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Troglodyte legends claim the Great Mother of Beholders assaulted their god to steal his eyes and they’re blind as a result of this heinous crime. Beholders scoff at that, saying Laogzed was the thief who stole two of their Great Mother’s eyes because the uneyed wretch was jealous of her beautiful eyes. Troglodyte contrarians traditionally retaliate by questioning just how Laogzed could’ve known the Great Mother’s eyes were beautiful if he was eyeless to begin with, then usually get petrified or disintegrated, as patience is no eye tyrant trait (which is one of the reasons why most beings usually don’t argue with beholders). However, neither side knows how right both them are or the actual sequence of bizarre events that led to their ancient and extremely unbalanced feud.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, which is why beholders are usually content to float in place and just stare at everything around them for days, marvelling at the beauty of what looks like a bunch of gray rocks to the lesser creatures. It’s also why beholders can get extremely violent when their contemplation of prettiness is disturbed. According to the few relatively benevolent beholders who interact with other creatures, they pity the pathetic range of vision that every other race of the multiverse have been saddled with and helped wizards of various races develop a number of infravision and ultravision spells to let them have the tiniest bit of glimpse into the real beauty of existence. It never worked well, for humanoid minds were unable to handle the colors beyond their laughably tiny red-to-violet spectrum and, even with magic, still see them as strange and distorted masses of shades of the colors they know (though at least they can see a few feet into solid objects now, which is better than what they started with). Their Great Mother too, as can be expected, is easily transfixed by the beauty of literally anything and she can spend centuries inspecting the lattice of a mineral vein fifty feet inside a rock wall down to its molecular structure, which is why she’s a distant and neglectful goddess to her children.
That is also the reason why the Great Mother of Beholders stuck around Tiamat and watched her create the next species of abominations to infest Elemental Plane of Water after beholders. Which was the troglodytes. Having made 11 eyes for each beholder, Tiamat was bored of it so the race of troglodytes were made without eyes. Entirety of their featureless face functioned as a sort of pressure pad instead, letting them sense the tiniest changes in their environment in the manner of a snake’s tongue. The Great Mother could of course see the incredibly complex web of nerves and detection cells lying beneath troglodytes’ carapace covered empty faces and precisely how they operated. She became enamoured of their “sightless eyes” and the undescribably beautiful dance of electrical impulses playing out on the nerves just beneath the skin/carapace thing covering front of the head, so started to follow them instead of returning to help her children protect themselves from long entrenched races of Water that were trying to subjugate and enslave them (such as krakens and aboleths). Thanks to her endless stalking of the troglodytes, Great Mother also got to witness the birth of Laogzed the Faceripper (who wasn’t called that at first). Unlike his people, Laogzed wasn’t scared of the Great Mother of Beholders and in fact, found the numerous light sensitive orbs radiating strange magic dotting her form to be interestingly exotic. What followed was a passionate affair the likes of which was never before (or since) seen among the abominable godspawn of the Serpent of Life, much to the chagrin of both troglodytes and beholders (who couldn’t unsee what was seen).
The couple’s happy days came to an end with the advent of mortal life on Material however. The Bitch Queen, kicked out of her father’s realm by the might of giants, came to Water and took her frustrations out on the abominational godspawn of Tiamat. Starting with their oldest sibling Pisaethces the Blood Queen, Umberlee worked her way down the abominable (for the lack of a better term) family tree of deities, bullying the godspawn into submission and converting great numbers of their children into her own worship, which would later become one of the largest follower bases of the planes. Some like Sekolah of Sahuagin put up a good fight and paid for it, others like Merrshaulk of Yuan-ti folded immediately and let her take as many of their children as she wanted, but no abomination could stand up to the savage might of the Bitch Queen (Tiamat, of course, didn’t care so long as her own corner of the plane wasn’t disturbed). Great Mother of Beholders had no intention to fight for her children, Umberlee was welcome to take the entire race of beholders and save her from having to hear their endless prayers. Laogzed, however, wouldn’t let his people be conquered so easily. Having seen what Umberlee does to those who try to oppose her, the Great Mother implored her lover to give up on the troglodyte race but he’d have none of that. So, with great reluctance, she petrified Laogzed and dragged him to Material Plane where they’d both be safe from the Devourer of Fathoms. By the time Laogzed broke free of his stony prison, Umberlee had already converted most troglodytes to her worship (beholders too, not that Great Mother cared).
Laogzed was furious. Great Mother offered to give him her petrifying eye as penance; thanks to the divinely mirrored nature of abomination races and their godspawn, both Laogzed and his remaining children would gain an eye to see (and shoot petrifying magic) with, whereas beholder race would lose one eye and the petrifying power that so offended Laogzed. It was insulting, this offer did the opposite of pacifying him. So Laogzed the Faceripper attacked her, clawing the skin out of her frontal half and tearing off a number of her eyes, finally earning the moniker he’s known for today. Great Mother had no course but to retaliate then, and (predictably) reduced Laogzed to ash and retook her eyes. She then left him where he fell, for as mournful as she was, this plane was an entirely new place full of things she’d never seen or even imagined before and Great Mother hoped to find something of comparable beauty to her now irrevocably lost love. She did, repeatedly. Material Plane didn’t have nearly the diversity of Water, pretty much every creature of note was the same basic shape with the same basic components, but made up for it by what the natives called geography and atmosphere. Mountains, deserts, coasts, lakes, forests, clouds, storms, suns, moons, stars... The poor critters of Pelor’s make couldn’t perceive absolute beauty even when it literally hit them in the eye. She never did find a new love, even the deities of other planes had a strange, instinctual aversion to her true form; but there was just so much prettiness to look at, she didn’t even miss having a lover (much). And that was before she discovered the strange and wondrous effects of certain strains of mushrooms and plants on the mind, not to mention the neat little thing they call alcohol she learned from Umberlee’s far more personable brother.
Laogzed healed of course, and went back to Water where, once Umberlee returned to her father’s side, he recovered the majority of troglodytes. But the extremely powerful barrage of magical rays the Great Mother shot into his face had damaged his subcarapace nerve web, severely weakening his (and by extension his people’s) perceptive abilities, leaving them blind to the world beyond a mere few hundred feet. While he still smolders with rage at beholders and their flaky goddess, he recognizes that they’re not remotely equal in power and any fantasies of revenge will never amount to anything. Some beholders have also returned to venerating their Great Mother but most are happy enough worshipping Umberlee (who at least cares about them a little). They blame troglodytes for their maternal abandonment issues however and are somewhat disposed to kill or enslave them (when they can stop staring at various beautiful things long enough).
The Great Mother of Beholders spends almost all of her time incognito now, usually in a humanoid guise, sampling various drinks and herbal concoctions made by the many many druids and alchemists she’s befriended, and seeing how they affect her perceptions of natural prettiness of the multiverse (aka high as a kite). She’s visited Outer Planes but found the solidified alignment essences that make them up lacking in the complex elemental beauty of real matter of Material Plane, also concluding that outsiders are shallow facsimiles that only seem real to lesser creatures with limited vision. These quite vocal (when she’s got various substances in her, which is virtually always) opinions have gained her the enmity of every single exemplar race and a good deal of deities (who’re also made of pure aligned essence). Her abominable sibling deities aren’t at all happy with her either, they all think she gives them a bad name and ruins their fearsome reputation; they too would love to destroy her. She gets to continue her mostly stoned and hazy existence with a list of terrifying enemies only rivaled by the great goddess of magic Mystra thanks to never leaving Material Plane (and also the immense destructive powers at the tips of her tentacles).
Great Mother does hear when beholders pray to her from anywhere in the planes, but she ignores them. The only way to get a boon out of her is to be a lucky partier who unwittingly runs into her and impresses her by holding one’s drink/mushroom/weed/misc substances well and being good company. She rewards beautiful mortals (which is all mortals in her eyes) who amuse her by gifting them a beholder eyestalk, complete with beam shooting ability, grafted to wherever they want on their body. On the very rare occasions a beholder finds her, she drops her humanoid facade and reveals her true form to everyone nearby, becoming maternal and warm to her child but still refuses to show them preferential treatment or answer prayers. Questioning her about the feud with Laogzed is about the only thing that can anger Great Mother and, if pressed, might lash out with disasterous consequences for the unwise.
Re: Teaching new tricks to old gods
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