As I prepared for a visit to the Tritons, who dwell in a secluded and very deep ocean rift region of the Sea of Swords nearby the Moonshae isles and a few miles as the Gull flies off the coastal cliffs from Candlekeep, I took some time to research one of the more rare and dangerous aberrations of the sea, known as the Eye of the Deep. Thankfully, I located a document in the archives from one Ed of the Greenwood, published originally on the planet Earth in a thing called Dragon Magazine, er, issue number 93 printed in January 1985, which is some time in the future by Dale reckoning of years, but from the perspective of Earth people, is now exactly 40 years ago, however, as confusing as this is already to any scholar, this is not the original text, as someone has made some annotations and changed whole bits of this document to update it with the strange mathematical gibberish that so often fills these startlingly accurate articles. I swear, one of these days, I will find this Greenwood fellow prowling around the realms somewhere as we investigate the same creature by sheer coincidence.
Nothing would delight me more; he seems like quite a friendly fellow.
What is strange is the article purports to be compiled from a discussion at a meeting of sages in Hillsfar led by Auvras the Enquirer, who was a real person from my point of view, but to the people of the earth, is a being of fiction! Don't ask me to make sense of it, I refuse to. Now, before I read this to you, please go grab yourself a tasty beverage, it is time to get deeply nerdy.
The eye of the deep is a creature of legend; though it truly exists, few trained observers have seen it, and fewer still have studied it at length in its habitat, the ocean depths. Several among us tonight have done so, and can answer many mysteries.
Many have speculated that the eye of the deep is related to the beholder, and it is our considered opinion that it is indeed a related species; perhaps both were once the same creature and evolved differently to master the vastly different environments.
The eye of the deep is a solitary predator, catching most of its victims by use of its power to stun its prey with a blinding flash of light from the large eye in the center of its roughly spherical body.
Intended victims of the eye-flash stun must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. Targets that are blindfolded, hooded, or unable to see in the visible spectrum cannot be stunned. A darkness spell will provide an effective screen against such flashes. However, most defenses require more time to put in place than the stunning flash of the eye requires to “fire”; and an eye of the deep will recognize any defensive preparations for what they are, in a magic shoot-out, the Beholder is always going to win, as it is not casting spells, its directly channeling raw magical power. A stunned creature is incapacitated, can't move, finds it very difficult to speak, and automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage. Unless the victim succeeds with a DC 15 Constitution saving throw on any of their following turns, this condition can last from one to four minutes.
The effect of repeated eye-flashes is not cumulative; a stunned victim cannot be “more stunned.” The creature can use its stun power for as many as five rounds in succession but then must rest the eye-flash power for an equal number of rounds before it can be used again. Saving against this stun flash does not provide immunity to future stun attempts from that or any other beholder, so the Eye of the Deep makes good use of it and can quickly overcome a group of enemies who happen to have some bad luck with their dice rolls.
The eye of the deep can use its physical attacks (pincers and teeth) in the same round that it emits an eye-flash. It will go after stunned creatures in preference to other nearby prey only if it thinks that the “unstunned” targets present no immediate threat to itself. The creature will attempt to grab prey with one or both of its pincers and then bring the victim up to its mouth. A bite attack is made at advantage against a victim held by one or both pincers, the benefit of grabbing a victim with both pincers is that the victim is also restrained, meaning attack rolls made against it from any source will have advantage, the victim's own attacks are made at disadvantage and this penalty also applies to any dexterity checks, plus they can't move, reducing their speed to zero.
If the creature takes damage in a given melee round, it will release its hold on anything in its pincers; otherwise, prey that is being held by one or more pincers will continue to take 2d6 + 2 piercing damage from each pincer until it dies or the hold is broken. A victim held by only one pincer can (if not stunned or otherwise immobilized) can wrest itself out of the pincer’s grasp witha DC 15 Strength check. An eye of the deep will attack prey that is considerably larger than itself (such as a giant squid) but is intelligent enough only to do so when it has an advantage and is not in immediate danger of being severely hurt. This is a common trait of most Eye's of the Deep, making them sometimes act in a manner that seems cowardly, but in fact, it is just shrewd self-preservation.
Even if prey is not thus restrained, the eye of the deep can bring its two large pincers into play to grab and rend its victims. These pincers can shred creatures much larger than the “eye” itself, and octopi, giant squids, and the huge cruising fish of the depths form the bulk of the creature’s diet. It prizes most highly sinking ships, for it breaks into the disintegrating hulls of these (aided by the intense pressure of deep water), and dines upon the tasty bodies of surface creatures trapped inside. It cannot rise into shallow waters after such prey, because the less intense water pressure at shallow depths causes its body (and internal gases) to expand, and ultimately explode apart. (For this reason, the corpse of an “eye” reaches the surface very rarely; the distorted fragments of its rent body sink back to the bottom, or are devoured by shallow-water marine life.)
To compensate for their inability to travel in shallow waters, eyes of the deep sometimes cooperate with sahuagin for short periods and specific undertakings, usually demanding as payment the bodies of many surface dwellers.
(This dietary preference is one of the many hints at a common origin of both the eye of the deep and the beholder.)
Metallic treasure is often ingested by an eye of the deep, but does not harm the creature, and remains in its stomach until it accumulates to uncomfortable proportions, whereupon it is regurgitated forth in the eye’s lair. All eyes make themselves a lair in an undersea grotto (slaying any previous occupants, if necessary) far from the lairs of other eyes of the deep and as near to abundant food as possible (such as beneath heavily traveled shipping routes, or in areas of storms or shoals). An eye may well have its lair guarded by lesser creatures, or by traps (falling nets weighted by stones, and so forth) such as it can manage. An eye’s claws are quite dextrous and can shear through nets, ropes, and the like with speed and accuracy.
Eyes are aggressive, deceitful, and totally self-interested; “loyalty” has little meaning for them, and they will cooperate with creatures of like alignment only when they stand to gain much prey, or are coerced into doing so. Eyes avoid other eyes purely for reasons of practicality, not desiring to die or be badly wounded in a tough fight with an opponent of equal powers.
It should be noted here that the admittedly few observations of such battles indicate that an eye can be affected by another eye’s illusions, but each is immune to another’s stunning power. Eyestalks can be regenerated in six to eleven days when lost, and other body parts (such as its pincers or central eye) regrown in a matter of months — but the rapidity of such growth depends upon the amount of prey an eye can consume, and a seriously wounded eye is a poor hunter due to its slow natural speed.
Eyes of the deep are highly maneuverable when swimming, due to their many underside “feelers” — flexible, sticky body strands which can act as paddles when swimming, “walk” along rocks or other solid objects, hold prey, and so on. An eye grows new feelers constantly, and feelers are continually lost or damaged by its activities, so that an eye’s underside is a tangled forest of whitish, mauve-mottled feelers, all of differing lengths and diameters. Hidden amongst the many feelers are a few “strands” devoted to reproduction — long feelers that hold the eye’s eggs like peas in a pod.
All of the feelers except for the few reproductive “strands” can be made sticky by the secretion of a gluelike fluid, and made “un-sticky” by the emission of an alcohol-like solvent that counteracts the glue. The former process requires one round and must be performed before the feelers can be used to manipulate objects or provide traction on a solid surface. The latter process takes only one segment and must be performed before the creature can again use the feelers to help it move through the water. The feelers can grab and manipulate any object as large and heavy as a human body, but the creature cannot hold such an object and move under its own power at the same time; as such, the feelers are almost exclusively used either for locomotion, or to anchor the eye of the deep to a solid surface while it awaits the approach of prey.
The reproductive “strands” have none of the properties of the other feelers. They are very few in number (3-6 out of a total of 60-90 feelers) and are continually replaced or regrown like the other feelers. Once every two months, an egg is produced in each strand; when a strand accumulates 6-11 eggs, it splits open lengthwise and deposits the contents into the surrounding water.
Each egg is spherical, about 6 inches in diameter, with a tough but flexible shell that enables it to withstand water pressure and moderately hard blows without cracking.
Periodically, these egg-holders rupture, depositing their cargoes on the ocean bottom or in the powerful currents of the deeps. Any other eye of the deep can fertilize these eggs; the creatures are bisexual but cannot fertilize their own eggs. (An eye will fertilize another eye’s eggs instinctively whenever it recognizes the eggs for what they are.
Fertilized eggs fall to the ocean bottom, if they were not there already, and lie there until they hatch or die. Few fertilized eggs survive to see the end of their maturation period because they are seldom left undisturbed by other denizens of the deep. Fewer still are fertilized in the first place, since they can only be left adrift for two months after being released from the nutrient-rich “strands”; after that time they become inert and infertile. For these reasons, few eyes of the deep are born, and this monster is thankfully very rare.
Only 50% of all fertilized eggs actually hatch (and only 20% of all eggs released by an eye of the deep are ever fertilized).
Hatchlings are weak swimmers (speed 15 ft.), Medium sized (2-foot diameter), with 2d6 + 2 hit points. They have only 11-20 feelers and no strands, and their pincers and teeth are softer and weaker (1d4 + 1 piercing damage) than those of full-grown eyes of the deep. Their stun attack lasts for only 1-4 rounds, and targets get advantage on their saving throw to avoid the effect. Young creatures cannot create illusions or use the hold powers of their still-immature eyestalks. At the age of one year, an eye of the deep specimen will have 8-10 hit dice, move 30 ft., and the full range of attacks that a mature creature has, with a 3-foot-diameter body and 40-60 feelers, but still no strands. Full physical maturity is attained within 2-3 years after hatching.
Hatchlings are rapidly dispersed by ocean currents and typically hide, feeding on bottom life, carrion, and small fish for a year or more, slowly growing to full size and powers. As an eye grows, it actually splits its skin, shedding the tough, chitinous outer armor plates of its body to reveal soft, new, larger plates within. It eats discarded plates to regain lost body minerals and begin building a new layer of plates within itself once more. When an eye reaches physical maturity, its body processes shift to regeneration rather than continual growth.
Thus, lost or damaged plates are repaired by the secretion of new material from within. Young eyes cooperate with other creatures more readily than do the more wary older ones. An eye can communicate with all other intelligent creatures by means of telepathy however, the telepathy ability of an eye of the deep will work only any creature with high animal intelligence or greater within a 60-foot range.
Eyes of the deep know the tongue of many lawful evil species, and usually sahuagin, ixitxachitl, common, or (5% chance) some other tongue. Knowledge of these languages is acquired by telepathy; an eye of the deep cannot understand or communicate with a creature that is using a language the eye does not know.
Perhaps the most fascinating and dangerous ability of an eye of the deep is its mastery of illusions. These it can create and hold with practiced concentration, for a literally unlimited duration (since eyes never sleep). Such illusions will end when the eye wills it, or when one of its eyestalks is blinded by battle damage or some other mishap (apparently, both must be intact for it to create and focus clear illusions), or when one or both of the eyes is used for its other purpose (the magic of hold person and hold monster spells).
An eye can move its created illusion about, and the image appears three-dimensional. An eye can remain in hiding and manipulate an illusion it cannot see.
This skill is assumed to be simply a result of practice; the creatures employ illusions constantly from maturity to death (improving their skill as they age), except for the few times when their eyestalks are incapacitated or otherwise occupied. A typical tactic of the creature is to lure prey to its vicinity with an illusion and then use the light-blast of its large central eye to stun the victim.
The illusionary image created by an eye of the deep is equivalent to a major image spell (PHB p. 258) with a range of 120 feet and an area of effect equal to a 10-foot cube or equivalent volume (enough to simulate a Medium-sized creature or a small school of fish). Any creature of average or higher intelligence that attempts to disbelieve such an illusion obtains a Wisdom (Insight) check, and if the check is successful, then that creature can add advantage to the saving throws of companions.
An eye of the deep can sense vibrations or unusual currents in the water emanating from as far as 120 feet away; the creature has darkvision out to a range of 60 feet and can smell blood or sweat in the water from up to 30 feet away.
The hold person and hold monster powers of the creature’s secondary eyes are treated as spells from a 6th-level spellcaster for determination of range and area of effect. Each of the secondary eyes has one of these spell-like powers, i.e., either one cannot use either power. The eye of the deep can employ one or the other of these powers in any given round, but not both in the same round, and can use each power as often as three times per day. Remember that whenever the eye of the deep uses one of its hold powers, it cannot create an illusion at the same time, and any illusion that had existed is dispelled.
All well and good, a fine document and rich in details, I do have a few more to add though.
To many, the Eye of the Deep is known as the Seaholder, which is amusing enough to be gaining popularity, and I must stress that these creatures are much larger in the flesh than people often think they are, most dungeon passages are not actually ten feet wide, they are five feet at best, so Beholders find most humanoid constructed habitats to be very cramped and weirdly restricted to these flat sprawls with jagged ramps and things to compensate for the fact they can't fly. Constructing structures for themselves, Beholders prefer sheer rises, wide shafts and a lot of plummeting drops that humanoids find quite difficult and dangerous to navigate. Beholders also feel no need to concern themselves with what is going on with the ground, so pit traps, pools of acid, tripwires and all sorts of ground hazards are employed as basic security against humanoids, one of the common pest species from their point of view, humanoids are not much different from any other vermin.
Seaholders are also known to entertain themselves using their power to project illusions and delight in sadistic games where they act very much like the ringmaster, or, dungeon master, if you will, of their lair, using combinations of illusions, treacherous terrain, other nasty creatures that share their lair and items from their collection of loot from past victims. The very last thing they want is to face an opponent that is any real threat to them, so while they are not as smart as other beholders, they make use of their abilities in ways a lot more creative than you would expect and its very hard to face them without also dealing with many other things that divide your attention, your abilities and your power to harm them. Beware also that as with all beholder kin, there is variation in every individual, no two are exactly alike, unless that happens to be their special quirk, but as the Dungeon master, feel free to modify the base traits of any Eye of the Deep or any other beholderkin, to make encountering them, predictably unpredictable.
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