RPG Menagerie: The Beholder

Being a new series of posts looking at role-playing game monsters/threats from across all games (probably with a preference for vintage games), but not an entirely serious look. Of course, Dungeons & Dragons is the old favorite, so I think we should start there, and come back to it at least once a month, which should still give other games their due. And so...

Monster: The Beholder
Game/Product: AD&D/Monster Manual

Writing: Gary Gygax. Art: David C. Sutherland
Origin: A pun on "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". A quintessentially D&D monster which doesn't appear in folklore, it just stems from asking questions about this "beholder" (a nice, archaic word) and his "eye". The result is a crazy floating ball (much bigger than it looks at 4-6 feet across), with 11 eyes, each with its own magical ray.
Fear Level: Elevated, once you stop laughing at this silly grin.
Danger Level: Final Boss.
Famous example: There's an Eye Tyrant called Xabash running the criminal underworld in Waterdeep.
I wonder if: Anyone ever mistook a Modron for a Beholder and needlessly crapped their pants.

The Beholder was my first monster love. I was 12. I got the original Monster Manual in a Toys R Us before boarding a plane for summer guardianship. I didn't know what role-playing games were. Since I had few books with me, I poured over it for two months. I started coloring the monsters in  - the Beholder was a soft pink - but lost the book transferring planes on the way back. I later replaced the book, but it had a different cover. I painted a very cool miniature that's very wobbly on its this metal rod (to make it seem like it's floating over the dungeon floor), and its hair-eyes break off pretty easily. Here's its condition today (and yes, each eye is a different color, only one stalk missing):

And I watched as the Spelljammer setting - D&D in Spaaaaaaaacccccce!!!! - used the design's weirdness as an excuse to make Beholders an alien species not native to any given D&D world. It just flew in space without a ship. They also started creating variants at that point, despite the monsters' hatred of diversity - perhaps inspired by the equally cyclopean, tentacled Daleks who also couldn't help mutating. The Beholder's one weakness, for me, is that you can't just use them willy-nilly. They're just too powerful. So you sit on them for a while, waiting for PCs to level up, then use them as an endgame threat. And once you've done that, well, you need to move on to another Big Bad or it gets repetitive. But it was great while it lasted, wasn't it?

If you have Beholder stories, please drop them in the comments!