I have just had a stroke of inspiration which seems fitting.

Beholders are reknowned as being overthinkers and planning for any and every occurrence that they can imagine. Does this mean that a Beholder is, in essence, the spirit of Doomsday Preppers?

Can we reasonably expect a Beholders lair to not contain a panic room (bomb shelter), weapons, non-perishable foods, water source, and all the D&D equivalents of doomsday prepping - as well as all the stuff they have for stopping groups of 2-6 humanoids from walking in and beating them to death?

Most doomsday preppers are very proud of what they have done - could a beholder resist showing off everything if someone came in, not violently, and showed the slightest bit of interest?

I always expected to play beholders as violently territorial, but now I'm considering they may be more inclined to show off their lair before they kill the intruder. Just to show them how much better they are than them!

A stroke of inspiration indeed! Beholders are often described as overthinkers and you'd think, as all their peers (such as Liches and Dragons) are defeated by adventurers, they would be prepared for such an attack on themselves. A beholder's 17 intelligence is often played down, making them a far less potent foe.

They are certainly described as paranoid:

Enemies abound, or so every beholder believes. Beholders are convinced that other creatures resent them for their brilliance and magical power, even as they dismiss those lesser creatures as crude and disgusting. Beholders always suspect others of plotting against them, even when no other creatures are around.

However, they are also described as being extremely arrogant:

As alien as their creator, the rooms in a beholder’s lair reflect the creature’s arrogance

I think that a Beholder would over-prepare for things that it sees as threats, but only those things that its arrogance allows it to perceive as threats. So it might prepare defences that would defend its lair against a meteor swarm, vastly over-complex anti-meteor lazers, but it would probably fail to prepare against simple threats that it believes its eye-ray abilities can easily deal with. So it might hugely fortify the main entrance to the lair, feeling that any worthy opponent would try to meet it head on, and pay no attention to the small access tunnel its enslaved minions use to fetch water from the stream.

So I am toying with the idea that the emperor of one of the nations on my world is a beholder who uses a puppet as his representative. He will certainly have a full prepper mentality and be paranoid of anyone entering his lair. He is also extremely paranoid of another beholder taking his place. 

Not to turn this into a lifestyle debate, but quite a few "influential" preppers do have a smug arrogance to them ("I'm going to make it because I'm more aware than all these fools"), philosophically the whole "prepper" ideology/mindset is very "me" oriented, and plenty of science fiction exists mocking human hubris when it comes to impregnable fortifications and safety/security.

That said, I sort of like Beholder prepper.  I think it actually lines up well with Xanathar, the most well known Beholder in DnD lore ... could definitely see that fellow having a self preservation infrastructure.

[On a related note, vampires at least the conduct described in Dracula and Dracula adaptations, are definitely preppers by necessity too].

So I could see "prepper" as good role playing short hand to play a Beholder like Xanathar ... though I'm not a huge fan of Xanathar.  Don't get me wrong but there's something "human, all too human" in his psychology which just isn't the way I usually play aberrations.  The "deep weird" potential in beholders is lost in a character like Xanathar, though reflective of a publisher who puts out lore that anthropomorphizes the psychology of all beings regardless of how different their physical nature and experience of life would be compared to human experience of the same (not hitting the political complaint button there, I think it's a failure or refusal to exercise imagination for the sake of "relatable" characterization to maximize product consumption).  

But for the sake of going "yes, but make it more weird", I think the following vid gives an excellent interpretation as to how make Beholder psychology and homebrew license to make the creatures really strange.  I don't even think the prepper possibility is excluded, but in this model, it would probably consider its defenses part of its "research.":

That is brilliant! That's the best new take on a classic old monster that I've heard in a long time! 

I like beholder pepper.  Prepping seems like a natural extension of a consciousness overwhelmed and driven to anxiety by boredom, which a beholder probably would be .

It's not what I'm doing with beholders, but I like it.

Quote from TimCurtin >>

I like beholder pepper.  

 
I looked at the title and saw Beholder Pepper as well. It made me wonder what kinds of culinary delights would a Beholder dream up? Beholders with expensive tastes could put certain types of chef on the list of items needed to stock his doomsday lair, that'd make for some interesting kidnapping mysteries. 

Can a beholder sneeze, and if it does after adventures surreptitiously dose it with enough pepper, would it start to panic that it has been stricken by an unforeseen viral antagonist or know a pepper sneeze for what it is?

I would imagine that if a beholder were to sneeze, that all of its eyestalks would suddenly fire all at once in random directions. So that may not be a good idea. 

I really like this take on the Beholder as well! It makes sense and gives a clear calling for how they might over think their lairs, down to the most minute detail, without forcing them all to be the same.

Like the Australian Drow this just instantly resonates with "Why didn't I think of this before?" because it fits so well.

Quote from Agile_DM >>

Like the Australian Drow this just instantly resonates with "Why didn't I think of this before?" because it fits so well.

Australian Drow makes so much sense. “So everything, and everyone is trying to kill us? Sounds like preschool.”