Beholders! March 27, 2018Zoltar beholders are one most iconic monsters in D&D they have a genius intellect they look incredibly strange and also no one in the DMV multiverse wants to take credit for this seemingly terrible mistake bee holders are incredibly powerful right all those different eye beams the central eye they they’re like good you know credibly powerful and they’re incredibly bizarre looking and you can imagine back in the 70s this idea this sphere with his one big eye and these tentacles with other eyes it’s interesting you look back the person who should monster annual and you wonder like why did this monster become so iconic and this other one no one talks about anymore but usually the answer is just because well this one was like creepy and weird and powerful and that’s what made it memorable as opposed to like oh this one is a rhinoceros the size of a house like okay that’s fine but it’s not like wow right and I think this idea that they have they’re intelligent you know they have they’re not just MOT the animals or monsters they’re thinking creatures and they’re smarter than humans right that makes them even more of a threat but luckily if you can abhi they we often think of geniuses coming with a lot of eccentricity and be holders have that in spades in some ways be holders are you know they they’re not biological creatures they they’re creatures that dream themselves into existence and in some ways that’s why I think be holders you know the name behold or something that behold that looks upon the world you know what did the original beholder was it was there a God that created them as far as they don’t really have deities they don’t have clerics they’re too arrogant for that each beholder each beholder thinks it’s dreaming the world maybe they are maybe there’s some grand massive beholder somewhere who’s like dreaming is what is keeping together the entire firmament of the cosmos I mean who can say right the most people would think that’s insane but who knows right behold there’s a dream entire what they dream creatures into being right they dream there that’s how powerful their ability to behold the reality is if they envisioned it it can become real which is a lot like what the the gods play in D&D the gods create things the gods oversee things there’s a god of nature because presumably that God had a role in creating the natural order and so you have these creatures that are in some ways these very small-scale tactical demigods with incredible power but not power so overwhelming what adventures can’t defeat them and they are incredibly solipsistic they think I am the center of the universe right there to me to God they think well this is you know III figured this out I know what’s going on they want to understand how things work they want to understand the connections and then they have the sort of unfettered ability to to shape reality which I find really fascinating they wanted to code how reality works they want to understand everything and then be ready for it because often they were afraid of it they’re paranoid they know there’s dangers out there well at least there’s a potential for a danger out there because they figured out there’s this chance that this thing could happen and so in some ways you know the when you think of them cosmically there’s a lot of interesting potential things they’re you know thinking of it is aberrations and I think in some ways they are they are they are not really weren’t meant to be part of this reality as far as the order of Dungeons and Dragons goes a cosmic order of it of the outer Plains and the inner planes and the Material Plane the be holders are separate they’re there they are not part of that process they’re almost like a bug in the system you know creating new things that have out of whole cloth and trying to decode absolutely decode what actually makes a reality function so I find that really interesting as a creature and as an enemy and in the the eccentricity if that plays out in a specific character like like zennith are and you know his approached like running this crime organization you know things like that that be holders are all incredibly individualistic but yeah it’s kind of how I think of it be holders is like their their their tactical level demigods know the origin that beholder is like it’s one of those things where maybe it’s a case where no one wants to take credit for it because there’s no credit design blame or it’s possible they’re just like this almost divergent if you can think of evolution of mythic creatures magical creatures they’re just some weird divergent foundational element that maybe was never meant to exist that as opposed to like other entities other creatures that were created by Gods or elementals that sort of arose out of the natural processes of the cosmos as the cosmos forms and the elemental planes form in a little chaos gives birth to the elemental plane of air which has you know more order to it and is more segmented and the elemental planes give rise to the prime the prime material plane where each element exists and bounds with each other that creates an environment where not no single one dominates completely and then that’s the stage on which the gods create their their their followers their you know that’s where there are concepts I bets where they express themselves while being sequestered off in the outer Plains and then you have B holders that have just opened that entire process you know what how did they show up it’s almost like you know when you think of a program that’s running and eventually a piece of data gets corrupted it starts doing crazy things our beholder is a piece of corrupted data that took on this form most of it just gets smooth up by the universe by the cosmic process but this time the bug start a life of its own almost like a computer virus and now as it doesn’t really spread so much but is still just not like the mine players are much more malevolent right they they want to rule they feel they should rule they’re the smartest that’s how they measure everything we’re smarter than that so we should tell it what to do and always remember the mind flayers it’s not the mind players it’s the Eldar brains the mind players of puppets and so when you compare beholder to an elder brain it’s very similar it’s a very intellectual creature and it exists outside the natural order well what was what what created them then if gods didn’t create them or where are they from and that’s where you get the root of the idea of the aberration yeah these are creatures that just don’t exist within the natural order there’s no home plane there’s no process that creates them they’re not like in elementals a reflection of the the structure of the cosmos a demon is a reflection of the structure of the cosmos it’s chaos and evil personified so was a devil law and evil personified what our mind flayers be holders i mean they have alignments that reflect their views but they they’re not part of that order thank you Mike whirls for being on the show I’m Todd Kendrick thank you for watching Dean D beyond Dean D beyond is the official fifth edition toolset 14 D Learn more about one of the EYEconic monsters in all of Dungeons & Dragons https://t.co/uzD6Bs3yL7 — D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) March 27, 2018 Share this:TweetWhatsAppTelegramEmail