Hrnaghr, the adopted Beholderkin

Mnark - Hrnaghr's mate and father of Ghandrl
Hrnaghr - Mnark's mate and mother of Ghandrl
Graghr - Hrnaghr's original adopted companion
Ghandrl - Daughter of Mnark and Hrnaghr
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When not suspicious and wary of danger to her new family, Hrnaghr enjoys outdoor activities with her companions and those she trusts, and is a vocal creature even if she can't be understood by normal means.

Description:This dirty human girl carries a small eyeball in one arm like a baby, and shows an extreme wariness toward most people, often appearing nearly feral, an untamed wild savagery in her manner as she prowls. Her oversized, ragged robe appears as if it might've once been orange, and is now stained and torn in places from long abuse, with numerous rough patches made to holes and cuts in the fabric. Never far from her side, either, is a very roughly carved staff, with what appear to be old bloodstains on either end, and to top it off, she can often be heard gnarring, growling, or snarling softly even when seemingly alone, her voice no longer rough and wet, but gently melodic.

Some History: The girl who would later refer to herself as Hrnaghr was orphaned as a child when her remote forest cottage was destroyed by a band of marauding goblins, killing her family in the process. Alone in the wilderness she wandered thereafter for many a day, surviving by what she could find or catch, and stealing from hunter's traps and the rare homestead, until in her meanderings, she discovered a youngling Eyeball who'd gotten lost stuck in a trap near the mountains close to her former house. Consumed by the unhappy loneliness of her situation, she took the cage with her and tamed Graghr slowly with scraps of food and tender care, finally releasing it from its cage when it had recovered, and gaining a new companion. Not knowing another way of life, they continued theirs in the remote places, venturing near small villages only when forced by a need for supplies. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Hrnaghr, such close, prolonged exposure to her new family's eye magics slowly drew forth a sympathetic power from within her...

First, a note: Yes, I realize Beholderkin are canonically scummy meatbags. Hrnaghr doesn't, however, and attempts to show what can be done with proper guidance and parenting. Also, I make the assumption their xenophobia is taught, not inborn, though it's rather likely they're normally CN at best to begin with.

Second, another note: Graghr and Ghandrl are Eyeballs, not proper Beholders.

Now, on to the real meat of what her kin normally are like, and their powers:

AD&D 2nd Edition Monster Manual - Beholderkin I
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AD&D 2nd Edition Monster Manual - Beholderkin II
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From the Forgotten Realms Wikia:

Physical characteristics

Beholders are immediately identifiable, essentially a floating head with one, single, cyclops-like eye surrounded by ten smaller eye stalks. Other than this, the main feature of a beholder’s anatomy is its massive, gaping maw. Because of these features, beholders are occasionally known as "spheres of many eyes" or "eye tyrants,"^[1] although the latter also refers to a specific type of beholder. ^[2]

Because their entire body is covered in eyes, beholders have the capacity to see in all directions at once, making it nearly impossible to ambush them while also giving them an unusually high degree of perceptive ability. Additionally, beholders have the ability to perceive in even the most darkened environment, although without the capacity to see color under conditions in which a human or similar creature would be rendered blind. ^[3]

Beholders are also capable of flight, in spite of their lack of wings or similar physical features, simply hovering above ground effortlessly. The effects of this flight resemble those of the wizardspelllevitation. ^[3]

Abilities


Beholders are not particularly strong but are inherently magical creatures, each of their eyes possessing an innately magical nature. Beholders, who often attack for seemingly no reason, will often try to end a battle as quickly as possible, unleashing their terrifying abilities all at once. Among the most basic of these attacks is their deadly ability to project magical power from their eyes, in varying forms such as instilling fear within, charming, knocking out, petrifying, disintegrating, slowing, or killing their enemies. ^[3] Any combination of these is possible, although they often use only two at a given time. ^[2]

Many, but not all, beholders also have the capacity to use their central eye to project a field of antimagic, which cancels the effects of all supernatural abilities within a small cone of 150 feet in length. In addition to enemy spells, prayers, or similar effects this also affects a beholder's own eye rays, suppressing their power. However, the lack of the ability to cast its eye rays at full strength is hardly a hindrance, as turning to face its enemies in this manner also allows a beholder to attack them with its large, toothy maw.^[3]

Culture

Beholders are often found occupying deep, underground caverns. Frequently, these lairs are carved out by the beholders themselves, using their eye rays to mold the environment for their purposes. Often, these lairs are built vertically rather than horizontally like most buildings, with beholder architecture frequently exhibiting a large number of vertical shafts through which beholders and other flying creatures can use with ease, while walking creatures find their navigation hindered. ^[3] Beholders worship Gzemnid^[4] and the Great Mother.^[5]

Psychology

Xenophobic yet vicious creatures, beholders are quick to attack enemies, including anyone they deem not "like themselves." Beholders, as a rule, are violent and greedy, hungering for both wealth and power over others. This is made all the more complicated since more than one variety of beholder exists, each believing itself to be the pinnacle of bodily perfection and they view other beholders who differ from this image in even the most minute details as loathsome enemies and inferiors.^[6]

Subraces
In spite, or perhaps because of their hatred of diversity, beholders come in a variety of forms, some of which are listed below.


Bloodkiss beholder
An undead beholder which sucks its prey dry of blood with its eye tentacles.^[7] Also sometimes referred to as a Deathkiss beholder.^{[citation needed]}
Death tyrant
Death tyrants are undead beholders akin to zombies.
Elder orb
These beholders are born with amazing longevity, to near-immortality.
Eye of flame
An unusually docile form of beholder whose members, while still malevolent, are willing to serve beneath more powerful beholders.
Eye of frost
A cruel beholder who lives in solitude.
Ultimate eye tyrant
An enormously powerful variant of beholder with the capacity to stun nearby enemies as well as a greater range of eye ray abilities.
Hive mother
Hive mothers have the ability to magically dominate other beholders.

Beholderkin

A vast number of beholderkin exist. Not true beholders, these creatures do not share the race's xenophobia, although most are still quite evil and cruel in nature.


Death Kiss
This creature's eyestalks are replaced with blood-draining tentacles.
Director
Beholder hive shock troopers.
Eye of the Deep
A aquatic subspecies of beholder. It most notable physical change is it's two large clawed arms.
Eyeball
An eyeball is a tiny beholderkin with four eye stalks.
Gauth
A Gauth is a subspecies of beholders specifically bred to combat spellcasters.
Observer
A Observer is one of the most socially adept of the beholder family.
Overseer
An overseer resembles a large, fleshy tree with mouths on its trunk and eyes on its branches.
Spectator
A spectator is an extraplanar beholderkin with four eye stalks.


From the Lords of Madness, an excerpt:

Beholder Magic

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Although they are naturally potent adversaries, beholders understand the value of augmenting their capabilities with additional magic. Yet beholders are not known for their skill or even their interest in creating magic items. Therefore, most of a beholder's magic gear has been stolen from others.

Since most magic items are crafted by humanoids, a beholder cannot use all of the items it finds. Still, it hoards weapons,armor, cloaks, boots, gauntlets, and similar magic items so it can study them to charge its dweomerlobes.

A creature with a beholder-shaped body can wear the following magic items:

• One headband, hat, or phylactery on the body. A beholder can only
  wear a helmet specially designed to fit over the creature's entire body.
  
• Three pairs of eye lenses or goggles over the central eye and up to two eyestalks (one pair per eye or eyestalk).
  
• Three amulets, brooches, medallions, necklaces, periapts, or scarabs on up to three eyestalks (one item per eyestalk).
  
• One belt worn about an eyestalk.
  
• One pair of bracers or bracelets on a pair of eyestalks.
  
• Up to three rings on up to three eyestalks (one ring per eyestalk).
  

Beholders cannot wear vests, vestments, shirts, robes, suits of armor, cloaks, capes, mantles, gloves, gauntlets, boots, or shoes.

Beholder mages and elder orbs are exceptions to the rule that beholders do not create magic items. Some of the items fashioned by these powerful creatures are among the treasures sought after by their lesser kin and adventurers alike.

Relations among Beholders

A beholder's typical reaction to encountering another beholder is rage. If possible, the beholder directs its minions to attack the other beholder and kill it, but sometimes this tactic isn't the best one available. In such a case, the beholder is driven to attack the other beholder personally.

Of all creatures, a beholder is perhaps the most invulnerable to others of its kind, due to its antimagic cone. A combat between two beholders is savage and ruthless, especially if the terrain doesn't allow one an advantage over the other. A beholder that is able to ambush another can end the fight quickly.

When two beholders meet on equal ground, each rotates quickly enough to keep its enemy in the area of its antimagic cone. Thus, the encounter rapidly degenerates into a frenzied battle of flashing teeth and tearing flesh. Each beholder uses Flyby Attack to swoop in, bite its enemy, and then retreat to a point where its foe cannot escape its cone of antimagic with a single move action, forcing the foe to take two moves to escape the antimagic or retaliate in a similar swoop-bite retreat tactic. Sometimes, a beholder can use the surrounding terrain to turn the tide of battle in its favor by using itseye rays to attack its enemy indirectly. For example, a beholder could use disintegrate rays to drop trees or cave in a roof on an enemy, or it could use its telekinesis eye ray to hurl objects at its enemy. (If the beholder uses the violent thrust form of telekinesis -- that is, using magic only to launch the object, which thereafter moves of its own accord as if it had been thrown -- the object maintains its velocity and trajectory even after it enters an antimagic cone.)

In the exceedingly rare cases where more than two beholders meet, the resulting melee is proportionally more savage and destructive. Beholders in such a fight team up against the one that looks the most unusual. The beholders form groups based on their similar physical features and work together to nullify the others. As each beholder falls, the groups reorganize so that the next most unique-looking beholder is the common target.

BEHOLDER ANATOMY

Although beholders might look like relatively simple creatures, they are in fact complex and alien in nature. Some of their features and internal organs have similar shapes and functions to those found in other creatures, but many of them are wholly unique to these terrible monstrosities.

EXTERNAL ANATOMY

A beholder’s body appears, on the outside, quite simple. It consists of a single sphere about 8 feet wide, but it’s not unusual to find a specimen slightly smaller or even much larger. A beholder’s natural buoyancy cuts down on its weight somewhat, but their bodies are still dense and compact. An 8-foot-diameter beholder typically weighs
anywhere between 4,000 and 5,000 pounds. A beholder’s skin has the strength of steel. Apart from the specialized skin of the eyelids and along the jaws, beholder skin is singularly inflexible. Coloration and texture varies widely from one beholder to the next. Some beholders have smooth, almost shiny skin of a single drab color, while others have brightly colored or even striped or spotted skin that seems to be comprised of thick, bony interlocking plates. Each beholder thinks of itself as the true form spawned eons ago by the Great Mother, and any variations exhibited by other beholders are taken to be marks of inferiority. The flesh of a beholder’s eyestalks is tough and fibrous, but unlike the skin that covers its body, this skin is quite flexible. On most beholders, each eyestalk is smooth and rubbery, almost like a tentacle. Again, there can be much variation. Some beholders have segmented eyestalks similar to a worm’s body, while others have articulated, almost insectlike
stalks composed of numerous knuckles and digits that can rotate and bend in any direction. A beholder’s mouth performs the same functions as a human’s mouth; it has a tongue, soft upper and lower palates, and upper and lower teeth. A beholder’s teeth are long, thin, and sharp, designed for ripping and tearing. A beholder’s sensory organs are, for the most part, not quite as acute as a human’s. Their sense of touch has atrophied nearly
to the point of uselessness, except for the surface of the tongue. Beholders use their tongue to feel objects, since this fleshy muscle is quite sensitive. One thing it’s not well designed for, ironically, is taste. Beholders have no sense of taste whatsoever, which might explain why they eat anything that falls prey to them. Beholders detect scents through thousands of miniscule openings (called spiracles) over the surface of their bodies, and
it is through these openings that they also breathe. Of the four non-visual senses, only a beholder’s hearing approaches that of a human’s. Beholders typically have a dozen small tympanic membranes at almost random spots across their bodies; each is merely an inch in diameter and impossible to see except upon the closest examination.Of course, beholders’ non-visual senses are so rudimentary primarily because their eyes are so much more developed.

Its multiple eyes are a beholder’s most notable (and feared) anatomical feature. In addition to providing the
creature with all-around vision, the eyes can be used to aim, direct, and emit powerful supernatural effects.
These effects aside, the eye of a beholder is a wondrous and complex organ that has long been the obsession of
countless sages and wizards. A beholder’s eyeball is remarkably hard and solid, about as strong as a similarly sized ball of stone. While at rest, the eyes have a round, brilliantly colored iris (1). The iris seems to be some sort of translucent crystal consisting of hundreds of interlocking sheaves, each of which is capable of independent movement. This allows a beholder amazing control over the shape of its iris and the amount of light that is allowed to enter the eye. A beholder can adjust its iris to almost any shape imaginable, and can even expand it to the rim of its eye socket to give the appearance of having no iris at all. Curiously, a beholder’s eye doesn’t have a single lens. Rather, an eye can have as many as a dozen differently sized and shaped lenses (2), all capable of independent rotation and movement and linked to the movement of the iris. By adjusting these lenses and the iris, a beholder can aim with its eye ray. The numerous lenses have the added benefit of granting the creature exceptional vision. All beholders possess darkvision out to 60 feet, and in brightly lit conditions can count the legs on a mosquito at over twice this distance.The interior of a beholder’s eye is a tangled mess of
transparent, nearly invisible strands of nervous tissue called evocularies (3). Each evoculary feeds directly into one of the eye’s three retinas and anchors an iris sheath (4), a lens, or both. The evocularies not only aid in the movement of the various components, but also transmit light and magic energy from the retinas to the lenses and vice-versa. Each eye has a slightly different configuration of evocularies. In one eye,they might form a complex spiral. In another, they might form tightly wound corkscrew patterns. In a third, they might be taut and straight. The nature of an eye’s evoculary configuration is believed to be what focuses the raw magic energy the creature generates deep in its brain to create its signature eye ray effects.The three retinas (5) of each eye coil into a highly complex, braid-like structure as they wind down the stalk or up behind the central eye to converge deep inside the creature’s body and brain. The raw magic energy that powers a beholder’s eye rays is transmitted along this braid from the dweomerlobes of its brain.

A beholder’s outer body, although strange, at least seems logical in construction. The farther one gets into the innards of a beholder, however, the more alien and unusual the components become. Its internal organs are a tangled, brightly colored, often inscrutable mess of tubes, sacs, coils, and “things” that have little or no analogy to those found in a human. Sages have managed to pin down the purpose for some of these organs by the process of elimination or by their proximity to the creature’s mouth. A beholder’s digestive system (and its connected circulatory and respiratory systems) is fairly obvious. Beyond these, sages are positive about only the reproductive organs and the brain. Perhaps the most unusual shared feature of a beholder’s
internal organs is their freakish buoyancy. Even when separated from the remainder of the body, these organs float like balloons, despite the fact that they rarely contain any appreciable volumes of air or natural gas (with the exception of the lung itself ). An internal organ separated from a beholder’s body retains this buoyancy for up to 12 hours, or longer if preserved by magic like gentle repose. This natural buoyancy allows a beholder to fly, its motions and movement controlled by bursts of air expelled from its thousands of spiracles.

Skeletal System

Technically, beholders are endoskeletal creatures, although what passes for a skeleton in their bodies really amounts to nothing more than a large skull. The material that comprises the skull isn’t bone, though; in fact, it is so similar in construction to the creature’s skin that it’s impossible to tell where the skin ends and the skull begins. The material is hard, inflexible, and, above all else, remarkably light. Despite the fact that it is incredibly
porous (a cup of water poured onto a sample of beholder “bone” is absorbed in a matter of seconds), it remains rigid and nearly as strong as iron. Unfortunately, the material quickly grows brittle upon a beholder’s death. Some alchemists have devised methods to maintain the bone’s strength after the creature’s death, but because this material is only about as strong as iron and much more dangerous to harvest, armor and weapons made of beholder bone remain little more than curiosities.

Vascular and Digestive System

The most readily obvious set of internal organs make up the creature’s digestive tract. The back of a beholder’s mouth consists of a powerful sphincter-like muscle (1), opening into a short esophagus (2) and then into a large, flat stomach (3) that fills most of the hollow inside its lower jaw. Numerous smaller tubes that are similar to intestines (4) branch off from the stomach and coil up the back of the creature. As they continue to split, they carry the liquefied remains of a meal farther up into the body. Eventually, these intestines become as thin as hairs, and they coil around and through a large, fan-shaped organ (5) that contains hundreds of tiny, air-filled channels. This is the beholder’s lung, and the channels constantly mix air with digested food to produce a frothy, pink fluid. The lung itself is lined with powerful muscles that expand and contract rhythmically, drawing in and expelling air from the spiracles in a beholder’s skin. From the lung, hundreds of thousands of fine arteries branch out to deliver the fluid mixture to the other organs. This runny material is pumped through the creature’s body by the pulsations of the lung. Once the nutrients and oxygen provided by the fluid are completely consumed, the waste liquid drains back into the beholder’s cavernous maw. It is then expelled or, more often, it dribbles
out in a constant stream of foul-smelling drool. A beholder that goes without food grows more lethargic as its body begins to dry out. Anything a beholder finds indigestible is either vomited back up and spat out or slowly absorbed into the lining of its stomach and eventually embedded in the inside surface of its
“skeleton.”

Reproductive System

Beholders are gender neutral, and they become fertile only once in their lives. During this period (which happens
within the first forty years of a beholder’s life), the creature grows increasingly more erratic and paranoid in behavior. A strange ovoid organ (6) below the back of the creature’s tongue grows large and swollen; this is the creature’s womb. A typical beholder gestates up to twelve young in its womb over a period of nearly six months, during which time it grows more and more active and cantankerous. A pregnant beholder eats nearly four times its normal amount of food for the first four months of its term, storing up food reserves in its stomach,intestines,
and even its lung. During the final two months, the creature’s womb has swollen so large that its mouth becomes incapable of swallowing more food, and its tongue protrudes grossly from its maw. A beholder is at its most paranoid during this time and remains hidden in its lair until it gives birth. The birthing of new beholders is a sight that few have witnessed, and by all accounts, it’s something that even fewer would want to witness. When a brood comes to term, a beholder’s jaw unhinges, and it regurgitates its womb out through the mouth. The creature bites the womb off, and it floats gently in the air. The young beholders are forced to chew their way out of the gory mass to freedom; they are capable of flight immediately, but their eye powers develop later in life. Although a beholder gives birth to up to a dozen young at once, only a handful survive. The parent observes its young and decides which look most like itself. The others are eaten by the ravenous parent, along with the discarded womb, and the surviving young are forced from the parent’s lair within the hour to fend for themselves.

Central Nervous System

A beholder’s intense magical power and energy are gathered and directed in the internal organs that comprise its nervous system and brain (7). Some theorize that beholders gather magical energy from the bodies of spellcasting creatures they’ve eaten, while others believe that they simply absorb ambient magic from the environment. In fact, a beholder’s vast store of magical power is directly connected to its eyes. Just as the creature’s braided optic nerves transmit light to the brain to allow sight, so do the eyes transmit magic to the brain for storage and augmentation. A beholder can absorb magical energy by looking at spell effects in action,
by observing magic creatures like constructs or spellcasters, gazing upon ancient relics and minor magic baubles, and simply reading or studying spellbooks. It can even absorb magic from watching its own eye rays, recycling the power back into its brain as it uses them. The amount of magical energy the eyes absorb is miniscule; a beholder could study the same magic missile scroll nonstop for months before the study would render the scroll useless. The more powerful and permanent the magic is, the longer it takes to absorb. Further, beholders build up tolerances to magic of the same variety. A beholder would gain much less magical energy from studying a single pair of winged boots over the course of a week than it would from studying an entire library full of arcane tomes. A beholder that goes without a steady supply of new magic to study grows cantankerous and paranoid. More than any sense of greed, this forces the creature to hoard magic items as treasure or to seek out ruins, dungeons, and other repositories of powerful magic. A beholder’s brain is quite large. Much of it consists of two
lobes that descend down to the left and right like horns. These are known as dweomerlobes, and it is here that magical energy is stored and amplified.

MINIONS

Although beholders are tremendously xenophobic, they can reign in their fears and intolerance when faced with a creature that they might be able to use for a time before killing it. A beholder never trusts bargains when “recruiting” a minion. Instead, it uses its charm person or charm monster eyes to magically control the creature. A beholder is careful to renew any charms it has on its minions as needed, setting aside the waking hours of the day for such tasks. Beholders keep minions for many reasons, the most common of which are detailed below. Beholders normally never use beholderkin as minions—they’d rather simply disintegrate them. Exceptions exist among those that are sane or that have been commanded to employ such minions by an overseer or hive mother.

Assassins:
Beholders invent complicated schemes and plans that can go awry when other creatures meddle in their affairs. When a beholder’s plan is foiled, it uses its spies to find out what happened. If it learns that a specific creature
or group of creatures is responsible, it sends assassins to remedy the situation. Only if all of its assassins fail to kill the troublemakers does a beholder get personally involved. In such a case, it prefers to use its spies or gatherers to lure the creatures to its lair, where it has the advantage, and then use all of its resources to finish the job. Example assassins: assassins, chokers, derro, doppelgangers, driders, rogues.

Entertainment:
Although beholders spend much of their time studying magic, plotting, and bullying other minions, most keep at least a few minions on hand solely for entertainment purposes. Entertainment to a beholder can range wildly according to personal tastes, from the sadistic glee derived from watching cowering goblins forced to fight
each other under threat of petrification and disintegration to the more cultured displays of magical prowess from charmed spellcasters. Beholders particularly enjoy watching illusions, but observing any magical display by an entertaining minion can also help charge the creature’s dweomerlobes. Of all minions, entertainers are the ones most likely to be eaten at a moment’s notice. Example entertainers: bards, goblinoids, sorcerers, wizards.

Gatherers:
Beholders prefer to remain in their lairs, surrounded by their guardians and defenses, but they need items that can be procured only from the world outside. In these cases, a beholder employs charmed gatherers—creatures
capable of traversing great distances quickly and penetrating secure sites with ease. A beholder sends a spy to determine the probable location of an object or person it needs, and then sends a gatherer to finish the job. Gatherers are used to catch new prisoners, although for particularly dangerous missions, a beholder sends a combined force of assassins and gatherers. Example gatherers: ethereal filchers, mephits, rangers, wizards.

Guardians:
The majority of a beholder’s minions are guardians, creatures selected to protect the lair. Unintelligent guardians are left to squat in dead-end sections of the lair, while more intelligent minions patrol the lair and look for intruders. Gas spores (see page 148) deserve special mention.This unique airborne form of fungus was originally cultivated and shaped by an ancient beholder mage whose name has long since been forgotten. In the gas spore, the beholder managed to create a dangerous yet mindless guardian that served as a form of living sculpture to honor and venerate the classic beholder form, was fecund and self-propagating, and required little to no outside maintenance. Gas spores never rebelled against their masters, never attacked a beholder by accident, and couldn’t be reasoned with or charmed away by an enemy. Since their creation, gas spores have taken to the far corners of the world like a plague, and dungeons that were once under the rule of a beholder lord that moved on or perished still serve as breeding grounds for these terrible fungi.Example guardians: athachs, barbarians, bulettes, carrion crawlers, dire animals, fighters, gas spores, giants, hydras,minotaurs, ogres, purple worms, ropers.

Representatives:
Rarely, a beholder needs to interact with another society or civilization in a nonviolent manner. A beholder put in this unenviable position relies on a charmed representative with a high Charisma score. Beholders treat their representatives much better than they treat their other minions, and even though representatives remain charmed, they are afforded the best personal quarters in the lair and are allowed to keep a fair amount of wealth and comforts. Beholders do this because, of all their minions, representatives are the most likely to be discovered and “rescued” by interlopers who dispel the charm. Often, a representative that is no longer charmed remains loyal to his beholder, thanks to the preferential treatment that he has received.Beholders keep only one representative, since they find treating other creatures as near-equals to be painful. Example representatives:
bards, ogre mages, sorcerers, wizards.

Spies:
Spies serve a similar role to that of gatherers, except that gatherers are sent to collect people and objects,
whereas spies are used purely to observe the lands around the beholder’s lair. A spy typically remains in the field for a week, returning to the lair well before the charm monster ray wears off to report his or her findings. Example spies: cloakers, kobolds, mephits, rangers, rogues, water nagas.