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The first thing Chris tried was just raking his lockpick through the pins trying to get any of them to stick up through the force of his tension rod alone. He figured if the dungeon was eternal and timeless, it wouldn’t exactly follow the latest lockpicking technology. But the lock was as tricky as it looked. He wondered how everyone would react if he got it open that quickly after saying it would take a bit of work. Probably they’d just scramble through the door in the heat of the moment, but afterwards? No, he did need to focus. He took his pick back out, reset the tension bar, and tried again. Once upon a time, back before Chris could ever have conceived of doing this for a living (because earning a living was for peasants, obviously), back before he was even picking the locks the maidservants set on the larder, a man came to Ellwood Manor looking to ply his trade. As it turned out, the man was a locksmith, a new trade branching off from the classical skill of blacksmithing, specializing in exactly what the name implied. If a noble needed something secured, a locksmith was who they would turn to. Now, this was back before Chris’ father and mother, patriarch and matriarch of the Ellwood estate, had imposed any sort of restriction on Chris’ activities, so the man never went near any of the things Chris cared about. He didn’t actually want valuables, yet. In fact, Chris was encouraged to be around the locksmith, helping the guards keep an eye out in case the man tried to pocket something from the coffers. “It might even teach him something,” Chris’ father said. “What a good work ethic looks like.” In a way, his father got what he wanted. The locksmith invited Chris to get up close to an installation, to survey his latest installation. Even to Chris’ untrained eye, it looked like a masterwork. “It’s perfect,” he said. The locksmith shook his head. “It’s not perfect,” he said. “But it’s okay. You make enough of these, you learn to spot the imperfections, the ways to do it better next time. That’s lesson one -- you can tell your father I told you that. Lesson two is this: Nothing is, especially not locks. If it can be opened with a key, it can be opened with a pin and some dedication. My job is to make there be as much dedication as possible.” Well, he certainly was dedicated now. He could feel a ghoul breathing down his neck over on his right, but he just had to keep trusting the rest of the group. Lana broke his concentration. “How’s it going with the lock?” she said. “It sure is going,” Chris said. Only then did he feel the first pin click into place. “Okay, that’s a start.”