Lucien can mostly make a living off of doing divining for certain niche medical studies, but he can't do specific enough conditionals to get his grander ideas off the ground yet. Still, when portals start showing up he's well positioned to suggest to a few people that diviners like him could be useful for quickly figuring out what conditions on the other worlds are actually like.
Still, they're taking a chance on Lucien by approving his application to join the expedition, so he definitely really shouldn't be late for his first day of work. He also probably shouldn't be running along a poorly maintained trail in Bolivia, but between that and the possibility of being late he knows which he prefers.
Well, which he prefers right up until he's tripped on a branch and sent tumbling towards the portal.
"Weird. Well, if you don't have it you don't have it. Paper is good, surfacer food is good if you wanna trade it for mushrooms."
"Huh. I am still interested in them but less. I'm also tempted by the food thing but I try to avoid overspending on luxury snacks so I would not really want to pay you what it's worth and can probably flip it for more, unwrapped."
Nod. She can have all the aforementioned items.
"Is this going to be enough for you to buy me a ladder. And uh, for you to escort me with the ladder to the portal."
"Not very. I think I could carry a ladder from my world that far by myself but possibly your ladders are much heavier."
"I cannot really do that either." Sigh. "And I have just spent my scroll budget for, like, a while, but if your stuff sells really well I can maybe spring for a Fly and you can get up there that way?"
Nod. That one is pretty self-explanatory.
"Is it possible to sell my divination abilities for things."
"...risky because it is not exactly a done thing to let magic non-drow live around here but maybe, what do they do?"