PDA

View Full Version : Where do little beholders come from?



Scalenex
2018-05-16, 09:59 PM
So I'm working on developing backstory, culture and whatnot for various Monster Manual entries. Not all of them, but the ones I think are more interesting.

Whether they have a natural lifespan of a few decades or they are effectively immortal until an adventurer blinds them, they have to create new Beholders some how. In order to figure out how their society and norms are constructed, it would help to know how they replenish their numbers.

Their reproduction could be very similar to the reproduction of the half-blind (that's what they derogatorily call humanoids like us).

They are often show as loners, so that would suggest their young have to fend for themselves. On the other hand they are usually lawful, and I think lawful monsters would probably care for their young, at least physically. Generally speaking their reproductive strategy should follow biology. If they have lots of young, they probably wouldn't provide their young much aid. If they reproduce slowly they would probably invest a lot of care in young. That applies to almost every living thing that has to deal with any Darwinism. Similarly if Beholders mature slowly they would need a fair bit of care, but if they are practically adults within a few weeks of being born they wouldn't need much care.

They are aberrations and thus they could have a very weird method of reproduction, but lets start with the basics.

If they sexually reproduce, how do beholders go from a being a twinkle in their father's eyes to being a bouncing eyeball in their own right? Would they lay eyeball-like eggs or give live birth. Would beholders have biological males and females? Since an orb covered in eyes doesn't leave a lot of room for secondary sex characteristics, do they have enough sexual dimorphism to let a non-beholder tell who is who? This may or may not have accompanying gender roles.

They are aberrations so they could still hax sexual reproduction without males and female. They could be hermaphrodites. Any of them could either could give birth or lay eggs after receiving genetic material from another somehow after they make eyes with each other.


As aberrations they could asexually reproduce. They could just periodically give birth to a Beholder or lay some eggs. They could shed their smaller eyes which sometimes bud into a new Beholder like a plant growing from a cutting. Maybe after death their eyes grow into little Beholders. This would fit with the mythos I came up. The Beholders believe their ancestors sprang from the eye sockets of a dead god or dead demigods but few others believe this narcissistic origin story figuring they were originally created by a god or very powerful mortal transmuter who wanted to create a race that was good at standing guard over things. I figure their early history would have them playing guard dogs to more powerful beings and then forming their own society as soon as they could break away.


Two side questions tangentially related. What do Beholders eat? What do they do with the treasure they collect?

Anyway I'm open to any and all suggestions how to have the birds and bees work for Beholders. I won't give the stink eye to any eye popping out of the box ideas. You guys are out of sight. I'll keep an eye out for responses. Okay that's enough eye puns.

Quertus
2018-05-16, 10:00 PM
I believe that there's an actual answer, and, off the top of my head, I'll guess that they bud.

LordEntrails
2018-05-16, 10:05 PM
In 5E this is covered in XGtE. If I remember correctly (not worth looking up, sorry), they are spontaneously formed from the insane mind of an existing one.

RazorChain
2018-05-16, 10:22 PM
It's the eyestalks.....you cut off one and it will grow to become a beholder.

JNAProductions
2018-05-16, 10:25 PM
In 5E this is covered in XGtE. If I remember correctly (not worth looking up, sorry), they are spontaneously formed from the insane mind of an existing one.

Volo's, actually.

But yeah, Beholders dream new ones into existence, and then they USUALLY fight to the death.

JoeJ
2018-05-16, 10:34 PM
Volo's, actually.

But yeah, Beholders dream new ones into existence, and then they USUALLY fight to the death.

When a mommy beholder or a daddy beholder loves itself very very much...

Mystral
2018-05-16, 11:45 PM
I believe that there's an actual answer, and, off the top of my head, I'll guess that they bud.

According to lords of madness, every beholder has an egg sack beneath its toungue. Once during their lifetime, those eggs start to develop into up to a dozen small beholders which are then vomited up by the beholder. The beholder kills all young beholder spawn except for those that look close to himself and kicks those out of its lair to fend for themselves.

Mystral
2018-05-17, 12:01 AM
Two side questions tangentially related. What do Beholders eat? What do they do with the treasure they collect?

Beholders can eat about anything that is organic, but since eating is one of the only acts they actually enjoy, they will go to great lengths to aqcuire exotic drinks and foodstuffs to gorge themselves on. Killed foes are a favorite, too. That said, beholders can't actually taste a lot. They judge the quality of food by its textures and its visual appeal.

Beholders are very visual creatures, so the treasure they collect, they mostly just enjoy looking at. They might reaarange it, light it with different colors or observe the movements. They might also use any magical treasures in their own endeavours. The most dangerous beholders are sane enough to actually use the treasures they acquire for their own machinations, perhaps trading with other races like drow or duergar or using them to fund their own cult.

BWR
2018-05-17, 12:37 AM
Track down a copy of "I, tyrant". It's a supplement that details most stuff you could want to know about beholders, including life-cycle, variants, psychology, culture, origin hypotheses, etc.

Bad Wolf
2018-05-17, 03:26 AM
Fun fact: beholders have brains split into two parts, the rational side and the more emotional side, with ideas going through the emotional side first. So if a beholder is ever introduced to a concept that offends it, even if its absolutely perfect, it'll always reject it.

SimonMoon6
2018-05-17, 07:09 AM
Fun fact: beholders have brains split into two parts, the rational side and the more emotional side, with ideas going through the emotional side first. So if a beholder is ever introduced to a concept that offends it, even if its absolutely perfect, it'll always reject it.

Sounds like human beings to me.

Millstone85
2018-05-17, 08:11 AM
Here is a weird life cycle that I made up:
https://i.imgur.com/YUkQ41rl.png (https://i.imgur.com/YUkQ41r.png)
----- gibbering mouther -- gibbering abomination -- gibbering orb -------------- beholder------------

As a gibbering mouther consumes ever more victims, adding their eyes, teeth, liquified flesh, and crazed minds, to its mass, it eventually develops into a more cohesive form called a gibbering abomination, which possesses tentacles, limited levitation, and a single eye ray. This process continues until the gibbering abomination has become a gibbering orb with full levitation and multiple magic-firing eyestalks. Then, slowly, the creature acquires an unified sense of self, which is signified by the gathering of its teeth inside a single large mouth, the merging of all but ten of its eyes into a single big one, and the formation of a skin which may have scales or feathers or a shell or anything. The creature loses its maddening gibbers but gains the ability to produce an antimagic cone. The newly formed beholder believes it has achieved the optimal shape, and can never be convinced otherwise.

Reproduction can happen at any point during the cycle, and is best described as the vomiting of a gibbering mouther. When it is thus produced from a beholder, a gibbering mouther's starting eyes and teeth are from the beholder's most recent meal. The extent of a beholder's care for its youngs is to incorporate them into the traps of its lair. The beholder will sometimes try to direct their development toward a form identical to its own, though the result is always met with disappointment. More often, the beholder will instead impede their development in order to produce lesser beholderkin it can dominate.

In rare cases, a gibbering orb keeps growing in size and intelligence without ever accomplishing its transformation into a beholder. Such gibbering orbs are often considered great old ones in their own right, and some scholars regard "true beholders" as mere "orb-kin". Said scholars then tend to mysteriously disappear.

Mystral
2018-05-17, 08:13 AM
Sounds like human beings to me.

In sane beholders, the two minds cooperate just like in human beings. Beholders of that kind are rare, but this is the category where you get the secret guild masters, the cult leaders and (more rare than anything else) the few non-evil beholders.

In most beholders, the logical mind and the emotional mind are in a constant state of warfare, with the emotional mind withholding information and the logical mind abusing the emotional mind.

Beleriphon
2018-05-17, 08:52 AM
In 5E this is covered in XGtE. If I remember correctly (not worth looking up, sorry), they are spontaneously formed from the insane mind of an existing one.

Very, very short version. Beholder don't have to sleep but they can. They of course has insane dream, and sometimes those insane dreams come to life. Usually the original beholder wakes up and kills the dream creature, but sometimes it doesn't and the dream escapes or kills the original.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-05-17, 09:34 AM
Here is a weird life cycle that I made up:
https://i.imgur.com/YUkQ41rl.png (https://i.imgur.com/YUkQ41r.png)
----- gibbering mouther -- gibbering abomination -- gibbering orb -------------- beholder------------

As a gibbering mouther consumes ever more victims, adding their eyes, teeth, liquified flesh, and crazed minds, to its mass, it eventually develops into a more cohesive form called a gibbering abomination, which possesses tentacles, limited levitation, and a single eye ray. This process continues until the gibbering abomination has become a gibbering orb with full levitation and multiple magic-firing eyestalks. Then, slowly, the creature acquires an unified sense of self, which is signified by the gathering of its teeth inside a single large mouth, the merging of all but ten of its eyes into a single big one, and the formation of a skin which may have scales or feathers or a shell or anything. The creature loses its maddening gibbers but gains the ability to produce an antimagic cone. The newly formed beholder believes it has achieved the optimal shape, and can never be convinced otherwise.

Reproduction can happen at any point during the cycle, and is best described as the vomiting of a gibbering mouther. When it is thus produced from a beholder, a gibbering mouther's starting eyes and teeth are from the beholder's most recent meal. The extent of a beholder's care for its youngs is to incorporate them into the traps of its lair. The beholder will sometimes try to direct their development toward a form identical to its own, though the result is always met with disappointment. More often, the beholder will instead impede their development in order to produce lesser beholderkin it can dominate.

In rare cases, a gibbering orb keeps growing in size and intelligence without ever accomplishing its transformation into a beholder. Such gibbering orbs are often considered great old ones in their own right, and some scholars regard "true beholders" as mere "orb-kin". Said scholars then tend to mysteriously disappear.

Mind blown!!! :smalleek:


Anyway I think they come form the far realms, the dimension ti self creates more and they just travel here.

Max_Killjoy
2018-05-17, 09:40 AM
Stories vary... sometimes it's a stork with lots of eyes, sometimes it's from under potato plants* instead of cabbages...

And of course there's the classic "when two beholders feel something (that can't really be called love) for each other..."


( * not sure how many people in this day and age will get that joke)

Deophaun
2018-05-17, 10:01 AM
sometimes it's a stork with lots of eyes
Not a stork. A cloaker.

Segev
2018-05-17, 10:03 AM
( * not sure how many people in this day and age will get that joke)

Mutated potatoes having their many eyes sprout stalks is an interesting folklore explanation for them!



So, here's a thought: Beholders have two minds. Are they intrinsically linked, or do mind-affecting powers hit only one at a time? If you Mind Switch with a Beholder, are you switching only with one of the two minds, or with both? If you Charm or Dominate a Beholder...?

Mia
2018-05-17, 10:11 AM
Beholders can eat about anything that is organic, but since eating is one of the only acts they actually enjoy, they will go to great lengths to aqcuire exotic drinks and foodstuffs to gorge themselves on. Killed foes are a favorite, too. That said, beholders can't actually taste a lot. They judge the quality of food by its textures and its visual appeal.

Beholders are very visual creatures, so the treasure they collect, they mostly just enjoy looking at. They might reaarange it, light it with different colors or observe the movements. They might also use any magical treasures in their own endeavours. The most dangerous beholders are sane enough to actually use the treasures they acquire for their own machinations, perhaps trading with other races like drow or duergar or using them to fund their own cult.


I could see Beholders being art collectors.

Mystral
2018-05-17, 01:50 PM
I could see Beholders being art collectors.

As far as I can gather from lords of madness, they have a sort of visual appetite. Exciting sights stimulate their brain and charge their magical abilities. Garish colors, the spray of blood in a staged fight of slaves, an illusionist casting spells, it all works. Of course, as with every stimulus, such things grow dull after a while and the beholder is required to gather new things to gaze at.

LordEntrails
2018-05-17, 07:36 PM
JNA, thanks for correcting me.

OP, if you want the official 5E versions, then get Volo's. Otherwise pick a mythos that you like :)

Glorthindel
2018-05-18, 04:07 AM
According to lords of madness, every beholder has an egg sack beneath its toungue. Once during their lifetime, those eggs start to develop into up to a dozen small beholders which are then vomited up by the beholder. The beholder kills all young beholder spawn except for those that look close to himself and kicks those out of its lair to fend for themselves.

I much prefer this than the frankly daft "a beholder dreams them into existence" rubbish that is in Volo's.

gkathellar
2018-05-18, 09:01 AM
Mind blown!!! :smalleek:


Anyway I think they come form the far realms, the dimension ti self creates more and they just travel here.

YMMV, but traditionally Beholders have little or no relationship with the Far Realm. They're abominations, but abominations that fit within the reality we're familiar with. The Far Realm, otoh, is a wholly unfamiliar conceptual space, with no recognizable attributes or constants. Even beings like the obyriths, who are antithetical to life and form, and in the case of Pale Night, existence itself, are within our range of conceptual parameters. The Far Realm is something infinitely worse (if perhaps less threatening).

Beholders are destructive, but they're of the Prime, and share many of our attributes, such as having eyes and teeth and complex thought. They are Other, and they are hostile, and they hate us, but they are cosmologically our kin. The Far Realm is different: it defies any coherent description, and nothing in it truly maps to our experience. Most of all, it's actually toxic to reality (and it's possible that reality is something distantly approximating toxic to the Far Realm, if the Kaorti are any indication). Aberrations that encounter its influence tend to degrade and go crazy, like the Mind Flayers of Thoon, because any interaction with the Far Realm requires the assumption of its "attributes," insofar as it has any, which it doesn't, and also does. It's not "the plane of gross flesh monsters," or "the plane of madness," and if it seems to cause gross flesh monsters and madness, it's because that's how reality looks to us when it's coming apart at the seams. I suspect that to a Beholder, it seems to resemble those disgusting little humanoids and their bizarre little "social" groups.

Millstone85
2018-05-18, 09:35 AM
I much prefer this than the frankly daft "a beholder dreams them into existence" rubbish that is in Volo's.Eh, I like it. I just wish Volo's gave more than one example of the sort of dream that would create a beholderkin instead of a true beholder. A wounded beholder, or one recently confronted by vampires, might dream of a death kiss? That's cool, but why stop there?


YMMV, but traditionally Beholders have little or no relationship with the Far Realm. They're abominations, but abominations that fit within the reality we're familiar with.In 5e, however, "Aberrations such as mind flayers and beholders are either from this plane or shaped by its strange influence" (DMG p68, The Far Realm).

I believe the idea is that, like the kaorti, they are a product of "our" reality coming into contact with the Far Realm, and are truly at home in neither.

gkathellar
2018-05-18, 11:36 AM
In 5e, however, "Aberrations such as mind flayers and beholders are either from this plane or shaped by its strange influence" (DMG p68, The Far Realm).

I believe the idea is that, like the kaorti, they are a product of "our" reality coming into contact with the Far Realm, and are truly at home in neither.

That's always been the case for aboleths (well, sort of - they were spawned by an entity that it's true for), and IIRC for grell, but is strictly in conflict with the existing fluff for a lot of other aberrations, especially mind flayers and neogi. If I were a less generous sort, I would ascribe it to how Mike Mearls is always trying to pare down his settings and simplify out the "messy" elements, on account of a stated dislike for explicit settings, even though one of the best things about D&D's larger setting is that very messiness. But I'm far too nice to mention such a thing.

Millstone85
2018-05-18, 12:04 PM
That's always been the case for aboleths (well, sort of - they were spawned by an entity that it's true for), and IIRC for grell, but is strictly in conflict with the existing fluff for a lot of other aberrations, especially mind flayers and neogi.It depends.

Mind flayers are refugees from the future, possibly fleeing the very end of time itself (Though 5e Volo's take on time travel is rather confusing; Not because paradoxes, just confusing). And what would you find at the far end of time and beyond it? Probably the Far Realm, yes.

For neogi, 5e Volo's actually offers a neat twist. During their space travels, they met aberrant stars like Caiphon or Hadar and made warlock pacts with them.

But I don't believe the 5e DMG is implying that all aberrations have such a connection with the Far Realm. Slaadi are aberrations and I think they are pure products of Limbo with a touch of Mechanus.

LordEntrails
2018-05-18, 12:13 PM
Eh, I like it. I just wish Volo's gave more than one example of the sort of dream that would create a beholderkin instead of a true beholder. A wounded beholder, or one recently confronted by vampires, might dream of a death kiss? That's cool, but why stop there?
Page count.

Until printed copies are a vast minority compared to digital copies (FG, DDB, R20, etc), page count will determine just how much info and examples are included. I suspect the team had a dozen different ideas and examples and would have liked to have included half of them, at least. But, when your product is a printed book, you have to keep to very limited amount of content.

Mystral
2018-05-18, 12:57 PM
I much prefer this than the frankly daft "a beholder dreams them into existence" rubbish that is in Volo's.

I may misremember this, it has been a while, but isn't Volo's entire character built around a guy who is well travelled, but he tends to talk out of his rear end more often than not?

Millstone85
2018-05-18, 01:07 PM
I may misremember this, it has been a while, but isn't Volo's entire character built around a guy who is well travelled, but he tends to talk out of his rear end more often than not?That's the guy alright. However, not much of Volo's Guide to Monsters is written in-character. We are only getting short glimpses of what the in-universe version of the guide looks like.

Scalenex
2018-05-18, 03:10 PM
Lots of good ideas everyone!

I think I smell a quest.


I could see Beholders being art collectors.


As far as I can gather from lords of madness, they have a sort of visual appetite. Exciting sights stimulate their brain and charge their magical abilities. Garish colors, the spray of blood in a staged fight of slaves, an illusionist casting spells, it all works. Of course, as with every stimulus, such things grow dull after a while and the beholder is required to gather new things to gaze at.

I can see a Beholder kidnapping a famous artist so that "he can paint pictures of a more worthy subject matter" and adventurers needing to rescue said artist.

Back to the big picture, I took a bit of everyone's input and created a detailed history for Beholders in my homebrew setting. Starting with the cliff notes version of the world history.

The Rebellion: Turoch created the world in order to feed upon the mortal souls and ran the universe like a farm for his gluttony. His nine most powerful lieutenants rebelled and led a massive army of mortal souls in battle against him. His nine lieutenants gained a large portion of Turoch’s power and became the deities known as the Nine. The few mortals who survived gained a small portion of Turoch’s power and became the first Dragons.

The First Age: Dragons took dominion over the new world and the Nine lavished Gifts upon the Dragons such as agriculture, writing, and metal working among many others to help them build mighty civilizations. As the Dragons grew and thrived, the Nine, working alone or in small groups, created new mortal races. Sometimes to aid the Dragons, sometimes to punish or restrain them, sometimes the Nine created new races out of boredom/curiosity.

The First Unmaking: As the Dragon kingdoms ran out of space the Dragons began fighting amongst themselves fighting over resources and drawing tribal lines along physiological, religious, and cultural differences. As the wars grew more intense, a powerful dragon sorceress tried to harness the elemental power of the world in order to gain an edge on her rivals. This spell went awry and unleashed over a million elementals who engaged in a four-way war of their own. The clash of elemental forces created huge supernatural disasters which decimated the Dragon nations’ structures and treasured and killed over 90% of the world’s mortals.

The Second Age: With the remaining Dragons holing up in isolated lairs jealously guarding their hoards, the world was largely empty. Collectively the Nine created Elves to inherit the world. Like before, alone or in small groups the Nine also created other mortals in lesser numbers either to help the Elves, harm the Elves, or out of boredom. This time more of the Nine created their own races, often hoping to craft the perfect worshippers. Again the world became crowded and the Elf nations began to war increasingly often.

The Second Unmaking: One king wanted to become a god and in his attempt to seize godhead he punctured a hole in the Barrier. Unknown to most mortals up to this point, the Nine had destroyed Turoch but his hunger remained and became the Negative Energy Plane (called the Void) passively attempting to consume all existence. The Barrier kept the Void at bay, but once the Barrier was damaged, untold numbers of Demons and their undead minions spawned by Turoch’s rage and hunger flooded the mortal plane and attempted to wipe out all mortal life. They didn’t wipe out all life but they were almost successful and the Elf nations were in ruins.

The Third Age: A few tiny pockets of Elves began rallying and attempting to recreate new nations and tribes for themselves. The Nine didn’t stop them, but opted to let new race become dominant. The Nine collectively creating Humans to populate the new world figuring a faster reproducing race could handle disasters better and lower life spans would reduce the likelihood of a single individual from getting enough power to destroy the universe. Again the Nine created new races in lesser numbers to help the Humans, hurt the Humans, or out of boredom/curiosity.


Beholders
Origins: Beholder guards were a common footnote in surviving historical records of the First Age. Their exact origins are unclear as is the case with many of the non-Dragon creatures that emerged in the First Age. It’s not known whether they were created to aid the Dragons, harm the Dragons, or someone wondering “what would happen if I created sapient floating eyes?”

Most scholars assume the first Beholders were created to aid the Dragons by either a Dragon transmuter or one of the Nine. Their natural arcane abilities suggest Greymoria, goddess of magic, may have been in involved in their origin, but she is unlikely to have created a race to aid the Dragons.
A more sinister theory is that Beholders and other aberrations were actually created when the world was young. The Nine didn’t fully understand the power they wielded and they created several abominations unwittingly by accidentally creating physical manifestation of their fears and insecurities.

The Beholders have their own story. The Beholders claim that they essentially created themselves. They sprung from the original dragons, the mightiest mortals who aided the Nine in fighting Turoch. When the greatest Dragons died a natural death, the first Beholders emerged from their eye sockets. A few even go farther and say the first Beholders sprung from Turoch’s eye sockets putting Beholders on the same level of divinity as the Nine.

First Age History: If the Beholders were originally created as antagonists to the Dragons than they didn’t maintain this antagonism very long. They commonly worked for Dragons, usually working in security, keeping an eye on things to make a bad pun. Mainly they served elder Dragons by spying on young Dragons making sure their elders knew if the young Dragons were poking their snouts were they were not wanted.

They served their Dragon masters loyally, or at least they showed up for guard duty when ordered to. When the Dragons were not watching they scavenged as much material as they could, creating their own communities in isolated locales with scraps scavenged from the Dragons far grander cities, usually underground. Some modern Dragons claimed that these Beholder communities were not secret as the Eye Tyrants believed. They say their First Age ancestors knew about these Beholder cities and just didn’t care. It made the Beholders feel good to have a “secret” and the Dragons didn’t mind throwing their servants these scraps.

Surviving the First Unmaking: The initial outbreak of the First Unmaking caused many Beholder casualties. When the elementals began fighting en masse, Beholders underground holdings were hardest hit as a lot of Beholder communities were buried by cave ins or flooded by newly spawned underground lakes and rivers.

After the initial onslaught, the Beholders were aware of what was going on. They were able to take the steps needed to survive. Beholder survivors quickly abandoned their Dragon masters in favor of their own kind. They can hold their breath a long time, eat almost anything, and (at the time) were not overly materialistic. They could stay mobile and hover and above or below the danger of the day. Once the survivors were able to deploy organized watches for dangerous outbreaks of elemental activity, they were able to give advanced warning and appropriately switch between the underground, surface level and high altitudes to avoid where the destruction was greatest.

Second Age History: The Beholders felt like they were forsaken by the Dragons (who in turn thought the Beholders were cowardly deserters). In any event, the Beholders were looking out for their own kind above all others. Now that they didn’t have to bite their tongues around the ears of their Dragon masters, Beholders began referring to all non-Beholders as the half-blinded. A few even hoped the Second Age would be the Age of Beholders but the power play of these Eye Tyrants was so short-lived and so unsuccessful against the far more numerous Elves that it was barely a footnote in even the most comprehensive Elven historical chronicles. Their would-be coup failed, but two cultural shifts drastically changed the temperament of Beholders forever.

The Beholders had been guarding the homes and treasures of Dragons for centuries and now since most of these Dragons were dead, their treasure was up for grabs by whoever got to it first (assuming the elementals didn’t destroy these treasures). The Beholders went from living on the leftovers of the Dragons now had amazing wealth. When they had little, the Beholders were community focused. Now they became jealous and covetous of protecting their wealth from each other (and every other race).
The second major change was that newly born Beholders began diverging physiologically developing new appearances and new eye stalk powers. It is unknown why and how this happened, but the most common theory is the release of elemental power during the First Unmaking altered the magic that sustained them. The Beholders became increasingly distinct from each other. The vain, visually focused Beholders began splitting themselves into smaller and smaller groups sticking with those as close to themselves as possible.

The same forces that isolated the Beholders from each other isolated them from the half-blind. A few old-school Dragons were able to successfully bully or bribe Beholders into serving them again, and a rare few Elves managed to recruit Beholder guards for their own holdings. For the most part, the Beholders were just another monster at the edge of the map in the eyes of the half-blinds. The Beholders rarely antagonized the Elves or other half-blinds but they did viciously defend their territories from any and all interlopers.

Surviving the Second Unmaking: The Void Demons wanted to consume all mortal souls and the Beholders had mortal souls just as delicious as the Elves’. A few Beholders tried negotiating with the Void Demons. “If you spare me I’ll tell you where a bunch of Elves are hiding,” but the Demons would just took the information and then consume the Beholders if they stopped to listen at all.
The Beholders tried their strategy from the First Unmaking and tried to make themselves mobile, but there were several reasons this strategy didn’t work as well before. First, the Beholders were barely speaking to each other, so they no longer had large information networks. Second, a lot of Beholders were reluctant to abandon their treasure hoards, and thus lost their mobility dying on a pile of gold. Third they were evading intelligent, determined pursuers, not impersonal supernatural disasters.

Far fewer Beholders survived the Second Unmaking versus the First Unmaking. The few Beholders that survived were either the luckiest or the ones who banded together with half-blinds and offered their arcane abilities to the groups in exchange for safety in numbers. Though in the Beholders case it was not always “we fight the demons together!” some of it was “you don’t have to be faster than the Demons, you just have to be faster than some of your ‘friends’.”

Recent History and Distribution: A brush with total annihilation softened modern Beholders a little, but did not reverse their cultural shift in the Second Age. They are slightly more likely to negotiate with the half-blind than their Second Age ancestors and they are moderately more likely to work with “inferior breeds” of Beholders than their ancestors were.

Beholders are few in number but as one of the oldest races on the planet they can be found in some numbers in every corner of the world. When pragmatism forces them to work with half-blind, they prefer to deal with relatively weak non-civilized creatures that they have a measure of power over like roving Kobold or Goblin clans though a few take employ of powerful humanoids. Most remain isolationist.

A few Beholder cities have been reclaimed. These tend to be carved in solid rock by Beholders’ arcane powers underground and oriented vertically to deter non-hovering intruders from being able to easily and safely navigate. Each Beholder gets its own tunnel and personal lair for privacy.
The Beholders remember their failed coup against the Elves, so they haven’t tried any major attempts against the Human race as a whole, but some are scheming for ways to incrementally weaken the Humans or at least build up a power base enough that they outlast the Humans in a hypothetical Third Unmaking and make the Fourth Age the Age of Great Sight.

Lifecycle and Society: Beholders have a maximum natural life expectancy of about eight hundred to a thousand years. Beholder adolescence occurs at about ten years when they start to gain full control of their eye stock spell like abilities. A Beholder is functionally an adult around forty years old though they continue to get stronger as they age, they just gain mystic potency very slowly after forty. They usually produce their first clutch of eggs around the end of their first century and their last around the end of their fourth century.

Beholders asexually reproduce creating an egg sack under their tongue about two to four times in their lifetime with clutches ranges from four to eight eggs. Beholders that live solitary lives tend to produce fewer clutches and smaller clutches than those that associate regularly with their own kind. Beholders that live around others of their kind often produce young that takes on traits of their neighbors. Even beholders that like tolerate each other do not physically touch so it’s believed by some scholars that Eye Tyrants pick up traits of those around them by looking at them. No one has dared test whether prolonged exposure to each other between humanoids and Beholders has any genetic info shared. It’s too horrifying to contemplate for both parties.

Most Beholders view themselves as the epitome of what Beholders should be, but they also have a sense that even lesser Beholders are better than everyone else and don’t want the race to go extinct. Tolerances vary from Eye Tyrant to Eye Tyrant, but Beholders often slay their own young that do not look sufficiently like them. City Beholders tend to be more tolerant of imperfections than solitary Beholders, but city Beholders clutches produce more extreme imperfections, so it balances out. On average, Beholders slay half their young upon hatching. More forward thinking Eye Tyrants opt to groom their disappointing offspring into cannon fodder roles. If they are allowed to live, Beholders educate their young usually until adolescence at which point they are driven away, unless the parent in question wants to cultivate expendable minions and is confident enough in its ability to bully other Beholders.

The Beholder cities generally only have two dozen eye tyrants at most and are nearly always underground. If one Beholder is for whatever reason of considerable power that Eye Tyrant will be in charge but most community decisions are discussed as a group when time permits. This tendency to consult others comes from pragmatism not altruism. Even the Eye Tyrants that truly live up to their name don’t want to be constantly challenged or have all their subjects leave when needed most. The most successful and long-lived Beholder collectives usually managed to enslave or at least regularly bully and extort a nearby group of half-blinds. Even if a Beholder rankles at lowering its gazes around an alpha, it at least knows that as a beholder it is superior to the half-blinded.

Solitary Beholders are more common. Beholders prefer living underground, but they are not limited to the underground. They will claim any territory that meets their needs for food, safety, privacy, and visual stimulation. Beholders tend to stake out a territory around their lair to hunt or if necessary forage in. The most ruthless kill any sapient being who trespasses on its territory, but they are generally interested in “greater sight”. They want to know what is going on outside their territory and are apt to question visitors. They might even let them leave alive after talking….maybe.

Solitary Beholders are not friendlier than Beholders in cities, but they are pragmatic enough to realize that they cannot utterly dominate every half-blind they encounter. Solitary Beholders often have working relationships with various half-blind races, such as some Kobold or Goblin clans. Both sides know that the Kobolds know that they have the numbers to take down the Beholder if pushed too far, but that at least half the clan will die if this happens, so neither side pushes the others too far.

A common arrangement is that the Kobolds can call upon the Beholder in extreme circumstances to slay or intimidate a mutual threat. In return the Kobolds will provide periodic tribute of food and treasure to their Beholder “protector.” More importantly, Kobolds will report interesting things they see in their supposedly joint territory. It’s generally more common for the Kobolds to be the flunkies in these partnerships than the other way around. When working with far more powerful creatures such as Dragons, Beholders can be amazingly obsequious to its master’s face, but it will surely plot to turn the tables as soon as possible.

Religious Practices: There are exceptions to this, but in general Beholders have an attitude towards religion like this. “The Nine favor the half-blind above us and thus should not receive our adoration. The Nine are far stronger than we are and thus should not receive our scorn, lest we anger them.”

Beholders do not have biological sexes or sociological genders. Since 99% of sapient creatures have some form of sexual dimorphism and gender roles Beholders are aware of the concept, but they do not ascribe genders to the gods like most do. The standard honorific that all the Nine receive is Name of deity, who is of unsurpassed vision. So a typical prayer for a hungry Beholder might be.

“Mera who is of unsurpassed sight, please allow me to find enough fish in this lake to sustain my sight.”
Beholder religious practices are very simple and pragmatic if they bother to pray to the gods at all.

When a Beholder is facing a difficult challenge relating to a specific deity’s expertise, they issue a short business like prayer, then move on with their day. Almost always following the formula. ______ who is of unsurpassed sight, please allow me success in this endeavor so that I may sustain my sight.

“Maylar who is of unsurpassed sight, please allow me to find prey on this hunt so that I may sustain my sight.”
“Phidas who is of unsurpassed sight, please allow me to evade these Void Demons so that I may sustain my sight.”

“Sustain my sight”, of course means “survive.” To a Beholder blindness and death are synonymous. Eye Tyrants rarely invoke the gods for anything not related to their own survival. They certainly are not apt to pray for others or give thanks for what they have.

The rare few Beholders who choose to become priests or divine spellcasters do with the goal of becoming seers. They tend to gravitate towards the Nine predisposed towards having oracles, most often Korus and Nami although Phidas’ and Hallisan’s dominion over the underground has attracted one or two devoted Eye Tyrants over the millennia.

elanfanboy
2018-05-18, 05:18 PM
Interesting thought in a setting. What if beholders can’t hear? Just imagine a poor little adventurer who has to play gestures with a beholder.

Bohandas
2018-05-18, 11:58 PM
In 5E this is covered in XGtE. If I remember correctly (not worth looking up, sorry), they are spontaneously formed from the insane mind of an existing one.

In 3e IIRC they're hermaphroditic and self-fertilizing and will just occasionally barf up (their mouth doubles as every other orifice) new beholders

EDIT:
Found it. Lords of Madness page 40. Basically as I originally stated it except apparently it generally only happens once in a beholder's lifetime (it only needs one time because they give birth in litters of 12).

Later on I'll try to look up if the 2e beholder sourcebook says anything.

EDIT:
The 2e sourcebook I,Tyrant reaffirms that they are self-fertilizing and give birth through the mouth, but says that they generally reproduce multiple times and give birth in litters of 3-6

Luccan
2018-05-19, 12:26 AM
I mean, the birth thing makes more sense than the dream one. They're a race that kills anything not enough like itself; if they're producing only one offspring at a time and usually at least one of them dies in the ensuing conflict (as in 5e, apparently), they probably would've died off by now.

Scalenex
2018-05-19, 02:13 AM
I mean, the birth thing makes more sense than the dream one. They're a race that kills anything not enough like itself; if they're producing only one offspring at a time and usually at least one of them dies in the ensuing conflict (as in 5e, apparently), they probably would've died off by now.

My thoughts exactly. That's why I modified their reproduction to make them vain and selfish beings who are awful parents but not such murderous parents that their race would die out.

Scalenex
2018-05-19, 02:09 PM
Interesting thought in a setting. What if beholders can’t hear? Just imagine a poor little adventurer who has to play gestures with a beholder.

It's fun to make PCs do charades but My concern that this would dissuade the players from attempting to negotiate.

Also, if they are deaf, how would the Beholder talk back? Blinking Morse code?

Bohandas
2018-05-19, 03:56 PM
That's always been the case for aboleths (well, sort of - they were spawned by an entity that it's true for), and IIRC for grell,

It's also the case for the Obryiths as well, IIRC


I much prefer this than the frankly daft "a beholder dreams them into existence" rubbish that is in Volo's.

Daftness is kind of Volo's thing. I mean, really it's all of the major FRCS NPCs' thing, especially in 5e, but Volo in particular is particularly daft

Tvtyrant
2018-05-19, 07:32 PM
I mean, the birth thing makes more sense than the dream one. They're a race that kills anything not enough like itself; if they're producing only one offspring at a time and usually at least one of them dies in the ensuing conflict (as in 5e, apparently), they probably would've died off by now.

I like the dream one better myself. It doesn't have to dream of a place nearby afterall, so anywhere a Beholder passes by and remembers later could potentially spawn Beholders and Beholderkin for centuries.

That makes for some interesting stuff, like dreaming of its early days leads to Eyeballs, a place where it was attacked by leeches spawns Deathkisses, that time it ate a shark spawns Eye of the Deeps, etc. It might even spawn things based on what it ate most recently, and true beholders require it to eat something specific.