Vellurith

The Vellurith, or the Game Undying, was a sacred game of manipulation played among beholders on Toril, partially as an act of veneration for the Great Mother. The game was played by accomplishing certain goals, all of which promoted the aims of the Great Mother. Winning the Vellurith required that a single beholder accomplish five of these goals, but the relative difficulty of each task was so great that no beholder was known to have pulled off more than a single goal.

Goals
Every goal of the Vellurith advanced the agenda of the Great Mother in some way, some more subtly than others. The sole judge of success in the Vellurith was the Great Mother herself, who signaled approval or displeasure but never gave any guidance to participants. The Vellurith encouraged subtle manipulation over direct action, and confrontation between players was discouraged as it was seen as resorting to the methods of "lesser races".

The nine initial goals of the Vellurith were as follows:


 * 1) Slay a deity.
 * 2) Obliterate a human city in a manner precluding its rebuilding.
 * 3) Topple a ruling dynasty and then restore them.
 * 4) Create a new sentient, intelligent race.
 * 5) Locate the remains of the lost beholder Xarlcaun and recover its Hive Mother egg.
 * 6) Find the Blind Beholder and free it from illithid captivity in the Underdark.
 * 7) Reopen the Gate of Eyes linking Faerûn to the Realm of a Million Eyes.
 * 8) Convince the ruler of a sizeable Faerûnian realm to make beholder worship the state religion for no less than six years in total (not necessarily continuously).
 * 9) Divert the attention and focus of Larloch and the Elder Rune cabal of liches away from beholderkind, preferably away from Faerûn altogether, or convince them that beholders are worth protecting from the machinations of deities such as Gzemnid or Shar.

Rewards
Beholders believed that participating in the Vellurith would yield them substantial rewards from the Great Mother that could help them "rise to the next upliftedness". At least one of the few beholders who managed to accomplish a Vellurith goal received a magical boon from the beholder goddess.

History
The game was said to originate with the Great Mother herself, who commanded the Beholder Ancients&mdash;the very first members of the beholder race &mdash; to play.

On Toril, beholders were known to engage in the Vellurith since at least the 1100s DR, with over twenty elder beholders having participated and survived over the centuries. Despite centuries of trying, only two elder eye tyrants had accomplished one goal each. In the, Alarkanamace succeeded in permanently destroying a human city&mdash;Sulasspryn in the Moonsea region. It achieved this by subtly manipulating duergar miners into mining beneath the city, compelling them to lure purple worms ever closer to the surface to bore their tunnels. The elder eye also tricked the dwarven watermaster Burdurin Longhammer into believing he had found ancient schematics detailing a subterranean river diversion&mdash;in reality just an area carved out and magically aged by Alarkanamace to further weaken the structural integrity of the area beneath Sulasspryn. Finally, the beholder saturated the limestone rock separating the duergar mines from the city above, then spread rumors of rich gem deposits beneath the city to encourage its citizens to start digging. The end result was utterly fatal&mdash;Sulasspryn collapsed into a sinkhole, killing thousands of citizens. The city was never rebuilt, in part because of the resulting instability of the area, but also because Sulasspryn became known as a place of death. Sages attributed the destruction of Sulasspryn to a drow revenge plot against the city's founder, Sulass Drowsbane, and so Alarkanamace's subtle manipulation of the situation must be said to have been a resounding success.

The other accomplished goal was attributed to the elder eye Xithallowthlan, who manipulated the political situation in Tethyr to both cause and end the Tethyrian Interregnum. In the, Xithallowthlan indirectly caused the fire that killed King Alemander IV and his family. During the Reclamation Wars, the beholder covertly aided Zaranda Star on numerous occasions, helping her win the war and ascend to the Tethyrian throne in the. Since Zaranda's husband, King Haedrak Rhindaun III, was the last surviving prince of the previous royal family, this meant Xithallowthlan had succeeded in toppling and restoring a human dynasty. The elder beholder received a boon from the Great Mother in recognition of his accomplishment: eyes with magic-sensing and truesight capabilities appeared all over its body.

Several beholders claimed to have killed the deity Ibrandul, though these claims were universally dismissed once it became known that Ibrandul had been killed by Shar during the Time of Troubles. Xyxikarph claimed to have caused the death of the duergar deity Laduguer in the by manipulating Moradin and secretly swapping his weapon for a thrice-cursed one, causing him to inadvertently kill Laduguer. Very few beholders believed this claim&mdash;indeed, Xyxikarph disappeared soon after, leaving its lair mysteriously empty save for a magical human voice announcing "The Great Mother is not pleased".