ARCHIVIST ZAZOX
First-time visitors to the Arcane Archive and Laboratory at the Wardenclyffe University College of Magic do not get to meet the Archivist. Indeed, they may not even hear about the Archivist on their first visit, and when they do, they may be intrigued to note that said personage is referred to in hushed, respectful tones, and never with a pronoun, leaving the uninitiated to wonder whether the mysterious and evidently hallowed Archivist Zazox is a man or a woman or what.

The answer, as those library patrons who eventually become trusted enough to earn a pass to the inner sanctum, is very much "or what", and those making their first visit behind the mahogany doors are often startled to discover that Archivist Zazox is a beholder.

Commonly known as exemplars of evil, beholders reproduce through a weird, usually involuntary reality-warping process while they sleep. Customarily, this leads either to a beholder's duplicating itself (because it dreamed of seeing itself in a mirror, for instance), or creating some even wilder aberration. Because "normal" beholders do not put up with anything that might conceivably be a rival, this process customarily results in a fight to the death, and whichever beholder wins, life generally proceeds pretty much as before in the creature's lair. Archivist Zazox is the result of a beholder's most hideous nightmare imaginable. Xozaz had a dream in which its reflection was horrifically, monstrously, revoltingly perverted, possessed of a moral and ethical code so twisted and repulsive as to be all but unspeakable: it was lawful good.

I know! How absolutely vile. Unfortunately for Xozaz, this disgusting parody of itself was also either better at fighting than it was, or just luckier, and when the dust settled, only Zazox still lived.

Life is tough for a good beholder. Not only does every other beholder in the world want you dead, so do most other beings, because they assume you're like every other beholder in the world. Zazox's lot in life was further complicated by the fact that it only barely survived the battle with its "parent". Savagely battered and clinging to life through little more than sheer stubbornness, it had lost all of its secondary eyes apart from the one with the telekinesis ray (in itself a lucky break of sorts). To make matters still worse, its very next visitors were a party of adventurers attracted by reports that the beholder Xozaz's minions had fled its lair.

Fortunately, these adventurers were a little cleverer, a little more perceptive, and a little more compassionate than the industry average in their profession, and they realized how thoroughly unusual Zazox was in time to avoid killing it. It traveled with them for some time, slowly regaining its strength, and eventually became an adventurer of some renown in its own right—albeit one so unusual as to be dismissed as a myth by nearly everyone who had ever heard of it.

Eventually, Zazox found its way to the University. Initially it planned only to visit long enough to bequeath to the Library its extensive collection of wondrous items, accumulated over the course of its long career, before retiring to a mountaintop or lost dungeon someplace to enjoy a quiet retirement. However, upon arrival, it discovered that the Library didn't have anyone on its staff who could competently catalog and curate such a collection, and more or less by default ended up in that job itself.

Archivist Zazox is a kindly disposed, gregarious, somewhat absent-minded creature, easily distracted by shiny magical objects, though it isn't a hoarder in the traditional monstrous sense. It doesn't wish to possess magical items for itself, but for the Archive, which under its care has become renowned throughout the land as one of the finest and most extensive such collections around; and it doesn't seek to take items that are not available by force, though it will occasionally make impassioned speeches meant to stir stubborn possessors to civic-minded generosity. Either way, it's happy to research the history, provenance, and functions of any magical items that come before it, and to share whatever it has learned with pretty much anyone who asks, so long as they have proper authorization to visit its domain.

Adventurers are most likely to meet Zazox either if they are arcanists who have earned admission to the Archive's inner collections, or, more likely, if Zazox has hired them to retrieve something from one of the unfathomed corners of the world for it.

In appearance, Zazox is probably just about as close to un-horrible as a beholder can get by humanoid standards: smooth-skinned, with human-like eyes and teeth, and somewhat stubby eyestalks (probably a relic of the fact that all but one of them were severed, and grew back gradually over the course of its adventuring career). It wears a monocle on its main eye, and often a sort of tweed "cape" with little sleeves for its eyestalks.

One feels a great swell of pity for anyone who goes to the Archive looking for trouble.

ARCHIVIST ZAZOX
beholder (Large aberration), lawful good
bard, lvl 14

Armor Class 18 (natural armor)
Hit Points 228 (10d10 + 13d8 + 104)
Speed 0 ft., fly 20 ft. (hover)

STR 10 (+0)
DEX 14 (+2)
CON 18 (+4)
INT 18 (+4)
WIS 12 (+1)
CHA 18 (+4)

Saving Throws INT +9, DEX +7, WIS +6, CHA +9
Skills Arcana +14, History +14, Investigation +14, Perception +6, Performance +9, Persuasion +14
Condition Immunities prone
Senses darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 12
Languages pretty much all of them
Challenge 15 (13,000 XP)

Bard Class Features College of Lore: Cutting Words, Peerless Skill

Spells: Dancing Lights, Mending, Prestidigitation, Vicious Mockery

Note: Zazox's eye rays replace most of the arcane spellcasting ability it should have gotten from its Bard class levels. It knows only cantrips from the Bard spell list.

Equipment: gem of seeing (monocle)
ring of restful sleep (worn on an eyestalk; this item prevents Zazox from accidentally dreaming another, probably evil, beholder into existence)

--G.
(yes, I stole Zazox's name from my old CoH character, Zazox Wazoxazole, who was in turn named after an epic spam subject line I got one time.)
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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