Category:Beholder

This section contains canon info from officially published sources

The beholder, also known as the eye tyrant, is an evil aberration with spheroid bodies and no arms or legs. However, the beholder body has a number of small eye stalks, a gigantic central eye, and a great maw. Although the beholder's mouth can chew its prey apart, the beholder's magical eyes are its greatest weapon. Its eye stalks can fire a number of magical rays independently, and its central eye emits a cone of magical energy, usually duplicating an antimagic shell. A beholder movies by the locomotion of flight.^[1][2]

Psychology

Beholders are usually highly xenophobic and solitary, save for possible slaves and other subjugated creatures. This xenophobia even extends to others of their kind, for which they can have particular loathing for. A beholder thinks of itself as the most glorious embodiment of its race, viewing other beholders bearing the slightest differences as blasphemous mockeries.^[1][2]

Beholders in Ravenloft

According to I, Tyrant, a 2nd Edition sourcebook on beholders, Ravenloft has its own beholders. The beholders of Ravenloft are black in color, their skin marked with silver patterns. The interiors of a beholder's eyes resemble swirling mist and may, along with the silver markings on the beholder's body, flash with light when the beholder is provoked.^[3]

Despite mention of Ravenloft beholders in I, Tyrant, official Ravenloft products have made scant mention of beholders barring a few special cases. The beholder does not appear in the Ravenloft appropriate monster lists in the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium Appendix I & II^[4] nor in the Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium III^[5] Beholders do not appear on the native monster list for any domains in the various campaign settings or Ravenloft Gazetteers.

Special cases of beholders existing in Ravenloft:

• The Living Armor is a dread flesh golem resembling a beholder, though constructed of nonbeholder body parts. It was created by Janos.^[6]
• Ndrionohary (Beholder) is a beholder in Africa pretending to be a god. Beholders are otherwise unknown on Gothic Earth.^[7]
• Three beholders, known as the Last to Leave, followed the Headless Horseman in fighting adventurers during the Grand Conjunction.^[8]
• Tashlai was formerly a human before being transformed into a gauth (beholderkin) by fell energies. Tashlai lairs in the Old Markov House.^[9]

Other Information

Beholders have an Outcast Rating of 8.^[10]

References