I talked to the guy in Frosgard about liches. He gave me the first half of the instructions, but no quest appeared in my log, and he never asked who wanted to become a lich. Later I got the second half of the instructions and the quest showed up, so I went back to Frosgard but he still never asks who should become a lich.

Is this normal? Will someone else ask later on or is the quest broken?

So this is working as intended? That's a relief. I had a lot of trouble getting the game to run in the first place, and while looking for solutions I kept reading about promotion quests being very easily broken.

yeah I'm pretty sure its working fine, its been a while so I'm not 100% sure but I think it also asks you who you want to turn into a skeleton when you enter the actual pod. the promotion quests fucking up is annoying but you can fix em in a few seconds using cheat engine so it doesn't completely fuck the game.

Finally slogged through the Lich Lab and it did indeed work. Drinking the elixir seems to substitute for the usual dialog choice in this quest.