Beers and Beards

Eight days isn’t that long, just a week, but it’s forever when you’re waiting for an Ability to ‘stabilize’.

Of course, dwarven society being what it was, I couldn’t just open a portal to a dungeon in the middle of the city, there were forms to be filled and rules to follow. Portal Abilities were rare, but did exist, usually for Specialisations linked to Aaron, the God of exchange.

So, it was back to City Hall, where I waited in lines, filled some forms, waited in more lines, used my nobility to skip said lines – rank hath its privilege – then filled more forms.

The one big upside to all of this bureaucracy was that I didn’t have to wait the weeks or months extra that it would’ve taken me to get all the approvals and paperwork done on Earth.

Unfortunately, it turned out that while portal abilities were rare, Dungeon portals were… a little more rare.

I paid a rather exorbitant license, agreed to a contract that stipulated a certain percentage of my dungeon’s value would need to be paid to the city to help ensure security. Additionally, I was going to need to hire an expeditionary team, and the first opening of the dungeon would have to be in a special space set aside for dangerous Ability testing. And it would need to be overseen by the army.

The city wanted to know if A) monsters could come out of the door, and B) if people could come out of the door and use the dungeon to launch an invasion. Option A had been Balin’s first concern, but B hadn’t occurred to any of us.

It was obvious in retrospect, but none of us thought like weasley military folk.

So it was that I found myself in the Adventurer’s guild, flirting with the lovely red-bearded easterner receptionist, and filling out more paperwork.