I've heard that a few times on these forums and I want to know is that true, or is it just more propaganda against the dark arts?

I ask because I don't remember hearing anything in-game about it, though as big as these games are I could have easily overlooked it. Thanks in advance for any info u guys/girls can give.

Not that I am aware of, as the process of lichdom is pretty much enchanting yourself into your own dead and decayed body, so that way you don't die of old age.

As far as I know, the only "corruption" is that it changes your soul from "black" to "white" since it is no longer under Arkay's protection.

Edit: As I recall, some self-made undead, such as Barilzar and Aesliip, were in fact quite well-intentioned.

I think the state of the Lich after raising from the dead is entirely based on the skill and compentency of the necromancer. In a few books and quests regarding this, most necromancers never achieve it or fail horribly during their attempt and die because much like creating life Frankenstien style is a huge secret. From what I have gathered the difference between normal undead and a lich, is that the lich retains it's concious awareness, where normal undead skeletons and zombies are just mindless creatures consumed by some basic and primal emotion like rage unless they are controlled by a skilled necromancer. In most fantasy games including Elder Scrolls the act of turning yourself into a lich requires you to temporarly or sometimes permenantly store your concious mind and power into a phylactry, which usually works like a special soul gem in the sense that a soul gem is a prison for a soul but a phylactry allows the soul inside to still interact with the world. Such a device would be incredibly difficult to create not to mention you do not get to test it, so you either pass or fail with your life on the line.

In Oblivion there was a necromancer who was using a special hourglass device to slowly seperate his mind and power from his body, and the simple act of removing the item from him would kill him as he was split between the two.
In Skyrim there is a Lich who used a stone basin and his own blood in an attempt, not to mention there is plenty of little quests and stories through out elder scrolls of necromancer's who have failed attempting it and become nothing more then a
mindless skeletal mage afterall, the concious mind is all that seperates a skeletal mage and a Lich. A large portion of the Oblivion Mage's guild revolves around this very study, as well as a few side quests.

In some of those quests it is suggested that much like medical sceince requires a great deal of hand's on work with dead to understand how things work, so does necromancy, and it is suggested that the very act of commiting yourself to a long
and obsessive life of studying the dead can lead someone to become, troubled mentally or in some cases completely insane. Which could be argued that could happen for many reasons, the very slightly error in the transferance process could of
resulted in the necromancer losing vital parts of their concious mind, rendering them insane, or the years of dealing with the dead while hiding in a cave or crypt out of fear would lead to a pyschosis, or the regret at having lost things they did not think they
would miss like, feel of skin, taste of food, wind in your hair could lead someone to become violently aggressive towards the living because they would see them as a reminder for everything they can no longer have that generally makes a person happy.

There is pleny of Lich's in Elder Scrolls who have proven that the transformation is entirely possible to achieve without going entirely insane. Mannimarco was apparently a power mad wizard before, and Lichdom was just a means to an end to ensure he would
have many thousand's of years to obtain more power, where as some Lich's have done it out of fear of death such as the necromancer in Oblivion who used a special hourglass. So no matter what the drive the risks involved according to every account I have come across is basicly like rolling the dice with a 1 in 1,000 chance of getting it right, and more study and preperation will help lower those odds, but there is no garuntee and that is part of secret of eternal life.

Also I would like to add about black and white souls. I have seen quite a few oddities in the creatures of Elder Scrolls regadring soul color, for instance the Falmer were once like any other elven race, yet they have white souls like an animal.
Giants are sentient beings with many resembalances to elves but they too are white souls, so what makes the 'people' races have black souls?

I'd think that it's mostly related to gameplay. Dremora also have "black souls" which is simply because of gameplay reasons. Falmer, were definitely once protected by Arkay and I'd say they still are... Giants I don't know, but in game you can capture them simply because they are creatures instead of npc's and creatures are unfortunately always white souls.

But as we seen since the release of Arena, game play does affect lore.
There is like 20 sub-species of khajjit and argonians in the Lore, because of code restrictions when making the elder scrolls game.
What started out as wood elves with ears and tails, turned into furry cat people with elongaged legs, turned into cat people with normal legs so they could wear boots, later became the lore
of the moon's power to dictate what form a Khajiit child would take. So saying anything is 'just' gameplay isn't very reliable as the fact Falmer have white souls that range from lesser to grand defently means something.

Perhaps it means White souls are the good ones and black ones are tainted. As in we are all tainted by the Arena and power struggle of the aeda and deadra. Black Souls are worth something, and obtaining them is like earning
points, where white souls belong to creatures that are either not worthy or incapable of being corrupted by the powers of Oblivion such as Giants. They have no need for the tempations of Clavicus Vile or care about the spirituality
of some of the Aedra, they just exist in a peaceful lifestyle, perhaps its the same with Lich's, their souls become white because they have removed themselves from the playing field, they do not die like normal people so the god's have
no interest in collecting them. Maybe only white souls go to Aetherius when they die and the tainted black souls are stuck in the game of power with Oblivion and all its power mad players.

Okay, gameplay can and sometimes does affect Lore, I just don't think it does in this sitation. During Morrowind and earlier Dremora had white souls. Then in Oblivion their souls where black all of a sudden, this wasn't because they changed but because the things became NPC's to make animations easier or something like that.

I don't know how they are in Oblivion but I'd imagine they are still black. Vivec and Almalexia in Morrowind where white souls, whereas they are definitely alive and elf.

If it is about the value of the soul towards certain groups, then I'd say their souls would definitely have been black, every Daedra would have called them a grand prize to have.

I think the Dremora one was definitely a simple error but the Falmer and (maybe) giants seems that it was a design choice, the falmer have fallen so far that their very souls have become as twisted and horrific as their appearance and so arkays protection no longer applies to them and giants possibly either are not as sentient as other races (i'm really not sure i wish they'd of expanded on the lore of giants more then they have done ><) or that they don't factor into arkays sphere of influence. I guess in those circumstances it depends on the nature of what arkays protection involves, i think someone suggested that you don't need to worship arkay to gain his protection, that he simply gives without asking for something in return (love) so only doing something truly abhorrent or such a radical change to your very nature would disqualify you from it. In the Falmers case it was their degeneracy into sub mer form.

Arkay does indeed protect whether you want it or not, the Falmer might be removed. But I just think it's hard to say, it could just as easily be a gameplay thing. For as far as I know there is no real evidence of any other race losing their black souls in favor of white one's over time. Of course the Falmer are rather unique in what they are, but they still have culture leadership they still build things use tools, even sometimes interact with the world. Sure in Skyrim all they do is attack you, but they are clearly capable of more.

So in my mind Falmer are nothing less then any bandit out there.

Yeah. Skyrim seems to have fixed a lot of the odd mechanics surrounding the NPC/creature dichotomy that plagued earlier games. It seems everything is an NPC race now -- the race list you can get and change yourself into through the in-game console contains all standard races, and all creatures as well (including dragons and mudcrabs). Vampire NPCs are properly handled as undead now (in previous games, NPCs couldn't be marked as undead), you can talk to creatures (that are set up for it; you could only enter conversations with NPCs in previous games), etc.

I'd say it's a good idea to take Skyrim's mechanics as a more proper implementation of how things like this are supposed to work, over previous games.

It depends though, what exactly qualifies a being for Arkays protection, tool making probably wouldn't be it. My theory is that the complexity, richness and depth of soul and spirit eventually crystallises it into a black soul (for instance, chimpanzee's wouldn't be protected even though they can use tools) this would explain why all races in game have black souls and why giants don't (theres simply not much to them) and that the reason Falmer are no longer protected is simply the fact that their souls have become so empty, so devoid of anything except the need for basic necessity that their souls have "shrunk/withered" into white souls, this is just my understanding of what little evidence has been presented so far.

It is implied black souls are larger but i don't think this is literal (though souls can have more power, i dont think that was the meaning implied in this context) i view white souls as akin to a balloons skin, it can be large (filled with power/air) but its still very basic, very flimsy. A black soul is more like a solid object its richer more full of culture, intelligence, something.