Three-Star Dungeon Package

The sacred ruins had a price list.

Jonah spoke with Eric Aleklotson and learned how Aleklot's Rest had turned its old danger into a tourist economy. The inn did not simply offer rooms. It bundled lodging with dungeon crawls beneath the temple, packaged by star rating and priced like danger had been domesticated into hospitality.

One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. Four hundred.

The higher the package, the deeper or better the crawl. The whole arrangement made QUEST's artifact-recovery mission feel almost absurdly entangled with local business. The party had been sent to recover magical artifacts from a dungeon beneath an old dragon pilgrimage site, and now the route in ran through an innkeeper's sales model.

They chose three stars.

Three hundred gold bought them the dungeon package and a three-room suite with infinite cots, the exact kind of impossible convenience that only made the surrounding tourist machinery stranger. Thunderlungs, the party, and the rest of the road's accumulated complications now had a place to sleep and a formal route into the ruins.

The mission had entered Aleklot's Rest properly.

Not through a holy gate.

Through a commercial dungeoneer package with room pricing.