The start of my scouting was rather dull, if you ignore that any bad luck or stupidity could have gotten me painfully killed at any time. But all I did was to disguise myself and then seek out one of the seedier bars and nurse some drinks. Quite possibly the owner knew I was up to no good, but I was quiet and paid with good coin. He had not survived by worrying about much else. So I was not bothered as long as I gave no sign of causing trouble. [Of course, he likely would have assumed, correctly, I was going to cause trouble if he had known I was a drow, but there are a variety of races on the surface, and if my disguise was not perfect, it certainly was good enough to confuse him, which meant my coin won out.] And I caused none as I sought out future customers.
The underdark produces a wide variety of drugs, which have a wide variety of uses. Not really that much difference from the surface actually, but for good and bad reasons, many of them are illegal on the surface, and thus of great value to the right people.
The poisons of course were popular. Not that there are not many on the surface too, but the drow poisons are not widely known and so the dead body may be investigated in the right way and the death becomes a natural cause.
And of course new recreational drugs are always popular, whether they are safe or not. Either way, being drow, they were outlawed.
Also popular was the Cure, a drug that cured any disease, temporarily. You would need a renewed dose to continue to be cured, and of course the drug was expensive and rare.
Love potions are always popular, and we drow have quite a few. Who has a better chance to kill you than a lover? And so potions to make sure that love included a desire that one's "love" stays alive are common, as are a variety of fakes and ways to get around such potions.
In any case, I had a wide variety of profitable merchandise. I needed merely to identify those customers who would not try to kill me. This was just a matter of time and caution.
Talk of the sickness of a small merchant provided my opening. A little checking confirmed that he did not have the coin to get the curing he needed, and that he was becoming desperate. And so he woke one morning to find a potion by his bed, and a note saying "From a friend who would have you live."
I am unaware of how quickly he drank it. But within a week, he was out of his sick bed, and back to work. I continued to stay quietly at the bar. I might well need a backup for one thing, and my plan had assumed this was going to be a slow process. So I had plenty of time to make my preparations. Only when the potion had begun to wear off did I need to act again.
I still had to wait until he was aware the cure had been only temporary. It would not do to have him still denying that. But eventually, he had to be well aware of his doom. So again, I used my magic to produce another potion besides his bed, along with a note to come to a certain quiet location if he wanted more.
I had no trouble finding out he had taken the potion. His return to health showed that. But what had he decided? I did not want to expose myself by looking too closely, but I did risk a look that showed him to be nervous and distracted, which left me unsure too.
But what I had to do was make sure that I would be able to talk with him without his being aware of who, what, or where I was. This was not all that hard, but I had to be ready. It was still possible for him to slip the hook if I was careless.
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