Editing Beholder (section)

==Personality and Characteristics==

Beholders are selfish bastards who love to manipulate and enslave any races considered beneath themselves (i.e. every other species). They are extremely [[Imperium|xenophobic]] even going so far as to kill other individuals of their species that look even ''slightly'' different from themselves, though they always go after the more extreme divergences first; two beholders will gang up on the "freak" with scales and fiery eyes before trying to kill each other over the differences in their numbers of teeth. Soooo basically the D&D equivalent of a [[Doctor Who|Dalek]].  Even if two beholders look identical to each other they will struggle to cooperate with each other due to their extreme paranoia.  Large groups of beholders can only work together while under the mind control of a beholder hive mother or an overseer.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the beholder race has a lot of genetic variety (as evidenced by the number of Beholder variants, [[Skaven|all of whom hate each other]], as listed below). They are greedy, often living in dungeons stuffed with valuables. They can cast magic from their eyes and often rule over unwilling souls through domination. One even runs the Thieves' Guild of Skullport, the most recent of several beholders to have done so.

Beholders worship the [[Great Mother]] and due to their massive egos, each beholder is convinced that not only does the Great Mother look exactly like itself, but also that it's ''literally'' their mother (false memories are funny like that).  Beholders would be shocked and possibly driven mad (or madder than they already are) if they found out that the Great Mother, despite possessing vast knowledge, is completely insane and acts mainly on instinct instead of logic, unlike her children.  Beholders also have another god named [[Gzemnid]] who is associated with gases and deception.  Worshipers of Gzemnid are considered [[Heresy|heretics]] by other beholders because they believe that the Great Mother is actually constantly changing in appearance and creates different breeds of beholders every time she reproduces so there is no master race of beholder.

Part of the reason why beholders are so egotistical and paranoid is because they actually possess two minds.  They do most of their thinking with their rational mind, but they also possess an intuitive mind which can censor the beholder from experiencing anything that might threaten their ego.  This causes the beholder's rational mind to have no memory of times when they failed at anything, and to try to explain the missing memories with conspiracy theories.  In short, they pretty much behave exactly like a human that has textbook narcissistic personality disorder with comorbid dissociative identity disorder.

Like [[Aboleth]]s, when a beholder is born, they inherit memories from their parent, though not a complete set of memories.  This is why trying to raise a baby beholder to be good is a terrible idea, as their xenophobic beliefs are one of the things they inherit. For a beholder to turn good they have to give up on everything they have ever believed since birth, which by beholder standards would make them insane even compared to other insane beholders. Even beholders that are tolerant enough of non-beholders to work with them are usually still evil and tend to become crime bosses.

A standard beholder has a roughly spherical body with no distinction between their head and torso.  Their skin comes in a wide variety of colors and textures.  They have large mouth full of sharp teeth and a single central eye that constantly projects an anti-magic cone when it is open.  At the top of their head are ten stalks tipped with smaller eyes.  In some beholder breeds the eye stalks resemble tentacles while in others they are jointed.  Each of theses eyes can fire a magical ray at will, with each eye having a different ray.  Theses rays are: Charm Person, Charm Monster, Sleep, Telekinesis, Flesh to Stone, Disintegrate, Fear, Slow, Cause Serious Wounds, and Death.  They have no other appendages besides these eye stalks.  A beholder can levitate and fly.  This ability is not magical in nature as it isn't affected by anti-magic fields or else beholders would knock each other out of the air by looking at one another.  Beholders with significant deviations from this form are known as Beholderkin.  Beholderkin may be born randomly from beholders, and are usually killed at birth, or may be intentionally birthed by beholder Hive Mothers.  Beholders posses both male and female reproductive organs inside of their mouth, but they usually reproduce by self-fertilization since most beholders hate each other too much to willingly mate with each other.  In 5th edition this is retconned and beholders now spontaneously create new beholders and beholderkin by altering reality while dreaming.