"The oculon is an enchanted monster created by a high-level magic-user to act as an assistant or guardian. The process of creating one is long and quite involved, but the resulting being is fairly powerful because of the many special skills it has. An oculon is humanoid in shape, though only vaguely so, and is 4 feet tall at the shoulder. Instead of a human head, the oculon has a flexible neck about 3 feet in length with a single large eye at the end. The neck is 2” in diameter and the eye is 4” across."
"The body of an oculon is light grey in color, and slightly glossy. The cornea of the eye is dark grey, and the pupil of the eye is black."
The oculon's first appearance was in Dragon Magazine #53 and it's credited to Roger E. Moore. I don't know if he also illustrated it or just came up with the backstory & stats but that's the only credit given.
It's a magical creation similar to a homunculus. It's rubbery, boneless physique remind me of the golem made by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezabel.
So the single eye immediately brings to mind the cyclops of Greek mythology but there's so many one eyed creatures in D&D that I don't think it's really worth diving into. But the long neck, that brings to mind the rokurokubi from Japanese mythology.
“A rokuro-kubi is ordinarily conceived as a goblin whose neck stretches out to great lengths, but which nevertheless always remains attached to its body.”
Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies Of Strange Things
Other long-necked humanoid monsters that came to mind while researching this were Henrietta from Evil Dead II, one of the titular creatures in C.H.U.D. and the appendage of The Beast from TerrorVision.
I feel like the oculon doesn't get a lot of love in the D&D world and I'm kinda understand. There are a bunch of other creatures that perform the same function but I really like the original design of a single eye at the end of an extremely long neck.
If one eye wasn't enough, you're in for a treat tomorrow!
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