Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Minis: Beholder

Product Information

The mind of a beholder is powerful and versatile enough that it can envision literally any possibility, and it prepares accordingly, making it virtually impossible for any invaders to catch it unawares. This way of thinking could be interpreted as a form of paranoia—and if so, it would be the most extreme form imaginable. While a human tyrant might be rightfully paranoid about unperceived threats, a beholder is paranoid even though it perceives everything, because that attitude is the natural companion to eternal vigilance. A hazard can be put to use in an offensive, defensive, or utilitarian capacity. Beholders are skilled at repurposing cursed or dangerous items as elements of traps or obstacles in its lair, especially if such an item emits an ongoing effect that it can suppress as needed with its antim agic cone. For death tyrant lairs, use this table, but replace approximately half of its living minions with ogre zombies. The beholder’s private chamber is usually at the highest elevation inside the lair and accessible only through a long vertical tunnel. Here, the beholder rests and plots. The room typically contains a nest of sand or cloth bedding and the beholder’s favorite pieces of sculpture. Vestibule

Beholders are among the few creatures that can shape reality in their vicinity. In addition, beholders don’t truly sleep when they rest. Instead, a beholder’s mind remains semiconscious even as it dreams. As a result, on rare occasions when a beholder dreams of another beholder, the dream-reality becomes warped and takes on physical form, becoming another actual beholder. To call this process reproduction would be inaccurate, because in most cases the old and new beholders fight to the death—a fact for which the rest of the world is thankful. Inhuman Intellect Unless otherwise indicated, an alternative ability has the same range as the eye ray it is replacing, and it affects only one creature per use (even if the ability is based on a spell that normally affects an area or multiple targets) . The saving throw for an alternative ability uses the same DC and the same ability score as the spell the eye ray is based on. A beholder uses its fear ray to psychologically torture and interrogate a prisoner until the creature loses the will to resist. Slowing Ray As a byproduct of their unique method of propagation, beholders in one part of the world tend to look similar, with variations becoming more pronounced the farther one travels from that area. Even a slight variation in the shape of an eyestalk or the texture of its skin is enough for one beholder to consider another a flawed abomination, which should be destroyed.Beholders can produce others of their own kind, but the process has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with p sychology. A beholder often has one or more pets in its lair, mainly because (for whatever reason) it enjoys the company of such creatures. Pets are usually of low intelligence and are kept around because of their combat abilities, entertainment value, or trop hy status. A beholder usually creates its lair in an area of natural caves, shaping the chambers with its disintegration ray. Most of the entryways and passages that it fashions to connect one chamber with another are too narrow to admit creatures larger than itself (particularly in the innermost chambers). If any large openings between adjacent caves exist naturally, the beholder constricts or seals off such openings, either by employing slave labor or by collapsing the tunn el itself.

I have foreseen the moment of my death and know what will kill me. I hope to curry favor with my slayer to forestall my end. For my beholder miniature I have chosen a rather cold colour scheme, mainly using blues and purples. The model comes pre-primed, which is helpful and a set of four additional eye stalks with magical effects emanating from them to use in place of four eye stalks which are loose from the head. Personally, I’m happy with the standard eye stalks, but it’s good that you have alternative eye stalks as an option. The Monsters Listingintroduces several new types of beholder-kin. A death kiss is usually the result of a nightmare about blood, such as what a beholder might experience after an encounter with a vampire or after being severely wounded in battle. Gazers are “born” out of a poisoned or ill beholder’s feverish dreams, in which its sense of perspective and scale is warped. A spectator (see the Monster Manual) is a kind of lesser beholder summoned from another plane of existence to watch over something, such as a treasure hoard. A gauth hails from the same plane as spectators, or one that overlaps it enough that they can take advantage of a flawed attempt to summon a spectator. Although true beholders can be found on a spectator’s or gauth’s home plane, the creatures’ actual place of origin is unknown (whether another plane, a world beyond the stars, or some stranger location), and spectators and gauths aren’t believed to originate from dreams as other beh olders do. Physical Characteristics The tables that follow present possibilities for personal characteristics that you can use to make a beholder di stinctive. A beholder that has amassed many trophies might set aside an area in its lair dedicated to their display. A trophy gallery is often a long chamber decorated with mementos taken from creatures the beholder has slain. Niches and pedestals hold smaller objects, while larger objects are suspended from the ceiling or left freestanding in the room. To prevent minions from handling or trying to steal trophies, the more favored and valuable items are kept on high shelves, accessible to the flying beholder but out of reach of anyone on t he ground. Leaving the LairIt is common for a beholder to charm a hostile monster, lure the creature to the beholder’s lair, and confine it there so it can’t escape under its own power. In this way, even monsters that can’t be bribed or coerced can be useful to a beholder, making its lair a confusing zoo of hosti le beasts. The ability to temporarily suspend magical effects is useful to a beholder for determining if a minion has been charmed or compelled to act against its master; the creature might change its behavior when inside the cone, or it might remember or be able to speak of things it was compelled to forget or ke ep secret. Complementing this ever-present, passive paranoia is the beholder’s genius-level intelligence. Where another creature would ignore the occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events as merely coincidental, a beholder imagines multiple ways they could be related, finding or fabricating a pattern out of supposed or actual randomness. By thinking of all these possibilities—however implausible they might be—and extrapolating its own actions in response, a beholder is truly prepared for any situation and has a strategy to coun teract it. A beholder has plans on top of plans, even for the least likely circumstances. It doesn’t matter if invading adventurers arrive at its lair with summoned angel allies or enslaved demons, by breaking through the floor, by teleporting or riding dinosaurs, or girded with layers of magical defenses and armed with advanced weapons. In any case, the beholder’s reaction is calculated, because it has thought about what it and its minions must do in response to every situation. Despotic Perspective

A room not dedicated to some other purpose could be festooned with a variety of traps. In addition to traps that are meant to catch ground-based creatures, a beholder creates or positions certain traps so that they’re effective against flying intruders.In addition to its lieutenants, the Xanathar has many minions with specific jobs. These underlings don’t have as much clout as the lieutenants do, but they do hold key roles in its guild and have some degree of influence in the organization. Among these are the beholder’s accountant, chamberlain, chief messenger, doctor, fish-keeper, fortune-teller, lawyer, master entertainer, monster trainer, trap-setter, and warden for its private prison. The individuals in these roles generally serve the Xanathar for months or years, because replacements that have the same specialized skills can be hard t o come by. What Others Know Death Ray: circle of death (10-foot-radius sphere; 4d6 necrotic damage to all creatures in the area), feeblemind Door Trap. In a seldom-used cavern with a high ceiling, a beholder might erect a wall that doesn’t reach the ceiling and build a trapped door into it. The beholder can fly over the trap, while intruders are forced to deal with the door or waste time trying to climb over the wall. A typical simple door trap is a pivoting spiked arm that swings downward to impale an intruder when the door is opened. Most of the guild’s low-ranking members have an idea that the boss isn’t human, especially given how long the Xanathar has been in power (they aren’t aware that several beholders have held the job). Most believe their leader is a member of a long-lived race, perhaps a dwarf or an elf. Some think the truth is more monstrous, and that the Xanathar is a drow or perhaps a dragon in huma noid form. A beholder might use its slowing ray on an uncooperative creature as a demonstration of sorts, threatening to follow it up with more severe consequences if the creature doesn’t submit to the behold er’s will. Death Ray and Enervation Ray