An Alternate Ecology of the Beholder
Inspired by, and in collaboration with, my good friend Justina. (@JustinaRevolution1)
“But is there anyone who's really good? Maybe goodness is just make-believe.” — Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon
In the 3.5 DnD book, Lords of Madness, we learned that Beholders were spawned by an entity known as the Great Mother, on some far flung outer plane. Hints in other places suggest she came from the Far Realm, as many aberrations do. In Volo's Guide to Monsters for 5e, we learned something new: Beholders are not born like other creatures, but created by the dreams and fears of their 'parent', because the beholder subconsciously molds reality around themselves.
Both sources stress the insanity and paranoia of the beholder, the utter and complete xenophobia, down to considering even other beholders 'other', deserving only of destruction. Neither source explains why.
In this article we hope to provide some interesting alternative explanations for the extreme oddities of beholder behavior...although we are not qualified to discuss their alien and impossible physiology.
First, one must understand that no non-beholder can possibly be truly aware of their origins. Thy are not honest with others, no others observed it, and the story some tell of the Great Mother does not hold together with the other things that are known. That is because it is a complete fabrication....or at best, a metaphor. Many beholders, in fact most, are similarly unaware of the truth, for reasons we will examine below.
The metaphor is explained something like this: The Great Mother is the multiverse, the megaverse, the grand cosmos in which all things reside, all worlds, all planes. In that sense, yes, she 'spawns' beholders, and continues to do so. Just as she spawns new realities, both sacred and profane, both beautiful and terrible, places no mortal mind could fathom as well as idyllic paradises...she spawns beholders. It is not a process one can explain, or put down to purpose. How could any mortal mind even begin to understand the motivations of all reality...if it even has such?
What we believe we have pieced together though, is the following. Beholders spawn, as a byproduct of the end of worlds. All realities end, in time, all spirals of planes and planets and structures succumb to entropy. But life, nay, existence, is persistent, both mindful and mindless. The last gasp of a dying reality, trying to survive...that is a beholder.
Some say that nothing can be either created nor destroyed. Only transformed. But nonetheless, things end. Worlds die. Where do they go when they die? How are they transformed?
Not all, but some...become beholders.
It was once believed that the name beholder came from their many eyes. But it is our theory that it comes from something else. The beholder is called so, because it is the last witness to a whole reality. A beholder is the sum total of a whole reality, collapsing into a singular entity as its existence falls to nothingness...an attempt by the reality to remain real, by manifesting an observer to stabilize it. The beholder holds the sum of every sight and experience its reality ever hosted, the memories of every living thing, and things no creature ever saw. Everything. And all the memories and might of those creatures of that world reside within it, even its gods. Cosmic power it can only barely consciously wield...but it knows that it has such potential. That each and every beholder has the power to be beyond any god, if only it can figure out how. And their madness? They are plagued by the trauma's of every single being that ever lived in their reality, and the collected pain outweighs the wonder of that creation. All they can recall are snippets of horror, and the final experiences of an uncaring cosmos and the tortured souls within it...a cosmos that they are the manifestation of. So, like the ultimate version of Disassociative Identity Disorder, it contains limitless multitudes...all damaged by trauma we can hardly conceive. And the paranoia, the xenophobia? All entities outside themselves must be other...for they are, or were, the sum total of existence!
There is beauty in the eye of the beholder, indeed. All the beauty of a whole reality, which might hold several worlds of wonder...but it cannot see that beauty anymore, or new beauty, because the pain and paranoia outweigh it all. Is it paranoia when you know existence does not care about you? When you know all the bad things creatures have done to each other...and cannot remember kindness?
It comes as no surprise, then, that beholders dream their spawn into being. We count ourselves lucky that the grand majority never realize what power they hold. But in infinite realities...some must. Some must realize they could surpass gods. And some must reason that if they can empty the reality they find themselves in of life and structure, there would be room for them to resurrect their world, as its new great god...
In closing, beholders are last survivors of dead worlds, the coalesced total experience and matter of that place that embodied in an attempt to survive. But no being can survey eternity and remain sane, and all they remember is the pain and trauma of all that cosmos, and its end...driving them to madness and hatred of all life but themselves. Some of them reason, that if they can destroy all life where they now exist, they can resurrect their own world....
Beholders are monsters, villains...and tragic victims of a cruel joke by the uncaring cosmoi, that strive to continue, no matter the consequences. And the greatest tragedy, perhaps, is when they must be slain. Every time one dies, the sum total of an entire existence is lost. There is indeed, beauty in the eye of the beholder...but they can't see it anymore. No single being can behold eternity and remain sane.