A Study of the Astral Dreadnaught (Chapter 6)

In my search for clues as to the identity and nature of the Astral Dreadnought, that vicious beast that scours the Astral Plane in its constant search for food and prey, I have come across several startling books as well as theories which all the facts I currently possess seem to support.Foremost among these facts has been that the Astral Dreadnought seems to bare a startlingly close resemblance to the Beholder, a multi-eyed creature who possesses one central antimagic eye and the same flair for xenophobia as the Astral Dreadnought (although far less mindless). Researching the nature of these 'Eye Tyrants' side-by-side with the Dreadnoughts, I have discovered several very strange similarities that have convinced me that Beholders are in actuality derivatives of the Astral Dreadnoughts, descendants who have settled upon various planes and gained extrodinary intelligence and enchanted eyestalks in exchange for the Dreadnought's incalculable strength and immense size.Simultaneously, both the history of the Beholders and Dreadnoughts is inescapably old. I find references to the Dreadnoughts in some of the oldest books of the Multiverse, and there's no end to the references to Beholders in various Prime Material works of literature. Perhaps my initial thought - that the Eye Tyrants descended from the Dreadnoughts - is incorrect. Perhaps it is the Dreadnoughts who descended from the Beholders. Nevertheless, the two species seem to be intrinsically linked, as well as incredibly old.A recent reference - an ancient text preserved through magic, its enchantments wearing thin and the book itself in a sad state of disrepair - has given me a clue. It refers to, in a dialect that seems to be a rough estimation of the Illithid written tongue, an ancient 'one-eyed race of tyrants' who predate the Mind-Flayers. There is reference to some great war between the Illithid and this race, but details are sketchy. I doubt the Illithid would care to expound on this, or if they would even remember - I can not place the book's exact date, but it is easily over a millenia old.In my mission to learn more about these 'one eyed tyrants', I found myself in the most surprising of places - Sigil's Asylum, run by the Bleak Cabal. It is here that an associate referred me to a particular inmate who told the most strange story... A story which I at first refused to believe. However, the inmate has an intimate knowledge of the facts which I have explained here, knowledge that could not be attained without either innumerable scholarly resources, or by the means in which he explained them...Having been declared irrevocably mad, he had been placed alone in one of the smaller cells where he was to stay for the rest of his natural life. This, I had been told, had proven to be an exorbitant amount of time - I was unable to find a single Bleaker who had arrived before he had, and the file on him had long gone missing. He was an elderly man with twisted appendages and a long spindling graying beard, with gold-flecked eyes that seemed to crackle with a sublime life.During one of my interviews when I asked him about the Dreadnoughts, he smiled bitterly and spoke with surprising lucidity. "Rage can last a very long time.""I don't quite understand what you mean," I said, beginning to take notes with frantic pen-strokes. "Do you know of the origin of the Dreadnoughts, or their purpose, or why there are so few?""You're asking the wrong questions. The Dreadnoughts should not be the focus of your studies. They are nothing more than the remains of what came before them."I hesitated at the man's words and the manner in which they struck true. "The One-Eyed Tyrants?"The man's smile turned from bitter to amused. "You've looked up on them, have you? Yes. The Beholders and the Astral Dreadnoughts are nothing more than the remnants." The man's eyes grew distant, and he seemed to speak in a voice that was not his own. "We were betrayed and forgotten. But we have not forgotten."The gleam of cunning faded from his eyes and I was left standing before nothing more than a simpleton. He looked to me almost pathetically, that vicious liveliness now missing. "Have you come to see my pretties?" He asked in a razor-thin voice as he gave me a yellow-toothed grin.I tried to question him more about the Dreadnoughts or the One-Eyed Tyrants, but he seemed to have completely forgotten the subject of our conversation. When I further questioned the Bleakers who watched over him, they told me that he was a harmless old mad-man who sometimes had bursts of lucidity, during which he spoke of vague horrors and distant cataclysms in the far past and near-future. Several days later when I returned to question him again, I was told that he had died in the night and his body had been taken to the Mortuary to be cremated.

In the walls of his cell, a sentence was found carved into the floor underneath his straw-bed.

'THE TYRANT IS COMING'