Hello all! And welcome. If you’re reading for the first time, know that every year I do something on this blog called Ocular October – a celebration of all that is the Beholder, my favorite D&D monster, and all sorts of brainstorming for DMs about things related to them – magic items, enemies, NPCs, diseases, tactics, the works!

But this year wound up a bit different. I have a fairly demanding job that took over this month with the tenacity of Xanathar protecting his goldfish, and between that and running four (4!) games a week and various other developments, I’ve been unable to focus on October like I have in years past.

But I knew I still had to do something! It’s Ocular October dammit! So I resolved to forge ahead with the ambitious project I’d planned – which would require a lot of cross-referencing anyway, rather than individual posts – and just release it all at the end of October. So I did – burned the midnight oil, stared at pages until my own eyes felt like their eyelids didn’t exist and could shoot magic lasers, and knocked out The First Beholder: a story of the Ten Plagues of Praxis the Pestilence. This is a fully-realized adventure path you can put your PCs on (or just read for funsies), and of course I decided to get “real weird with it” at times. I hope you enjoy it!