Summon Spectator

The annals of the church of Helm relate that in ancient times Helm, He of the Unsleeping Eyes, created the ultimate guardian to assist his necessarily fallible human followers. This creature, known as a spectator, appeared as a large orb dominated by an unblinking central eye with four stalks sprouting from the top of the orb to watch in each of the cardinal directions. In a dark time in the church's distant history, the forces of evil gained the upper hand for a while. During this bleak period, various gods of evil corrupted Helm's creations into the horrors known as beholders and their kin. Priests of Bane claim this is so much hogwash; they believe that the Black Lord created the eye tyrants as the ultimate rulers, and spectators are Helm's poor attempt at copying Bane's magnificent creation. The truth is unknown, although priests of Helm are known to destroy beholders and their kin wherever possible, and the remaining priests of Bane (and Xvim) return the favor to spectators whenever possible.

This spell enables priests of Helm to summon nearly infallible guardians to assist in their ordained tasks. Summon spectator summons one of Helm's spectator servitors from Mechanus to the Prime Material Plane to serve for up to 101 years in a specified task. (Spectators are detailed under the Beholder and Beholder-kin entry in the MONSTROUS MANUAL™ tome.) The task must involve the guarding of some location or inanimate physical object, such as a portal, shrine, or a holy relic. (The scope of things a spectator summoned by summon spectator will guard is broader than what one summoned by the particular variant of the 7th-level wizard spell monster summoning V that normally summons spectators will guard.) It allows no one except the one who summoned it or another priest of Helm to enter the location it is guarding or to use, borrow, or examine an item or treasure it watches over. It is not gullible and can fairly easily detect false claims to membership in Helm's priesthood by questioning such claimants telepathically about details of the church's rituals and beliefs.

A summoned spectator does not abandon its post unless slain or blinded in all five eyes, in which case it automatically returns to Helm's tower in Mechanus. Its eyes regenerate in 24 hours, after which time it returns to its post. If the object is gone or the location breached when it returns (it can automatically tell), it again leaves for Mechanus, never to return.

The material components for this spell are the priest's holy symbol and a steel gauntlet blessed in the name of Helm; the latter is consumed in the casting.