Strip 2132: Beholders Conquer and Destroy.

Julien Brightside · **Joined:** Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:22 pm **Posts:** 29

PheonixIV wrote:

Bunshichi wrote:

Lord_Fellgrin wrote:

Ah well. Drow tartare anyone?

I thought that Beholders always set their "eyes" on "leave no evidence" or "statuary" when they were mad?!?

Beholders have access to a wide variaty of eye rays. Lesser beholders have such gems as Scorching Ray and various levels of Inflict Wounds or fun status effects like Exhausted and Sleep, more powerful beholders have the well known disintigrate and petrify rays but also have access to various forms of Charm, Inflict Wounds, Finger of Death and Telekinesis, amongst other spells. Some really powerful beholder lords also have an even wider range of spells at their disposal.

So yeah, while everyone knows about the disintigrate and flesh to stone eye rays, most people often forget that there are a whole bunch of other powers they can pull off.

Of course there's also the antimagic cone from the central eye, but Rich seems to have decided to axe that particular power.

So, pick a table of effects and roll a dice for a random one?

Morgana · **Posted:** Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:43 am

I wonder if they have an agenda or if they are just randomly blasting people...

PheonixIV · **Joined:** Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:42 am **Posts:** 184

timemonkey wrote:

I asked Bob about that in the Ask The Charcter section, he said he still had it. It might be a switch it on and off thingy.

In which case i guess Rich decided to change it from 'central eye emits antimagic cone when open and does not when closed' to some kind of mental trigger so that all the beholders didn't spend most of the time running around with their eye closed.

Julien Brightside wrote:

So, pick a table of effects and roll a dice for a random one?

The Beholder decides which beams it wants to fire where, the can only direct a certain number of beams in any given direction, so they typically either focus all theri heavy hitters on one person and obliterate him or spread out and cause hell for everyone in the vicinity.

Basically, in 'core', Beholders are incredibly powerful, utterly insane and totally dedicated to murdering pretty much everything everywhere. Fortunately, Beholders save their strongest and most powerful hate for other Beholders which thankfully means they don't team up and destroy the entire world because an army of Beholders would be just shy of totally unstoppable.

Rich seems to have toned a lot of that down a fair bit though since we've got Beholders working together with other creatures and not murdering each other on sight, they do however still seem to possess their full range of magical power which means everyone who isn't a Beholder right now is very, very screwed.

Aebliss · **Joined:** Sun Sep 20, 2009 6:20 pm **Posts:** 974

Don't Beholder Queens usually have the power to force lesser Beholders to work together? I'm not sure whether they can force Beholders of differing body types to do so, but it wouldn't surprise me. The Beholder King may be enforcing a similar peace on the Beholders under the Black Mountain, whatever his reasons may be, or maybe all the Beholders under the Black Mountain belong to the same body type.

Because yeah, in the 'core', Beholders fight Beholders over the most trivial physical differences. They'll eat their own offspring if they display even small differences from themselves. It doesn't help that their DNA seems to be highly flexible, allowing for such mutation...

marger · **Joined:** Tue Jul 20, 2010 4:26 am **Posts:** 243

How Yapp could get away in one piece (and not petrified with this) with all this -- that's what interests me...

Aebliss · **Joined:** Sun Sep 20, 2009 6:20 pm **Posts:** 974

He brought the Beholder King news that someone else was bad-mouthing him. That probably got him at least a few seconds' worth of head start before the big guy started throwing a temper tantrum.

PheonixIV · **Joined:** Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:42 am **Posts:** 184

Aebliss wrote:

Don't Beholder Queens usually have the power to force lesser Beholders to work together? I'm not sure whether they can force Beholders of differing body types to do so, but it wouldn't surprise me. The Beholder King may be enforcing a similar peace on the Beholders under the Black Mountain, whatever his reasons may be, or maybe all the Beholders under the Black Mountain belong to the same body type.

Because yeah, in the 'core', Beholders fight Beholders over the most trivial physical differences. They'll eat their own offspring if they display even small differences from themselves. It doesn't help that their DNA seems to be highly flexible, allowing for such mutation...

Hive Mothers and Overseers were both introduced in Lords of Madness and they can mind-control other Beholders and Beholderkin and there is one example given of an Elder Orb (effectively the Beholder equivilant of an Ancient Dragon) which is so powerful that it manages to keep a large city of Beholders under control for the most part.

While the Beholder King could be doing something similar as he appears to be an Elder Orb as well (which would mean that Bob is also an Elder Orb, fun times) it's more likely Rich just toned down the Beholder racial insanity to make them work as protagonists.

Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Strip 2132: Beholders Conquer and Destroy.

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