Steampunk D&D Beholder sculpture

Daniel Proulx married his love of Dungeons and Dragons with his steampunk jewelry making hobby and produced this handsome sculpture based around a taxidermy reptile eye:

Since I was I kid I've been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons. The Beholder has always been one of the most feared monster... Here's my first Beholder-Steampunk-Robot . I plan to make bigger one, this one is only 4 cm large .
Right upper arm: You can imagine that arm shooting a disintegrating Newtonian beam.
Left upper arm: Triple saw made from vintage brass clock gear.
Top arm: Made from mysterious yellow amber.
Bottom arm: a single magnetic wheel for an alternative transport and stability.
Beholders floatshover above the ground. They are known to be obsessively tyrannical.

Steampunk Beholder Miniature robot sculpture (Thanks, Daniel!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Gadgets • Games • Happy Mutants • maker • Old school

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Phasma Felis

Victor, you deluded fool! Beholder subspecies may have any number of different stalks. It’s the eyes, man, the EYES! Those so-called stalks bear not a single eye! THIS IS NO TRUE BEHOLDER.

Harrumph.
Anonymous

They should add this into the next Monster Manual! :-D
Matt Staggs

Cool! I don’t think he needs to classify it as a beholder, though. I think that the potential PC terror at seeing some multi-tentacled, heavily armored saw-blade swinging monster charging down a dungeon corridor justifies the creation of this as a brand new monster all its own.
Anonymous

I could honestly see this thing as a modron rather than a beholder. Modrons kind of look steampunkish-fantasy to start, and round orbs with eyes and coiled tentacles could be right up their alley. But it is beautiful, and I know I could come up with useful scenarios around that mini easily! Very nicely made!
Avram / Moderator

So. Friggin’. Awesome.
JL Bryan

It looks like an evil dentist-bot from the future. Definitely scary!
Lobster

*sigh*

Boing Boing, I love you, but for chrissakes not every thing made out of metal and gears is “steampunk” any more than everything with an LED on it is “cyberpunk.”

Still, this is better than the “librarian side of steampunk” pile-of-books purse.
Laroquod

Last I went against a Beholder I rolled right off the table on my attack and while trying to recover my swing, spilled my slurpee all over my pants. Embarrassing. Definitely wouldn’t want to go up against one of THOSE things again.
CatherinetteRings

You are right it is a beholder shaped speudo-creature less a few stalks . After i made it i planned to make a larger one with more stalks and inside a control room where the smaller speudo-version sits .
Basically it would be the brain of the larger one .
Phikus

It’s all fun and games until it flies after you, saw-blades humming.
Moriarty

“Newtonian beam?”
Nycteris

Even at 4cm it’s scary!
juln

Hi Daniel… I THOUGHT I recognized the style of the wrapping on the arms! Cool sculpture.

We always used Dust of Disappearance to fight beholders…
Anonymous

For those having trouble determining the creature here’s some information. Yes, it is a beholder of some sort but obviously not one that most are accustomed to going against. It could be a Gauth or a Director but either way I still wouldn’t want to deal with it.

Last I went against a Beholder I rolled a one on my attack and then he gave me the finger of death, which I also rolled a 1 on.
PaulR

My quantum beam will take out your Newtonian beam fater than you can say…well, anything.
Anonymous

Beauty!
nehpetsE

a lovely little creature. Indeed, beauty is in the eye of the …
Anonymous

Its currently on display at the steampunk exhibit at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford (UK).

Make sure to visit if you are close enough!
designian

Lobster, Thank you. I second that emotion. Raise the bar for steampunk anything please.
VICTOR JIMENEZ

OH No NO NOES!
That one have ONLY six stalks, and as any cultured Ad&D player would know a true Beholder has TEN stalks.
Thats more like a pseudo-beholder, looks more closely related to the Gauth, that has six stalks.

But being a steampunk I give it 100 GeekyPoints!
Anonymous

dude that creature is AMAZING. I once saw a cockatrice made out of a real, stuffed fox body & three real, stuffed chicken heads. Sounds gruesome, but it looked real enough to be really cool. :) Reminds me of that sculpture – a kind of ‘bringing fantasy to life’ thing :) way to go :)
danegeld

This is the first item tagged ‘steampunk’ that I thought was any good / interesting / creative. Just so you know.
trimeta

This isn’t not a Beholder because it has the wrong number of eye-stalks. It’s not a Beholder because the eye-stalks are coming from all around the main central eye, rather than just from the top of the head. I mean, it’s still awesome, and would make a pretty frightening foe in a cyberpunk setting, but that doesn’t make it a Beholder.
Hypnoid

Ah, but could it be made out of depleted uranium for the discriminating connaisseur?
http://badgods.com/kitchenfloor.html
Forkboy

So THAT’s why that computer game was called “Eye of the beholder.” Only took me 20 years to find out.