Editing Greg Fulton/Fanstratics Newsletters/14 (section)

== Fanstratics Troop: Gawker ==
Where the Chimerans are believed to be the unfortunate remnants of archaic arcane experiments, the Zubhewens are a sub-human faction born from intentional evolutionary corruption.  While there are clear evolutionary connections between Elves and Goblins, when it comes to the Gawker, there is one obvious question, “From what did the Gawker evolve, and what is its mysterious relationship to the other Zubhewen folk?”

In 1997, when I began building HoMM3’s various rosters, TSR’s original hard cover [[wikipedia:Monster Manual|Monster Manual]] was a primary resource.  To this day, it is still valuable.  It is quite literally, a ‘manual of monsters’ gleaned from mythology, folklore, and fantasy fiction.

To avoid extended creative research, any author can jumpstart their work by thumbing through TSR’s Monster Manual.  Most of the depicted creatures couldn’t be copyrighted by TSR, but the Beholder was different, and I wanted something like a [[Beholder]] in HoMM3.

While the idea of a ‘floating eye’ [https://imgur.com/a/1BQxV5H] is not necessarily original, TSR’s stylistic conception could be copyrighted.  In fact, to avoid any potential copyright issues, Ultima’s version of the Beholder was initially called [https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Gazers Wandering Eyes], before it eventually became the Gazer.

I had no idea Beholders were specifically copyrighted by [[wikipedia:TSR, Inc.|TSR]], and I should have avoided naming HoMM3’s Beholders/Evil Eyes as such.  Perhaps TSR didn’t know, didn’t care, or didn’t think a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter was worth the turmoil.  Perhaps we were on safe ground.  I simply don’t know.

Regardless, I am happy a Beholder-inspired Troop remained in the game.  As for Fanstratics... we have a Gawker.

For those of you who want to see Justin actually render the drawing, you can watch a VOD of his Twitch stream.