To maintain order, a group of roaming factions had instituted a lottery system here.
They occupied a relatively flat stretch below the rift, using collapsed wall stones and broken beams to build a crude raised platform.
The platform was not large, only three or four meters square. Its surface was pieced together from broken planks, with nails still sticking out in places. A Stake stood before it, bearing a wooden sign inscribed with charred branches. Several crooked words were carved into it: "Lottery Draw."
The sign swayed gently in the wind, letting out faint creaks.
Gano sat atop the platform, leaning against the half-standing stone pillar behind him.
He was over forty, with a long scar running across his face from the left side of his forehead all the way to his right jaw. The scar was deep, as if something had torn open his face before it had been hastily stitched back together.
His hair was a tangled mix of gray and black, as though it had not been washed in ages, greasy and plastered to his scalp. His right hand was still intact, its fingers thick and short, its knuckles swollen, the back of it covered in calluses and scars. His left leg had been amputated below the knee, leaving white bone exposed at the stump. The bone was cracked, black grime lodged in those cracks as if it had not been cleaned for years.
He leaned on a crude wooden crutch carved from a dead branch. Its surface was rough and angular, painful to grip.
Gano had once been a small-time merchant in town. He had sold cloth, grain, and secondhand goods.
He had not been rich, but neither had he been poor.
With his glib tongue and quick wits, he could trade in a bit of