What is "The Lich"?

Lich is an open source scripting engine for text-based MUDs. It is not a complete front-end in and of itself: it operates much like a proxy server and communicates with the user through their chosen front-end (effectively giving the appearance of expanding the front-end's features with its own). It allows you to write and run scripts for a text-based MUD in the Ruby language.

Lich was originally created by Shaelun, who brought it up from an idea to version 3.57. Starting with version 3.58, Lich is maintained by Tillmen. Tillmen's versions focus more heavily on Simutronics games, specifically Gemstone IV.

What can Lich do for me?

The Lich program, absent of any scripts, doesn't appear to do much of anything (besides allow you to alias commands in the game). What Lich is doing behind the scenes allows you to use pretty powerful scripts, such as:

In addition to the powerful Ruby scripts, Lich can run most WizardFE/Stormfront scripts unaltered. This allows you to use the scripts you already have, but since Lich is running them, you can have any number of them going at once. However, learning a little Ruby goes a long way. Scripts that take a hundred lines in WizardFE/Stormfront can usually be rewritten as a dozen or so lines in Ruby, and work much better.

What operating systems does it work with?

Starting in version 3.58, Lich is written completely in Ruby. This means it should it should run on any platform that can run the Ruby interpreter. Lich is developed on Linux, but the majority of the user base uses Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8).