Kaldalis was a little unsure about venturing into the dungeon with no healer, but he had pockets full of healing potions, and a very pointed interest in testing out his new Shrug Off cooldown as a solo survival tool.

And if they got murdered horribly by the first boss right away, they could share a good laugh about it and come back later with Balrim.

The stairwell was only dimly lit as they ventured beneath the city. Kaldalis noticed the walls here were dark gray stone, with a rough texture that brought to mind a dungeon. He expected them to receive the notification for the name and clear records for the dungeon at any moment. But it didn’t seem to be happening.

He was just starting to wonder if they’d been bamboozled when they reached the bottom of the stairwell.

The stairwell opened into an office, much like the one at the guard station where they’d turned in Onirioago. The room’s walls were made of those same rough stone blocks, but everything inside was uncomfortably swaddled in bureaucracy. There were a series of manned counters at one end of the room, with velvet ropes defining an area of lines before them. Unlike the Magistrate Office, this place was crowded, with the lines well-populated by adventurers lined up and quietly waiting to be seen.

“What fresh hell is this?” Kaldalis asked. He found himself whispering, to match the quiet of the office.

“Looks like registration,” Ess said. She pointed at the velvet-rope lines, and Kaldalis noticed that there were three separate lines and not just one really long one. “Reminds me of local pickup brackets. In-person sign-ups and all that.”

As soon as he noticed the multiple lines, the detains started to resolve themselves. One line was full of people wearing leather and light chain armor. The next one was mostly cloth - a mix of robes and tunics. While the third line was mostly people in heavier chainmail and even plate armor.

The groups were divided by class role.

What bothered Kaldalis the most was that the people who were finishing up whatever business was keeping them at the counter didn’t then turn and head towards the far door. Opposite the stairwell was a heavy wooden door that likely led into the dungeon proper. But the people who finished their paperwork and left were heading back up the stairs and out.

They weren’t registering to enter the dungeon now.

They were scheduling a later entry.

Kaldalis was jumping to all sorts of conclusions very quickly. What he needed was information and confirmation. It was possible that he was blowing this all out of proportion at high speed, and the truth was going to be much more reasonable. There was an official-looking woman in a suit standing near the heads of the lines, and Kaldalis made his way towards her.

“Excuse me,” Kaldalis asked as she looked up at him. “This is our first time here. How does this work?”

The woman - an older Human with dark brown hair - gave a heavy sigh, pointing at the line full of people with plate armor. “Get in line and you’ll schedule your passage into the dungeon and pay a deposit. Come back when its your scheduled window. The people assigned to the same time window will be here to run with you. If your window has a no-show, a replacement will be assigned. If you’re a no-show, your deposit is forfeit. By default, your deposit is equal to your entry fee, but if you’re deemed unreliable, you may be charged a higher deposit, and the difference will be returned by your guide when the run is completed. In extraordinary circumstances where a guide is unable to fulfil this duty, the difference may be recovered from the gift shop upon your exit, so hold on to your receipt.”

“So the dungeon runs have guides,” Ess said from beside Kaldalis. “That sounds nice.”

Kaldalis found himself focusing on the idea that this dungeon had a gift shop. That wasn’t a good sign.

“So what if we want to run together?” Reno asked.

“Premade groups are going to be throttled by their Slugger members.” The woman gestured at the longest line, which was the one for DPS. “Sluggers with a scheduled time window can request three duplicates of their receipt. Administers, Bodyguards, and one additional Slugger can take the duplicate receipts to their counters and sign up for the same time window.”

“How much is the entry fee?” Reno asked.

“Forty crescents,” the woman said, clearly growing agitated at the continued questioning.

“Jeeze,” Ess said with a grimace. “Steep.”

Kaldalis wasn’t sure why she would flinch at the amount, but remembered that he was still sitting on quite a pile of wealth. He’d done more questing than probably anyone else on the expedition, on top of the coin he’d earned from stream support.

“And we don’t even get to run together,” Reno said with a grimace. “I think I’m tapping out on this and going to chase the questline from the castle.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ess said, patting Reno on the shoulder. “Especially since we can’t guarantee that our window would happen before the trial, and I don’t want to hold us all up on the trip back just for this. Such is the life of DPS queues.”

“I think I’ll give it a shot,” Kaldalis said, trying not to shudder at the idea of going back to the immersion-shattering questgivers in the castle to be sent out to commit more petting-zoo atrocities. “Tank queues are usually pretty short, right?”

“This shouldn’t even count as a tank queue,” Reno complained. “Because I don’t get to ride along for free.”

“How do you think I feel?” Kaldalis said with a smirk as he moved towards the tank line. “I don’t get to guarantee one DPS with output enough to carry the whole group.”

Reno and Ess left, heading back up the stairs, leaving Kaldalis to stand in line alone with his thoughts. It seemed a bunch of people were staring at him, as the conversation with them and the official overseeing the lines had been the loudest thing that had happened in the room all day. It didn’t take long for boredom to reign again, though.

The tank line was the shortest, but all of them moved painfully slow. It seemed to take over twenty minutes for one person to be processed and leave, and there were still nearly a dozen people in front of him. Some of them made casual conversation with the clerks, slowing the whole affair down even more.

Kaldalis noticed that the lines seemed a pretty solid cross-section of the spectrum of adventurers. There were a couple who appeared to be PCs who had made interesting choices for their cosmetics. Healers in fancy dresses that would be more at home on the red carpet than a combat scenario. One DPS was wearing just a bit of fur-covered hide studded with all of his charms. The garment, combined with the sculpted physique and long hair, was obviously intended to evoke Conan the Barbarian. But the execution was a bit closer to He-Man’s fur diaper.

He was the one with the most out-of-place armor, though. The decoratively plated armor Onirioago had given him so long ago stood out in stark contrast to the more utilitarian plate armor of those in line with him, and made him look like kind of a ponce when compared to the rough chainmail that was the starter gear on the others. At least it was well-used, scratched and dirty, to make clear that he’d earned it instead of being some noble dumbass who bought a fancy suit and never wore it outside before.

Three hours after getting in line, he was the next called to the window. The bored-looking Talsar at the window bombarded him with questions for a solid ten minutes, took a few moments to fill out a sheet, and then offered him a schedule.

Kaldalis was a bit surprised to see that the next available slot was tomorrow afternoon. Given the number of people here, he expected it to be farther out, but there were tank slots filled well past that as well, going into the following week. He assumed that was tanks signing up to fit their schedule, or following the process described before and running with their friends.

“I’ll take the first opening here,” Kaldalis said, tapping the empty spot on the little calendar page.

“Thank you,” the clerk said. “Your deposit is sixty crescents, sir.”

Kaldalis wanted to object to being charged a deposit above the entry fee, but he had to admit it was a fair call. He didn’t call Baimer home. He was technically a foreigner, even. They’d also probably heard that he had friends who weren’t joining him, which might have made them consider him a potential no-show.

He had crescents to spare, and was going to get back the difference anyway, so he didn’t make a fuss. Fifteen Full Doubloon coins filled the demand, and in a few minutes he had a carefully handwritten copy of a receipt.

In hand, it seemed more like a ticket than a receipt, neatly written on dense paper, noting the amount of his deposit, identifying the clerk he’d paid it to, and listing the date and time that he’d made the payment. It also contained all the information he’d need, including the date and time of his dungeon window, notifying him that his dungeon guide would be named Daniel, and would expect him to arrive punctually ten minutes before his scheduled time, and assured him that the difference in his deposit of twenty crescents would be paid upon completion.

Kaldalis almost asked if there was anything else he’d need to know, but he had the knowledge now that the person at the head of the tank line was glaring daggers intently at his back right now. He knew that because twenty minutes ago he’d just finished spending twenty minutes glaring daggers at the back of the person in front of him. Instead of holding up the line, he took his receipt and made his way out of the office, seeking to clear the way for the steady march of bureaucracy to continue on.