Ever heard of forbiddance?
And as to the OP, if its your first time ever playing D&D, start a weee bit smaller and work your way up would be my suggestion.
Make lvl 1-3 characters, make an adventure, explore it. Realize as you and your players learn the system the first 2-3 campaigns may be write-offs.
Once you have learned the system, you can look at bigger stuff. Look, DMing a mid-level game (lvl 8-13) can be challanging enough, let alone an EPIC one. As with anything, the more variables something has the more complex and therefore more unstable it is. Epic play, with the most variables (levels, accessible abilities, possible combinations) is the most unstable and therefore generally the most broken level of play.
To the logman: The devil's kill you and take all your silly rocks. LOL, you think Devil's play fair or give a crap about what you are aksing? Your rock-merchant needs POWER or nobody is going to CARE what price you are asking, they just are going to take it.