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Elder Evils

2020-06-22T04:55:09Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Kyuss, The Worm That Walks */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition, similar to how [[The Apocalypse Stone]] was released to give DMs in 2nd edition a way to end their campaigns before switching to 3rd. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of the Elder Evils are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them that the players can defeat.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
</gallery>

=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster personifying primal chaos that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
</gallery>

=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low level rogues sent by the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
<gallery>
File:D7b59ix-5a1ad7e3-73d6-4cfc-ab6d-46b7825f13f2.jpg
File:Tumblr inline oyely8D2qp1robfbt 500.png
File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
</gallery>

===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but an immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As he gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to release Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s. See [[Starspawn]] for details.

=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-22T04:52:51Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Kyuss, The Worm That Walks */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition, similar to how [[The Apocalypse Stone]] was released to give DMs in 2nd edition a way to end their campaigns before switching to 3rd. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of the Elder Evils are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them that the players can defeat.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
</gallery>

=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster personifying primal chaos that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
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=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low level rogues sent by the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
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File:D7b59ix-5a1ad7e3-73d6-4cfc-ab6d-46b7825f13f2.jpg
File:Tumblr inline oyely8D2qp1robfbt 500.png
File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
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===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but an immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As he gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s. See [[Starspawn]] for details.

=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-22T04:48:42Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Sertrous */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition, similar to how [[The Apocalypse Stone]] was released to give DMs in 2nd edition a way to end their campaigns before switching to 3rd. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of the Elder Evils are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them that the players can defeat.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
</gallery>

=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster personifying primal chaos that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
</gallery>

=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low level rogues sent by the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
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File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
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===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but an immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s. See [[Starspawn]] for details.

=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-22T04:47:43Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Ragnorra */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition, similar to how [[The Apocalypse Stone]] was released to give DMs in 2nd edition a way to end their campaigns before switching to 3rd. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of the Elder Evils are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them that the players can defeat.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
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File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
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=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

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===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster personifying primal chaos that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
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=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low level rogues sent by the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
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File:D7b59ix-5a1ad7e3-73d6-4cfc-ab6d-46b7825f13f2.jpg
File:Tumblr inline oyely8D2qp1robfbt 500.png
File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
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===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s. See [[Starspawn]] for details.

=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-22T04:32:44Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Elder Evils (the book) */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition, similar to how [[The Apocalypse Stone]] was released to give DMs in 2nd edition a way to end their campaigns before switching to 3rd. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of the Elder Evils are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them that the players can defeat.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
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=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
</gallery>

=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low rogues sent the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
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File:D7b59ix-5a1ad7e3-73d6-4cfc-ab6d-46b7825f13f2.jpg
File:Tumblr inline oyely8D2qp1robfbt 500.png
File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
</gallery>

===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s. See [[Starspawn]] for details.

=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-22T04:28:27Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Elder Evils (the book) */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition, similar to how [[The Apocalypse Stone]] was released to give DMs in 2nd edition a way to end their campaigns before switching to 3rd. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of them are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
</gallery>

=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
</gallery>

=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low rogues sent the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
<gallery>
File:D7b59ix-5a1ad7e3-73d6-4cfc-ab6d-46b7825f13f2.jpg
File:Tumblr inline oyely8D2qp1robfbt 500.png
File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
</gallery>

===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s. See [[Starspawn]] for details.

=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Far Realm

2020-06-22T03:54:33Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Creatures from the Far Realm */

The '''Far Realm''' is <s>H.P. Lovecraft's magnum opus</s> one of the more obscure [[planes]] of [[Dungeons & Dragons]], and basically amounts to the obligatory "[[Cthulhu Mythos]] Dimension" for Lovecraftian horrors. It is formally considered an invention of 3rd edition, although Lovecraftian tropes were in D&D lore from the very beginning - like the first ''Deities & Demigods'', for which Gygax's ass got royally sued. It was Bruce Cordell's 2e adventure "The Gates of Firestorm Peak" which named the plane "Far Realm", and since nobody sued him that's what stuck. 3rd edition merely expanded on the details most highly, which, combined with the fact it isn't formally placed on the [[Great Wheel]], is why most consider it a 3e invention.

The Far Realm is generally described as, or believed to be, the origin-point for all [[aberration]]s (although a moment's thought would indicate that aberrations could only be ''touched'' by the Far Realm ''at some point in their evolutionary history'', as native entities actually plane-shifted ''out'' of the far realm drive PCs insane just from being looked at). The exception is in [[Eberron]] where they are instead the creation of the daelkyr.

Ironically, the Far Realm was about the only major plane to survive completely unchanged when 4th edition switched from the Great Wheel to the [[World Axis]]. It is still the mysterious alien realm from which aberrations are believed to spring and about which little is known. It's actually quite important to the [[Nentir Vale]] setting; [[shardmind]]s were born when a cosmological construct keeping the Far Realm at bay was acidentally broken by some of the gods, whilst the energies pouring through that heavenly wound are suggested as one possible source for [[psionics]].

==Creatures from the Far Realm==
Please note that many of these creatures have multiple origin stories so whether they are from the far realm or somewhere else depends on what edition and setting you are looking at.
* [[Gibbering Mouther]] (Depending on the edition they may be from the Realm or formed from corpses left near Far Realm portals, or have a completely different origin if this is from before the far Realm was added)
* [[Beholder]] (Mainly in 4th edition)
* [[Neh-thalggu]]
* [[Grell]]
* [[Flumph]]. Not everything from the Far Realm has to be evil
* [[Foulspawn]]
* Kaorti. Accidentally created from a group of wizards that tried to set up a base in the Far Realm and were warped when Zurgurth tried to examine them.
* Uvuudaum. From the [[Epic Level Handbook]]. A bizarre and extremely powerful creature that has 8 human like arms but no legs and a giant spike where it's face should be.
* Zurgurth the Feasting Vast. An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] resembling an ocean of flesh.
* Father Llymic the Alien Thought Given Flesh. An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] resembling a three-eyed scythe-armed ice monster who spreads a disease that turns the infected into similar monsters.

{{Planescape-Cosmology}}

{{WorldAxisCosmology}}

Beholder

2020-06-22T03:46:54Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Personality and Characteristics */

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]]
[[Image:Beholder_balloon.jpg|thumb|right|Drow clowns make a different kind of balloon animal]]

A '''beholder''' is a giant lumpy... thing that looks like a floating octopus with a giant eye in the middle. The tentacles also have eyes at the end of them. Yuck.

Beholders, like [[Illithid|Mind Flayer]]s, are considered "intellectual property" of <s>TSR</s> Wizards of the Coast, so they aren't allowed to be used in third party D&D supplements or in [[Pathfinder]] as they were not covered under the [[OGL|Open Gaming License]]. This naturally doesn't stop [[ChapterHouse Studios|weirdly]] [[Original character, do not steal|similar]] creatures from appearing in various [[weeaboo]] JRPGs and related works, where they're usually called "gazers" or similar. Yes, this includes [[Monstergirls]]. Of course one game even used the name beholder, but we all excuse it, because this game is [[Heroes of Might and Magic|THE GAME. THE LEGEND.]]

The Beholder first appeared on the cover of the [[Greyhawk]] supplement for the Original Dungeons and Dragons. The creation of [[Spelljammer]] where beholders play an major role resulted in the creation of many varieties of beholders. Much information about their biology and culture was revealed in the book [[Lords of Madness]]. They also got an entire book to themselves in second edition called ''I, Tyrant''.

==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, 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.

Like [[Aboleth]]s, when a beholder is born, they inherent 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 inherent.

While good beholder technically are possible, they are extremely rare because turning good requires a beholder 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.

==Notable Variants==
===2nd & 3rd Edition===
====True Beholders====
* Beholder: Your basic beholder. A central eye that projects an anti-magic cone and ten smaller eyes that each fire a different ray, such as charm person, disintegrate, and flesh to stone.
* Elder Orb: A larger beholder with a much longer than normal lifespan. Always has at least 6 levels of sorcerer.
* Hive Mother/[[Hive Tyrant]]: The highest ranked of all beholders and beholderkin. Basically a bigger meaner beholder that holds beholders and beholderkin under its sway. It has the ability to control other beholders and beholderkin, and has the ability spawn new kinds of beholderkin specialized for different tasks. Beholder hives are almost always ruled by a Hive Mother, which keeps the different kinds of beholders and kin from killing each other, and when Hive Mothers belonging to the same breed come together, they can form beholder cities. In 2nd edition, Hive Mothers have their smaller eyes set in a ring around their head instead of being on the ends of stalks, making them less maneuverable but also less vulnerable to being cut off, while in 3rd edition they are just extra large beholders.

====Beholderkin====
* Gauth: Basically, babby's first beholder, with only 6 eyestalks of doom and a reduced ability to disintegrate everyone and eats magic. Looks like a smaller beholder with a ring of useless extra eyes around the central eye and four of its ten stalks don't have eyes on the end.
* Eyeball: Tiny beholder, best used as a familiar. Pretty damn adorable for a beholder, still Neutral Evil. They have four eye stalks with ray of frost, cause fear, daze, and mage hand and can only use one of them at a time. The central eye doesn't do anything.
* Death Kiss: instead of dispensing death-beams from its eyestalks, they use them to suck your blood. Their only eye has no powers, but they release electric shocks when they are injured.
* Astereater: giant space-faring asteroid beholderkin with no eyestalks that eats your ship. For some reason it likes to enslave [[Giff]] to use as soldiers. [[Spelljammer]] was weird. Beholders and other beholderkin insist that they have no relation to them.
* Examiner: Four eyestalks, four limbs, and no central eye. Their limbs let them use tools and weapons, and they can create magic items. They also regenerate 1 hit point every round.
* Observer: A powerful psionic beholder with a hard shell, six eye-stalks, three large eyes spaced evenly around its middle, and three mouths on the ends of long retractable stalks that suck blood similar to a death kiss. It uses its psionic abilities to brainwash other monsters into its loyal servants. Less evil than other beholders.
* Lensman: Beholder infantry. The lowest of all beholderkin, or at least until the Eyeball was introduced. Imagine a starfish, then add a giant eye and mouth in the middle of its body, then replace four of its five arms with the arms and legs of an ape. The eye may have one of six different powers. They do not levitate but their limbs allow them to use weapons and tools.
* Watcher: the second lowest of beholderkin. Has three normal eyes around its body and a large compound eye on the top surrounded by six eyespots, and a single tentacle on the bottom which can inflict electric shocks. Its three regular eyes each have two different powers, and the compound eye can use three of those powers. Can cast the message and tongues spells. They are cowardly and mainly act as scouts for their more powerful cousins.
* Spectator: true neutral beholderkin. It's actually pretty swell, as far as beholders go. Remember that one beholder in Baldur's Gate? They can be summoned with a ritual using four beholder's eyestalks. They make excellent guards since they are content to spend very long periods of time in deep contemplation and don't need to be fed since they can magically create their own food. Has only four eye-stalks and the central eye reflects magic instead.
* Overseer: a beholderkin that looks like a giant fleshy tree trunk with thirteen eyestalk branches, tentacles for roots, no central eye, and several mouths at the base. Yes, I realize that it looks nothing like a beholder, but the book says it is so fuck it, let's call it a beholder. Like the hive mother, it also has the ability to dominate other beholders and beholderkin. In large beholder cities, the Hive Mother dominates the Overseers, who then dominated other beholders and kin for her, thus greatly increasing the number of a beholders a Hive Mother can control at one time.
* Eye of the Deep: it's like a beholder BUT UNDERWATER! And it tastes oddly of shrimp. Also, it's got little arms with crab-pincers. Only has two eye stalks and the central eye can flash blinding light. Also can cast the spell persistent image, which it uses to create [[Trap|illusions of mermaids]] and other things to lure victims closer. Rarely interacts with other kinds of beholders due to them living in different environments.
* Director: beholder cavalry. A beholderkin with six eyestalks and three tentacles on the bottom that it uses to bond with and ride vermin, usually giant centipedes. Because haven't we all wanted to ride a giant centipede like a pony up and down the streets... SHUT UP, I DON'T JUDGE YOU! Has six eye stalks and its central eye generates a protective forcefield around itself and its mount.
* Gouger: A beholderkin created to fight beholders. In the [[Forgotten Realms]] setting, they were created by [[Phaerimm]]s. Larger than regular beholders and has four small useless legs hanging off of its body. It has the same number of eyes as a standard beholder but does not have any eye powers other than the central antimagic eye. It attacks with a 15 foot long barbed tongue which it uses to disable other beholder's eyes.
* Gorbel: A beholderkin whose stalks are tipped with claws instead of eyes. Explodes when badly injured.
* Orbus: An albino dwarf beholder with no eyes other than the anti-magic central eye but is a powerful spellcaster. They are only seen in the [[Spelljammer]] setting on beholder ships, which they are bred to power and navigate.

====Other====
* Beholder mage: when the DM wants the entire party to die horrible deaths but doesn't feel like using rocks. This is a special character class that only true beholders can take, which requires them to remove their anti-magic eye, and whenever they gain a the ability to cast a new level of spells must sacrifice one of their eye powers to turn that eyestalk into a spellstalk which casts spells of that level. At level 10, it's empty eye socket can absorb spells to heal it. All the cheese of a wizard with more spells per day, the ability to blast 10 spells at once at you as free actions, and fucking spontaneous casting. Even munchkins shit their pants in fear when they hear of these things. One of the unholy trinity of fuck off broken PCs that you can technically enter, the others being tainted scholars and Illithid Savants. And that's before you start optimizing the bastard because the fucker can still take ten more levels before becoming epic.
* Beholder Priestess: Sometimes when a beholder city is endangered the Hive Mother will called for help from The Great Mother and will be temporarily granted abilities similar to a cleric. On rare occasions this can also happen to a standard beholder, which will cause it to mutated into a Hive Mother.
* Doomsphere: The ghost of a beholder killed in by a magical explosion that haunts the area where it died. If doomsphere is defeated it will respawn in one day unless the area is exorcised.
* Death Tyrant: Basically, a Beholder lich. Yeah, you're probably fucked.
* Kasharin: A death tyrant beholder that also carries a rotting disease similar to mummy rot.
* Evil Eyes: A beholder that possesses non-standard eye powers and so is especially hated by other beholders.

===4th edition===
4e made use of quite a few different kinds of beholder, though almost all of them were pretty rapetastic, being made for higher levels. Most kinds of beholders had a Telekinesis Ray that they could use to slide enemies about, though for most that's all they do.

* Gauth - Pretty much the same as old editions, this is the pitiful little baby of the beholder family in 4e, and something you can toss at low-level parties to scare them without killing them. Level 5 Elites that can shoot fire, sleeping rays and exhaustion rays, and immobilise with its central eye.
* Bloodkiss - Another carry-over, and the second-weakest beholder statted, this one got the Undead subtype for some reason (guess they didn't read up and thought it was "just" a beholder vampire). Level 9 Solo Controller that relies on its blood-sucking tentacles to rip up anything in reach, though it also packs a psychic + dazing effect Death Scream attack and can hit people a lot of times.
* Eye of Shadow - Beholders who spent too long in the shadowfell, dissolving into a blot of darkness and hate. Fairly puny (level 12 Elite), but seriously trolling, with blinding rays, thundering rays, freezing rays, and the ability to pull off a "teleport 20 squares and then be invisible" trick.
* Eye of Flame - A beholder that specialises in burninating shit. Central eye gives vulnerability to fire and causes fire attacks to do ongoing, eyestalks blast foes with fire and fear effects. A low-Paragon tier (level 13 Elite) foe.
* Eye of Frost - We got a burn-your-ass beholder, so evidently we need a freezinating beholder. Slightly tougher (1 level higher) than its counterpart. Central eye means cold damage can immobilise those it looks at... weirdly, its got two kinds of freezing rays; one that does a lot of cold damage, one that does less cold damage but freezes your ass solid.
* Beholder Spawn - Baby beholders wanna eat your face, too. Level 15 Minions that can bite or do elemental damage with their eye-rays.
* Death Tyrant - Zombie Eye Tyrants, pretty much. Way weaker than their older namesakes (level 15 Solo). Central eye can strip away necrotic resistance (guess what kind of damage it does most) and slow you, and eyebeams focused on kill-you-dead. Choice is whether it just necrotic damages you to death, petrifies you, makes you die, or makes you die and then come back as a ghoul. Oh, and it has a fear ray too.
* Ghost Beholder - Dead Eye Tyrant who came back as a ghost. A level weaker and only an Elite, but still pretty nasty. Freezing eye rays and the ability to possess and mind control your dudes: not a lot of fun if your Will is shitty.
* Eye Tyrant - Your basic beholder for this edition, and pretty damn nasty (level 19 Solo). Can daze you with its central eye, or use its eyestalks to cause radiant and necrotic damage, put you to sleep, paralyze you, confuse you, terrify you, petrify you, disintegrate you or kill you outright.
* Eye of Chaos - Now we're getting into the big guns. Beholders that have been warped by the abyss, changing their alignment to chaotic evil and making them more similar to demons in their behavior. Level 25 Elites that will drive you almost as crazy as themselves, with the ability to lock you down to at-will powers only with their central eye and hit you with rays of force, blinding, confounding, madness, fear or teleportation.
* Ultimate Tyrant - They ain't fucking kidding when they named this bastard. Level 29 Solo - there are ancient dragons that aren't this nasty! Central eye locks you down, other eyes can drive you mad, unravel you, dissolve you, burn you, freeze you, drag you around, petrify you, disintegrate you, pull you closer or hurl you away.
* Eternal Tyrant - Because even the Ultimate Tyrant isn't ultimate enough. This bastard is an undead version of the Ultimate Tyrant that comes in a pair of linked entities; the Shell, a beholder [[golem]] (Level 31 Elite Brute) and the Essence, a hyper-powerful beholder [[ghost]] (level 33 Elite Artillery). These assholes are literally god-tier monsters - you had damn well better know what you're doing when you fight an Eternal Tyrant!

===5th Edition===
5e's first Monster Manual provides three forms of beholder; common beholder (or Eye Tyrant), Death Tyrant, and Spectator. The first two variants are what 5e calls Legendary creatures, meaning they have extra powers in their lairs that they can trigger on Initiative Count 20, certain specific effects mark the regions in which they lair, and they have special Legendary Actions that they can perform outside of the normal turn sequence. Their legendary ego has been given up a serious boost; now, beholders mutate at random just by accidentally thinking too hard, their ego is that overpowering. This is also how they reproduce now: by sleeping and dreaming of other beholders, bending reality in that way.

* Beholder: You know it, you hate it. Challenge level 13. Has its old antimagic cone central eye back, a bite attack for piercing damage, and ten eye rays, of which it can use three each round, rolling randomly to determine which three it has. Charm ray, paralyzing ray, fear ray, slowing ray, enervation ray, telekinetic ray, sleep ray, petrification ray, disintegration ray and death ray. It can burn one of its three legendary actions at the end of another creature's turn to blast somebody with a random eye ray. Its lair effects consist of three options; change a 50ft square up to 120ft distant into slimy difficult terrain, make any walls within 120ft sprout flailing appendages that'll grapple anyone within 10ft who can't beat a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, or cause an eye to pop up on any solid surface within 60ft that can then shoot a random eye ray at any enemy within its sight. For region effects, they're all fluffy; creatures within 1 mile sometimes feel they're being watched, or minor reality warps that affect inanimate objects (markings changing on a wall, slime coating a statue, etc) pop up whilst the beholder is sleeping. Volo's Guide to Monsters introduced a table of potential alternate eye rays, in case your party was feeling complacent.
* Death Tyrant: A beholder who dreamed of living forever. So it died in its sleep and became an undead beholder skull with ghostly eyes. It trades the antimagic cone for a negative energy cone (creatures can't regain hitpoints, humanoids that die in its area of effect become zombies under the death tyrant's command on the next turn). It has the same eye rays and legendary actions as the beholder. Its lair actions are variants of the beholder's - its grabbing walls are DC 17 and reach into the Ethereal Plane, it creates a 50ft cube of lightly obscured difficult terrain, and it can create a spectral eye at any point within 50ft, which can also target foes on the Ethereal Plane. It has one crunchy regional effect; a creature that is both hostile to the death tyrant and aware of its existence must roll a D20 if it finishes a long rest within 1 mile of the death tyrant's lair. On a 10 or less, it gets zapped with a random eye ray.
* Spectator: A lesser beholder variant with only four eye stalks, conjured from another plane of existence via a ritual that requires four beholder eyestalks as material components. It's only Challenge level 3 and it's Lawful Neutral, rather than the Lawful Evil of the others. It has a Confusion Ray, a Paralyzing Ray, a Fear Ray and a Wounding Ray, and it can magically create all the food and water it needs to sustain itself each day. It's a fool's gambit to attack it with spells thanks to its Spell Reflection reaction, which lets it retarget a spell that missed the spectator, or which forced a save that the spectator passed, against another creature within the spectator's line of sight and that is at least 30 feet from the spectator.
* Beholder Zombie: Much weaker than a living beholder. Loses most of its eye rays and its anti-magic cone.
* Death's Kiss: A Beholder who had nightmares about bleeding out spawns a vampiric tentacle monster, using toothy mouth-stalks to voraciously suck the blood from other creatures. It also bleeds lightning, for some reason. Not as smart as a normal beholder, but for this reason not as egotistical or paranoid. Added in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
* Gauth: A smaller beholder who sometimes shows up if you screw up the ritual to summon a spectator; it's got six eyestalks, four tentacles, and smaller eyes all around its central eye, so it's hard to understand how wizards can get confused when it lies and claims to be the real deal. The issue is that Gauths are magic eaters, sucking the juice from magical items to sustain themselves, so you can see why that makes them pretty piss-poor guards for a wizard's lair. They're weaker than true beholders and also less xenophobic. Also, they explode when you kill them.
* Gazer: A ridiculously adorable and weak little beholder (only Challenge 1/2 - that is, a ''twenty-sixth'' of the strength of a true beholder) that is sometimes dreamed into being. They're so amusingly pathetic that even pure beholders often keep them as pets, and they have the same sadistic ego of a full beholder in miniature. Have caused a lot of argument over whether the sidebar on gazer familiars is intended for PCs as well or just for mage NPCs, and if so if house rules should be used to slot them in as Chain Pact warlock familiars, let them take the action to fire their eye-rays, etc.
* Mindwitness: A beholder converted into an [[illithid]]-like creature via ceremorphosis. Now that those of you who aren't currently running from your computers in terror have stopped screaming, the end result is less "terrifying perfect marriage of beholder eye-rays with illithid mind rape and the combined egotism of both" and more "quasi-lobotomized docile [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica#Astropaths|glorified psionic email server]]," though still smarter than the average human. Notably, if the illithids and elder brains they serve are slaughtered and they survive, mindwitnesses tend to drift around looking for other psionic creatures to serve, taking on the alignments and worldviews of those they meet, be they kindly [[flumph]]s or evil [[demon]]s. Four of their eyestalks become tentacles, but they have six kinds of eyerays: fear, telekinetic, and slowing rays like those of their normal cousins, but also aversion rays that cause disadvantage on attack rolls, stunning rays that stun creatures, and a psychic ray that just causes a pile of psychic damage.

==Similar Monsters==
Beholders are not the only monsters that look like floating orbs with eyes.
* Gas Spore: Not a true beholder or beholderkin, but a [[fungus]] that resembles a beholder. May have been created by a beholder mage, or may be a fungus that took on the form of the beholder that it fed on, or maybe it's just mundane evolutionary mimicry. Beholders sometimes cultivate them in their cities for defense.
* Thagar: Also known as the Beholdereater, it is a predator that eats beholders. Is a giant orb covered in eyes with several mouths on the ends of stalks. It does not have any eye powers, but it is immune to mind affecting magic and highly resistant to it's body being physically affected by magic, so there isn't much a beholder can do against it.
* Deep spawn: An orb with six large tentacles and several retractable eye stalk. Three of it's tentacles end in mouths, and the other three can wield weapons. It has the ability to give birth to loyal clones of creatures it has previously eaten, making them useful for villains who want to populate their dungeons with a variety of monsters. Relation to beholders unknown.
* Gibbering Orb: An epic version of the [[Gibbering Mouther]]. An amorphous orb covered in mouths and eyes, which have eye rays similar to a beholder. Possibly is the common ancestor of beholders and gibbering mouthers, though this would conflict with the belief that the Great Mother created beholders. Fourth edition also introduced the Gibbering Abomination, a middle ground between the mouther and the orb which also eye rays.
* Lurking strangler: These creatures are to beholders what monkeys are to humans. A tiny aberration that looks like a pair of flying eyeballs connected by a cord of muscle. It likes to strangling sleeping enemies to death, and it can put enemies to sleep with one of its two eye rays. Beholders sometimes keep these things as pets.
* Fihyr: A living manifestation of nightmares that forms when a large number of people in an area all have nightmares in one night. It has a roughly spherical body covered in eyes, mouths, and tentacles. No relation to beholders.
* [[Astral Dreadnought]]: A huge predator that lives in the [[Astral Plane]] that has a single eye with anti-magic abilities similar to a beholder's central eye. Relation to beholders unknown.

==Notable Beholders==
*Large Luigi, a relatively friendly beholder who works as a barkeep in the [[Spelljammer]] setting.
*That beholder head of the thieves' guild who was the first major boss in [[Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance]]
*Another beholder head of another thieves' guild who was the final boss of the first Eye of the Beholder game.
*That funny spectator you kept running into and quasi-befriended in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That blind death tyrant boss you had to get a special god-killing magic wand to kill in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That beholder in [[Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes]]
*That beholder in Futurama who's there for no apparent reason (was meant to be guarding some passage in the Central Bureaucracy but fell asleep on the job)
*Xanathar, the writer of "Xanathar's guide to everything" and head of Skullport's Thieves' Guild, which includes new options for classes and backgrounds, along with his snide comments running throughout. Apparently he's only one of many beholders to have used the title since the first one seized power. Notable for being one of the few beholders to remotely care for a being other than itself, he really loves his pet goldfish. It is kind of adorable. What he doesn't know is that his beloved goldfish has been replaced several times by the Thieves' Guild since goldfish don't live very long and he would [[RAGE|not be happy if he ever found out]].

==Beholders as Monstergirls==
[[File:Gazer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|No, you're not dreaming, this is a Beholder in monstergirl form.]]{{Monstergirls}}

[[rule 34|The proof that nothing, ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing is sacred,]] even Beholders got anthropomorphised into a sexy almost-human female by [[/d/|those irremediably insane weebs]]. Goddamit, Japan!

Gazers (as they are typically known due to copyright) are often depicted as arrogant, selfish beings that do not hesitate to use their eye ray powers to get what they want. Of course, fitting for a [[monstergirl]]s setting, their powers are [[PROMOTIONS|less destructive]] than that of a D&D Beholder, going more toward charm, hypnotism and mind control.

Still, beholder-girls are a rarity, simply because there's something rather counter-intuitive about turning a floating head full of teeth and eyes into a monstergirl. Perhaps the most well known example of them on /tg/ is the Gazer of the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]], whose smug grin currently adorns this section of the page. Described as spiteful and full of themselves, their deepest secret is that this is mostly bluster to cover up feelings of insecurity about their looks. They specialize in hypnotic spells, mostly to brainwash men into falling in love with them.

==Gallery==
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Beholder

2020-06-22T03:19:50Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Beholderkin */

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]]
[[Image:Beholder_balloon.jpg|thumb|right|Drow clowns make a different kind of balloon animal]]

A '''beholder''' is a giant lumpy... thing that looks like a floating octopus with a giant eye in the middle. The tentacles also have eyes at the end of them. Yuck.

Beholders, like [[Illithid|Mind Flayer]]s, are considered "intellectual property" of <s>TSR</s> Wizards of the Coast, so they aren't allowed to be used in third party D&D supplements or in [[Pathfinder]] as they were not covered under the [[OGL|Open Gaming License]]. This naturally doesn't stop [[ChapterHouse Studios|weirdly]] [[Original character, do not steal|similar]] creatures from appearing in various [[weeaboo]] JRPGs and related works, where they're usually called "gazers" or similar. Yes, this includes [[Monstergirls]]. Of course one game even used the name beholder, but we all excuse it, because this game is [[Heroes of Might and Magic|THE GAME. THE LEGEND.]]

The Beholder first appeared on the cover of the [[Greyhawk]] supplement for the Original Dungeons and Dragons. The creation of [[Spelljammer]] where beholders play an major role resulted in the creation of many varieties of beholders. Much information about their biology and culture was revealed in the book [[Lords of Madness]]. They also got an entire book to themselves in second edition called ''I, Tyrant''.

==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.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the beholder race has a lot of genetic variety (as evidenced by the number of Beholder variants, 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.

Like [[Aboleth]]s, when a beholder is born, they inherent 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 inherent.

While good beholder technically are possible, they are extremely rare because turning good requires a beholder 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.

==Notable Variants==
===2nd & 3rd Edition===
====True Beholders====
* Beholder: Your basic beholder. A central eye that projects an anti-magic cone and ten smaller eyes that each fire a different ray, such as charm person, disintegrate, and flesh to stone.
* Elder Orb: A larger beholder with a much longer than normal lifespan. Always has at least 6 levels of sorcerer.
* Hive Mother/[[Hive Tyrant]]: The highest ranked of all beholders and beholderkin. Basically a bigger meaner beholder that holds beholders and beholderkin under its sway. It has the ability to control other beholders and beholderkin, and has the ability spawn new kinds of beholderkin specialized for different tasks. Beholder hives are almost always ruled by a Hive Mother, which keeps the different kinds of beholders and kin from killing each other, and when Hive Mothers belonging to the same breed come together, they can form beholder cities. In 2nd edition, Hive Mothers have their smaller eyes set in a ring around their head instead of being on the ends of stalks, making them less maneuverable but also less vulnerable to being cut off, while in 3rd edition they are just extra large beholders.

====Beholderkin====
* Gauth: Basically, babby's first beholder, with only 6 eyestalks of doom and a reduced ability to disintegrate everyone and eats magic. Looks like a smaller beholder with a ring of useless extra eyes around the central eye and four of its ten stalks don't have eyes on the end.
* Eyeball: Tiny beholder, best used as a familiar. Pretty damn adorable for a beholder, still Neutral Evil. They have four eye stalks with ray of frost, cause fear, daze, and mage hand and can only use one of them at a time. The central eye doesn't do anything.
* Death Kiss: instead of dispensing death-beams from its eyestalks, they use them to suck your blood. Their only eye has no powers, but they release electric shocks when they are injured.
* Astereater: giant space-faring asteroid beholderkin with no eyestalks that eats your ship. For some reason it likes to enslave [[Giff]] to use as soldiers. [[Spelljammer]] was weird. Beholders and other beholderkin insist that they have no relation to them.
* Examiner: Four eyestalks, four limbs, and no central eye. Their limbs let them use tools and weapons, and they can create magic items. They also regenerate 1 hit point every round.
* Observer: A powerful psionic beholder with a hard shell, six eye-stalks, three large eyes spaced evenly around its middle, and three mouths on the ends of long retractable stalks that suck blood similar to a death kiss. It uses its psionic abilities to brainwash other monsters into its loyal servants. Less evil than other beholders.
* Lensman: Beholder infantry. The lowest of all beholderkin, or at least until the Eyeball was introduced. Imagine a starfish, then add a giant eye and mouth in the middle of its body, then replace four of its five arms with the arms and legs of an ape. The eye may have one of six different powers. They do not levitate but their limbs allow them to use weapons and tools.
* Watcher: the second lowest of beholderkin. Has three normal eyes around its body and a large compound eye on the top surrounded by six eyespots, and a single tentacle on the bottom which can inflict electric shocks. Its three regular eyes each have two different powers, and the compound eye can use three of those powers. Can cast the message and tongues spells. They are cowardly and mainly act as scouts for their more powerful cousins.
* Spectator: true neutral beholderkin. It's actually pretty swell, as far as beholders go. Remember that one beholder in Baldur's Gate? They can be summoned with a ritual using four beholder's eyestalks. They make excellent guards since they are content to spend very long periods of time in deep contemplation and don't need to be fed since they can magically create their own food. Has only four eye-stalks and the central eye reflects magic instead.
* Overseer: a beholderkin that looks like a giant fleshy tree trunk with thirteen eyestalk branches, tentacles for roots, no central eye, and several mouths at the base. Yes, I realize that it looks nothing like a beholder, but the book says it is so fuck it, let's call it a beholder. Like the hive mother, it also has the ability to dominate other beholders and beholderkin. In large beholder cities, the Hive Mother dominates the Overseers, who then dominated other beholders and kin for her, thus greatly increasing the number of a beholders a Hive Mother can control at one time.
* Eye of the Deep: it's like a beholder BUT UNDERWATER! And it tastes oddly of shrimp. Also, it's got little arms with crab-pincers. Only has two eye stalks and the central eye can flash blinding light. Also can cast the spell persistent image, which it uses to create [[Trap|illusions of mermaids]] and other things to lure victims closer. Rarely interacts with other kinds of beholders due to them living in different environments.
* Director: beholder cavalry. A beholderkin with six eyestalks and three tentacles on the bottom that it uses to bond with and ride vermin, usually giant centipedes. Because haven't we all wanted to ride a giant centipede like a pony up and down the streets... SHUT UP, I DON'T JUDGE YOU! Has six eye stalks and its central eye generates a protective forcefield around itself and its mount.
* Gouger: A beholderkin created to fight beholders. In the [[Forgotten Realms]] setting, they were created by [[Phaerimm]]s. Larger than regular beholders and has four small useless legs hanging off of its body. It has the same number of eyes as a standard beholder but does not have any eye powers other than the central antimagic eye. It attacks with a 15 foot long barbed tongue which it uses to disable other beholder's eyes.
* Gorbel: A beholderkin whose stalks are tipped with claws instead of eyes. Explodes when badly injured.
* Orbus: An albino dwarf beholder with no eyes other than the anti-magic central eye but is a powerful spellcaster. They are only seen in the [[Spelljammer]] setting on beholder ships, which they are bred to power and navigate.

====Other====
* Beholder mage: when the DM wants the entire party to die horrible deaths but doesn't feel like using rocks. This is a special character class that only true beholders can take, which requires them to remove their anti-magic eye, and whenever they gain a the ability to cast a new level of spells must sacrifice one of their eye powers to turn that eyestalk into a spellstalk which casts spells of that level. At level 10, it's empty eye socket can absorb spells to heal it. All the cheese of a wizard with more spells per day, the ability to blast 10 spells at once at you as free actions, and fucking spontaneous casting. Even munchkins shit their pants in fear when they hear of these things. One of the unholy trinity of fuck off broken PCs that you can technically enter, the others being tainted scholars and Illithid Savants. And that's before you start optimizing the bastard because the fucker can still take ten more levels before becoming epic.
* Beholder Priestess: Sometimes when a beholder city is endangered the Hive Mother will called for help from The Great Mother and will be temporarily granted abilities similar to a cleric. On rare occasions this can also happen to a standard beholder, which will cause it to mutated into a Hive Mother.
* Doomsphere: The ghost of a beholder killed in by a magical explosion that haunts the area where it died. If doomsphere is defeated it will respawn in one day unless the area is exorcised.
* Death Tyrant: Basically, a Beholder lich. Yeah, you're probably fucked.
* Kasharin: A death tyrant beholder that also carries a rotting disease similar to mummy rot.
* Evil Eyes: A beholder that possesses non-standard eye powers and so is especially hated by other beholders.

===4th edition===
4e made use of quite a few different kinds of beholder, though almost all of them were pretty rapetastic, being made for higher levels. Most kinds of beholders had a Telekinesis Ray that they could use to slide enemies about, though for most that's all they do.

* Gauth - Pretty much the same as old editions, this is the pitiful little baby of the beholder family in 4e, and something you can toss at low-level parties to scare them without killing them. Level 5 Elites that can shoot fire, sleeping rays and exhaustion rays, and immobilise with its central eye.
* Bloodkiss - Another carry-over, and the second-weakest beholder statted, this one got the Undead subtype for some reason (guess they didn't read up and thought it was "just" a beholder vampire). Level 9 Solo Controller that relies on its blood-sucking tentacles to rip up anything in reach, though it also packs a psychic + dazing effect Death Scream attack and can hit people a lot of times.
* Eye of Shadow - Beholders who spent too long in the shadowfell, dissolving into a blot of darkness and hate. Fairly puny (level 12 Elite), but seriously trolling, with blinding rays, thundering rays, freezing rays, and the ability to pull off a "teleport 20 squares and then be invisible" trick.
* Eye of Flame - A beholder that specialises in burninating shit. Central eye gives vulnerability to fire and causes fire attacks to do ongoing, eyestalks blast foes with fire and fear effects. A low-Paragon tier (level 13 Elite) foe.
* Eye of Frost - We got a burn-your-ass beholder, so evidently we need a freezinating beholder. Slightly tougher (1 level higher) than its counterpart. Central eye means cold damage can immobilise those it looks at... weirdly, its got two kinds of freezing rays; one that does a lot of cold damage, one that does less cold damage but freezes your ass solid.
* Beholder Spawn - Baby beholders wanna eat your face, too. Level 15 Minions that can bite or do elemental damage with their eye-rays.
* Death Tyrant - Zombie Eye Tyrants, pretty much. Way weaker than their older namesakes (level 15 Solo). Central eye can strip away necrotic resistance (guess what kind of damage it does most) and slow you, and eyebeams focused on kill-you-dead. Choice is whether it just necrotic damages you to death, petrifies you, makes you die, or makes you die and then come back as a ghoul. Oh, and it has a fear ray too.
* Ghost Beholder - Dead Eye Tyrant who came back as a ghost. A level weaker and only an Elite, but still pretty nasty. Freezing eye rays and the ability to possess and mind control your dudes: not a lot of fun if your Will is shitty.
* Eye Tyrant - Your basic beholder for this edition, and pretty damn nasty (level 19 Solo). Can daze you with its central eye, or use its eyestalks to cause radiant and necrotic damage, put you to sleep, paralyze you, confuse you, terrify you, petrify you, disintegrate you or kill you outright.
* Eye of Chaos - Now we're getting into the big guns. Beholders that have been warped by the abyss, changing their alignment to chaotic evil and making them more similar to demons in their behavior. Level 25 Elites that will drive you almost as crazy as themselves, with the ability to lock you down to at-will powers only with their central eye and hit you with rays of force, blinding, confounding, madness, fear or teleportation.
* Ultimate Tyrant - They ain't fucking kidding when they named this bastard. Level 29 Solo - there are ancient dragons that aren't this nasty! Central eye locks you down, other eyes can drive you mad, unravel you, dissolve you, burn you, freeze you, drag you around, petrify you, disintegrate you, pull you closer or hurl you away.
* Eternal Tyrant - Because even the Ultimate Tyrant isn't ultimate enough. This bastard is an undead version of the Ultimate Tyrant that comes in a pair of linked entities; the Shell, a beholder [[golem]] (Level 31 Elite Brute) and the Essence, a hyper-powerful beholder [[ghost]] (level 33 Elite Artillery). These assholes are literally god-tier monsters - you had damn well better know what you're doing when you fight an Eternal Tyrant!

===5th Edition===
5e's first Monster Manual provides three forms of beholder; common beholder (or Eye Tyrant), Death Tyrant, and Spectator. The first two variants are what 5e calls Legendary creatures, meaning they have extra powers in their lairs that they can trigger on Initiative Count 20, certain specific effects mark the regions in which they lair, and they have special Legendary Actions that they can perform outside of the normal turn sequence. Their legendary ego has been given up a serious boost; now, beholders mutate at random just by accidentally thinking too hard, their ego is that overpowering. This is also how they reproduce now: by sleeping and dreaming of other beholders, bending reality in that way.

* Beholder: You know it, you hate it. Challenge level 13. Has its old antimagic cone central eye back, a bite attack for piercing damage, and ten eye rays, of which it can use three each round, rolling randomly to determine which three it has. Charm ray, paralyzing ray, fear ray, slowing ray, enervation ray, telekinetic ray, sleep ray, petrification ray, disintegration ray and death ray. It can burn one of its three legendary actions at the end of another creature's turn to blast somebody with a random eye ray. Its lair effects consist of three options; change a 50ft square up to 120ft distant into slimy difficult terrain, make any walls within 120ft sprout flailing appendages that'll grapple anyone within 10ft who can't beat a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, or cause an eye to pop up on any solid surface within 60ft that can then shoot a random eye ray at any enemy within its sight. For region effects, they're all fluffy; creatures within 1 mile sometimes feel they're being watched, or minor reality warps that affect inanimate objects (markings changing on a wall, slime coating a statue, etc) pop up whilst the beholder is sleeping. Volo's Guide to Monsters introduced a table of potential alternate eye rays, in case your party was feeling complacent.
* Death Tyrant: A beholder who dreamed of living forever. So it died in its sleep and became an undead beholder skull with ghostly eyes. It trades the antimagic cone for a negative energy cone (creatures can't regain hitpoints, humanoids that die in its area of effect become zombies under the death tyrant's command on the next turn). It has the same eye rays and legendary actions as the beholder. Its lair actions are variants of the beholder's - its grabbing walls are DC 17 and reach into the Ethereal Plane, it creates a 50ft cube of lightly obscured difficult terrain, and it can create a spectral eye at any point within 50ft, which can also target foes on the Ethereal Plane. It has one crunchy regional effect; a creature that is both hostile to the death tyrant and aware of its existence must roll a D20 if it finishes a long rest within 1 mile of the death tyrant's lair. On a 10 or less, it gets zapped with a random eye ray.
* Spectator: A lesser beholder variant with only four eye stalks, conjured from another plane of existence via a ritual that requires four beholder eyestalks as material components. It's only Challenge level 3 and it's Lawful Neutral, rather than the Lawful Evil of the others. It has a Confusion Ray, a Paralyzing Ray, a Fear Ray and a Wounding Ray, and it can magically create all the food and water it needs to sustain itself each day. It's a fool's gambit to attack it with spells thanks to its Spell Reflection reaction, which lets it retarget a spell that missed the spectator, or which forced a save that the spectator passed, against another creature within the spectator's line of sight and that is at least 30 feet from the spectator.
* Beholder Zombie: Much weaker than a living beholder. Loses most of its eye rays and its anti-magic cone.
* Death's Kiss: A Beholder who had nightmares about bleeding out spawns a vampiric tentacle monster, using toothy mouth-stalks to voraciously suck the blood from other creatures. It also bleeds lightning, for some reason. Not as smart as a normal beholder, but for this reason not as egotistical or paranoid. Added in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
* Gauth: A smaller beholder who sometimes shows up if you screw up the ritual to summon a spectator; it's got six eyestalks, four tentacles, and smaller eyes all around its central eye, so it's hard to understand how wizards can get confused when it lies and claims to be the real deal. The issue is that Gauths are magic eaters, sucking the juice from magical items to sustain themselves, so you can see why that makes them pretty piss-poor guards for a wizard's lair. They're weaker than true beholders and also less xenophobic. Also, they explode when you kill them.
* Gazer: A ridiculously adorable and weak little beholder (only Challenge 1/2 - that is, a ''twenty-sixth'' of the strength of a true beholder) that is sometimes dreamed into being. They're so amusingly pathetic that even pure beholders often keep them as pets, and they have the same sadistic ego of a full beholder in miniature. Have caused a lot of argument over whether the sidebar on gazer familiars is intended for PCs as well or just for mage NPCs, and if so if house rules should be used to slot them in as Chain Pact warlock familiars, let them take the action to fire their eye-rays, etc.
* Mindwitness: A beholder converted into an [[illithid]]-like creature via ceremorphosis. Now that those of you who aren't currently running from your computers in terror have stopped screaming, the end result is less "terrifying perfect marriage of beholder eye-rays with illithid mind rape and the combined egotism of both" and more "quasi-lobotomized docile [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica#Astropaths|glorified psionic email server]]," though still smarter than the average human. Notably, if the illithids and elder brains they serve are slaughtered and they survive, mindwitnesses tend to drift around looking for other psionic creatures to serve, taking on the alignments and worldviews of those they meet, be they kindly [[flumph]]s or evil [[demon]]s. Four of their eyestalks become tentacles, but they have six kinds of eyerays: fear, telekinetic, and slowing rays like those of their normal cousins, but also aversion rays that cause disadvantage on attack rolls, stunning rays that stun creatures, and a psychic ray that just causes a pile of psychic damage.

==Similar Monsters==
Beholders are not the only monsters that look like floating orbs with eyes.
* Gas Spore: Not a true beholder or beholderkin, but a [[fungus]] that resembles a beholder. May have been created by a beholder mage, or may be a fungus that took on the form of the beholder that it fed on, or maybe it's just mundane evolutionary mimicry. Beholders sometimes cultivate them in their cities for defense.
* Thagar: Also known as the Beholdereater, it is a predator that eats beholders. Is a giant orb covered in eyes with several mouths on the ends of stalks. It does not have any eye powers, but it is immune to mind affecting magic and highly resistant to it's body being physically affected by magic, so there isn't much a beholder can do against it.
* Deep spawn: An orb with six large tentacles and several retractable eye stalk. Three of it's tentacles end in mouths, and the other three can wield weapons. It has the ability to give birth to loyal clones of creatures it has previously eaten, making them useful for villains who want to populate their dungeons with a variety of monsters. Relation to beholders unknown.
* Gibbering Orb: An epic version of the [[Gibbering Mouther]]. An amorphous orb covered in mouths and eyes, which have eye rays similar to a beholder. Possibly is the common ancestor of beholders and gibbering mouthers, though this would conflict with the belief that the Great Mother created beholders. Fourth edition also introduced the Gibbering Abomination, a middle ground between the mouther and the orb which also eye rays.
* Lurking strangler: These creatures are to beholders what monkeys are to humans. A tiny aberration that looks like a pair of flying eyeballs connected by a cord of muscle. It likes to strangling sleeping enemies to death, and it can put enemies to sleep with one of its two eye rays. Beholders sometimes keep these things as pets.
* Fihyr: A living manifestation of nightmares that forms when a large number of people in an area all have nightmares in one night. It has a roughly spherical body covered in eyes, mouths, and tentacles. No relation to beholders.
* [[Astral Dreadnought]]: A huge predator that lives in the [[Astral Plane]] that has a single eye with anti-magic abilities similar to a beholder's central eye. Relation to beholders unknown.

==Notable Beholders==
*Large Luigi, a relatively friendly beholder who works as a barkeep in the [[Spelljammer]] setting.
*That beholder head of the thieves' guild who was the first major boss in [[Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance]]
*Another beholder head of another thieves' guild who was the final boss of the first Eye of the Beholder game.
*That funny spectator you kept running into and quasi-befriended in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That blind death tyrant boss you had to get a special god-killing magic wand to kill in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That beholder in [[Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes]]
*That beholder in Futurama who's there for no apparent reason (was meant to be guarding some passage in the Central Bureaucracy but fell asleep on the job)
*Xanathar, the writer of "Xanathar's guide to everything" and head of Skullport's Thieves' Guild, which includes new options for classes and backgrounds, along with his snide comments running throughout. Apparently he's only one of many beholders to have used the title since the first one seized power. Notable for being one of the few beholders to remotely care for a being other than itself, he really loves his pet goldfish. It is kind of adorable. What he doesn't know is that his beloved goldfish has been replaced several times by the Thieves' Guild since goldfish don't live very long and he would [[RAGE|not be happy if he ever found out]].

==Beholders as Monstergirls==
[[File:Gazer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|No, you're not dreaming, this is a Beholder in monstergirl form.]]{{Monstergirls}}

[[rule 34|The proof that nothing, ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing is sacred,]] even Beholders got anthropomorphised into a sexy almost-human female by [[/d/|those irremediably insane weebs]]. Goddamit, Japan!

Gazers (as they are typically known due to copyright) are often depicted as arrogant, selfish beings that do not hesitate to use their eye ray powers to get what they want. Of course, fitting for a [[monstergirl]]s setting, their powers are [[PROMOTIONS|less destructive]] than that of a D&D Beholder, going more toward charm, hypnotism and mind control.

Still, beholder-girls are a rarity, simply because there's something rather counter-intuitive about turning a floating head full of teeth and eyes into a monstergirl. Perhaps the most well known example of them on /tg/ is the Gazer of the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]], whose smug grin currently adorns this section of the page. Described as spiteful and full of themselves, their deepest secret is that this is mostly bluster to cover up feelings of insecurity about their looks. They specialize in hypnotic spells, mostly to brainwash men into falling in love with them.

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
File:Awesome Beholder.png
File:The-bard-and-the-beholder.jpg
File:Gazer_D&D.png
</gallery>
</center>

SJW

2020-06-22T02:56:48Z

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{{delete|This is possibly the biggest lightning rod of shitposts on the site, so either permanently protect this accursed thing or make it so nobody can blather on about it ever again.}}
{{Topquote|The only way to win is to not read the crazy, and just fap and/or shlick to the pictures.|[[/d/]]}}
{{Topquote|People love to pretend they're offended.|Matt Groening}}
{{Topquote|Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.|Friedrich Nietzsche}}

== Meaning ==
[[Skub]]'s final form.

'''SJW''' stands for '''Social Justice Warrior''', a term originated in the late '90s to mid-2000's, where it was originally more neutral and meant to refer to ardent or outspoken advocates of social change, usually for 'furthering' civil rights. This generally meant someone who demanded that all races, classes, genders, sexuality, and other groups (with members who can't leave voluntarily) be represented in media and treated with equal respect.

Nowadays, it has a less-than-savory connotation, especially to people within 4chan (''especially'' [[/pol/]] and /v/ - the lattermost is a partial by-product of the GamerGate shenanigans). The modern usage of SJW refers largely to people who demand that media and society be inclusive and inoffensive (in practice, usually only to groups said SJW is a part of and those whose beliefs align with them) before all else, basically trying to police all media and, by proxy, the rest of society.

SJWs also tend to chuck that aforementioned respect out the airlock as they prioritize looking and feeling "good" over actually doing good, like most zealots. They frequently employ simplistic and/or ahistorical analysis that could wring both tears and rage from any fa/tg/uy's inner history buff (and not just the ones with military vehicle fetishes, either). Such piping hot takes also open them up to "easy debunking" - often by a mix of opportunists looking for an easy 'gotcha', /pol/acks looking for an easy triggering or (perhaps most rarely) people who actually studied their shit, with bonus points if said people are left of center and/or themselves part of said minorities on whose behalf the SJWs pull this shit, even as they speak over them. Of course, the debunking may itself be poorly researched - most political discussions set the bar amazingly low, if you hadn't guessed. Many SJWs also practice the double standard of selective outrage (attacking a particular person or group over what they said or did, but ignoring and/or censoring similar or worse things from other groups - bonus points if the latter group is one the "rager" is part of and/or claiming to defend).

In short, it's associated with activists that advocate a a view of progressive societal change that non-progressives and sometimes even progressive groups, like feminists and minority activists, perceive to be ostracizing, harmful or unnecessary. This being mostly subjective is why the definition is so [[skub|contentious]] to begin with.

Expect Social Justice Warriors to show up or at least be mentioned anytime some combination of the following occurs:

*A) a popular figure does or says something considered offensive, whether legitimately so or otherwise;
*B) some asshole's trying to shut up people they're being rude to;
*C) someone is ''harmlessly'' being a bit less politically correct than people want them to;
*D) someone is being ''far less'' politically correct than the situation warrants; or
*E) there isn't enough presentation in a work for ethno-social groups that are already infinitesimal to begin with.

On that note, feel free to play a drinking game where you take a shot each time [[Nazi|Godwin's Law]] is invoked, and be sure to bid your liver farewell before hand.

Expect the affected thread and any other nearby discussion to be derailed in short order; this is becoming more and more frequent on /tg/ lately as hobbies like [[Magic: The Gathering|MTG]] and [[Warhammer 40k]] are being subjected to changes that are viewed as "progressive" and generate unholy waves of skub. This often appears in the forms of users being accused of bigotry for either not checking off enough "oppressed minority" checkboxes in character creation, or else portraying certain groups too positively. The sources are generally either the usual crowd of trolls and shit stirrers, or else actual morons who want to show off their 'good guy' badges - aka virtue signalling - and miss the point of their ideals entirely. Naturally, most people who hold similar views prefer to voice them only when appropriate to do so, and outside of the "radical" fringe, they differ from the average fa/tg/uy only by the presence of a few things they think tabletop games could be better at doing.

This can and does often lead to rifts in communities, fanbases and franchises, with creators (most often independent ones) facing harassment and death threats, and any legitimate criticisms are almost immediately lost in the mix of mob mentality - just like most of the internet.

There are plenty of examples, but the average fa/tg/uy is unlikely to care about most of them outside of the few relevant ones discussed further below.

== ...so why is this a big deal again? ==
The crux of the problem is that SJWs act as "moral guardians" to popular culture. Previous moral panics, such as the hysteria surrounding hip-hop, rock music and (most relevantly) tabletop games such as [[Dungeons & Dragons]] ever since each medium's creation, were driven by people who claimed to be protecting their children from the "evils" within certain works, as well as seeing enemies under every rock or choosing to die on hills that are ultimately of no consequence.

To use pen-and-paper RPGs as an example, the mostly-Christian right-wingers of the late 70s believed them to be [[Heresy|a gateway to devil worship and eternal damnation]] because of a misunderstanding. Some of the game developers lifted elements from real-life occultism and black magic practices for themes and stories, which was mistaken for trying to promote these practices - despite Gary Gygax, D&D's co-creator, being a known Jehovah's Witness. The response to this huge outcry mostly consisted of renaming or remodeling a bunch of shit (e.g. [[demon]]s and [[devil]]s were now Tanar'ri and Baatezu and in-universe occult symbols were redesigned). More concerning were a few murders and suicides by known players. While it sounds ridiculous in hindsight, DnD had yet to gain the traction it currently has and coupled with some groups considering the murderers and suicide victims the face of the games, the games were nearly damned by association.

For more details on that sad, stupid time outlined above, see [[Satanic Panic]].

Where most moral panics in America are often attributed and traced back to said older outspoken conservative Christians, with SJWs it's different - they are generally younger, left-leaning and are either affiliated with new-age religions or atheists (the latter often alongside being anti-religious - ironically, with Christianity often singled out). While many espouse lefty-hippie ideas of acceptance and inclusiveness, many have turned from simply promoting acceptance of varied interests, lifestyles, and hobbies to policing them for proper behavior and raising hell when they find something they don't like. Maybe it's too objectifying, maybe it's not inclusive or diverse enough, maybe it portrays a group they disagree with in too positive a manner; either way, it is promoting bigotry and bad behavior and must be changed accordingly. Some extreme SJWs even become bigots themselves, but with different groups targeted and a "tit for tat" approach.

For the modern SJW, replace the religious issues with socio-political ones, pick a random issue somewhere in the Left (sometimes Far Left) using an advocacy dartboard, and you can find someone who is ready and willing to start petitions, run boycotts, and send death threats to the creators of Your Favorite Thing<sup>TM</sup>.

While there are many key differences, they've joined the ranks of still-existing moral guardians before them through a combination of sheer overzealousness, hatred of particular groups, the usual co-opting by corporations who use their ideologies as a new way to promote their brands and the plentiful organizations and other third parties willing to fund attention-grabbing political actions of varying effectiveness to whatever ends they may desire, whether it be for fame, name or revenge.

That said, compared to the Satanic Panic, any /tg/-related controversies that have occurred since then are hardly a blip on the radar (thankfully so) and are mostly centered around sporadic attempts at pandering by game developers trying to milk what is, to them, a new demographic.

==Further Relevance to /tg/ ==
[[File:SJW in WOTC Staff.png|thumb|right|300px|Typical SJW delusions, seeing people who hate women in places where there are none, while simultaneously implying women are idiots.]]
While SJWs mostly focus on comics, movies and video games, they've found relatively little traction on tabletop games - it's widely considered more obscure in comparison to other forms of media, thus not warranting scrutiny OR continued interest to the SJW's inner hipster. Movies are delivered as a finished product that usually cannot be tampered with, so they have to worry more about what's given to them. [[/v/|Video games]] can sometimes be modded to some extent, but are usually more at the mercy of its creators.

However, as with any game that allows GMs and their players to [[Homebrew|make up their own shit and tailor the rules and setting to their own goddamn pleasure]], the consumers are the arbiters of what is canon or relevant in their private sessions; [[Games Workshop|the companies]] simply provide the setting these sessions take place within. The 'worst' a given fa/tg/uy has to worry about is fits being thrown over given models, [[White Wolf|disingenuous pandering]] [[Vampire: The Masquerade|that's often mandated by higher-ups]] (sometimes enforced by devs and writers), and a loss in quality of [[Black Library|franchise fiction]] (as if [[C.S. Goto|a ton of]] [[Matt Ward|terrible franchise fiction]] isn't already out there). More on that later, though.

Any other debates and criticisms surrounding the medium are either nearly as old as the genre itself, or else commonplace enough that it's not even exclusive to the genre anymore. [[-4 STR]] is something of an exception in this regard, given that the term originated with tabletop itself, and there has also been [[Sociopathic diplomancer gets shut the fuck down|at least one tale of an encounter with someone]] who would very much fit the stereotype. This hasn't stopped them from ''trying'', however, to the point where numerous people in high-level positions in the development of not only [[Dungeons & Dragons]], but [[Pathfinder]], are viewed as part of the same ideological mindset, and supposedly believe that THE problem with D&D, is, of course, the fanbase itself.

While this might seem to hold water due to the nature of tabletop and PnP games, more astute fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls might have already noticed the aforementioned logical fallacy with this: [[/tg/|traditional gaming]] is fundamentally an insular hobby populated predominantly by its fans, who consist of a much wider spectrum of people than stereotypes dictate. Trying to ''"mandate"'' inclusiveness and force the hobby to fit a completely different audience who has no real interest (key words) is equal to spraying napalm to put out a fire.

Oldfags can only chuckle to themselves; the neckbeards of old saw people try to demonize or similarly alter their hobbies for [[Gary Gygax]]'s entire lifetime, and know that ultimately, this crap is destined to fail just as hard as previous attempts to kill their favorite hobbies off. In turn, many gamers and self-styled movie buffs who don't understand the "players make the rules" aspect of tabletop thus fail to understand the futility of forcing roleplaying fa/tg/uys to join a "fight" that cannot threaten their fun, even in spite of the stereotype of roleplayers who define themselves solely by their hobby.

The main reason this article exists at all is to detail the perceived threat to the hobby that defines the board and (more often) the annoyance caused by forcing unrelated political discussions on a board of people who are ''ideally'' just trying to play some damn games or otherwise mind their business.

Y'know, like most of the internet.

===SJWs and WH40k===
Now, you may hear complaints about wargaming, and how it has too much [[Imperium of Man|imperialism, war crimes]], [[Exterminatus|genocide]], [[Ecclesiarchy|religious extremism]], [[Inquisition|xenophobia, abduction]], [[Cadian Shock Troops|child soldiers]], [[Daemonculaba|injury and death of minors]], [[Penitent Engine|religious mind-rape driven war machines]], [[Slaanesh|rape, drug abuse, sexual exploitation]], [[Warp|supernatural horror]], etc. etc. While not mentioned by name, you can imagine those complaints had [[Warhammer 40,000|a particular franchise in mind]]. Naturally, you can also imagine the lengths they went to in order to [[Derp|completely ignore]] [[Grimdark|the entire air of black vs. black morality within the setting itself]] (with shades of super-dark grey if you're feeling [[Salamanders|gene]][[Tau|rous]]).

The three most common complaints about Warhammer 40,000 are usually: the absence of [[Female Space Marines]]; the [[Sisters of Battle]] having boob plates; and - tied for third - how 40k models and art seldom depicted non-Sisters of Battle women and non-white humans, despite lore containing multiple, numerous easily-found examples to the contrary.

Here is a handy quick-list of refutations, to make everyone's lives a little easier:

#Warhammer 40,000 originated as an ironic parody of hard-right authoritarianism, born out of the explosion of progressive UK Sci-Fi and Fantasy that erupted as a reaction to [[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka|Margaret Thatcher]]'s policies of moral regulation and strong executive power (as well as all the other shit that happened in then-living memory during the 20th Century). Warhammer 40k took the piss out of the conservative UK government in the same way ''2000AD'' did, via satire and cautionary tales - this context has been lost over time with the growing popularity of the game, the growth of the company itself, and how the right-leaning political climate being satirized is no longer dominant in the UK (Margaret Thatcher herself also ''died'' several years go) while its current political climate is an entirely different beast.
#Anyone who actually reads the fluff knows that the Imperium as a body doesn't care about sex or race on that level, because the encroaching forces of [[grimdark]] make any form of discrimination impractical. Women and other minorities regularly participate in every level of Imperial society. The lack of female models is a semi-regular issue that ends up at the feet of GW, who already get enough shit from pearl-clutching moral guardians about [[Hot Chicks|Sisters Repentia and Daemonettes]] to generally want to avoid gender controversy and making "redundant" models. [[Mutant|The discrimination that ''does'' happen in the Imperium]] has some credible backing, in that the Imperium is an empire of semi-justified zealots: mutation is a common symptom of exposure to [[Chaos]] or [[Genestealer|other very bad things,]] so they figure it's best to not take chances.
#:Female Space Marines also have a well-defined fluff reason for not existing: recent lore stated there were in-universe attempts that failed badly enough to warrant discontinuing them. And of the section of the actual playerbase that clamors for female Marines, you can guess how many do so [[Rule 63|with impure intent.]] At any rate, important characters have a higher percentage of female or LBGTQ+ representation than expendable meatgrinder characters. This goes for both old characters like Yarrick (revealed to be gay) and new characters like Arch Magos Exasus (who is non-binary).
#Until recently, GW was also [[Commorragh Slaves|terrible at sculpting female characters in most cases]]; the Sisters of Battle were a rare exception for years, and that's likely ''because'' they're just power-armored humans with boobplate.
#GW so rarely listened to their own customers that complaining wouldn't have changed shit no matter how obvious the problem was. Nowadays there is a MUCH better chance for more fan-interaction, but there you go: anyone looking for change should be taking it up with GW, not Warhammer fans.
#When it comes to racial representation, they've previously said that their idea was for humanity in 40k to be as ethnically and physically diverse as they are across Earth in real-life. GW said the reason for having majority white people in the art was because the early art teams were small and made art of what they knew (the UK is still populated by 95% white people, although interestingly where GW is in Nottingham is nowadays only about 65% white), and this pattern just became an unthinking habit. This is typical of a lot of fantasy work, which is often based on history or mythology from Europe or Asia where lighter skin colors are believed more common. While it is discriminatory, it's 'unconscious bigotry' as opposed to GW being actively malicious. [[Image:5zft MoOz3I.jpg|thumb|right|200px|It begins!]]
#Every Warhammer Fantasy and 40k player knows that GW is simply [[End Times|bad]] [[Abaddon|at]] [[Matt Ward|making]] [[C.S. Goto|writing]] [[Storm of Chaos|decisions]]. Asking for well-written ''anyone'' from GW is like praying for a miracle. Furthermore, some of the most interesting characters in Fantasy were female, and got written out of canon as the years went on, so best believe the fans were already outraged over that.

If you read GW's Annual report: 2015-16, you'll find there were complaints about most of the staff being male even back then. To GW's credit, they answered: "The Company does not consider that diversity can be best achieved by establishing specific quotas and targets and appointments will continue to be made based on merit." (p. 15, if you're bored enough to check). That kinda contradicts with the "principle of boardroom diversity, which was first introduced into the Code in June 2010" mentioned on the same page, but you get it.

On the other hand, it should be noted that GW has been somewhat 'addressing' things, in [[Age of Sigmar]] anyway; several human models have non-white skin tones in their official paint jobs (and most of them look laughable with it, as they're rocking classical European features. Painting grizzly white doesn't make it a polar bear, you know), there's black Sigmarines and at least one black Ultramarine, there's more than one model for a Sigmarine woman, and in the early days of AoS, the most promoted faction other than Sigmarines and Khorne was the mostly female [[Sylvaneth]] led by [[Everqueen|Alarielle the Everqueen]]. Meanwhile, [https://spikeybits.com/2017/10/female-representation-40k.html GW has promised on social media to "improve female representation" in 40k], specifically referring to reducing "boob-plate" in the miniature line and artwork (which may have factored into the decision to cover up - and bulk up - the Sister Repentia in 8th edition).

That said, it isn't all rosy of course; [[Age of Sigmar|Age of Smegmar]] 2e has a female Stormcast Eternal with warning-coloration hair done up in a [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Trigglypuff Trigglypuff-tier] mohawk on the front cover of the BRB, though that might not be anything other than garish visual design. The Daughters of Khaine ''could'' also be viewed as a caricature of radical feminists, being a violently misandric society where the men are literally slaves to the women... or it could be because they're [[Drow]] with the serial numbers filed of. On the 40k side, [[Gav Thorpe]] wrote a recent book, ''Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah'', with a Magos who "does not identify as male or female". While this makes some sense - the Mechanicus shuns the flesh, which would presumably include gender roles - it generated a good amount of [[skub]] due to this new gender dynamic, the use of recently invented gender pronouns, how they fit into the universe, and whether or not this written in an attempt to pander to SJWs or a sign that Gav Thorpe has become one. It should be noted that, like many GW/Black Library writers, Gav Thorpe's content is by no means 100% great reads, and this might just be a case of him finding a character interesting, political views aside, and writing them very badly.

==What do???==

'''''Nothing.'''''

It's your hobby, and at day's end, any changes you make to doing what you love and loving what you do should be ultimately ''your'' decision. Don't care so much about what other people think, let alone some fanbrats and/or political brainlets who probably don't even give a shit about it to begin with. Anyone who DOES care enough about diverse characters and settings will eventually take matters into their own hands and [[Homebrew|brew some up]] [[Get shit done|themselves]], as they should. Half the fun of Warhammer is [[Your dudes|making your armies your own]] anyway, like most tabletop games, so why wait for GW to change?

The ''wrong'' response (and this is almost always true, by the way), is to insult the fans for liking something they don't like. But hey, whatchagonnado? "Pretending to be offended" can cut '''both''' ways, and complaining about people liking something you don't like is [[Twilight|almost]] [[Drizzt|as]] [[Ironclaw|popular]] [[The End Times|here]] as [[Grognard|complaining about people ''not'' liking something you love]]. And as long as someone makes their dudes "wrong," [[That Guy|''someone'']] will always be yelling.

Yet again, ''like most of the internet.''

So weigh your options and pick your battles wisely, because God knows these chucklefucks won't.

==Do They Have a Point?==

===TL;DR:===
'''It's complicated.''' Many of the points the SJWs raise aren't incorrect in themselves, ''but'' they are often distorted by proponents and detractors alike to further their respective agendas. Regardless of your stance on the social issues in dispute, keep in mind that it's not black-and-white and the goal is change rather than destruction.

Except about Orcs. There is nothing racist about Orcs. They're Orcs. They go around killing and enslaving everything that's not an orc because of their religious beliefs. Clearly, orcs are white. That was a joke. Orcs aren't based on any real race. Dwarves could be more racist. Probably the most racist thing in D&D are the [[Vistani]].

===The long version===
While the term represents legitimate grievances and real issues, as hinted earlier "SJW" has also seen use as a snarl word by people on the right to shut down arguments, regardless of any merit they might have. This snarl creates a crude caricature of modern leftists to smear a rather large body of people (e.g. lumping said leftists with liberals, even though not all liberals are left-wing and may participate in said smears themselves), misrepresenting any position left of the "snarler" as a threat to any cultural aspect you can think of (like say, entertainment and gaming). Sometimes it doesn't matter if the SJWs in question (or their supposed position) are even partly real, or just convenient caricatures up to and including the most blatant trolls. This use of the term is especially true of those on the [[/pol/]] side when they don't want to scare the normies - or at least let the caricatures do the work for them. After all, who's gonna pay attention to someone when they or their views are successfully cast as "[[That Guy|rocking the boat?]]"

Some fiction ''does'' have problematic elements, and all fiction has a certain degree of subtext woven into it (intentionally or not) by its creators and/or the general worldview of the day. For example, in a lot of 1950s fiction, female characters would usually be sidelined to supporting roles such as home keeper, while a male protagonist would be the guy who took charge and get shit done - even in a science fiction setting where many futurists would have speculated that women would take a greater active role in future society. Most times, writers consider the way things are done where they're from to be the way things "should" be, unless they're exploring a "what if" scenario or criticism of an aspect of their society. Tropes built around the worldview of a generation persist into the next and often serve as the foundation for that generation's works - it's part of human nature for people to write what they know, take their worldview for granted and/or follow the leader without considering the implications.

Though such tropes ''can'' serve as useful indicators of the author's beliefs and/or the cultural zeitgeist, many of these tropes also do not age well, becoming discredited in some fashion as society and attitudes towards history change over time; a fair number of MST3K episodes snark at this. Understanding how this process works, and the ramifications thereof, is a perfectly valid approach to identify problematic matters and address them in future works. This has far more practical applications than trying to be as inoffensive as possible merely for the sake of it, which often does the subject matter(s) a disservice - it is frequently an exercise in futility, and besides that, context is key. One series having [[Fantasy Armor|metal bikini armor]] is not a problem (especially if its general tone is tongue firmly in cheek), but when that becomes the norm even in more serious works, especially without justification, then it's become an issue.

Furthermore, acknowledging problematic elements in a work is not the same as a condemnation of its quality or wanting it censored because of that (usually) comparatively small element - this assumption is a classic Hanlon's Razor scenario, assuming malice where at worst stupidity may exist. The presence of certain views or "biases" in a work doesn't mean that the modern reader will instantly like or adopt said views. No one is immune to propaganda, but reading Atlas Shrugged doesn't automatically make you an individualist; being a fan of the Imperium of Man doesn't make you a militaristic theocracy advocate, reading The Lord of the Rings does not automatically make you a monarchist, and so on. Aside from tarring all people with the same brush as being easily impressionable morons, that's mostly putting the cart before the horse and attacking symptoms rather than the actual cause, i.e. what would lead someone to seek reinforcement of that particular worldview via reading or producing fiction, for instance - [[Skub|a nuanced topic that would take up a page on its own and isn't likely to be done real justice here]].

There are numerous reasons why there's "pandering" in /tg/ media, beyond the points discussed above. For one, many companies want to broaden their consumer base by taking in new demographics. As the world gets interconnected and as society becomes more diverse, there is an increasing demand by people who aren't heterosexual white men to see people who aren't heterosexual white men in Western media, be it as the hero, getting the girl/guy, or "just" being more than a sidekick (matters of representation and diversity in non-Western media - such as China's film industry or India's Bollywood - and related questions of double standards/selective outrage in the complaints are [[Skub|something that would warrant several paragraphs, if not their own page]]). Putting all your eggs in the established core demographic basket can be as disastrous as trying to appeal to a new demographic at the expense of that initial base (AKA "biting the hand that feeds you"). For example, the former was a contributing factor in the [[/co/|Comics Crash of 1996]], focusing too much on the established fanbase at the expense of bringing in new ones by (for example) abandoning magazine stands for comic stores, only to lose it all when they failed to appeal successfully to either while driving much of that old fanbase away.

The 'threat' to any given body of work, much less works within the domain of our hobby, does not lie merely in conflicts between people with different political views, but more often in foolish mass-marketing mandates. And when those politics themselves become mass-marketed, the parasitic corporate practices it enables, along with framing the matter as one of a dichotomous nature - be it unintentionally, actively, dishonestly, and/or otherwise - provides further ammo to the "fringe" ideologues involved, supporters and detractors alike, that they may continue their never ending game of philosophical sportsball, and only the most short-sighted and/or fanatical sorts, especially "SJWs", consider that to be a good result.

Thankfully, some solutions are straightforward; there is absolutely no reason that you could not make the the Inquisitor in your Warhammer 40,000 campaign [[Mordecai_Toth|black]]. In the typical Tolkien-knockoff fantasy settings, you can (depending on how cosmopolitan or travel-allowing the setting is) include a few black characters, and the bare minimum requirement is a sentence to the effect of "their parents were from a distant land where humans look a bit different" (though Tolkien himself had ethnic diversity among humanity in his setting; the Drúedain people of LotR were non-white and opposed Sauron, while there were those among the Free Peoples who knowingly or unknowingly aided Sauron). Population dynamics, such as the oft-cited 1:1 ratio of male-to-female, suggest that there needs to be a pretty good reason NOT have a mix of characters (such as an epidemic that only effects males or females). The lack of LGBTQ+ people is often a point of contention, as it is very difficult to calculate the actual number in any population, given the inherent dangers in certain regions and the vagueness of personal gender/sexual identification. Adding said characters if they're written well and fit the story is, in general, a positive and just good business, especially for those who are transparent about the reasoning behind their works.

The problems arise with executives and other figureheads who don't know any better: some only care about lining their own pockets, and engage in the usual out-of-touch appealing to what the kids are into today without understanding the how and why of it; others fail to distinguish between diversity and tokenism as a result of pushing an agenda-based quota; and still others use the work to push their views and beliefs onto others, the latter two groups ignoring that their franchises are sold to people and not reductive demographic abstractions. Then there are the marketers and PR representatives who encourage this behavior in the vain hope that "new demographics" will eat it up no matter what; when this is almost inevitably proven wrong, they will double down on the pandering, which alienates those who support the view represented by not giving them what they actually wanted while further souring those who don't endorse said view.

When further combined with the tendency of sensationalist media outlets to lionize or demonize whoever they have to in order to meet their given slant's quota, as well as the presence of astroturfing and other means of manufacturing outrage in support of or against said slants, you have the recipe for a failed market or a doomed franchise at best. In a worst-case scenario, you end up creating a new set of problematic cliches and stereotypes. That the majority of fiction is political in some shape or form '''''does not''''' absolve writers of their responsibility to skillfully and properly handle what, if any, politics they acknowledge, lest we get propaganda masquerading as entertainment - and the groups they're expecting to eat that kind of slop up may very well be the first to notice.

== See Also ==
*[[/pol/]] - /pol/ is the largest face of the "alt-right", the yang to the SJW's left-leaning yin... if the analogy works when one side makes a habit of acting scummier as a matter of principle, and often go out of their way to one-up any bad action they see, without the excuse of at least having a good cause to hide behind. They ''pretty much'' run on the same fuel, shot-for-shot, but /pol/ uses skewed far-right principles instead. Exudes a very similar rage to their perceived enemies, but it has a chance of ranging from hilarious, to the pot calling the kettle black, to "[[Edgy|Hitler did nothing wrong]]" (lets be honest, it's mostly the last one these days).

Beholder

2020-06-22T02:23:58Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Beholderkin */

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]]
[[Image:Beholder_balloon.jpg|thumb|right|Drow clowns make a different kind of balloon animal]]

A '''beholder''' is a giant lumpy... thing that looks like a floating octopus with a giant eye in the middle. The tentacles also have eyes at the end of them. Yuck.

Beholders, like [[Illithid|Mind Flayer]]s, are considered "intellectual property" of <s>TSR</s> Wizards of the Coast, so they aren't allowed to be used in third party D&D supplements or in [[Pathfinder]] as they were not covered under the [[OGL|Open Gaming License]]. This naturally doesn't stop [[ChapterHouse Studios|weirdly]] [[Original character, do not steal|similar]] creatures from appearing in various [[weeaboo]] JRPGs and related works, where they're usually called "gazers" or similar. Yes, this includes [[Monstergirls]]. Of course one game even used the name beholder, but we all excuse it, because this game is [[Heroes of Might and Magic|THE GAME. THE LEGEND.]]

The Beholder first appeared on the cover of the [[Greyhawk]] supplement for the Original Dungeons and Dragons. The creation of [[Spelljammer]] where beholders play an major role resulted in the creation of many varieties of beholders. Much information about their biology and culture was revealed in the book [[Lords of Madness]]. They also got an entire book to themselves in second edition called ''I, Tyrant''.

==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.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the beholder race has a lot of genetic variety (as evidenced by the number of Beholder variants, 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.

Like [[Aboleth]]s, when a beholder is born, they inherent 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 inherent.

While good beholder technically are possible, they are extremely rare because turning good requires a beholder 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.

==Notable Variants==
===2nd & 3rd Edition===
====True Beholders====
* Beholder: Your basic beholder. A central eye that projects an anti-magic cone and ten smaller eyes that each fire a different ray, such as charm person, disintegrate, and flesh to stone.
* Elder Orb: A larger beholder with a much longer than normal lifespan. Always has at least 6 levels of sorcerer.
* Hive Mother/[[Hive Tyrant]]: The highest ranked of all beholders and beholderkin. Basically a bigger meaner beholder that holds beholders and beholderkin under its sway. It has the ability to control other beholders and beholderkin, and has the ability spawn new kinds of beholderkin specialized for different tasks. Beholder hives are almost always ruled by a Hive Mother, which keeps the different kinds of beholders and kin from killing each other, and when Hive Mothers belonging to the same breed come together, they can form beholder cities. In 2nd edition, Hive Mothers have their smaller eyes set in a ring around their head instead of being on the ends of stalks, making them less maneuverable but also less vulnerable to being cut off, while in 3rd edition they are just extra large beholders.

====Beholderkin====
* Gauth: Basically, babby's first beholder, with only 6 eyestalks of doom and a reduced ability to disintegrate everyone and eats magic. Looks like a smaller beholder with a ring of useless extra eyes around the central eye and four of its ten stalks don't have eyes on the end.
* Eyeball: Tiny beholder, best used as a familiar. Pretty damn adorable for a beholder, still Neutral Evil. They have four eye stalks with ray of frost, cause fear, daze, and mage hand and can only use one of them at a time. The central eye doesn't do anything.
* Death Kiss: instead of dispensing death-beams from its eyestalks, they use them to suck your blood. Their only eye has no powers, but they release electric shocks when they are injured.
* Astereater: giant space-faring asteroid beholderkin with no eyestalks that eats your ship. For some reason it likes to enslave [[Giff]] to use as soldiers. [[Spelljammer]] was weird. Beholders and other beholderkin insist that they have no relation to them.
* Examiner: Four eyestalks, four limbs, and no central eye. Their limbs let them use tools and weapons, and they can create magic items. They also regenerate 1 hit point every round.
* Observer: A powerful psionic beholder with a hard shell, six eye-stalks, three large eyes spaced evenly around its middle, and three mouths on the ends of long retractable stalks that suck blood similar to a death kiss. It uses its psionic abilities to brainwash other monsters into its loyal servants. Less evil than other beholders.
* Lensman: Beholder infantry. The lowest of all beholderkin, or at least until the Eyeball was introduced. Imagine a starfish, then add a giant eye and mouth in the middle of its body, then replace four of its five arms with the arms and legs of an ape. The eye may have one of six different powers. They do not levitate but their limbs allow them to use weapons and tools.
* Watcher: the second lowest of beholderkin. Has three normal eyes around its body and a large compound eye on the top surrounded by six eyespots, and a single tentacle on the bottom which can inflict electric shocks. Its three regular eyes each have two different powers, and the compound eye can use three of those powers. Can cast the message and tounges spells. They are cowardly and mainly act as scouts for their more powerful cousins.
* Spectator: true neutral beholderkin. It's actually pretty swell, as far as beholders go. Remember that one beholder in Baldur's Gate? They can be summoned with a ritual using four beholder's eyestalks. They make excellent guards since they are content to spend very long periods of time in deep contemplation and don't need to be fed since they can magically create their own food. Has only four eye-stalks and the central eye reflects magic instead.
* Overseer: a beholderkin that looks like a giant fleshy tree trunk with thirteen eyestalk branches, tentacles for roots, no central eye, and several mouths at the base. Yes, I realize that it looks nothing like a beholder, but the book says it is so fuck it, let's call it a beholder. Like the hive mother, it also has the ability to dominate other beholders and beholderkin. In large beholder cities, the Hive Mother dominates the Overseers, who then dominated other beholders and kin for her, thus greatly increasing the number of a beholders a Hive Mother can control at one time.
* Eye of the Deep: it's like a beholder BUT UNDERWATER! And it tastes oddly of shrimp. Also, it's got little arms with crab-pincers. Only has two eye stalks and the central eye can flash blinding light. Also can cast the spell persistent image, which it uses to create [[Trap|illusion of mermaids]] and other things to lure victims closer. Rarely interacts with other kinds of beholders due to them living in different environments.
* Director: beholder cavalry. A beholderkin with three bottom tentacles that it uses to bond with and ride vermin, usually giant centipedes. Because haven't we all wanted to ride a giant centipede like a pony up and down the streets... SHUT UP, I DON'T JUDGE YOU! Has six eye stalks and its central eye generates a protective forcefield around itself and its mount.
* Gouger: A beholderkin created to fight beholders. In the [[Forgotten Realms]] setting, they were created by [[Phaerimm]]s. Larger than regular beholders and has four small useless legs hanging off of its body. It has the same number of eyes as a standard beholder but does not have any eye powers other than the central antimagic eye. It attacks with a 15 foot long barbed tongue which it uses to disable other beholder's eyes.
* Gorbel: A beholderkin whose stalks are tipped with claws instead of eyes. Explodes when badly injured.
* Orbus: An albino dwarf beholder with no eyes other than the anti-magic central eye but is a powerful spellcaster. They are only seen in the [[Spelljammer]] setting on beholder ships, which they are bred to power and navigate.

====Other====
* Beholder mage: when the DM wants the entire party to die horrible deaths but doesn't feel like using rocks. This is a special character class that only true beholders can take, which requires them to remove their anti-magic eye, and whenever they gain a the ability to cast a new level of spells must sacrifice one of their eye powers to turn that eyestalk into a spellstalk which casts spells of that level. At level 10, it's empty eye socket can absorb spells to heal it. All the cheese of a wizard with more spells per day, the ability to blast 10 spells at once at you as free actions, and fucking spontaneous casting. Even munchkins shit their pants in fear when they hear of these things. One of the unholy trinity of fuck off broken PCs that you can technically enter, the others being tainted scholars and Illithid Savants. And that's before you start optimizing the bastard because the fucker can still take ten more levels before becoming epic.
* Beholder Priestess: Sometimes when a beholder city is endangered the Hive Mother will called for help from The Great Mother and will be temporarily granted abilities similar to a cleric. On rare occasions this can also happen to a standard beholder, which will cause it to mutated into a Hive Mother.
* Doomsphere: The ghost of a beholder killed in by a magical explosion that haunts the area where it died. If doomsphere is defeated it will respawn in one day unless the area is exorcised.
* Death Tyrant: Basically, a Beholder lich. Yeah, you're probably fucked.
* Kasharin: A death tyrant beholder that also carries a rotting disease similar to mummy rot.
* Evil Eyes: A beholder that possesses non-standard eye powers and so is especially hated by other beholders.

===4th edition===
4e made use of quite a few different kinds of beholder, though almost all of them were pretty rapetastic, being made for higher levels. Most kinds of beholders had a Telekinesis Ray that they could use to slide enemies about, though for most that's all they do.

* Gauth - Pretty much the same as old editions, this is the pitiful little baby of the beholder family in 4e, and something you can toss at low-level parties to scare them without killing them. Level 5 Elites that can shoot fire, sleeping rays and exhaustion rays, and immobilise with its central eye.
* Bloodkiss - Another carry-over, and the second-weakest beholder statted, this one got the Undead subtype for some reason (guess they didn't read up and thought it was "just" a beholder vampire). Level 9 Solo Controller that relies on its blood-sucking tentacles to rip up anything in reach, though it also packs a psychic + dazing effect Death Scream attack and can hit people a lot of times.
* Eye of Shadow - Beholders who spent too long in the shadowfell, dissolving into a blot of darkness and hate. Fairly puny (level 12 Elite), but seriously trolling, with blinding rays, thundering rays, freezing rays, and the ability to pull off a "teleport 20 squares and then be invisible" trick.
* Eye of Flame - A beholder that specialises in burninating shit. Central eye gives vulnerability to fire and causes fire attacks to do ongoing, eyestalks blast foes with fire and fear effects. A low-Paragon tier (level 13 Elite) foe.
* Eye of Frost - We got a burn-your-ass beholder, so evidently we need a freezinating beholder. Slightly tougher (1 level higher) than its counterpart. Central eye means cold damage can immobilise those it looks at... weirdly, its got two kinds of freezing rays; one that does a lot of cold damage, one that does less cold damage but freezes your ass solid.
* Beholder Spawn - Baby beholders wanna eat your face, too. Level 15 Minions that can bite or do elemental damage with their eye-rays.
* Death Tyrant - Zombie Eye Tyrants, pretty much. Way weaker than their older namesakes (level 15 Solo). Central eye can strip away necrotic resistance (guess what kind of damage it does most) and slow you, and eyebeams focused on kill-you-dead. Choice is whether it just necrotic damages you to death, petrifies you, makes you die, or makes you die and then come back as a ghoul. Oh, and it has a fear ray too.
* Ghost Beholder - Dead Eye Tyrant who came back as a ghost. A level weaker and only an Elite, but still pretty nasty. Freezing eye rays and the ability to possess and mind control your dudes: not a lot of fun if your Will is shitty.
* Eye Tyrant - Your basic beholder for this edition, and pretty damn nasty (level 19 Solo). Can daze you with its central eye, or use its eyestalks to cause radiant and necrotic damage, put you to sleep, paralyze you, confuse you, terrify you, petrify you, disintegrate you or kill you outright.
* Eye of Chaos - Now we're getting into the big guns. Beholders that have been warped by the abyss, changing their alignment to chaotic evil and making them more similar to demons in their behavior. Level 25 Elites that will drive you almost as crazy as themselves, with the ability to lock you down to at-will powers only with their central eye and hit you with rays of force, blinding, confounding, madness, fear or teleportation.
* Ultimate Tyrant - They ain't fucking kidding when they named this bastard. Level 29 Solo - there are ancient dragons that aren't this nasty! Central eye locks you down, other eyes can drive you mad, unravel you, dissolve you, burn you, freeze you, drag you around, petrify you, disintegrate you, pull you closer or hurl you away.
* Eternal Tyrant - Because even the Ultimate Tyrant isn't ultimate enough. This bastard is an undead version of the Ultimate Tyrant that comes in a pair of linked entities; the Shell, a beholder [[golem]] (Level 31 Elite Brute) and the Essence, a hyper-powerful beholder [[ghost]] (level 33 Elite Artillery). These assholes are literally god-tier monsters - you had damn well better know what you're doing when you fight an Eternal Tyrant!

===5th Edition===
5e's first Monster Manual provides three forms of beholder; common beholder (or Eye Tyrant), Death Tyrant, and Spectator. The first two variants are what 5e calls Legendary creatures, meaning they have extra powers in their lairs that they can trigger on Initiative Count 20, certain specific effects mark the regions in which they lair, and they have special Legendary Actions that they can perform outside of the normal turn sequence. Their legendary ego has been given up a serious boost; now, beholders mutate at random just by accidentally thinking too hard, their ego is that overpowering. This is also how they reproduce now: by sleeping and dreaming of other beholders, bending reality in that way.

* Beholder: You know it, you hate it. Challenge level 13. Has its old antimagic cone central eye back, a bite attack for piercing damage, and ten eye rays, of which it can use three each round, rolling randomly to determine which three it has. Charm ray, paralyzing ray, fear ray, slowing ray, enervation ray, telekinetic ray, sleep ray, petrification ray, disintegration ray and death ray. It can burn one of its three legendary actions at the end of another creature's turn to blast somebody with a random eye ray. Its lair effects consist of three options; change a 50ft square up to 120ft distant into slimy difficult terrain, make any walls within 120ft sprout flailing appendages that'll grapple anyone within 10ft who can't beat a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, or cause an eye to pop up on any solid surface within 60ft that can then shoot a random eye ray at any enemy within its sight. For region effects, they're all fluffy; creatures within 1 mile sometimes feel they're being watched, or minor reality warps that affect inanimate objects (markings changing on a wall, slime coating a statue, etc) pop up whilst the beholder is sleeping. Volo's Guide to Monsters introduced a table of potential alternate eye rays, in case your party was feeling complacent.
* Death Tyrant: A beholder who dreamed of living forever. So it died in its sleep and became an undead beholder skull with ghostly eyes. It trades the antimagic cone for a negative energy cone (creatures can't regain hitpoints, humanoids that die in its area of effect become zombies under the death tyrant's command on the next turn). It has the same eye rays and legendary actions as the beholder. Its lair actions are variants of the beholder's - its grabbing walls are DC 17 and reach into the Ethereal Plane, it creates a 50ft cube of lightly obscured difficult terrain, and it can create a spectral eye at any point within 50ft, which can also target foes on the Ethereal Plane. It has one crunchy regional effect; a creature that is both hostile to the death tyrant and aware of its existence must roll a D20 if it finishes a long rest within 1 mile of the death tyrant's lair. On a 10 or less, it gets zapped with a random eye ray.
* Spectator: A lesser beholder variant with only four eye stalks, conjured from another plane of existence via a ritual that requires four beholder eyestalks as material components. It's only Challenge level 3 and it's Lawful Neutral, rather than the Lawful Evil of the others. It has a Confusion Ray, a Paralyzing Ray, a Fear Ray and a Wounding Ray, and it can magically create all the food and water it needs to sustain itself each day. It's a fool's gambit to attack it with spells thanks to its Spell Reflection reaction, which lets it retarget a spell that missed the spectator, or which forced a save that the spectator passed, against another creature within the spectator's line of sight and that is at least 30 feet from the spectator.
* Beholder Zombie: Much weaker than a living beholder. Loses most of its eye rays and its anti-magic cone.
* Death's Kiss: A Beholder who had nightmares about bleeding out spawns a vampiric tentacle monster, using toothy mouth-stalks to voraciously suck the blood from other creatures. It also bleeds lightning, for some reason. Not as smart as a normal beholder, but for this reason not as egotistical or paranoid. Added in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
* Gauth: A smaller beholder who sometimes shows up if you screw up the ritual to summon a spectator; it's got six eyestalks, four tentacles, and smaller eyes all around its central eye, so it's hard to understand how wizards can get confused when it lies and claims to be the real deal. The issue is that Gauths are magic eaters, sucking the juice from magical items to sustain themselves, so you can see why that makes them pretty piss-poor guards for a wizard's lair. They're weaker than true beholders and also less xenophobic. Also, they explode when you kill them.
* Gazer: A ridiculously adorable and weak little beholder (only Challenge 1/2 - that is, a ''twenty-sixth'' of the strength of a true beholder) that is sometimes dreamed into being. They're so amusingly pathetic that even pure beholders often keep them as pets, and they have the same sadistic ego of a full beholder in miniature. Have caused a lot of argument over whether the sidebar on gazer familiars is intended for PCs as well or just for mage NPCs, and if so if house rules should be used to slot them in as Chain Pact warlock familiars, let them take the action to fire their eye-rays, etc.
* Mindwitness: A beholder converted into an [[illithid]]-like creature via ceremorphosis. Now that those of you who aren't currently running from your computers in terror have stopped screaming, the end result is less "terrifying perfect marriage of beholder eye-rays with illithid mind rape and the combined egotism of both" and more "quasi-lobotomized docile [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica#Astropaths|glorified psionic email server]]," though still smarter than the average human. Notably, if the illithids and elder brains they serve are slaughtered and they survive, mindwitnesses tend to drift around looking for other psionic creatures to serve, taking on the alignments and worldviews of those they meet, be they kindly [[flumph]]s or evil [[demon]]s. Four of their eyestalks become tentacles, but they have six kinds of eyerays: fear, telekinetic, and slowing rays like those of their normal cousins, but also aversion rays that cause disadvantage on attack rolls, stunning rays that stun creatures, and a psychic ray that just causes a pile of psychic damage.

==Similar Monsters==
Beholders are not the only monsters that look like floating orbs with eyes.
* Gas Spore: Not a true beholder or beholderkin, but a [[fungus]] that resembles a beholder. May have been created by a beholder mage, or may be a fungus that took on the form of the beholder that it fed on, or maybe it's just mundane evolutionary mimicry. Beholders sometimes cultivate them in their cities for defense.
* Thagar: Also known as the Beholdereater, it is a predator that eats beholders. Is a giant orb covered in eyes with several mouths on the ends of stalks. It does not have any eye powers, but it is immune to mind affecting magic and highly resistant to it's body being physically affected by magic, so there isn't much a beholder can do against it.
* Deep spawn: An orb with six large tentacles and several retractable eye stalk. Three of it's tentacles end in mouths, and the other three can wield weapons. It has the ability to give birth to loyal clones of creatures it has previously eaten, making them useful for villains who want to populate their dungeons with a variety of monsters. Relation to beholders unknown.
* Gibbering Orb: An epic version of the [[Gibbering Mouther]]. An amorphous orb covered in mouths and eyes, which have eye rays similar to a beholder. Possibly is the common ancestor of beholders and gibbering mouthers, though this would conflict with the belief that the Great Mother created beholders. Fourth edition also introduced the Gibbering Abomination, a middle ground between the mouther and the orb which also eye rays.
* Lurking strangler: These creatures are to beholders what monkeys are to humans. A tiny aberration that looks like a pair of flying eyeballs connected by a cord of muscle. It likes to strangling sleeping enemies to death, and it can put enemies to sleep with one of its two eye rays. Beholders sometimes keep these things as pets.
* Fihyr: A living manifestation of nightmares that forms when a large number of people in an area all have nightmares in one night. It has a roughly spherical body covered in eyes, mouths, and tentacles. No relation to beholders.
* [[Astral Dreadnought]]: A huge predator that lives in the [[Astral Plane]] that has a single eye with anti-magic abilities similar to a beholder's central eye. Relation to beholders unknown.

==Notable Beholders==
*Large Luigi, a relatively friendly beholder who works as a barkeep in the [[Spelljammer]] setting.
*That beholder head of the thieves' guild who was the first major boss in [[Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance]]
*Another beholder head of another thieves' guild who was the final boss of the first Eye of the Beholder game.
*That funny spectator you kept running into and quasi-befriended in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That blind death tyrant boss you had to get a special god-killing magic wand to kill in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That beholder in [[Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes]]
*That beholder in Futurama who's there for no apparent reason (was meant to be guarding some passage in the Central Bureaucracy but fell asleep on the job)
*Xanathar, the writer of "Xanathar's guide to everything" and head of Skullport's Thieves' Guild, which includes new options for classes and backgrounds, along with his snide comments running throughout. Apparently he's only one of many beholders to have used the title since the first one seized power. Notable for being one of the few beholders to remotely care for a being other than itself, he really loves his pet goldfish. It is kind of adorable. What he doesn't know is that his beloved goldfish has been replaced several times by the Thieves' Guild since goldfish don't live very long and he would [[RAGE|not be happy if he ever found out]].

==Beholders as Monstergirls==
[[File:Gazer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|No, you're not dreaming, this is a Beholder in monstergirl form.]]{{Monstergirls}}

[[rule 34|The proof that nothing, ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing is sacred,]] even Beholders got anthropomorphised into a sexy almost-human female by [[/d/|those irremediably insane weebs]]. Goddamit, Japan!

Gazers (as they are typically known due to copyright) are often depicted as arrogant, selfish beings that do not hesitate to use their eye ray powers to get what they want. Of course, fitting for a [[monstergirl]]s setting, their powers are [[PROMOTIONS|less destructive]] than that of a D&D Beholder, going more toward charm, hypnotism and mind control.

Still, beholder-girls are a rarity, simply because there's something rather counter-intuitive about turning a floating head full of teeth and eyes into a monstergirl. Perhaps the most well known example of them on /tg/ is the Gazer of the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]], whose smug grin currently adorns this section of the page. Described as spiteful and full of themselves, their deepest secret is that this is mostly bluster to cover up feelings of insecurity about their looks. They specialize in hypnotic spells, mostly to brainwash men into falling in love with them.

==Gallery==
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Beholder

2020-06-22T01:58:06Z

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[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]]
[[Image:Beholder_balloon.jpg|thumb|right|Drow clowns make a different kind of balloon animal]]

A '''beholder''' is a giant lumpy... thing that looks like a floating octopus with a giant eye in the middle. The tentacles also have eyes at the end of them. Yuck.

Beholders, like [[Illithid|Mind Flayer]]s, are considered "intellectual property" of <s>TSR</s> Wizards of the Coast, so they aren't allowed to be used in third party D&D supplements or in [[Pathfinder]] as they were not covered under the [[OGL|Open Gaming License]]. This naturally doesn't stop [[ChapterHouse Studios|weirdly]] [[Original character, do not steal|similar]] creatures from appearing in various [[weeaboo]] JRPGs and related works, where they're usually called "gazers" or similar. Yes, this includes [[Monstergirls]]. Of course one game even used the name beholder, but we all excuse it, because this game is [[Heroes of Might and Magic|THE GAME. THE LEGEND.]]

The Beholder first appeared on the cover of the [[Greyhawk]] supplement for the Original Dungeons and Dragons. The creation of [[Spelljammer]] where beholders play an major role resulted in the creation of many varieties of beholders. Much information about their biology and culture was revealed in the book [[Lords of Madness]]. They also got an entire book to themselves in second edition called ''I, Tyrant''.

==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.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the beholder race has a lot of genetic variety (as evidenced by the number of Beholder variants, 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.

Like [[Aboleth]]s, when a beholder is born, they inherent 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 inherent.

While good beholder technically are possible, they are extremely rare because turning good requires a beholder 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.

==Notable Variants==
===2nd & 3rd Edition===
====True Beholders====
* Beholder: Your basic beholder. A central eye that projects an anti-magic cone and ten smaller eyes that each fire a different ray, such as charm person, disintegrate, and flesh to stone.
* Elder Orb: A larger beholder with a much longer than normal lifespan. Always has at least 6 levels of sorcerer.
* Hive Mother/[[Hive Tyrant]]: The highest ranked of all beholders and beholderkin. Basically a bigger meaner beholder that holds beholders and beholderkin under its sway. It has the ability to control other beholders and beholderkin, and has the ability spawn new kinds of beholderkin specialized for different tasks. Beholder hives are almost always ruled by a Hive Mother, which keeps the different kinds of beholders and kin from killing each other, and when Hive Mothers belonging to the same breed come together, they can form beholder cities. In 2nd edition, Hive Mothers have their smaller eyes set in a ring around their head instead of being on the ends of stalks, making them less maneuverable but also less vulnerable to being cut off, while in 3rd edition they are just extra large beholders.

====Beholderkin====
* Gauth: Basically, babby's first beholder, with only 6 eyestalks of doom and a reduced ability to disintegrate everyone and eats magic. Looks like a smaller beholder with a ring of useless extra eyes around the central eye and four of its ten stalks don't have eyes on the end.
* Eyeball: Tiny beholder, best used as a familiar. Pretty damn adorable for a beholder, still Neutral Evil. They have four eye stalks with ray of frost, cause fear, daze, and mage hand and can only use one of them at a time. The central eye doesn't do anything.
* Death Kiss: instead of dispensing death-beams from its eyestalks, they use them to suck your blood. Their only eye has no powers, but they release electric shocks when they are injured.
* Astereater: giant space-faring asteroid beholderkin with no eyestalks that eats your ship. For some reason it likes to enslave [[Giff]] to use as soldiers. [[Spelljammer]] was weird. Beholders and other beholderkin insist that they have no relation to them.
* Examiner: Four eyestalks, four limbs, and no central eye. Their limbs let them use tools and weapons, and they can create magic items. They also regenerate 1 hit point every round.
* Observer: A powerful psionic beholder with a hard shell, six eye-stalks, three large eyes spaced evenly around its middle, and three mouths on the ends of long retractable stalks that suck blood similar to a death kiss. It uses its psionic abilities to brainwash other monsters into its loyal servants. Less evil than other beholders.
* Lensman: The lowest of all beholderkin, or at least until the Eyeball was introduced. Looks like a cross between a starfish and an ape with a single eye, which may have one of six different powers.
* Watcher: the second lowest of beholderkin. Has three normal eyes around its body and a large compound eye on the top surrounded by six eyespots, and a single tentacle on the bottom which can inflict electric shocks. Its three regular eyes each have two different powers, and the compound eye can use three of those powers. Can cast the message and tounges spells. They are cowardly and mainly act as scouts for their more powerful cousins.
* Spectator: true neutral beholderkin. It's actually pretty swell, as far as beholders go. Remember that one beholder in Baldur's Gate? They can be summoned with a ritual using four beholder's eyestalks. They make excellent guards since they are content to spend very long periods of time in deep contemplation and don't need to be fed since they can magically create their own food. Has only four eye-stalks and the central eye reflects magic instead.
* Overseer: a beholderkin that looks like a giant fleshy tree trunk with thirteen eyestalk branches, tentacles for roots, no central eye, and several mouths at the base. Yes, I realize that it looks nothing like a beholder, but the book says it is so fuck it, let's call it a beholder. Like the hive mother, it also has the ability to dominate other beholders and beholderkin. In large beholder cities, the Hive Mother dominates the Overseers, who then dominated other beholders and kin for her, thus greatly increasing the number of a beholders a Hive Mother can control at one time.
* Eye of the Deep: it's like a beholder BUT UNDERWATER! And it tastes oddly of shrimp. Also, it's got little arms with crab-pincers. Only has two eye stalks and the central eye can flash blinding light. Also can cast the spell persistent image, which it uses to create [[Trap|illusion of mermaids]] and other things to lure victims closer. Rarely interacts with other kinds of beholders due to them living in different environments.
* Director: The beholder equivalent of the cavalry. A beholderkin with three bottom tentacles that it uses to ride vermin, usually giant centipedes. Because haven't we all wanted to ride a giant centipede like a pony up and down the streets... SHUT UP, I DON'T JUDGE YOU! Has six eye stalks and its central eye generates a protective forcefield around itself and its mount.
* Gouger: A beholderkin created to fight beholders. In the [[Forgotten Realms]] setting, they were created by [[Phaerimm]]s. Larger than regular beholders and has four small useless legs hanging off of its body. It has the same number of eyes as a standard beholder but does not have any eye powers other than the central antimagic eye. It attacks with a 15 foot long barbed tongue which it uses to disable other beholder's eyes.
* Gorbel: A beholderkin whose stalks are tipped with claws instead of eyes that explodes when badly injured.
* Orbus: An albino dwarf beholder with no eyes other than the anti-magic central eye but is a powerful spellcaster. They are only seen in the [[Spelljammer]] setting on beholder ships, which they are bred to power and navigate.

====Other====
* Beholder mage: when the DM wants the entire party to die horrible deaths but doesn't feel like using rocks. This is a special character class that only true beholders can take, which requires them to remove their anti-magic eye, and whenever they gain a the ability to cast a new level of spells must sacrifice one of their eye powers to turn that eyestalk into a spellstalk which casts spells of that level. At level 10, it's empty eye socket can absorb spells to heal it. All the cheese of a wizard with more spells per day, the ability to blast 10 spells at once at you as free actions, and fucking spontaneous casting. Even munchkins shit their pants in fear when they hear of these things. One of the unholy trinity of fuck off broken PCs that you can technically enter, the others being tainted scholars and Illithid Savants. And that's before you start optimizing the bastard because the fucker can still take ten more levels before becoming epic.
* Beholder Priestess: Sometimes when a beholder city is endangered the Hive Mother will called for help from The Great Mother and will be temporarily granted abilities similar to a cleric. On rare occasions this can also happen to a standard beholder, which will cause it to mutated into a Hive Mother.
* Doomsphere: The ghost of a beholder killed in by a magical explosion that haunts the area where it died. If doomsphere is defeated it will respawn in one day unless the area is exorcised.
* Death Tyrant: Basically, a Beholder lich. Yeah, you're probably fucked.
* Kasharin: A death tyrant beholder that also carries a rotting disease similar to mummy rot.
* Evil Eyes: A beholder that possesses non-standard eye powers and so is especially hated by other beholders.

===4th edition===
4e made use of quite a few different kinds of beholder, though almost all of them were pretty rapetastic, being made for higher levels. Most kinds of beholders had a Telekinesis Ray that they could use to slide enemies about, though for most that's all they do.

* Gauth - Pretty much the same as old editions, this is the pitiful little baby of the beholder family in 4e, and something you can toss at low-level parties to scare them without killing them. Level 5 Elites that can shoot fire, sleeping rays and exhaustion rays, and immobilise with its central eye.
* Bloodkiss - Another carry-over, and the second-weakest beholder statted, this one got the Undead subtype for some reason (guess they didn't read up and thought it was "just" a beholder vampire). Level 9 Solo Controller that relies on its blood-sucking tentacles to rip up anything in reach, though it also packs a psychic + dazing effect Death Scream attack and can hit people a lot of times.
* Eye of Shadow - Beholders who spent too long in the shadowfell, dissolving into a blot of darkness and hate. Fairly puny (level 12 Elite), but seriously trolling, with blinding rays, thundering rays, freezing rays, and the ability to pull off a "teleport 20 squares and then be invisible" trick.
* Eye of Flame - A beholder that specialises in burninating shit. Central eye gives vulnerability to fire and causes fire attacks to do ongoing, eyestalks blast foes with fire and fear effects. A low-Paragon tier (level 13 Elite) foe.
* Eye of Frost - We got a burn-your-ass beholder, so evidently we need a freezinating beholder. Slightly tougher (1 level higher) than its counterpart. Central eye means cold damage can immobilise those it looks at... weirdly, its got two kinds of freezing rays; one that does a lot of cold damage, one that does less cold damage but freezes your ass solid.
* Beholder Spawn - Baby beholders wanna eat your face, too. Level 15 Minions that can bite or do elemental damage with their eye-rays.
* Death Tyrant - Zombie Eye Tyrants, pretty much. Way weaker than their older namesakes (level 15 Solo). Central eye can strip away necrotic resistance (guess what kind of damage it does most) and slow you, and eyebeams focused on kill-you-dead. Choice is whether it just necrotic damages you to death, petrifies you, makes you die, or makes you die and then come back as a ghoul. Oh, and it has a fear ray too.
* Ghost Beholder - Dead Eye Tyrant who came back as a ghost. A level weaker and only an Elite, but still pretty nasty. Freezing eye rays and the ability to possess and mind control your dudes: not a lot of fun if your Will is shitty.
* Eye Tyrant - Your basic beholder for this edition, and pretty damn nasty (level 19 Solo). Can daze you with its central eye, or use its eyestalks to cause radiant and necrotic damage, put you to sleep, paralyze you, confuse you, terrify you, petrify you, disintegrate you or kill you outright.
* Eye of Chaos - Now we're getting into the big guns. Beholders that have been warped by the abyss, changing their alignment to chaotic evil and making them more similar to demons in their behavior. Level 25 Elites that will drive you almost as crazy as themselves, with the ability to lock you down to at-will powers only with their central eye and hit you with rays of force, blinding, confounding, madness, fear or teleportation.
* Ultimate Tyrant - They ain't fucking kidding when they named this bastard. Level 29 Solo - there are ancient dragons that aren't this nasty! Central eye locks you down, other eyes can drive you mad, unravel you, dissolve you, burn you, freeze you, drag you around, petrify you, disintegrate you, pull you closer or hurl you away.
* Eternal Tyrant - Because even the Ultimate Tyrant isn't ultimate enough. This bastard is an undead version of the Ultimate Tyrant that comes in a pair of linked entities; the Shell, a beholder [[golem]] (Level 31 Elite Brute) and the Essence, a hyper-powerful beholder [[ghost]] (level 33 Elite Artillery). These assholes are literally god-tier monsters - you had damn well better know what you're doing when you fight an Eternal Tyrant!

===5th Edition===
5e's first Monster Manual provides three forms of beholder; common beholder (or Eye Tyrant), Death Tyrant, and Spectator. The first two variants are what 5e calls Legendary creatures, meaning they have extra powers in their lairs that they can trigger on Initiative Count 20, certain specific effects mark the regions in which they lair, and they have special Legendary Actions that they can perform outside of the normal turn sequence. Their legendary ego has been given up a serious boost; now, beholders mutate at random just by accidentally thinking too hard, their ego is that overpowering. This is also how they reproduce now: by sleeping and dreaming of other beholders, bending reality in that way.

* Beholder: You know it, you hate it. Challenge level 13. Has its old antimagic cone central eye back, a bite attack for piercing damage, and ten eye rays, of which it can use three each round, rolling randomly to determine which three it has. Charm ray, paralyzing ray, fear ray, slowing ray, enervation ray, telekinetic ray, sleep ray, petrification ray, disintegration ray and death ray. It can burn one of its three legendary actions at the end of another creature's turn to blast somebody with a random eye ray. Its lair effects consist of three options; change a 50ft square up to 120ft distant into slimy difficult terrain, make any walls within 120ft sprout flailing appendages that'll grapple anyone within 10ft who can't beat a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, or cause an eye to pop up on any solid surface within 60ft that can then shoot a random eye ray at any enemy within its sight. For region effects, they're all fluffy; creatures within 1 mile sometimes feel they're being watched, or minor reality warps that affect inanimate objects (markings changing on a wall, slime coating a statue, etc) pop up whilst the beholder is sleeping. Volo's Guide to Monsters introduced a table of potential alternate eye rays, in case your party was feeling complacent.
* Death Tyrant: A beholder who dreamed of living forever. So it died in its sleep and became an undead beholder skull with ghostly eyes. It trades the antimagic cone for a negative energy cone (creatures can't regain hitpoints, humanoids that die in its area of effect become zombies under the death tyrant's command on the next turn). It has the same eye rays and legendary actions as the beholder. Its lair actions are variants of the beholder's - its grabbing walls are DC 17 and reach into the Ethereal Plane, it creates a 50ft cube of lightly obscured difficult terrain, and it can create a spectral eye at any point within 50ft, which can also target foes on the Ethereal Plane. It has one crunchy regional effect; a creature that is both hostile to the death tyrant and aware of its existence must roll a D20 if it finishes a long rest within 1 mile of the death tyrant's lair. On a 10 or less, it gets zapped with a random eye ray.
* Spectator: A lesser beholder variant with only four eye stalks, conjured from another plane of existence via a ritual that requires four beholder eyestalks as material components. It's only Challenge level 3 and it's Lawful Neutral, rather than the Lawful Evil of the others. It has a Confusion Ray, a Paralyzing Ray, a Fear Ray and a Wounding Ray, and it can magically create all the food and water it needs to sustain itself each day. It's a fool's gambit to attack it with spells thanks to its Spell Reflection reaction, which lets it retarget a spell that missed the spectator, or which forced a save that the spectator passed, against another creature within the spectator's line of sight and that is at least 30 feet from the spectator.
* Beholder Zombie: Much weaker than a living beholder. Loses most of its eye rays and its anti-magic cone.
* Death's Kiss: A Beholder who had nightmares about bleeding out spawns a vampiric tentacle monster, using toothy mouth-stalks to voraciously suck the blood from other creatures. It also bleeds lightning, for some reason. Not as smart as a normal beholder, but for this reason not as egotistical or paranoid. Added in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
* Gauth: A smaller beholder who sometimes shows up if you screw up the ritual to summon a spectator; it's got six eyestalks, four tentacles, and smaller eyes all around its central eye, so it's hard to understand how wizards can get confused when it lies and claims to be the real deal. The issue is that Gauths are magic eaters, sucking the juice from magical items to sustain themselves, so you can see why that makes them pretty piss-poor guards for a wizard's lair. They're weaker than true beholders and also less xenophobic. Also, they explode when you kill them.
* Gazer: A ridiculously adorable and weak little beholder (only Challenge 1/2 - that is, a ''twenty-sixth'' of the strength of a true beholder) that is sometimes dreamed into being. They're so amusingly pathetic that even pure beholders often keep them as pets, and they have the same sadistic ego of a full beholder in miniature. Have caused a lot of argument over whether the sidebar on gazer familiars is intended for PCs as well or just for mage NPCs, and if so if house rules should be used to slot them in as Chain Pact warlock familiars, let them take the action to fire their eye-rays, etc.
* Mindwitness: A beholder converted into an [[illithid]]-like creature via ceremorphosis. Now that those of you who aren't currently running from your computers in terror have stopped screaming, the end result is less "terrifying perfect marriage of beholder eye-rays with illithid mind rape and the combined egotism of both" and more "quasi-lobotomized docile [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica#Astropaths|glorified psionic email server]]," though still smarter than the average human. Notably, if the illithids and elder brains they serve are slaughtered and they survive, mindwitnesses tend to drift around looking for other psionic creatures to serve, taking on the alignments and worldviews of those they meet, be they kindly [[flumph]]s or evil [[demon]]s. Four of their eyestalks become tentacles, but they have six kinds of eyerays: fear, telekinetic, and slowing rays like those of their normal cousins, but also aversion rays that cause disadvantage on attack rolls, stunning rays that stun creatures, and a psychic ray that just causes a pile of psychic damage.

==Similar Monsters==
Beholders are not the only monsters that look like floating orbs with eyes.
* Gas Spore: Not a true beholder or beholderkin, but a [[fungus]] that resembles a beholder. May have been created by a beholder mage, or may be a fungus that took on the form of the beholder that it fed on, or maybe it's just mundane evolutionary mimicry. Beholders sometimes cultivate them in their cities for defense.
* Thagar: Also known as the Beholdereater, it is a predator that eats beholders. Is a giant orb covered in eyes with several mouths on the ends of stalks. It does not have any eye powers, but it is immune to mind affecting magic and highly resistant to it's body being physically affected by magic, so there isn't much a beholder can do against it.
* Deep spawn: An orb with six large tentacles and several retractable eye stalk. Three of it's tentacles end in mouths, and the other three can wield weapons. It has the ability to give birth to loyal clones of creatures it has previously eaten, making them useful for villains who want to populate their dungeons with a variety of monsters. Relation to beholders unknown.
* Gibbering Orb: An epic version of the [[Gibbering Mouther]]. An amorphous orb covered in mouths and eyes, which have eye rays similar to a beholder. Possibly is the common ancestor of beholders and gibbering mouthers, though this would conflict with the belief that the Great Mother created beholders. Fourth edition also introduced the Gibbering Abomination, a middle ground between the mouther and the orb which also eye rays.
* Lurking strangler: These creatures are to beholders what monkeys are to humans. A tiny aberration that looks like a pair of flying eyeballs connected by a cord of muscle. It likes to strangling sleeping enemies to death, and it can put enemies to sleep with one of its two eye rays. Beholders sometimes keep these things as pets.
* Fihyr: A living manifestation of nightmares that forms when a large number of people in an area all have nightmares in one night. It has a roughly spherical body covered in eyes, mouths, and tentacles. No relation to beholders.
* [[Astral Dreadnought]]: A huge predator that lives in the [[Astral Plane]] that has a single eye with anti-magic abilities similar to a beholder's central eye. Relation to beholders unknown.

==Notable Beholders==
*Large Luigi, a relatively friendly beholder who works as a barkeep in the [[Spelljammer]] setting.
*That beholder head of the thieves' guild who was the first major boss in [[Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance]]
*Another beholder head of another thieves' guild who was the final boss of the first Eye of the Beholder game.
*That funny spectator you kept running into and quasi-befriended in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That blind death tyrant boss you had to get a special god-killing magic wand to kill in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That beholder in [[Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes]]
*That beholder in Futurama who's there for no apparent reason (was meant to be guarding some passage in the Central Bureaucracy but fell asleep on the job)
*Xanathar, the writer of "Xanathar's guide to everything" and head of Skullport's Thieves' Guild, which includes new options for classes and backgrounds, along with his snide comments running throughout. Apparently he's only one of many beholders to have used the title since the first one seized power. Notable for being one of the few beholders to remotely care for a being other than itself, he really loves his pet goldfish. It is kind of adorable. What he doesn't know is that his beloved goldfish has been replaced several times by the Thieves' Guild since goldfish don't live very long and he would [[RAGE|not be happy if he ever found out]].

==Beholders as Monstergirls==
[[File:Gazer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|No, you're not dreaming, this is a Beholder in monstergirl form.]]{{Monstergirls}}

[[rule 34|The proof that nothing, ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing is sacred,]] even Beholders got anthropomorphised into a sexy almost-human female by [[/d/|those irremediably insane weebs]]. Goddamit, Japan!

Gazers (as they are typically known due to copyright) are often depicted as arrogant, selfish beings that do not hesitate to use their eye ray powers to get what they want. Of course, fitting for a [[monstergirl]]s setting, their powers are [[PROMOTIONS|less destructive]] than that of a D&D Beholder, going more toward charm, hypnotism and mind control.

Still, beholder-girls are a rarity, simply because there's something rather counter-intuitive about turning a floating head full of teeth and eyes into a monstergirl. Perhaps the most well known example of them on /tg/ is the Gazer of the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]], whose smug grin currently adorns this section of the page. Described as spiteful and full of themselves, their deepest secret is that this is mostly bluster to cover up feelings of insecurity about their looks. They specialize in hypnotic spells, mostly to brainwash men into falling in love with them.

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
File:Awesome Beholder.png
File:The-bard-and-the-beholder.jpg
File:Gazer_D&D.png
</gallery>
</center>

/pol/

2020-06-22T01:38:23Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: Undo revision 666826 by HussarZwei (talk)

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{{delete| Lets just delete this and, as its eventually gonna become spammed by /pol/'s many idiotic supporters. Besides, we could always redirect this page to skub. If we don't delete this, then please permanently protect it.}}

[[File:QnVjrKW.jpg|thumb|right|300px]]

{{topquote|Gas the kikes! [[Racial Holy War|Race war]] now!|/pol/'s battlecry}}
{{topquote|1=Gentlemen, I had a vision of the future. One day because we won [[The_World_Wars#The_First_World_War|this war]], a man called Adolf Hitler will take power and he will make a lot of people angry about the Jewry. And also romani. And also the blacks. And the non-whites. Except for the Japanese, they're honorable Aryans, I guess. Also there will be a website called 4chan.org, and there will be a board called /pol/, and it will just be about what I have described. Its kind of a [[My Little Pony|one-trick-pony, except the pony is retarded]].|2=[https://youtu.be/Tj-nCjnVDKM?t=2133 The Fresh Sorcerer's accurate summary of /pol/]}}

[[Skub]]'s OTHER final form, and the polar opposite of [[SJW]].

'''/pol/''' is 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" board, nowadays mostly <s>populated by</s> used for incarcerating <s>people who identify as</s> neo-nazis, alt-righters, ancaps, edgy contrarians, and other colorful characters who rant on Jews, black people, women, Marxists, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, and every variety of white depending on the time of day. This also entails dumb shit such as long passionate debates on whether Slavic or Southern European people count as white, or complaints about Jews causing everything from financial crises to World Wars to hurting your toe on a table leg (the phrase "[[Meme|Baton Roue]]" might come to mind).

If you ask /pol/, they'll claim to be the best and most enlightened board that can see through the lies of society, while everyone from the other boards will call their userbase arguably the most obnoxious and [[cancer]]ous board on the whole site and nothing more than a far-right [[My Little Pony|containment board to prevent them spreading their cancer elsewhere]].

People who frequent /pol/ usually refer to themselves as /pol/lacks, but much more terms have been used to describe them by people outside of /pol/ such as /pol/io, /pol/luters, /pol/tards, /pol/yps, tad/pol/es, /pol/esmokers, and /pol/tergeists. The recently coined-term "alt-right" has quickly become for the right what the term SJW is for the left. On that note, some SJWs and /pol/acks aren't above having similar ''fundamental'' attitudes towards both their ideology and people who don't agree with it, which may seem odd - unless you're familiar with the idea of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory horseshoe theory] as it applies to political radical behavior, though that in itself isn't always the case.

==Origins==
...What, the above wasn't enough?

Do you REALLY want to know more about this?

...alright, fuck it. Put on the helmets and bring the bleach, this is going to be real long and real boring.

4chan's userbase is naturally a product of the industrial society, i.e. it bred a lot of NEETs and frustrated people who are largely kept in line with entertainment and porn and economic welfare, and will [[Roman Empire|gladly support any political party as long as their needs are met, inasmuch as they don't bother thinking about anything beyond their immediate well-being]]. Additionally, /b/ in particular had a history of racial supremacy expressed via memetic bigotry (i.e. using "nigger" as an insult, "faggot" as an endearing word, and "jewgolds" or "shekels" as the term for money) since around 2008, prior to the Anonymous v. Scientology clashes that brought them into more of a "spotlight". Most times it was considered little more than a joke by its userbase, just another way of ensuring that people who couldn't demonstrate thick enough skin to handle the typical level of discourse on /b/ would be driven off.

However, as time went on, people who took such things at face value began to show up more and more often - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011498 it's been said that] "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." Eventually, some of the aforementioned idiots began espousing positions that couldn't be dismissed as attempts at humor any longer, but were soon seen for the representation of their values that it really was.

...Then along came the economic housing bubble of 2009, and said NEETs found their bread and circuses were not enough in the face of concepts such as "darkening future" and "imminent poverty". And that opened Pandora's box, unleashing the suppressed anger (normally kept in check by porn, cheap entertainment and welfare) of the NEETizens of 4chan. Unsurprisingly, the first mention of the "alternative right" coincides around the bubble, with this "internal" discontent playing a part in their rise alongside the external 'friction' that social justice represented.

People can get defensive about their opinions about Kirk vs Picard or their taste in anime or opinions about Warhammer fluff or berate others for having opinions which they disagree with, but in the end that's just talking about fiction. In contrast politics is about stuff which actually matters to you in the Real World. Political discussions, especially online, are volatile things at the very best of times. Given that 4chan is '''''the''''' place where reasonable discussion goes to die, it was inevitable that even the calmest attempt at discussing politics quickly devolved into extremist arguments. Trolls and fanatics alike, in many points, became impossible to distinguish from one another - they either forgot whatever original aims they may have possessed, or else simply used those aims as a cover for something they now legitimately believed in and gained validation from.

While they gleefully embraced the Nazi accusations that both sides of a debate would make at each other - and invariably decided to supercharge the politically incorrect arguments with shitposting just to enrage their opponents further - they did all of it with only a marginal knowledge of what the issues they were arguing about even entailed at any given time, if they remotely cared at all. Thus many political arguments far too numerous to count here, from immigration to crime and race, began to take root in /b/ and quickly spread elsewhere; Moot, being the [[Tzeentch|Eternal Planner]] that he is, created /n/ (what /pol/ started as) to corral the arguments.

As you can see, [[Not as planned|it's gone swimmingly for everyone involved.]] Sort of like a multilayered monkey's paw of pure [[fail]].

===Containment Board===
[[File:Pol leaves containment.png|thumb|right|200px]]
As stated earlier, /pol/ is meant to contain the population of stormweenies (named for Stormfront, a website that can be considered a precursor to /pol/, and whose community still overlaps with them) on 4chan. Pretty much everyone, including both Moot and most of /pol/ itself, has acknowledged this; Global rule #3 was once 'Keep /pol/ in /pol/'. The rule has since been changed to a more general version saying not to post flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled-for catch phrases and other things that are unhelpful to a board, but since that's what /pol/ shitposting essentially IS, the rule is still the same in spirit. Several boards have a sticky at the front page telling people to keep politics in /pol/ as well.

Though /pol/ isn't the only containment board on 4chan, the other containment boards such as /mlp/ and /soc/ are considered to have better userbases - those users have (mostly) less volatile baggage and the sense to leave it ''on'' those boards. When they venture onto another board, they stay on topic and only ''occasionally'' derail threads or start inflammatory ones (complete with /tg/ [[rage|deriving]] [[lulz|entertainment]] from it), but overall aren't ''nearly'' as insufferable in comparison.

Most attempts to curb /pol/, on the other hand, result in them [[Cancer|spreading to other boards]], where they will try to de-rail the threads on those boards to whatever political event that is galvanizing them and spreading around conspiracy theories. Whenever they are told to fuck off and quit derailing threads, they will start shouting buzzwords. This hasn't stopped the board from being deleted twice throughout their history, mind, but the inevitable spread forced it to be brought back both times. Even to this day, you'll still get threads here and there that fall victim to politically-based derailing.

==/pol/ using [[Warhammer 40,000]] as propaganda==
{{topquote|Suffer not the [[xenos]] to live!|Battle cry of the [[Deathwatch]]}}

One of the greatest [[RAGE|headaches]] that /tg/ in particular has with /pol/ is the misuse of the [[grimdark]]ness and xenophobic policies of the [[Imperium of Man]] by /pol/'s [[Neckbeard|Trump supporters]], who apparently believe that he is quite possibly a modern day incarnation of [[The Emperor]], and that the Western world should really become an IRL Imperium with zero tolerance against "Xenos" and "[[Tau|Cultural Marxists]]", with lots of conspiracy theories that Trump is fighting an endless battle against the "Ruinous Powers" of Liberalism supposedly led by [[Tzeentch|George Soros]]. It's basically yet another "Jews secretly controlling the world" episode on top of the usual boogeyman of "The All-Powerful Left" already invoked by many of the "cuckservatives" the alt-right railed against at their inception.

Initially, they "helped" him the only way they knew how: shitposting about [[anime]], Pepe the Frog, and [[Touhou|Momiji Inubashiri]] in a MAGA hat. One of their most widespread propaganda involving 40k was the complete stereotyping of all Muslims as [[Ork|ultraviolent savages who reproduce by the thousands and have no other instinct than to kill, maim and pillage]], Mexicans being cast [[Tyranids|an all-consuming swarm migrating to America to consume all of its resources]], and that every single one of them should be subject to [[Exterminatus]]. AS if that wasn't insulting to all parties real and fictional, eventually they finally "invented" a shitty forced meme where [[Heresy|they put Donald Trump's head on images of the great God-Emperor of Mankind]]. Not many people find them funny, even in the rare case of the Photoshop job being decent, and the Trump buzz started to fade anyway as reality promptly ensued and people realized he was largely more of the same checkers-level propaganda volleys designed to sway voters (if "[[Derp|uber-rich American politician claiming to be the champion of the poor]]" sounds familiar to you, anyway).

The new wave of French elections brought a more horrific wave of shitposting, with [[Extra Heresy|Marine le Pen being photoshopped into Sister of Battle pictures]]. However, Le Pen lost the French election by [[Fail|a 30% margin]], much to the [[Butthurt|chagrin]] of various /pol/tards. This was possibly compounded by the fact that Le Pen's campaign partly ran off the idea of a 'Frexit', only for Le Pen to abandon the entire idea post-election; between this and the Trump supporters in the userbase becoming nigh-indistiguishable from the more stereotypical ones, it proves for the umpteenth time that relying on any kind of political figurehead for overall validation is a universally bad idea.

Given 40k had its start as a ''satire'' of dystopian fiction and a bitter, ironic reflection of right-wing 80s Britain (see also: [[Rogue Trader]]), other right-wingers latching onto 40k-memery as a vehicle for demagoguery, propaganda and appeals to emotion, and further conflating it with modern politics is perhaps a schadenfreudish circle finally come complete. Without the original context, they see nothing more than an unironic heroic fantasy that validates their beliefs, rather than the proper mockery that it constitutes. Needless to say, many in /tg/ find such inclusion of real world politics in our 40k to be a sad, idiotic and pathetic phenomenon that should be punished by summary [[Exterminatus|SAGE'ing]].

==Ideology and Methodology (such as it is)==
While the full history of the SJW phenomenon is way too complicated to describe on their page and is usually less relevant to /tg/ (at least far less so than interactions with other boards on the site), suffice to say that while SJWs are the product of modern civil rights movements [[Ultramarines|who blindly adhere to the LETTER of a given progressive political creed's code of conduct without understanding the spirit of it]], /pol/acks essentially aspire to become the uber-racist, sexist, [[Chaotic Stupid|hyper-reactionary]] [[Marines Malevolent|card-carrying degenerates]] they think the other side believes them to be.

That this is (again) close to the same way some SJWs would come to conduct themselves - down to and including the general rudderlessness, the ''typical'' response to anyone who doesn't share their opinion, and the general prevalence of bullshit artists as figureheads - may explain why /pol/, by and large, seem so eager to join them in the race to the bottom. However, the horseshoe theory only holds water if you have the most basic and binary grasp of the political spectrum; everyone likes to think their "side" is the most rational.

Admittedly, badly implemented and ham-fisted progressive policies tend to alienate the people not supported by them, just like any other political policy, and it's not uncommon for social justice narratives (or ANY kind, really, but specifically these) to be astroturfed and exploited by politicians and corporations alike, as well as the grifters out for social currency. Thus, some people feel an instinct to rebel against a status quo that supposedly coddles and encourages "white guilt" and "political correctness gone mad", while others seek out the "rightful" social positioning they couldn't get elsewhere - and still others are looking for fresh marks after their recruitment pool in other activist circles went dry. From these groups, the edgiest and the craziest form the core of /pol/.

However, any analysis going beyond the surface for more than five minutes would recognize progressive lip service to be just that - lip service designed to appease 'SJW' demands rather than actually meet them. In addition, the "horseshoe theory" school of thought seems slightly more merited upon recognizing that, when they're not using it as a thoroughly cynical ploy to draw attention and stir shit, /pol/acks will use eerily similar rhetoric to signal their own virtues of traditional values, being "rational" thinkers, and otherwise acting in defense of "freedom", at least when they're genuinely believing anything beyond what directly benefits them. The words "refuge in audacity" should come to mind for the [[TVTropes|tropers]] in the audience, albeit in a far more disingenuous sense - the right to offend and be irreverent is elevated to a sacred cow, which is about as self-defeating as it sounds.

That said, most /pol/tergeists have no idea how anything actually works - even the basics of their own most common political beliefs are notoriously flimsy (if not OUTRIGHT blatant) myths and lies, often more than the SJWs they denigrate. The average /pol/ user tends to conduct themselves and their approach to politics across the board with all the nuance and subtlety of any given sportsball fandom, even '''before''' the slow bleeding of the glorified sportsball spectacle that is modern mainstream politics into the board itself commenced. While 4chan at large is and always has been something of a self-sustaining shitshow even at its best, /pol/ is (ostensibly) despised even by the rest of the userbase because they take their views to the logical "conclusion" and render themselves little more than bizarre caricatures.

Example of such nonsensical claims include: Stalin being a Jew (he was Georgian and a major anti-Semite to boot; the Jewish influence, of course, was mainly from Trotsky, which makes it all the more ironic); the first reports of Nazi death camps came from the Soviets (it came from Poland); most welfare recipients being unemployed black people (evidencing a misunderstanding of "majority" and "disproportionate number", as most people on welfare are white and only use it for 3 years or less); and the British Empire started declining by 1800 (their Golden Age was from 1816-1915, with Jews very well represented). And the coup de grace theory to rule over them all is another theory, "The Khazar Theory", that the real good Jews are actually all white people (Jacob's sons), while all the stereotypical Jews are [[Mongols|Khazar nomads' descendants]]. [[What|Yes, this is your brain's sound when it shifts without the clutch.]]

This is indicative of one of the biggest problems with /pol/, even more than not staying in their containment board: its denizens suffer from a board-wide Dunning-Kruger effect, believing themselves expert authorities on a multitude of subjects that individually take years of study at minimum, and shitpost and overuse bad memes as a substitute for wit and intelligence, ignoring that even the most casual Googling could debunk most of their narratives. Even Stormfront (which was run by an actual member of the Ku Klux Klan at one point, if it somehow still isn't) had ''slightly'' more principle; gods help you if you enter /pol/ from Israel.

Whenever a meme becomes popular on /pol/, they will begin forcing the meme on every other board, rapidly driving it so far into the ground that it will come out on the other side of the planet before the day is out. The memes they spam tend to be childish insults that will only impress people below 18. It says a lot about their board when getting merged with /mlp/ during an April Fools' joke '''improved''' it.

'''TL;DR:''' Even ignoring their disgusting traits AND putting aside "keep /pol/ in /pol/" talk, /tg/ remembers first and foremost that /pol/ is a containment board for a ''very good'' reason.

===Connections with the Christchurch Mosque Attacks===
<span style='font-size:125%'>{{BLAM|This section concerns the attacks on the Christchurch Mosques in New Zealand, the consequences of which affected the entire board, and by extension /tg/.}}</span>

Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old man who attacked two Mosques in Christchurch, NZ, apparently identified as a "/pol/ack" and made a <s>detailed</s> barely literate manifesto mostly in the form of a "Q&A," containing absolutely zero original political thought and nary a trace of coherent ideology besides repetition of the basic White Nationalist complaints of a Western demographic upheaval (the "fourteen words," basically). It is all the more pathetic because he characterizes the poorly-formatted PDF as a ''magnum opus'' of three years' worth of political growth; one critical point of [[Derp|critical fuckstupid]] is his admiration for Communist China, known for its violation of basic human rights, especially free speech, against the Muslim Uyghurs of and even its Han (the dominant Chinese ethnic group) citizens.

Even '''/pol/ itself''', for all its numerous faults, practically worships the concept of the free exchange of ideas: A common point of contention with SJWs, perceived and otherwise, is freedom of debate and free speech at all costs, especially when it's offensive...at least, up until the point where their '''''own''''' views are challenged, of course. Then they suddenly decide that maybe censorship isn't so bad after all, which explains quite a lot about the board's fascist sympathies.

Said manifesto referenced several questionably tasteful memes (prominently, "remove kebab"), and the fucking degenerate actually went so far as to shout out those memes in public and play [[/v/|video game soundtracks]] and songs that /pol/ has turned into memes, while actively shooting people and live-streaming it. Sick fuck. Naturally, this means more conversations about the impact of the Internet/social media and technology in general and its role in the lives of disaffected millennials (and doing it full justice is a tall order and a half); the level of disconnect displayed, even by the expected standards of radical politics, that would allow a person to take a life while joyfully shouting silly sayings from the Internet like he was at an anime convention is disgusting and hard to fathom.

His goal, apparently, was to cause more hysteria and retribution: in his manifesto, he specifically spoke of wanting to stir up shit regarding ''inter alia'', laws regarding the rights of free speech and bearing arms which, in his mind, would lead to civil war and an ultimate victory for his ideology, such as it is. He imagined himself becoming a full martyr for the cause, or else incarcerated and (if the latter) perhaps later to be broken out of jail by a movement inspired by his "noble actions"...and yet few people online seem to consider his actions or their results desirable, even among those who would inevitably be even ''remotely'' 'sympathetic' to his cause. The only ones who would wholeheartedly support him were likely deadset on their ideology to begin with.

This, along with his choice to attack extremely soft targets (including women, children, and mainstream, non-radical places of worship), is enough to demonstrate that he was not a political actor in any real sense, but rather amounts to the perpetrator of an incident far more serious and tragic. Rather than a "proper 'domestic [i.e. white] terrorist'" (say, Timothy McVeigh), he comes across more as an aimless man on a demented rampage.

By virtue of being a white man in a European culture instead of, say, a member of a rival sect in an Islamic country, his attack on a mosque actually makes international headlines for more than five minutes; with his point well out the window, his pathetic attempts at justifying his attack only harmed his cause in the imagination of the general public and even amongst his peers. Needless to say, the consequences of his actions were quite serious: political groups of which he was a member or tangentially related to are being attacked by the government, despite their having no part in the violence, and the blood was not yet dry when the PM said that New Zealand's already highly restrictive gun laws "had to change". Most directly relevant to /tg/, their neighbor Australia [[Exterminatus|banned access]] to 4chan, 8chan and ''even fucking LiveLeak'' for distributing video of the massacre, which indirectly fucks over that entire sector of the userbase(s), likely due to the fact that the shooter, Brenton, is an Australian.

In spite of that, Australia is the country in the Anglosphere whose attitude towards the Internet most resembles that of the Communist Chinese, so that's the LEAST of their worries. Crikey. As if that wasn’t enough, the level of irony to Tarrant’s actions defies reality. Tarrant was fixated on mass migration in his manifesto, but thanks to his attack, New Zealand (and possibly other western countries) will accept EVEN MORE migrants from the Middle East and Africa in an effort to show that they’re tolerant of said migrants despite Tarrant’s attack. Way to go.

Though /pol/, with its vulgar and juvenile approach to issues of demography and race, is a tempting target to assign blame for his actions, 4chan might not be the genesis of his personal dissatisfaction; if the manifesto is to be trusted (itself a dicey proposition) he had apparently become interested in racial questions while touring the world and seeing the demographic changes which are afflicting Europe first hand. The problem is that when shitposting manchildren drink their own Kool-Aid and take up their guns alongside to murder innocent people, the average reasonable person can make a connection between the violence and the [[Star Wars|wretched hives of scum and villany]] said bad actors frequent, and so here we are.

This isn't entirely news to these folks, of course: "screw your optics, I'm going in" was how the last significant /pol/ terrorist put it, before attacking a defenseless synagogue which had no remote relation to any of /pol/'s 'concerns'. The inherent cowardice in that aspect of ''that'' attack and the most recent one are only one of the ways in which they are alike, but one of the most telling, not least because it begs the question of why the phrase "the last significant /pol/ terrorist" is even applicable.

Any reasonably well-adjusted person from anywhere on the political spectrum can see that the culture and posters of /pol/ are what give it its unfathomably bad name, which by extension affects already-considered-malignant *chan subculture such that one would be hard-pressed to assert otherwise. Inasmuch as /pol/acks even take their own putative ideas seriously, they don't tend to do themselves any favors - on- OR off-line. In addition, despite 4chan supposedly not being the birthing place for the ideals of Mr. Tarrant, the fact that it can now be tangibly tied to such people AND the resulting Australian lockdown on 4chan/8chan/etc. is certain to impact perception of the board and anyone seen as aligned with them - likely for the worse.

==See Also==
*[[SJW]]s, the left-leaning "contrast" to /pol/'s alt-right twattery, subjected to constant, mostly inaccurate, comparisons due to alleged hypocrisy and similar but more ethical zealotry. A major distinction is that SJWs have much more influence in the media and have produced less(if any) violence than /pol/.
*[[Board-tans/pol]]
*[[Racial Holy War]], for what the rest of 4chan thinks would happen if a /pol/ack made an RPG.
*[[MYFAROG]], for when a /pol/ack actually made an RPG.
*[[Nazi]], what these guys ''wish'' they were.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpijRDDOxQ An appropriate response] to the forced Trump meme.

==Gallery==
<gallery class="center">
File:First_visit_to_pol.gif
File:1477229948688.jpg
File:Never Relax.jpg
File:1491144651231.png
File:1475903382909.jpg
File:Global Rule -3.jpg
File:Shitpost.png
File:1490344868585.jpg
File:1518620305269.jpg
File:1517880145411.png
File:Srgfd.png|All anyone needs to know.
File:1495590391196.png|Same as before but adapted to new memes.
File:5680446+_b10ddaacb84c03cf89b71c1f1327e25b.jpg|Cap doing what Cap does best.
File:Back_to_pol.jpg|The appropriate dismissal of all /pol/tards.
File:1481725926368.jpg|Some guy on Stormfront planning on using /pol/ as ''agitprop''.
File:1488601566861.jpg|/pol/tards delude themselves into thinking that it's only liberals who dislike them.
</gallery>

[[Category: Meme]][[Category: 4chan]][[Category: RAGE]][[Category:Pure Evil]]

Beholder

2020-06-22T01:27:16Z

2601:203:480:4C60:1D8E:FB7B:CC66:85F4: /* Personality and Characteristics */

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category:Monsters]]
[[Image:Beholder_balloon.jpg|thumb|right|Drow clowns make a different kind of balloon animal]]

A '''beholder''' is a giant lumpy... thing that looks like a floating octopus with a giant eye in the middle. The tentacles also have eyes at the end of them. Yuck.

Beholders, like [[Illithid|Mind Flayer]]s, are considered "intellectual property" of <s>TSR</s> Wizards of the Coast, so they aren't allowed to be used in third party D&D supplements or in [[Pathfinder]] as they were not covered under the [[OGL|Open Gaming License]]. This naturally doesn't stop [[ChapterHouse Studios|weirdly]] [[Original character, do not steal|similar]] creatures from appearing in various [[weeaboo]] JRPGs and related works, where they're usually called "gazers" or similar. Yes, this includes [[Monstergirls]]. Of course one game even used the name beholder, but we all excuse it, because this game is [[Heroes of Might and Magic|THE GAME. THE LEGEND.]]

==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.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the beholder race has a lot of genetic variety (as evidenced by the number of Beholder variants, 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 does not possess a logical mind and acts mainly on instinct, 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.

Like [[Aboleth]]s, when a beholder is born, they inherent 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 inherent.

While good beholder technically are possible, they are extremely rare because turning good requires a beholder 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.

Much information about their biology and culture was revealed in the book [[Lords of Madness]]. They also got an entire book to themselves in second edition called ''I, Tyrant''.

==Notable Variants==
The Beholder first appeared on the cover of the [[Greyhawk]] supplement for the Original Dungeons and Dragons. The creation of [[Spelljammer]] where beholders play an major role resulted in the creation of many varieties of beholders.
===2nd & 3rd Edition===
====True Beholders====
* Beholder: Your basic beholder. A central eye that projects an anti-magic cone and ten smaller eyes that each fire a different ray, such as charm person, disintegrate, and flesh to stone.
* Elder Orb: A larger beholder with a much longer than normal lifespan. Always has at least 6 levels of sorcerer.
* Hive Mother/[[Hive Tyrant]]: The highest ranked of all beholders and beholderkin. Basically a bigger meaner beholder that holds beholders and beholderkin under its sway. It has the ability to control other beholders and beholderkin, and has the ability spawn new kinds of beholderkin specialized for different tasks. Beholder hives are almost always ruled by a Hive Mother, which keeps the different kinds of beholders and kin from killing each other, and when Hive Mothers belonging to the same breed come together, they can form beholder cities. In 2nd edition, Hive Mothers have their smaller eyes set in a ring around their head instead of being on the ends of stalks, making them less maneuverable but also less vulnerable to being cut off, while in 3rd edition they are just extra large beholders.

====Beholderkin====
* Gauth: Basically, babby's first beholder, with only 6 eyestalks of doom and a reduced ability to disintegrate everyone and eats magic. Looks like a smaller beholder with a ring of useless extra eyes around the central eye and four of its ten stalks don't have eyes on the end.
* Eyeball: Tiny beholder, best used as a familiar. Pretty damn adorable for a beholder, still Neutral Evil. They have four eye stalks with ray of frost, cause fear, daze, and mage hand and can only use one of them at a time. The central eye doesn't do anything.
* Death Kiss: instead of dispensing death-beams from its eyestalks, they use them to suck your blood. Their only eye has no powers, but they release electric shocks when they are injured.
* Astereater: giant space-faring asteroid beholderkin with no eyestalks that eats your ship. For some reason it likes to enslave [[Giff]] to use as soldiers. [[Spelljammer]] was weird. Beholders and other beholderkin insist that they have no relation to them.
* Examiner: Four eyestalks, four limbs, and no central eye. Their limbs let them use tools and weapons, and they can create magic items. They also regenerate 1 hit point every round.
* Observer: A powerful psionic beholder with a hard shell, six eye-stalks, three large eyes spaced evenly around its middle, and three mouths on the ends of long retractable stalks that suck blood similar to a death kiss. It uses its psionic abilities to brainwash other monsters into its loyal servants. Less evil than other beholders.
* Lensman: The lowest of all beholderkin, or at least until the Eyeball was introduced. Looks like a cross between a starfish and an ape with a single eye, which may have one of six different powers.
* Watcher: the second lowest of beholderkin. Has three normal eyes around its body and a large compound eye on the top surrounded by six eyespots, and a single tentacle on the bottom which can inflict electric shocks. Its three regular eyes each have two different powers, and the compound eye can use three of those powers. Can cast the message and tounges spells. They are cowardly and mainly act as scouts for their more powerful cousins.
* Spectator: true neutral beholderkin. It's actually pretty swell, as far as beholders go. Remember that one beholder in Baldur's Gate? They can be summoned with a ritual using four beholder's eyestalks. They make excellent guards since they are content to spend very long periods of time in deep contemplation and don't need to be fed since they can magically create their own food. Has only four eye-stalks and the central eye reflects magic instead.
* Overseer: a beholderkin that looks like a giant fleshy tree trunk with thirteen eyestalk branches, tentacles for roots, no central eye, and several mouths at the base. Yes, I realize that it looks nothing like a beholder, but the book says it is so fuck it, let's call it a beholder. Like the hive mother, it also has the ability to dominate other beholders and beholderkin. In large beholder cities, the Hive Mother dominates the Overseers, who then dominated other beholders and kin for her, thus greatly increasing the number of a beholders a Hive Mother can control at one time.
* Eye of the Deep: it's like a beholder BUT UNDERWATER! And it tastes oddly of shrimp. Also, it's got little arms with crab-pincers. Only has two eye stalks and the central eye can flash blinding light. Also can cast the spell persistent image, which it uses to create [[Trap|illusion of mermaids]] and other things to lure victims closer. Rarely interacts with other kinds of beholders due to them living in different environments.
* Director: The beholder equivalent of the cavalry. A beholderkin with three bottom tentacles that it uses to ride vermin, usually giant centipedes. Because haven't we all wanted to ride a giant centipede like a pony up and down the streets... SHUT UP, I DON'T JUDGE YOU! Has six eye stalks and its central eye generates a protective forcefield around itself and its mount.
* Gouger: A beholderkin created to fight beholders. In the [[Forgotten Realms]] setting, they were created by [[Phaerimm]]s. Larger than regular beholders and has four small useless legs hanging off of its body. It has the same number of eyes as a standard beholder but does not have any eye powers other than the central antimagic eye. It attacks with a 15 foot long barbed tongue which it uses to disable other beholder's eyes.
* Gorbel: A beholderkin whose stalks are tipped with claws instead of eyes that explodes when badly injured.
* Orbus: An albino dwarf beholder with no eyes other than the anti-magic central eye but is a powerful spellcaster. They are only seen in the [[Spelljammer]] setting on beholder ships, which they are bred to power and navigate.

====Other====
* Beholder mage: when the DM wants the entire party to die horrible deaths but doesn't feel like using rocks. This is a special character class that only true beholders can take, which requires them to remove their anti-magic eye, and whenever they gain a the ability to cast a new level of spells must sacrifice one of their eye powers to turn that eyestalk into a spellstalk which casts spells of that level. At level 10, it's empty eye socket can absorb spells to heal it. All the cheese of a wizard with more spells per day, the ability to blast 10 spells at once at you as free actions, and fucking spontaneous casting. Even munchkins shit their pants in fear when they hear of these things. One of the unholy trinity of fuck off broken PCs that you can technically enter, the others being tainted scholars and Illithid Savants. And that's before you start optimizing the bastard because the fucker can still take ten more levels before becoming epic.
* Beholder Priestess: Sometimes when a beholder city is endangered the Hive Mother will called for help from The Great Mother and will be temporarily granted abilities similar to a cleric. On rare occasions this can also happen to a standard beholder, which will cause it to mutated into a Hive Mother.
* Doomsphere: The ghost of a beholder killed in by a magical explosion that haunts the area where it died. If doomsphere is defeated it will respawn in one day unless the area is exorcised.
* Death Tyrant: Basically, a Beholder lich. Yeah, you're probably fucked.
* Kasharin: A death tyrant beholder that also carries a rotting disease similar to mummy rot.
* Evil Eyes: A beholder that possesses non-standard eye powers and so is especially hated by other beholders.

===4th edition===
4e made use of quite a few different kinds of beholder, though almost all of them were pretty rapetastic, being made for higher levels. Most kinds of beholders had a Telekinesis Ray that they could use to slide enemies about, though for most that's all they do.

* Gauth - Pretty much the same as old editions, this is the pitiful little baby of the beholder family in 4e, and something you can toss at low-level parties to scare them without killing them. Level 5 Elites that can shoot fire, sleeping rays and exhaustion rays, and immobilise with its central eye.
* Bloodkiss - Another carry-over, and the second-weakest beholder statted, this one got the Undead subtype for some reason (guess they didn't read up and thought it was "just" a beholder vampire). Level 9 Solo Controller that relies on its blood-sucking tentacles to rip up anything in reach, though it also packs a psychic + dazing effect Death Scream attack and can hit people a lot of times.
* Eye of Shadow - Beholders who spent too long in the shadowfell, dissolving into a blot of darkness and hate. Fairly puny (level 12 Elite), but seriously trolling, with blinding rays, thundering rays, freezing rays, and the ability to pull off a "teleport 20 squares and then be invisible" trick.
* Eye of Flame - A beholder that specialises in burninating shit. Central eye gives vulnerability to fire and causes fire attacks to do ongoing, eyestalks blast foes with fire and fear effects. A low-Paragon tier (level 13 Elite) foe.
* Eye of Frost - We got a burn-your-ass beholder, so evidently we need a freezinating beholder. Slightly tougher (1 level higher) than its counterpart. Central eye means cold damage can immobilise those it looks at... weirdly, its got two kinds of freezing rays; one that does a lot of cold damage, one that does less cold damage but freezes your ass solid.
* Beholder Spawn - Baby beholders wanna eat your face, too. Level 15 Minions that can bite or do elemental damage with their eye-rays.
* Death Tyrant - Zombie Eye Tyrants, pretty much. Way weaker than their older namesakes (level 15 Solo). Central eye can strip away necrotic resistance (guess what kind of damage it does most) and slow you, and eyebeams focused on kill-you-dead. Choice is whether it just necrotic damages you to death, petrifies you, makes you die, or makes you die and then come back as a ghoul. Oh, and it has a fear ray too.
* Ghost Beholder - Dead Eye Tyrant who came back as a ghost. A level weaker and only an Elite, but still pretty nasty. Freezing eye rays and the ability to possess and mind control your dudes: not a lot of fun if your Will is shitty.
* Eye Tyrant - Your basic beholder for this edition, and pretty damn nasty (level 19 Solo). Can daze you with its central eye, or use its eyestalks to cause radiant and necrotic damage, put you to sleep, paralyze you, confuse you, terrify you, petrify you, disintegrate you or kill you outright.
* Eye of Chaos - Now we're getting into the big guns. Beholders that have been warped by the abyss, changing their alignment to chaotic evil and making them more similar to demons in their behavior. Level 25 Elites that will drive you almost as crazy as themselves, with the ability to lock you down to at-will powers only with their central eye and hit you with rays of force, blinding, confounding, madness, fear or teleportation.
* Ultimate Tyrant - They ain't fucking kidding when they named this bastard. Level 29 Solo - there are ancient dragons that aren't this nasty! Central eye locks you down, other eyes can drive you mad, unravel you, dissolve you, burn you, freeze you, drag you around, petrify you, disintegrate you, pull you closer or hurl you away.
* Eternal Tyrant - Because even the Ultimate Tyrant isn't ultimate enough. This bastard is an undead version of the Ultimate Tyrant that comes in a pair of linked entities; the Shell, a beholder [[golem]] (Level 31 Elite Brute) and the Essence, a hyper-powerful beholder [[ghost]] (level 33 Elite Artillery). These assholes are literally god-tier monsters - you had damn well better know what you're doing when you fight an Eternal Tyrant!

===5th Edition===
5e's first Monster Manual provides three forms of beholder; common beholder (or Eye Tyrant), Death Tyrant, and Spectator. The first two variants are what 5e calls Legendary creatures, meaning they have extra powers in their lairs that they can trigger on Initiative Count 20, certain specific effects mark the regions in which they lair, and they have special Legendary Actions that they can perform outside of the normal turn sequence. Their legendary ego has been given up a serious boost; now, beholders mutate at random just by accidentally thinking too hard, their ego is that overpowering. This is also how they reproduce now: by sleeping and dreaming of other beholders, bending reality in that way.

* Beholder: You know it, you hate it. Challenge level 13. Has its old antimagic cone central eye back, a bite attack for piercing damage, and ten eye rays, of which it can use three each round, rolling randomly to determine which three it has. Charm ray, paralyzing ray, fear ray, slowing ray, enervation ray, telekinetic ray, sleep ray, petrification ray, disintegration ray and death ray. It can burn one of its three legendary actions at the end of another creature's turn to blast somebody with a random eye ray. Its lair effects consist of three options; change a 50ft square up to 120ft distant into slimy difficult terrain, make any walls within 120ft sprout flailing appendages that'll grapple anyone within 10ft who can't beat a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, or cause an eye to pop up on any solid surface within 60ft that can then shoot a random eye ray at any enemy within its sight. For region effects, they're all fluffy; creatures within 1 mile sometimes feel they're being watched, or minor reality warps that affect inanimate objects (markings changing on a wall, slime coating a statue, etc) pop up whilst the beholder is sleeping. Volo's Guide to Monsters introduced a table of potential alternate eye rays, in case your party was feeling complacent.
* Death Tyrant: A beholder who dreamed of living forever. So it died in its sleep and became an undead beholder skull with ghostly eyes. It trades the antimagic cone for a negative energy cone (creatures can't regain hitpoints, humanoids that die in its area of effect become zombies under the death tyrant's command on the next turn). It has the same eye rays and legendary actions as the beholder. Its lair actions are variants of the beholder's - its grabbing walls are DC 17 and reach into the Ethereal Plane, it creates a 50ft cube of lightly obscured difficult terrain, and it can create a spectral eye at any point within 50ft, which can also target foes on the Ethereal Plane. It has one crunchy regional effect; a creature that is both hostile to the death tyrant and aware of its existence must roll a D20 if it finishes a long rest within 1 mile of the death tyrant's lair. On a 10 or less, it gets zapped with a random eye ray.
* Spectator: A lesser beholder variant with only four eye stalks, conjured from another plane of existence via a ritual that requires four beholder eyestalks as material components. It's only Challenge level 3 and it's Lawful Neutral, rather than the Lawful Evil of the others. It has a Confusion Ray, a Paralyzing Ray, a Fear Ray and a Wounding Ray, and it can magically create all the food and water it needs to sustain itself each day. It's a fool's gambit to attack it with spells thanks to its Spell Reflection reaction, which lets it retarget a spell that missed the spectator, or which forced a save that the spectator passed, against another creature within the spectator's line of sight and that is at least 30 feet from the spectator.
* Beholder Zombie: Much weaker than a living beholder. Loses most of its eye rays and its anti-magic cone.
* Death's Kiss: A Beholder who had nightmares about bleeding out spawns a vampiric tentacle monster, using toothy mouth-stalks to voraciously suck the blood from other creatures. It also bleeds lightning, for some reason. Not as smart as a normal beholder, but for this reason not as egotistical or paranoid. Added in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
* Gauth: A smaller beholder who sometimes shows up if you screw up the ritual to summon a spectator; it's got six eyestalks, four tentacles, and smaller eyes all around its central eye, so it's hard to understand how wizards can get confused when it lies and claims to be the real deal. The issue is that Gauths are magic eaters, sucking the juice from magical items to sustain themselves, so you can see why that makes them pretty piss-poor guards for a wizard's lair. They're weaker than true beholders and also less xenophobic. Also, they explode when you kill them.
* Gazer: A ridiculously adorable and weak little beholder (only Challenge 1/2 - that is, a ''twenty-sixth'' of the strength of a true beholder) that is sometimes dreamed into being. They're so amusingly pathetic that even pure beholders often keep them as pets, and they have the same sadistic ego of a full beholder in miniature. Have caused a lot of argument over whether the sidebar on gazer familiars is intended for PCs as well or just for mage NPCs, and if so if house rules should be used to slot them in as Chain Pact warlock familiars, let them take the action to fire their eye-rays, etc.
* Mindwitness: A beholder converted into an [[illithid]]-like creature via ceremorphosis. Now that those of you who aren't currently running from your computers in terror have stopped screaming, the end result is less "terrifying perfect marriage of beholder eye-rays with illithid mind rape and the combined egotism of both" and more "quasi-lobotomized docile [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica#Astropaths|glorified psionic email server]]," though still smarter than the average human. Notably, if the illithids and elder brains they serve are slaughtered and they survive, mindwitnesses tend to drift around looking for other psionic creatures to serve, taking on the alignments and worldviews of those they meet, be they kindly [[flumph]]s or evil [[demon]]s. Four of their eyestalks become tentacles, but they have six kinds of eyerays: fear, telekinetic, and slowing rays like those of their normal cousins, but also aversion rays that cause disadvantage on attack rolls, stunning rays that stun creatures, and a psychic ray that just causes a pile of psychic damage.

==Similar Monsters==
Beholders are not the only monsters that look like floating orbs with eyes.
* Gas Spore: Not a true beholder or beholderkin, but a [[fungus]] that resembles a beholder. May have been created by a beholder mage, or may be a fungus that took on the form of the beholder that it fed on, or maybe it's just mundane evolutionary mimicry. Beholders sometimes cultivate them in their cities for defense.
* Thagar: Also known as the Beholdereater, it is a predator that eats beholders. Is a giant orb covered in eyes with several mouths on the ends of stalks. It does not have any eye powers, but it is immune to mind affecting magic and highly resistant to it's body being physically affected by magic, so there isn't much a beholder can do against it.
* Deep spawn: An orb with six large tentacles and several retractable eye stalk. Three of it's tentacles end in mouths, and the other three can wield weapons. It has the ability to give birth to loyal clones of creatures it has previously eaten, making them useful for villains who want to populate their dungeons with a variety of monsters. Relation to beholders unknown.
* Gibbering Orb: An epic version of the [[Gibbering Mouther]]. An amorphous orb covered in mouths and eyes, which have eye rays similar to a beholder. Possibly is the common ancestor of beholders and gibbering mouthers, though this would conflict with the belief that the Great Mother created beholders. Fourth edition also introduced the Gibbering Abomination, a middle ground between the mouther and the orb which also eye rays.
* Lurking strangler: These creatures are to beholders what monkeys are to humans. A tiny aberration that looks like a pair of flying eyeballs connected by a cord of muscle. It likes to strangling sleeping enemies to death, and it can put enemies to sleep with one of its two eye rays. Beholders sometimes keep these things as pets.
* Fihyr: A living manifestation of nightmares that forms when a large number of people in an area all have nightmares in one night. It has a roughly spherical body covered in eyes, mouths, and tentacles. No relation to beholders.
* [[Astral Dreadnought]]: A huge predator that lives in the [[Astral Plane]] that has a single eye with anti-magic abilities similar to a beholder's central eye. Relation to beholders unknown.

==Notable Beholders==
*Large Luigi, a relatively friendly beholder who works as a barkeep in the [[Spelljammer]] setting.
*That beholder head of the thieves' guild who was the first major boss in [[Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance]]
*Another beholder head of another thieves' guild who was the final boss of the first Eye of the Beholder game.
*That funny spectator you kept running into and quasi-befriended in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That blind death tyrant boss you had to get a special god-killing magic wand to kill in [[Baldur's Gate|Baldur's Gate II]]
*That beholder in [[Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes]]
*That beholder in Futurama who's there for no apparent reason (was meant to be guarding some passage in the Central Bureaucracy but fell asleep on the job)
*Xanathar, the writer of "Xanathar's guide to everything" and head of Skullport's Thieves' Guild, which includes new options for classes and backgrounds, along with his snide comments running throughout. Apparently he's only one of many beholders to have used the title since the first one seized power. Notable for being one of the few beholders to remotely care for a being other than itself, he really loves his pet goldfish. It is kind of adorable. What he doesn't know is that his beloved goldfish has been replaced several times by the Thieves' Guild since goldfish don't live very long and he would [[RAGE|not be happy if he ever found out]].

==Beholders as Monstergirls==
[[File:Gazer.jpg|200px|thumb|right|No, you're not dreaming, this is a Beholder in monstergirl form.]]{{Monstergirls}}

[[rule 34|The proof that nothing, ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing is sacred,]] even Beholders got anthropomorphised into a sexy almost-human female by [[/d/|those irremediably insane weebs]]. Goddamit, Japan!

Gazers (as they are typically known due to copyright) are often depicted as arrogant, selfish beings that do not hesitate to use their eye ray powers to get what they want. Of course, fitting for a [[monstergirl]]s setting, their powers are [[PROMOTIONS|less destructive]] than that of a D&D Beholder, going more toward charm, hypnotism and mind control.

Still, beholder-girls are a rarity, simply because there's something rather counter-intuitive about turning a floating head full of teeth and eyes into a monstergirl. Perhaps the most well known example of them on /tg/ is the Gazer of the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]], whose smug grin currently adorns this section of the page. Described as spiteful and full of themselves, their deepest secret is that this is mostly bluster to cover up feelings of insecurity about their looks. They specialize in hypnotic spells, mostly to brainwash men into falling in love with them.

==Gallery==
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File:Awesome Beholder.png
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File:Gazer_D&D.png
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