If you were a Beholder.........what would you ask of my players?

[Guilberwood]

Theres a few things to consider:
- Does the party even have access to stone to flesh?
- Does the party have access to resurrection (and a lot of diamonds)?
- Is the petrified player okay with sitting out for one (or more) adventures, if not, then making some elaborate deal to go do some quest is going to seriously suck for that player.
- Would the members of the party even be willing to aid an evil aberration even if it was to save their friend (which they ran out on already)?

Luckly, the party has momentary acess to break enchantment, due to a npc cleric that's hanging with them. No resurrection though. And no, the player would not be ok with sitting arround a long time. Oh, one other thing, the party is majorly lawfull good and kinda of hack and slash (only melee types in the party, and the only spellcaster is stoned), so if they are put in a situation where the only way is to cooparate with something evil, or that they don't want to do, they'll just charge.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it' something that I at least want to try to avoid.

 

[Land Outcast]

Lawful Good ain't "the end justifies the means" (say, it is not acceptable to lose Mr. Statue but manage to kill an evil aberration with the same action)

 

[Quartz]

Why was the beholder there in the first place? How about they go back and simply find that the beholder has left?

 

[Arkhandus]

Beholder: "Bring me the Eye of Vecna, so that I might put it in a jar, and mock it daily."

 

[Lorne]

Two options come to mind, given the time constraints you've described.

The first involves 'thinking like a beholder.' Everyone seems to have concurred that the heroes have challenged the creature and placed some doubts in its mind about its ability to dispose of them with typical ease. While wanting to avoid future combat, moving the lair and other precautions are prudent steps for the creature to take, I don't think we've explored the possibility that the beholder may be ticked off and dead set on crushing these vile humanoids for daring to attack it.

Were I the beholder, I'd use the petrified hero as bait for a trap (as was eloquently suggested earlier), and wait for the heroes to return. While I wouldn't set traps in the strictest sense, I might strategically place reflective surfaces - alchemically treated for deflecting magic - along their route of approach, and fire a ray or two from a position of cover to soften them up. Alternately, I may devise a way of separating the party and firing all my rays at each in turn; while the party may be tough enough to challenge it as a group, a beholder is a tough customer one-to-one.

A second option is a combination of an earlier suggestion - the creature requiring a lock of hair from each hero - with an old Dungeon adventure that ran at least 15 years ago. The old adventure involved a low-level mage who worked as a traveling barber. If a client happened to be a burly, low-level warrior, he saved hair clippings as a material component for a special variant of a monster summoning spell that allowed the barber to 'summon' the PC! Typically, the barber would summon the hero to cut firewood, clean his wagon, or perform some other menial task, and, as a summoned creature, the hero was compelled to obey.

What if the beholder researched a similar spell, and could periodically summon the party to do its bidding? It wouldn't affect the timetable of your current adventure, but it sure could make a mess for the party later.

Thanks for reading,

Lorne

 

[grodog]

Beholder: "Bring me the Eye of Vecna, so that I might put it in a jar, and mock it daily."

Beholder with the Eye of Vecna installed!! Wow, now that's a great idea! Thanks Arkhandus---I think you just spawned a big, nasty monster for my Maure Castle campaign

 

[Nightfall]

Yeah as if Maure Castle didn't have enough bad stuff in it!