The Loot Becomes Paperwork

Back at the Aleklotson Inn, the treasure stopped being treasure and became a legal problem. The party gathered in their suite and sorted the dragon-lair haul while weighing several claims at once. QUEST had sent them for recovered artifacts. Aleklot's Rest had local interests. Lawful magic-rationing records turned attunement into something close to ownership, registration, and taxation. Keeping an item was no longer just a question of usefulness. It was a question of what the world would let them say they had. So they debated what to declare. What to keep. What to hide. The Ring of Absorption immediately became the kind of object everyone understood should not be handed over casually. The party began planning to under-declare it before the official administrator arrived, turning the aftermath of the dungeon into a second encounter with different weapons. The dragon had tested their bodies. The inn would test their honesty, loyalty, and appetite for bureaucracy.