After awakening from a comfortable slumber in my luxurious sleeping arrangement, I checked to see if Tchadd was still in the room with me. To my frustration, he’d already left and he even forgot to make the bed! Regardless, he gave me all of the information I needed to start my mission. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I had a decent idea for how to do it, assuming things went my way, which they would.

I got my things together and started downstairs, making careful note of the architectural style of the building - in specific, the structure of the chimneys and other passageways of air, as air was one of the simplest things to manipulate when trying to win sweepstakes. In raffles, it’s an important technique to push my tickets to the top of the pile to ensure victory.

I arrived at the bar, but, as I was beginning to walk out the door, I felt like I had forgotten something. Was there some kind of amenity I left on the dresser? After a careful meditation on what I had with me in this world, I just barely remembered that I had left my slave, Sally, in the closet yesterday. I thought about letting him out for the day, but decided not to. He didn’t really have anything to offer. Maybe later.

I stepped out onto the street, searching for anyone who had a good sense of fashion. One little girl in particular caught my eye, wearing a wig of snakeskin and shoulder pads that looked like they had been fashioned out of sea urchins.

“Good morning, little girl,” I said, the girl was startled that I had approached her, perhaps she thought her style was incognito enough to slip past my eye, or something.

“And who might you be? I must say, wearing a bathrobe in public is quite daring. I’m impressed.” Her startled expression became a smug one as she delivered that killer line.

“Well, I’m always on the cutting-edge of these things. But speaking of cutting, you’re looking quite sharp, as well.” I retorted with a fierce glare.

“I’m impressed that you noticed, commoners usually don’t have the eye for these things. You didn’t answer the question though, who exactly are you?”

“Oh, I’m just someone with a passing interest in… sweepstakes” I said, the last word dancing off my tongue like a tiger at the circus.

The girl’s eyes suddenly widened, and though not a moment later they were back to normal, it was evident that she had some kind of lead, or, at the very least, was familiar with those of the craft.

“Sweepstakes, you say… I’d like to feign ignorance here, but seeing as you were able to locate me in the crowd, you already know who I am, don’t you?” She seemed more businesslike now, appearing as though she was sizing me up, deliberating on whether I was worthy to know more.

“I’ve got a passing familiarity, but what I’m really wondering is whether there’s some new juice in the mixer.” I lied to maintain my standing in this battle - our meeting was truly unintentional. Even still, I know better than to assume something like this to be coincidence.

“Well yes, interesting way of putting it. There is, in fact, a new sweepstakes in the works. One of unimaginable proportion. Come to the sewers under the guild hall tonight if you wish to enter. I’ll have more information then, if you’re interested.”

“I’ll see you there.”

It was only morning though, so the meeting wasn’t starting for several hours. I had to find a way to spend the rest of the day. The choice was easy enough though, I needed more information on ways to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time.

A few possibilities came to mind: poisonous potions, constructing a raffling bloc, getting the devil king to fix the water shortage, all decent ideas but none would yield results quickly enough to solve the problem in the time allotted. I needed to find out if there were things with the same kind of destructiveness as hydrogen bombs from my homeworld. If I could get my hands on a bunch of weapons of mass destruction, I figured that I’d have a decent shot at the win.

As a start, I wanted to get Sally some armor so I could use him as a meat shield if someone attacked us. I went back to the tavern and returned to my room. The door to the closet had some visible dents by now, but I was impressed by its durability, assuming his uppercut was as mean as he’d said. I was also impressed that room service had come in and cleaned up, without opening the closet.

I opened the closet door and Sally rushed out. I hope he’s ready for shopping time!