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be holders stalking through a dungeon in search of treasure you turn a corner and come face-to-face with a floating mass of flesh a great eye in the center and a dozen smaller eyes on stalks each staring you down you are facing a beholder an alien intelligent and extremely hostile creature determined and fully capable of seeing your destruction well perhaps not the most iconic monster in Dungeons and Dragons that honour of course belonging to the Dragons the image of a beholder has become synonymous with D&D and is one of the few creatures that Wizards of the coast does not allow others to freely use be holders are one of the oldest creatures in deities publication history and are one of the first monsters to be uniquely created for D&D instead of being borrowed or recreated from some other source let's look first at their out of universe history and then see why exactly be holders are so fearsome the holders were introduced in the gray hawk supplement for original D&D released in 1975 only a year after the release of the original game although Gary Gygax detailed the beholder for the supplement its original creator was Rob Koontz brother Terry Koontz the beholder was already important enough to be shown on the cover of the gray Hawk supplement and its image would also be used on the covers of the a D&D 2nd edition monstrous compendium and the fifth edition Monster Manual it would of course go on to be featured in every edition of a D&D along with a large number of beholder variants presented in other monster manuals and supplements be holders feature prominently in the outer space Adventures of the spell jammer setting but will maybe save that for another time there have been countless modules written featuring B holders sometimes as a mere obstacle in the adventurers path I'll be it a powerful one or sometimes as the primary villain undoubtedly the greatest source of information about B holders is the book I tyrant written for a D&D second edition in 1996 containing 93 pages entirely about the creatures detailing information about their biology their diets their variations their history their societies their cities and their psychology in keeping in line with the abba left video however and to keep things a little modern I'll be again using a chapter from the Lords of madness supplement written for Dean D 3.5 edition in 2005 the average beholder is pretty large with a body about 8 feet wide although they of course can come smaller or larger than that and they typically weigh around 4 or 5 thousand pounds the skin covering most of the be holders body is as strong as steel and can vary wildly in color between different B holders each beholder possesses a wide mouth filled with long sharp teeth and a sensitive tongue that they use to feel objects in general beholder cannot sense objects as well as say a human as their sense of touch is nearly atrophied besides their tongue their sense of taste is gone and they smell through thousands of tiny openings in their skin they can hear fairly well though and their eyesight is of course exceptional a beholder possesses one larger eye in the center of the body and then a number of smaller eyes connected by stalks to the beholders body typically around ten rather than being spongy and soft Abbe holders eyes are remarkably hard and solid akin to stones using all of its various eyes a beholder can constantly see all around itself even in the dark and possesses enough visual acuity to count the legs on a mosquito from over a hundred feet away the interior of a beholder is a tangled mess of tubes sacs coils and other organs that are largely alien to human understanding there is no single organ responsible for EB holders flotation but instead every internal organ is naturally buoyant and retains its buoyancy for up to 12 hours after being removed from the bee holders body this buoyancy is rather inexplicable as almost none of the organs aside from the lungs contains any significant amount of air or natural gas a beholder moves by utilizing bursts of air expelled through the thousands of openings in its skin a beholder skeletal system is really more of just a large skull but the material that comprises this skull is almost identical to its skin meaning that it's hard inflexible and incredibly light the creatures digestive system works by breaking down consumed food into liquid in its stomach and then pumping the liquefied remains into the B holders lung where the remains are mixed with air and become a frothy pink fluid this fluid is pumped through thousands of small arteries into other organs until all the nutrients have been drained at which point the remaining liquid is funneled back to the creatures mouth where it is either forcefully expelled or more commonly dribbles out as a foul drool as for reproduction B holders are all gender-neutral and typically reproduce only once in their lives typically in their first 40 years the creatures womb is located underneath the back of its tongue and they will generally carry up to 12 young in this womb for six months before giving birth by that point the womb has swollen to the point of preventing the beholder from eating food and the beholder will remain hidden in its lair until the young are born during the birthing process the womb is regurgitated out of the mouth and bitten off where it will then hover in the air until the young B holders chew their way out of the fleshy mass the baby beholders that don't resemble the parent enough are quickly consumed by the parent and the remaining children are forced out of the lair a few hours later to fend for themselves the most remarkable feature of B holders are the Rays of magical energy that they are able to emit from their various eyes a beholder actually absorbs magical energy through their eyes by looking at different sources of magic including spells magical creatures magical relics tomes or even by looking at their own eye raised in action they siphon off very little energy from the magical source in this process and they can build up a tolerance if they view the same source for a prolonged period of time leading many B holders to hoard a whole wealth of magical relics and books each of their eyes possesses a different magical ability that the beholder can shoot out in the form of rays the central eye of beholder typically releases an anti-magic field in front of it that suppresses magical effects including that from its own eye raised but that still leaves the beholder with a large pointy mouth to fight with the effects of the smaller eyes can vary quite a bit but generally they include powerful abilities such as paralyzation petrification disintegration or just outright killing a target lesser but still highly dangerous effects include being put to sleep being slowed or being charmed into harming your allies as long as the beholder has magical energy stored in its brain and its eyes are functioning it can continue to barrage targets with various effects until they are no longer a threat in comparison to Abba let's who have been around since time and memorial bee holders typically have a very short lifespan relatively a newborn beholder will develop its arrays after several months of observing magic which might take up to a year if born in a magic scarce area a beholder will reach adult size in around two years and won't grow much more after that point by around age 100 if a beholder isn't killed before then their eye stalks will begin to wither away and lose power and it's very rare for a normal beholder to live past the age of 120 of course in a world of magic with creatures determined to hoard and observe magical effects it's not unheard of for particularly intelligent bee holders to use magic to extend their lives possibly for several hundred years bee holders don't ever really stop growing so it's said that these ancient creatures can be nearly 20 feet in diameter rarely a beholder of a different variety might be born called an elder orb that is effectively immortal unless killed by adventurers or by some terrible disease elder orbs can live forever and maintain their intelligence and of course they can become truly dangerous foes a more common and less dangerous kin of the beholder is the gout at about half the size of normal and lacking the truly deadly eye rays of the bee holders so bee holders are large intelligent mobile and magically powerful so what's stopping them from becoming the dominant race well opposable thumbs for one but more importantly bee holders are by and large insane rather than falling into chaos however this inherent insanity leads most bee holders to adhere to similar patterns of isolation and hatred of other forms of life most notably other bee holders each beholder typically sees themselves as being the greatest example of their species and will fly into an insane rage at the sight of another beholder often with the goal of slain the rival creature in an ambush scenario these fights end rather quickly for one side but if both bee holders face each other equally the anti magic fields projected by both tend to make the fights of vicious and savage affairs filled with sharp teeth tearing through flesh every society has outcasts though including bee holders and these creatures are considered the most sane of bee holders usually establishing layers underneath cities in order to form shadowy organizations and cults using their intellect and their magical ability to charm humanoids often most members of these organizations will have no idea a beholder is actually in charge as the creature will use various proxies in order to secretly run things sometimes however members will be very aware of the beholders presence and will indeed worship it becoming a beholder cult particularly insane members of these cults might gouge out their eyes or their foreheads and graft in abbey holders I as part of a dark ritual even more worrisome is the existence of beholder hives congregations of bee holders ruled by an especially unique type of bee holder called a hive mother who possesses the magical ability to dominate and control other bee holders hive mothers believe they exist in order to bring unity to the beholder race and build their hives so that they may one day rule the world obviously a beholder hive represents a grave threat but that's what adventurers are for depending on the location and goals of a beholder they might utilize a number of other creatures for different purposes generally by charming them into service bee holders operating in a city will employ minions as spies assassins or representatives in social situations bee holders hiding out in a remote lair might use minions as gatherers to travel great distances in search of magical artifacts or other minions almost all bee holders however will use different minions as guardians of their lairs from various monsters and animals to wayward adventurers or bandits in a running theme if it's a powerful intelligent creature it's likely to have lesser creatures as protection although be holders are perhaps not as majestic as dragons or as purely terrifying as the Tarasque they're undoubtedly one of the fan favorites of Dungeons and Dragons monsters they're one of the creatures that are uniquely associated with D&D even making an appearance in the ill-fated Dungeons & Dragons film this series won't be specifically focusing only on powerful creatures in D&D but I couldn't pass on the insane floating balls that absorb magic through their eyes and shoot out disintegration razed you