Death Tyrant

Source: Monster Manual (2024) p. 95, FRHoF

Death Tyrant

Beholder beyond Death

• Habitat. Underdark
• Treasure. Any

A death tyrant is a beholder that pursues aberrant goals beyond its death. Ten magical singularities—all that remains of its magical eyes—orbit its floating, cyclopean skull, while the hateful gaze of its central eye socket stifles life and raises the dead.

Beholders typically transform into death tyrants over years when their dreams fixate on death, morbid apotheoses, or journeys to realms inhospitable to life. Some death tyrants rise from the corpses of slain beholders or result from exposure to strange magic or Underdark radiation. Sometimes beholders purposefully pursue this undead state, just as depraved magic-users pursue lichdom, although it is rare, as most beholders already believe themselves to be perfect beings.

No matter how death tyrants come into being, bizarre impulses drive their deathless existences. Their motivations tend to be extreme or beyond the reason of living creatures.

Death Tyrant Lairs

Death tyrants often lurk deep in the Underdark, in the tunnel-mazes they occupied in life or in the lairs of enemy beholders they conquered. These lairs are devoid of life, as death tyrants change their servants into Undead horrors.

A quote from Journal of Jastus Hollowquill, explorer of Undermountain

A cluster of tiny lights descended from a dark crevice in the ceiling. These motes cast an eerie glow on the great, alien skull that hung beneath them.