Great Mother

The Great Mother, sometimes specified as the Great Beholder Mother, is the eldritch matron deity of the beholders. Her title simply refers to her role as their progenitor rather than as an indicator of her questionable gender. Beholders themselves lack a name for her and feel no need to give her one.

Description

The Great Mother's avatar appeared as a gargantuan beholder, 18 ft (5.5 m) in diameter, that slowly and silently drifted through the air. Her bloated body was coated in a layer of random debris, including small stones and shells, encrusted gems, armor scraps, damaged weapons, skeletons, dragon's teeth and other refuse. It was thought that the features of the Great Mother's form were in a state of constant flux as a result of her utter complexity. Despite her ever-changing form, her presence was always enchanting to beholders since their own distorted minds remembered her as having their traits.

Personality

Those that study the Great Mother typically conclude that she is completely insane, lacking in the ruthless logic possessed by mortal beholders. In truth, she is not only intelligent but dangerously so, the method behind her madness simply being beyond the ability of most beings to understand. Ironically, her mind isn't even divided into two halves, like most beholders. Still, while not crazy or mindless, the Great Mother is a creature of utter chaos, capricious whimsy, and incoherent thought patterns, acting primarily on instinct and impulse.

Often times, the Great Mother philosophizes to herself about the nature of chaos and evil and is rumored to be the greatest sage on the subjects. She is said to be omniscient according to beholders and does, in truth, possess exclusive hidden lore, but seems to be so knowledgeable that she is incapable of sharing it with any but the most intelligent entities, much less inferior beings.

Some scholars speculate that the Great Mother is not unable to convey her knowledge, but simply won't provide it to lower-lifeforms. Indeed, the Great Mother is a jealous and egotistical intellectual that refuses to acknowledge even the notion that she could be mistaken. Befitting the deity of eye tyrants, she is a dictatorial deity said to have her own strange standards for her creations, and will destroy or devour any that she finds displeasing.

Divine Realm

The Great Mother dwells in the 6th layer of the Abyss known as the Realm of a Million Eyes, a cave system of innumerable twisting tunnels, many of which are vertical. The walls of the realm are studded with eyes, each an eye of the Great Mother herself, indicating how gigantic she truly is.

Evil beholders and beholderkin of every type are abundant within the realm, especially those of great devotion, and prey upon each another along with anyone else, demon or otherwise, that stumbles into it. The most cruel and elderly beholder petitioners act as the enforcers of the realm since the Great Mother herself has no interest in managing her domain.

Only the Great Mother herself knows of the location of her true lair, a massive cavern sub-plane hidden deep underneath the sinkholes and shafts. Within her chamber she spawns more beholders, eating anything that comes near or progeny that stays too long.

Activities

Aside from birthing more beholders, the Great Mother's only other activity is drifting enigmatically in solitude throughout reality, particularly in the darker planes. She inexorably cruises through space deep in thought, always incomprehensibly gibbering in an alien protolanguage while experiencing bizarre visions. The purpose of her aimless journey isn't to gather knowledge or magical secrets, since unlike deities such as Ilsensine, she believes that she already knows all that is worth knowing.

The Great Mother's true motivation is fairly simple; the primal drive to propagate and fill the multiverse with her spawn. She seeks to replace all life with her children, and in that sense, each beholder is a reflection of her desire to self-replicate and remake reality in her image. Her endless travels only come to temporary stops when she decides to produce offspring, either on other worlds or in her lair. Neglectful and self-absorbed, she concerns herself only with the spread of her offspring, caring little for the irrelevant activities of mortals and gods alike.

Even the activities of her own creations are considered trifling matters for she does not communicate to them through omens and only occasionally intercedes when a great number are endangered, and many times not even then. Drow threats or lawful good interlopers are likely to draw her attention, but she just as well might allow the beholders of an entire world to go extinct. Still, being a creature of unfathomable randomness, she might also manifest powers in response to invocations, send whole avatars to deal with issues regarding small groups or even more rarely attempt to avenge the death of just one. It is thought that of the few things that can get the wandering Mother's attention, great interplanar magic such as permanent gates to other worlds could pique her interest enough for her to send avatars.

Worshippers

Beholder clerics were incredibly rare, not simply because their antimagic eye normally neutralized any attempts to utilize divine magic, but because their minds normally lacked both the will and ability to conceive of being dedicated to higher powers. As such, the Great Mother lacked an official priesthood to conduct rituals and celebrations or lead the devoted, nor did the Great Mother grant spells to her spawn, given the plethora of magical powers they already inherited. What beholder priests did exist received powers only for use in times of conflict, whether between each other or with other threats, and few involved material components due to their lacking ability to manipulate them.

Despite such obstacles, beholders were greatly faithful creatures that expressed perpetual piety to the Great Mother in their own way. In the minds of beholders, the Great Mother was the perfect being and the personification of truth, with all other things being imperfect. In addition, all beholders viewed themselves as the closest that any physical being could come to mirroring true divinity, strongly believing from birth that they were the ultimate mortal incarnation of the Great Mother and vividly remembering the event as if she personally spawned them.

It was for this reason that each beholder viewed the idea of belonging to a "beholder race" a ridiculous notion, held by lesser races unaware that they were truly unique beings. Despite other true breeds of beholder being possible in their minds, beholders that were physically and mentally identical to themselves, they would dismiss such beings as "correct" versions and not divinity made flesh as they were. Every beholder strived to truly exemplify the Great Mother in body and mind, and slaughtering inferior beholders, those that showed any variations, was the greatest possible display of devotion.

Despite their reverence, beholders generally didn't wish for the Great Mother to be personally interested in them, instead holding her in a kind of fearful, religious awe. Although their minds could misremember differences in physical form between themselves and the Great Mother, learning that the Great Mother's mind was so utterly alien even to them would, and likely already had to some, come as a massive shock. The clash between their preconceived notions of identity and the truth behind their idealized role model would, in all likelihood, slowly sever their already tenuous sanity. Variants

Normal beholders were not the only worshipers of the Great Mother, for she also received reverence from beholder-kin. Elder orbs, beholders whose bodies never deteriorated with age, believed their immortality to be a sign that they embodied the Great Mother's eternal, elemental nature. They aided the Great Mother by spreading her offspring across the planes, typically on worlds where they were few in number.

Hive mothers were the direct descendants of the Great Mother and they themselves had the ability to spawn beholder abominations, specialized and sterile beholder-like monsters, an ability they regarded as a gift from the Great Mother. Viewing themselves as her chosen, hive mothers used their ability to dominate other beholders in order to gather beholders and beholderkin together, believing it to be their duty to unite the scattered and quarrelsome members of the race. However, hive mothers shared the abhorrence for their own kind found in normal beholders and sought to destroy or assimilate other hive mothers and their cities. All rivals were considered anathemas and stains on the beholder race and only once they were dealt with could the remaining hive purify the rest of reality and ready it for the Great Mother's return.

Despite rarely answering prayers, when enough beholders were in danger, such as those of a city, and begged for aid, the Great Mother's avatar would sometimes appear and temporarily turn some into beholder priestesses if the situation warranted it. The transformation lasted only up to a week until the issue was dealt with, although nothing prevented the avatar from simply returning and transforming them again. Beholder priestesses would be elderly hive mothers, although if no hive mothers were present, possibly because they had been killed, then elderly female beholders would be transformed instead and would mutate into a hive mother over the course of two years. Priestesses received clerical abilities, albeit slightly reduced in power, magical resistance and the ability to command nonintelligent undead like skeletons and zombies.

Clergy

Cultists Occasionally humanoids could be found that agreed with the supposition of divinity by certain beholders. The most faithful of cultists were ocular adepts, debased, desperate yet nonetheless devoted servants who, in their quest for even a fraction of perfection, entered a pact with a beholder and had the eye of a gazer surgically implanted in their skulls. The process required a stern mind, willpower, and physical fortitude to survive, so normally only the former clerics of other deities, such as Bane, could survive. After beseeching the beholder in question for acceptance into their community and pledging religious devotion to the Great Mother, the dark ritual would be performed. Even if not pledged to specific beholders the prayers of cultists were sometimes answered by the Great Mother herself, justifying the idea of beholder divinity in their minds.

Rituals

The only ceremony specifically dedicated to the Great Mother in their rare hives involved a beholder's death, and even then they weren't particularly ceremonious. As opposed to the complex funerary rites of other cultures, 4-8 beholders moved the corpses of their dead to a mass grave. The graveyard was merely a circular cavern meant to symbolize the Great Mother.

Relationships

Though the precise nature of their relationship was questionable, whether he was her direct son or grandson, the lesser deity Gzemnid was the only one of her mortal descendants that had risen ascended to godhood. Gzemnid dwelt underneath the Outlands purportedly because he was hiding from some major threat, said to be the Great Mother herself, and legends did say that he only escaped her wrath long ago due to his illusory skill. Such claims appeared to be false because The Great Mother recognized and made noises of approval when she came across him and Gzemnid treated her with respect, albeit the form of respect given to a force of nature rather than a rational being.

The Great Mother (presumably) seemed to have come to some kind of arrangement with Mystryl or the first Mystra to allow humans to draft or modify the goals of Vellurith. As for why and how this agreement came to be (perhaps as some form of peace treaty) it was unknown to even the likes of Elminster, who had personally altered some of the rules, and who speculated that his memories of the reason had been removed. The Great Mother either supported or approved of this even as at least some of the rules were designed to undermine or occupy the beholder race with long-term of disastrous ideas, while beholders suspected nothing of the sort.

The Great Mother could count Kiaransalee of the Dark Seldarine among her few allies, though the other members (namely Lolth, Vhaeraun, Eilistraee, Selvetarm, and Ghaunadaur) were her foes, as were the duergar gods Laduguer and Deep Duerra, Callarduran Smoothhands of the deep gnomes, and the elven god of vengeance Shevarash, a general enemy of evil Underdark gods.

History

Cryptic and unknowable, the Great Mother lacked a preexisting pantheon, her first act after entering the multiverse being to seed the cosmos with her spawn. All beholders and beholderkin were her progeny, some of which were said to match her in size and rival her avatars in power. Beholders were only the most well-known of the Great Mother's aberrant brood however; she had also wrought gibbering orbs and other less notable monstrosities. Some scholars believed that the gibbering orbs were the ancestors of beholderkin and gibbering mouthers, which would make the two groups cousins of sorts.

With some variation, the creation myth told by beholders was that the true beholder Kzamnal, the direct spawn of the Great Mother, gave rise to the biological ancestors of the beholder race before mandating them to gather knowledge in order to become omniscient like their grandmother. However, a group referred to as "the traitors" sinfully spawned inferior offspring, beginning a genocidal war between the traitors and the "true" beholders, which continued on to the present day. The appearance of the true beholders was, as expected, dependent on the beholder tell the story and scholars of Gzemnid realized that the story was, if not entirely false, incredibly inaccurate.

Other versions of the Great Mother's history had her take a more direct approach where she personally laid a vast array of what were termed "cosmic eggs" across worlds and dimensions. The eggs would spawn a race of beings known as the "Beholder Ancients", many of which were said to be destroyed by the Great Mother in a beholder-like fit of perfectionist rage, with only Gzmenid and a few hive mothers living through the process.

Great Mother

Greater deity

Basic Information

Pantheons

Beholder

Attributes

Alignment

Chaotic Evil

Symbol

Egg with central eye

Realm

Infinite Layers of the Abyss/6th Layer

Portfolio

Magic, Fertility, Tyranny

Favored Weapon

Bite, Greataxe

Following

Worshippers

Beholders
Ocular adepts
Cultists

Alignments

CN, NE, CE

Domains

Chaos (Entropy, Whimsy)
Death (-)
Madness (Insanity, Nightmare, Truth)
Magic (Arcane)
Void (-)