a collective noun for liches and it would be more suitable if fiction writers do it. You can also use different collective nouns depending on the context.

For example, One of the writers used scores:

The demon waddled into the main hall on its short legs. There were scores of liches.

Lord of the Isles, Volume 1 By David Drake

And one used chorus:

"The Weave... collapsing," answered the chorus of liches.

The Ghost King: Transitions, Book 3 By R.A. Salvatore

But in the end, you can always use group itself like some writers do.

I could also find some collective nouns used in fantasy role-playing game related texts.

From Tibia Wiki:

Woe and behold! A plague of Liches threatens Drefia's Deeper Vampire Crypts.

From Baldur's Gate Wiki:

Through armies of skeletons, legions of zombies, hordes of noncorporeal undead, and a gauntlet of liches they battled.

I could also find a gaming forum discussion where people are trying to find collective nouns for legendary/fantastic creatures and there are two suggestions for liches:

  • a pall of liches
  • a lynch of liches
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    I think "score" here is used in its literal sense, meaning "twenty" in the same way one might say, "dozens of soldiers." It's not a collective noun. Similarly, the "chorus" is probably imagery meant to describe how they are acting together, like an "army of street sweepers," not a collective noun. A pod of whales, a parliament of owls, or a murder of crows doesn't function like a pod of peas, the Parliament of England, or the murder of Jesse James.
    – jejorda2
    Apr 20, 2015 at 20:11
  • "Scores" means large numbers here.
    – ermanen
    Apr 20, 2015 at 23:48
  • @ermanen yes, multiples of twenty.
    – Mr Lister
    Apr 21, 2015 at 17:21
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Liches, by the nature of the person who usually succeed in becoming them, tend to be smart, cunning, ambitious and treacherous. So, the only time I could see a group of them working together it would really be a sort of "shake your hand while trying to stab you in the back" proposition for all involved. So, a cabal maybe?

Alternatively, since there is no specific term for a group of them that I know of, you could just use the term for a group of undead creatures, since they fit that decision, and there are a lot of different ones. The most fitting of those that I can think of would be a "scourge".

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  • Thanks ermanen. I would have done that myself, but I wrote this on a mobile device in a hurry
    – jokeSlayer94
    Apr 20, 2015 at 21:50