This Dungeons & Dragons Theory Will Make You Question All of Existence

A recently posted Dungeons & Dragons video will question everything you know about the cosmos.

Each week, the web-based resource D&D Beyond posts video content in which some of the key designers of Dungeons & Dragons share their insights about some of the mythos and characters of the world. In their most recent episode, D&D Fifth Edition co-creator Mike Mearls shared his thoughts on beholders, one of the game’s most iconic and dangerous monsters.

Beholders are giant floating creatures that seemingly defy explanation. Their entire body is a giant head with a massive single eye that can negate magic and multiple eyestalks that can shoot out deadly beams of arcane energy.

As Mearls explains in the video, beholders aren’t natural creatures – they literally reproduce by dreaming and their origins are unclear. Beholders don’t believe in gods, they have no clerics, and they seemingly believe that all of reality is simply a dream they’re having. While beholders’ egos are legendary, Mearls points out (with a smile) that it’s possible that they’re not wrong.

“Maybe there’s some grand massive beholder somewhere whose dreaming is keeping together the firmament of the cosmos?” Mearls says with a sly grin. “Whose to say?”

It’s pretty insane to think that the entire D&D multiverse is simply the dream of some grotesque cyclopean monster with jagged teeth and an ego that rivals that of Adonis, but in a weird way that makes a lot of sense. On a meta-level, Dungeons & Dragons is a game where a story can change in a heartbeat, with thousands of lives wrecked on the whim of a player or a Dungeon Master. Maybe beholders are just the strange embodiment of the worst impulses of the humans pulling the strings of the Dungeons & Dragons world, trying to inflict misery on players for their own amusement.

Mearls even points out the similarity between the Dungeons & Dragons gods and beholders, in that both are capable of creation. Mearls rightfully points out that the beholders are basically “small-scale tactical demi-gods” who consider themselves the center of the universe.

All of the D&D Beyond videos are worth watching, but I particularly loved how giddy Mearls looked when discussing the slight absurdity that surrounds beholders. After watching this video, you’ll be begging your DM to bring a beholder into the campaign. However, you might want to think twice before vanquishing the next beholder you see…after all, all of reality might depend on you keeping it alive.