Dungeons & Dragons Teases Next Adventure With Retro Video Game Easter Egg

Dungeons & Dragons may have used a reference to an old video game to tease the subject of their next adventure story.

Earlier today, the popular tabletop game announced a three-day "Stream of Many Eyes" event that will serve as a preview for the game's next adventure story. Each story contains a fully written adventure set in one of D&D's worlds and usually feature a few iconic characters and monsters for players to interact with along the way.

While the name of the event teases that the adventure will somehow involve beholders, an iconic monster that's basically a grotesque and dangerous floating head with multiple eyestalks, the press release for today's announcement provides another big clue. The catch is that you'll probably have needed to play a pretty old D&D video game in order to understand the reference.

The end of the press release contains a bit of Morse code, which translates to "No Stone Unturned." That's likely a reference to the 1991 computer game Eye of the Beholder, which was set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The game involves a player forming a party of adventurers to explore the sewers and dungeons underneath the city to stop a hidden evil. Eventually, the players fight the evil beholder Xanathar, but only after fighting the way through drow and duergar.

The phrase "Leave No Stone Unturned" can be found carved into a wall in Xanathar's Outer Sanctum, just before players battle the beholder itself.

In D&D lore, Xanathar is the title of a beholder crime boss that lives underneath Waterdeep. Xanathar's lair was based out of the Undermountain dungeon underneath Waterdeep (which was built on and around a mountain) and few knew that the crime boss was actually a monstrous beholder.

Xanathar has already made an appearance of sorts in recent D&D publications. Last year's Xanathar's Guide to Everything served as the first expansion for D&D's Fifth Edition, giving players new subclasses to choose from, some new spells, and plenty of new ways for DMs to expand the game. The book featured the cynical and often hilarious notes of Xanathar itself.

We'll have to see if D&D's cryptic easter egg was actually a reference to Eye of the Beholder, or if we're totally off. Either way, we can't wait to find out more in the coming weeks!