Riftling (Beholder Bandwagon)

Observing the Beholder Bandwagon I was suddenly struck by inspiration – the bandwagon so far has Lantern Heads by Garamondia, Three “Beholders” from The Nothic’s Eye or A New Direction by Occultronics.

What remains when you dissolve in proto-matter?

Beholders are horrifically dangerous, barely a form of life one can interact with, almost but not-quite a revenant – subject to ordeals that would drive others to claw back from the veil of death.

They are a coalescence of planar rifts, formed when a wizard that ventures beyond their talents into the deep ethereal partly dissolves into the corrosive ur-stuff there. Where such a thing happens the flailings for escape cause splits and rifts like a very large fly tearing itself loose from a spiders web and dragging web and all back out with them. Where those sufficiently strong-willed arcanists manage to struggle their way off the deep ethereal back to the material plane, they are warped beyond all recognition by the journey.

Said to be named from a famed declaration of ‘behold!’ where an archmage cast a rival into the deep ethereal to such a fate.

A beholder is a coruscating confluence of planar rifts around a central knot of proto-matter from the deep ethereal. Impressions of maw or eyes are just splits in the boundary of their hide that allow darker or brighter views of other planes to be seen. The core elemental planes are too solid and real to be caught up in such a creature so the writhing tentacle-like rifts that flail about it are typically fissures to the para- and quasi- elemental planes – salt, dust, ash, vacuum, ice, ooze, magma, smoke, lightning, radiance, steam and minerals – casting dreadful effects from those planes at things that annoy it.

Sometimes the struggles of a beholder wrench themselves in two, each half of the shattered entity becoming a beholder in its own right. Beholders who have been on the prime material for a while can settle down to merely very twitchy and paranoid; enough that they might converse before lashing out at someone they encounter. Mostly they assume everything is out to get them and act accordingly.

Beholder (Riftling)

12HD (60HP), AC16, Morale 10 (Crazed and tenuously grasping reality)

Appears as a floating lump of churning matter, surrounded by a nimbus of flickering tendril-like rifts; typically heralded by a grinding noise and erratic flashes and flares.

No. Appearing: 1
Movement: Lurching, high-inertia trundle; the massy core often barreling through things less solid than five feet of stone.
Senses: Perceives ripples in the ethereal and some ‘sight/sound’ senses through lidar/echolocation pings from the ‘brighter’ planar rifts
Morality: Desperation of a drowning person; lashes out at most things on encountering them
Intelligence: Flashes of the puissant mage occassionally seen, mostly a desperate cunning

Effects:
Planar disruption: All around a beholder magic the planes are warped and twisted – anything with connections to other planes is disrupted or disturbed. The undead, fey and outsiders avoid beholders where possible – prolonged time in their presence eventually disrupts their planar connection and destroys (undead) or banishes (outsiders). No magic that requires extradimensional travel or connection works in proximity to them – at best it fizzles painfully, more often the caster is sucked into the beholder and will likely induce a split of the entity eventually.

Arcane disruption: magical effects are deflected and absorbed by the whirling rifts. Only pure elements – earth, air, fire or water – or massive application or physical force can impact a beholder.

Attacks: (d4 x rift flares in any combination or 1x grinding rifts)
Rift flares:
Quench with vacuum – wrench magical energy into the void of vacuum – Dex save or all magic anulled on a target for a round,
Disrupt with Ash – magical effects flicker and fade as the ash absorbs the energy – any magic has a 50% failure chance until cleaned
Blind with smoke – billow forth clouds of choking smog – Con save or be stunned, perceptions all badly affected
Erode with Dust – sandblast-like disintegrate
Blast with Lightning – as lightning bolt
Entomb with Ooze – as petrify, inflicted through gouts of clinging mud
Freeze with Ice – as slow
Irradiate with Radiance – as fear

Grinding Rifts – any adjacent target can be wrenched into the grinding edges of the central mass – damage is d4 fire from magma, d4 radiant from hazardous minerals and d4 necrotic from life-draining salt.

Final thought on this Beholder Bandwagon – I feel there is great potential in remixing Lantern Heads from Garamondia with the Last Star from the Apocalypse Archive by Bearded Devil – a general theme of bad light and its carriers and cultists.