The Eyes Had It

Where I last left off, we'd collected a purple worm egg for use in the ritual intended to rid the Underdark of its demonic infestation. We decided to take it straight back to Vizeran, rather than risk it while we went after the beholder. It cost us a couple extra days, but it was a worthwhile investment; we managed to convince Vizeran that use of the teleportation circle was vital to the completion of our mission. Thus, he allowed me to know the activation procedure. Still, something's bothering me; that teleportation circle is right outside of the tower. More convenient than miles away, true, but why not put the circle in his own tower? It would make more sense practically speaking, not to mention in case of emergencies. A topic worth thinking about for later.
 
In any event, we then sought out the beholder that Vizeran needed the central eye of. Jorlan and I pooled together every tip and trick we could think of in regards to beholders; that central eye, so vital to our ritual, was so important because of its antimagic power. This very same power makes them a nightmare to confront, and more than one overconfident caster has been killed or enslaved by an eye tyrant they underestimated. Our basic strategy boiled down to having Tanebi be our aerial distraction, while the rest of us peppered the aberration with projectiles. Such was the plan, anyway.
 
Along the way we encountered some aggressive trolls (my fire spells came in handy there), a friendship of eleven flumphs (friendship = pack, for reference), and a few lost dwarves that we were able to send along to Gauntlgrym. On the fifth day, we arrived at Karazikar's lair.
 
The place was a large series of vertical shafts connected by tunnels gouged out of the rock, with the shafts being filled with numerous rope bridges that connected the various tunnels. Looking up, we saw a massive relief of a beholder; its main body over the largest central shaft, with each additional eye atop the smaller side shafts. Impressive, and hopelessly vain; definitely a beholder's lair. On the way in, we noticed various humanoids, all wearing odd crowns that looked as if most of them had been painted. But we had little time to ponder this as we were met by the "Herald of Karazikar", Shedrak, a mage with ten eyes tattooed into his bald head. He asked what business we had with his master, and I babbled something vague and flattering that could get us a personal audience (tough to keep track of the lies sometimes, especially when I don't intend them to last long).
 
Thankfully, it worked enough to get us up to the top of the central shaft, where a large platform had been built. Here was the beholder, in the flesh, flanked by two knights that looked as if their armour had been splashed with white paint. The herald announced us, and the knights took notice, but the beholder didn't seem to much care; he was absorbed in manipulating some sort of large painting that seemed to alter based on some combination of movements and intention on the part of the beholder. Intriguing as it was, the beholder didn't seem particularly happy; one of the humanoids with crowns made a harsh (yet accurate) observation, and the beholder levitated a small hammer over to it, bonking it on the head and banishing it from existence for a full minute.
 
Eventually the beholder grew impatient enough with the painting that it slammed the thing down and turned to us. It asked us if we'd come to make a donation (we had not) or to "moderate" its captive audience (we had not). We then mentioned that we'd been searching in the Underdark for something, and the beholder asked if we were here to join its "stream" of thought (we certainly had not, but we pretended otherwise). Hestan attempted to do a martial arts performance with his crescent blade to ingratiate us, but the beholder accused us of "secretly being trolls", and attacked along with the mage and knights.
 
It shattered the wooden platform with a command word, giving us only a few moments to safely jump to a rope bridge. We made it, but so did the beholder's minions; being able to fly, it was in no danger itself. Tanebi's spectral wings unfurled and he flew at the beholder to keep its attention off of us. I engaged in a short magical duel with the mage (which the beholder called "Swiggins" rather than Shedrak, but who knows why), while Jaaski and Hestan fought off the knights in white paint.
 
It was a mess of a fight, not helped along by the fact that once the battle began to tip in our favor, the beholder began attempting to disintegrate the rope bridges, indifferent to its minions falling to their death as long as we did, too. Shedrak was slain, and I grabbed up his mage's pouch before it had a chance to fall from the bridge. The others slew one of the knights, and another failed to get clear of a falling rope bridge in time. Soon, the beholder was the only one left.
 
It became desperate, and caught a couple of us with a nasty surprise; it bounced some of its eye rays off of mirrors embedded into the cavern's walls, catching us from angles that we weren't able to react to in time. I was pulled right off of the bridge by the beholder's telekinesis ray, and once I was I didn't dare try to break free; if I had, it would've been 100 feet straight down. Thankfully, the rest of the group was able to combine their efforts to save me; Jorlan and Hestan pelted the beholder's body with arrows, and just as its concentration broke, Tanebi swooped in and caught me, bringing us both back to the bridge.
 
The beholder then, seeing that it would not be the victor if things continued, tried to flee. However, we were able to bombard it with enough arrows, bolts, and thrown weapons that it not only didn't escape, it died looking like a pincushion. Using its eyestalks, we were able to heave it onto one of the remaining rope bridges to retrieve its central eye. It was probably a more tension-filled moment than the actual battle; one errant flick of the knife, one shake of the hand holding it, and all that effort would have been wasted. Nevertheless, we retrieved our prize, storing it in the glass jar that Vizeran had supplied to us. I collected the ten eyestalks for myself, knowing that they would come in handy at a later time. We knew we couldn't leave without..."appropriating" the beholder's treasure hoard, though a greater issue faced us as we saw the faces of those humanoids with strange crowns. Looking between us and the slain beholder. And then BOWING to us. All one hundred of them.
 
The question arose: what would we do with those hundred people the eye tyrant had enslaved for so long?