Herman Winger's Waivers

The next step into the dungeon began like a tourist attraction with teeth.

The party started the paid three-star dungeon experience at the Aleklotson Inn, not with a solemn ritual, but with a guide, a group, and paperwork. Herman Winger, a birdfolk guide, gathered the entrants and introduced the tour as though the cave beneath an old dragon pilgrimage site had become just another managed attraction.

The group was not only My Alchemical Romance.

There was Jeremiah Shadowplay, a drow adventurer with his own presence in the room, and Gumbo, a halfling clothier caught up in the same commercial danger package. The dungeon economy made strangers into fellow entrants, competitors, witnesses, or future liabilities before anyone saw the first chamber.

Then came the waivers.

The rules mattered because they revealed what the town expected from its product. Dungeon loot would return to the cave if someone died before leaving. Entrants had to name who received the items they brought in if they did not come back out. Aleklot's Rest had turned ruins into business, but it had not forgotten that people died under the temple.

The waiver made that official.

Only after the confirmations did Herman lead them toward the cave system.

The three-star dungeon crawl had begun.