Eyenabella
Abyss — Layer the Sixth
Also Known As: The Realm of One Million Eyes
The Nature of Evil: You are alone in this multiverse. You are unique. All others are different from you, and they hate you because you are more perfect. Hate them more. Kill them before they can threaten you, and trust not a soul.
The Chant: This place is one of the crown jewels of chaos and malevolence in the Abyss, a festering wound in the multiverse that even gives tanar’ri pause. Imagine the worst of the worst; no, worse than that, and you’re scratching the surface. The place is alive, cutter, with a mind that can only be described as deranged. I mean, just the terrain itself is mind-boggling; cavernous tunnels embedded with eyeballs, the constant rumbling echo of magical rays being fired off in the distance, and rivers not of water, but of noxious ooze so vile it makes the River Styx look inviting. Chant goes that the layer is always watching you through its million eyes, all belonging to the Great Mother. She is the alpha and the omega of the Beholder pantheon, a being so vile and corrupt that even the stoutest planewalkers tremble under her gaze.
A few words about names: The layer is commonly called “the Realm of One Million Eyes”. The name “Eyenabella” is the name used by beholders for the layer in their own language. And while we’re on the subject of nomenclature, the entire layer is also the realm of the Great Mother, princess of beholders.
They say the ever-watchful Mother is a being of such malice that one look from her can leave a stain on your soul. She’s the puppet master pulling all the strings in Eyenabella, and by strings I mean eyestalks. Her eyes—both the ones embedded in the cavern walls throughout the layer and those belonging to her children, the beholders—are always watching. Some say the body of the Great Mother is the entire layer, others that’s it’s an extension of her consciousness but she has a discrete body, albeit enormous. Funnily enough, any berk who’s got close enough to find out the answer hasn’t been heard from again—so that mystery may have to stay dark a bit longer.
Now her Eye Tyrant children are creatures that are formed from a maelstrom of teeth and eyes, each being more paranoid and unhinged than the last. One thing about beholders that might surprise you is that, while they hate creatures who are not beholders, they also hate most other beholders too. Beholder politics are notoriously complex and violent, with factions divided mainly along racial and familial lines. Chant goes that there’s usually a state of civil war between this faction and that, and the other—although the fighting tends to be conducted outside of the beholder population centres and in the tunnels. That’s the noise you’ll hear in the distance, the characteristic dull crackle of disintegration rays and the swoosh of magic missiles. Presumably the Great Mother tacitly approved of this internecine struggle, for it’s a cert she knows it’s going on. Survival of the meanest, presumably.
They say the sights you’ll stumble upon here are spectacular though—the caverns, they ain’t your usual Underdark. No, no, they open into grandiose spaces that dwarf even the grandest halls of the dwarven lords, all meticulously carved out by the disintegration rays of beholder residents. The artisans have turned disintegration sculpting into an art form; the angles, the parapets! Since they can all levitate, gravity is no object to these bashers and the architecture is impressively alien.
There’s also this burg called Failing Sight, an ironic beacon of, well, not hope, but of something in that forsaken place. It’s built inside the corpse of a dead beholder of a size that boggles the mind, its central eye socket now hosting a cathedral of unholy might and darkness. I mean, the sheer audacity to build a burg in the eye-hole of a long-dead leviathan, now that’s Abyssal-style grandeur for you!
But let’s get it right, the Realm of a Million Eyes ain’t a place for sightseeing, unless you’ve got a death wish. Or you’re a beholder—with a death wish. Even hardened planewalkers steer clear of this hellhole, and for a good reason. There ain’t much to see in Eyenabella that won’t see you first, and what sees you ain’t likely to be friendly. So do yourself a favour, cutter, and give this layer a wide berth unless you’ve got a really good reason to visit, lest you find yourself caught under the gaze of a million eyes, never to return.
Ruler and Powers of Note: The entire layer is the realm of the Great Mother, there is no room for any dissent. She’s the only power here, and she likes it that way. Chant goes she chased her own son, Gzemnid, from the Abyss long ago. Harsh, perhaps, but if you’d ever encountered his truly unpleasant personality you’d understand why.
No other powers have ever dared the wrath of the Great Mother by calling this wretched layer home. She’s basically a power so feared that she sits unchallenged in her own layer of the Abyss, the whole thing effectively her realm. And that ain’t no small feat, I’ll tell ya. She’s not just the matriarch of those foul beholders; she’s their beginning and end, a deity of incomprehensible might and madness with a loathing that could burn stars to cinders.
Locations of Note
- The Bastion of the Blinded (site)‡
- An Eye for an Eye (independent town)‡
- Eye Sanctum (site)
- Viscid Oculus (site)
- Failing Sight (independent town)‡
- Blind Watchers, the (sites)
- Bowels, the (district)
- Eye, the (district)
- Mind, the (district)
- Whispergaps, the (sites)‡
Movers and Shakers
- Great Mother, the (beholder power of magic, fertility, tyranny)
- Xxajuz, Zxjuax, and Azujxz (tiefling triplet rulers of Failing Sight)‡
Sources: Jon Winter-Holt. The layer is briefly described in Planescape canon but all the additional details marked ‡ are homebrew.
