This article contains major spoilers for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, especially the Cassalanter storyline.
Things can get dark in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. But the darkest moment of all is not in the story with the beholder crime lord. It’s not even in the story with one of Faerûn’s greatest dark wizards. This grim honor belongs to the new villains on the block: Lord Victoro and Lady Ammalia Cassalanter. The most horrific moment of the entire story happens when the player characters make a no-win choice at the end of the Cassalanter storyline.
If you want your players to consider the consequences of their actions and the weight of their duty as heroes, set Dragon Heist in summer with the Cassalanters as your villains. At the end of this story, the following choice lies with the heroes. Who dies: one hundred unsuspecting people, or two innocent children?
Let’s back up.
The Cassalanter’s Bargain
This is your last chance to turn back before the spoilers really kick in. Seriously, if you aren’t DMing Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, you should consider backing out now. Because we’re about to crack open this adventure and pick through its guts for the seeds of this bleak, decisive moment. It all started when Victoro and Ammalia were younger. Victoro Cassalanter was the heir to one of Waterdeep’s wealthiest noble families, and he and his beautiful and clever wife had one son, Osvaldo Cassalanter. Even by this time, however, the Cassalanters were devil worshipers. Yet even with all their privilege, Victoro and Ammalia longed for more.
Some time ago, “Ammalia and Victoro signed a contract with [Asmodeus], trading the souls of their children for power, good health, and long life. The soul of Osvaldo, their eldest son, was taken immediately, and he was transformed into a chain devil” (Source). Victoro and Ammalia are not good people. They did not make a deal with Asmodeus out of desperation. They were already wealthy beyond imagining, and they traded the soul of their eldest son for an embarrassment of temporal riches. But as with all Faustian bargains, the Cassalanters’ greed would come to haunt them.
The Cassalanters did not just pay for their power, health, and longevity with the soul of their eldest son. They promised the souls of all their children. And as the Dark One’s own luck would have it, Ammalia bore twins. Terenzio and Elzerina Cassalanter are now eight years old, and their parents have learned that Asmodeus plans to take their souls when they turn nine years old later this summer. Ammalia and Victoro are not heartless. They are selfish, cruel, and greedy, but they do love their children. They regret losing Osvaldo to Asmodeus’s bargain just as much as they love the power they have gained from it.
In short, the Cassalanters owe Asmodeus the souls of their twin children, Terenzio and Elzerina, and he will come to collect before the end of the summer.
The Way Out
But the Cassalanters do have a way to renege upon their deal with Asmodeus. I wouldn’t put it past Asmodeus to have included this clause fully understanding that the Cassalanters would want to back out after seeing how Osvaldo suffered. (Osvaldo has been transformed into a chain devil, and the Cassalanters keep him hidden away in the rafters of their house.) Asmodeus stands to profit greatly off of this secondary clause of the deal, for he will agree to spare the souls of the Cassalanters’ present and future children if they deliver to him “one shy of a million gold coins and the sacrifice of one shy of a hundred unfortunate souls.” Simply by the numbers, 99 souls is a much better deal than two, and he needn’t so much as lift a finger to obtain them!
And if you select the Cassalanters as your villains for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, their plot to save their children’s souls requires them to find the Stone of Golorr, enter the Vault of Dragons, and abscond with the half-million gold pieces interred there. The players need to stop them… right? They’re the bad guys. They’re devil-worshipers planning on paying nearly one million gold coins and sacrificing nearly one hundred innocent people to Asmodeus as tribute in order to make up for their mistake! That seems like a more than worthy adversary for any group of adventurers.
“Aye, There’s the Rub”
Perhaps you’ve seen the trolley problem this poses to any would-be heroes who seek to defeat the Cassalanters. It’s actually a sort of reverse trolley problem; if the characters actively oppose the Cassalanters, their actions will save the lives of 99 innocent Waterdhavians from being sacrificed to the Hells, and they will also recover the cache of gold for the city. However, in doing so, they condemn the Cassalanters’ innocent children to damnation. The Cassalanters’ greed has not damned them. If they covered their tracks well, they will emerge from this entire sordid affair as—still—one of Waterdeep’s wealthiest, best respected, and powerful families. Their children, however, will suffer for eternity.
It’s a grim day for the player characters to see their actions—their victory!—lead to the loss of two innocent souls.
But the characters have to take action. After all, defeat is—by the numbers, anyway—much worse than victory. If they do nothing, or worse, lose to the Cassalanters, 99 souls will be sacrificed, and the half-million gold they fought so hard to protect will be handed over to Asmodeus on a silver platter.
Are your players willing to make this choice? Over the course of their adventure, they will have likely met Terenzio and Elzerina. They may have even befriended them. The “goal” of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is to claim the half-million gold pieces for yourself and keep it out of the hands of the villains. But if victory means losing your two friends, would you still seek victory? Would you instead seek to ally yourselves with the villains just to save their innocent children? Even if it meant sacrificing 99 other souls you’ve never met?
If your game has already passed their crucial juncture, which path did your party choose? Which choice do you suspect your party will make? Or will they make another choice altogether?
“I Don’t Believe in the No-Win Scenario”
A truly determined party might seek a third option. The heroes have found themselves in a Kobayashi Maru situation, but in the word of James Kirk, some parties “don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” How would you go about saving not only the 99 innocent souls and 999,999 gold pieces the Cassalanters plan on sacrificing and the souls of their two children? Osvaldo, I regret to opine, is probably a long-lost cause. Consider some options, and maybe you’ll be ready for your players when they try to pull a fast one on you.
Pulling one over on the Supreme Master of the Nine Hells himself is no small feat, especially for 5th-level characters. Will you wait ‘til 15th level or so and launch an attack on Nessus itself to reclaim Terenzio and Elzerina’s souls? Will you try to challenge Asmodeus to a fiddling contest? (In the right game, with the right DM, that might work!) What would you offer in exchange for the souls of these children?
Something to think about.
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and his fiendish yowlers, Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
I'm kind of tired of these massive spoiler articles showing up on the front page.
You can argue that people should have self control and not look at them, but theres only so much that can be thrown in your face before something sticks.
Thankfully I read that first line and stopped myself, but can we please have a way of ignoring these articles completely by filtering articles with the Spoiler tag perhaps?
I really wanted to run to the Cassalanters, but I am running Dragon Heist for a group including my kids. Just not dropping this on them. Not until they are a bit older. :D
Amazing article as always, I think this has convinced me to (eventually) run W:DH in Summer. Originally I wanted to run with the Xanathar, but after reading up on Manshoon and his plans I wanted to have the characters face him, but this whole problem will be fun to see the party talking about, both in and out of the game.
There is always the option to strike your own bargain with Asmodeus to invalidate the bargain of another. Numbers are nice, but Asmodeus, unlike the other archfiends, has no quota of souls. So rather than focus on quantity, he may be swayed by quality. If your character is noble enough to lay down their own soul in exchange for the two children, you may very well pique the archfiend's interest.
Which would also be great lore for an infernal pact warlock, should you like to offer your players that option upon completing the adventure.
As I see it, the best way to have a no-loss scenario is to kill Victoro and Ammalia. The pact was between two parties; the first being Asmodeus, the second being Victoro and Ammalia. The fee was either the souls of any and all children of those two, or 999,999 gp and 99 unwitting souls. If Victoro and Ammalia are dead, then the beneficiaries of the original pact don't exist, and as such, the pact would be rendered null and void.
Now, first off, the two Cassalanters (not counting their servants and minions) are powerful foes for 1st-5th level PCs, so offing them would be quite the task. But that's a given; I'm going for story, here, not game mechanics. And we also don't have any canonical write-up of the pact itself, so everything I've said is technically just assumption based on what we know from Dragon Heist. So, further assumption, though not based upon Dragon Heist itself, follows.
Presumably, the Lawful Evil alignment of the Cassalanters, combined with their religious practices, would consign their souls to the Nine Hells, meaning that Asmodeus would have them no matter how the Dragon Heist module plays out. Considering their respective power (i.e. Challenge Rating) having Victoro and Ammalia's souls alone would be much better than just their three kids, and a much more reliable investment than 99 souls of indeterminate value. It's possible, considering the Cassalanters' intelligence, that they could've foresee and address this loophole in the contract, but greed blinds people, so I'm assuming that neither of them would've thought of this. And of course, both Victoro and Ammalia would be too selfish to commit suicide even for the sake of their own children, so even if they realized their death(s) would release their children from the contract, neither would go through with it.
Of course, this is all just me spit-balling, people can and should do what they want in their own games.
For sure, killing the Cassalanters is the first thing I thought of. Easy math, kill the 2 devil worshippers and save 101 people.
As the DM and a player I would expect the players to recruit some help. This would be where that renown comes in which they got from doing all the faaction quests. For each of the factions over 4 renown a champion might join them, a bad ass NPC to run. Or a high level artifact (ala Crit Role vestiges) might be loaned to them. Gather enough evidence and the Black Staff along with a horde of griffon calvary. Lots of options to drop hints or let the players figure it out (my choice).
Assuming, of course, that Asmodeus did not write the pact so that the souls were forfeit regardless of whether the Cassalanters are still alive. Fiendish pacts can be quite... devilish in their details. ;)
Killing the Cassalanter's would not stop the contract. Payment from Asmodeus has been delivered to the Cassalanter's there for payment owed is still needed. Think of it like debt owed upon the death of a family member. When the estates are being sold off it is still used to pay those debts back.
I can't remember but I think that mortal law is still considered overriding to infernal contracts. The reason they were able to bargain there children's souls is because parents own all property of there children to a certain age. Changing the local law to dictate that a childs spiritual beliefs belong to themselves and cant be dictated by the parents might trump the kids half of the contract. Basicly starting that a childs soul is theres to manage and not the parents.
Well then asmodeus shoulda specified shouldn't he.
And yeah bugs have souls anything that lives has a soul. It just may not be very complex or hold much.
Remember, DMs: the exact specifics of Asmodeus's contract with the Cassalanters are up to you. The adventure provides wording that states they need to hand over 999,999 gold and 99 souls to Asmodeus, but there are plenty of details the book leaves out. Do they need to be humanoid souls? Do dragons or kobolds or goblins count towards the total? Do the gold coins need to be intact, or will the equivalent in solid gold suffice?
Trying to lawyer out the exactly details of this contract and how to circumvent it in the comments isn't going to get you anywhere, because the adventure very intentionally left out the specifics. Making up how the contract works and how clever players can circumvent it is up to you.
Here's how I solved the problem:
In order to save their children, they sacrifice their money and become poor. You and your allies then take the Cassalanters in as employees at your inn back in Trollskull. Now you have to help them raise their children and do what you must with the devil child in the attic.
It's not about winning, it's about living in harmony. And for the villains, every door closed is another door opened.
THAT'S WHAT I SAID HELL YEAH
Here's a thought, why ask for "one shy of a million" and "one shy of one hundred".
I personally believe this is a major trap by Asmodeus (or a great place for a DM to add one).
For one, it means that should any additional person die at the sacrifice, or if one single gold piece is slipped in or miscounted, then the contract remains intact and despite the offering, the children die.
It could also be a sort of word play. "one shy of a million gold coins" could mean one gold piece shy, or one copper piece, or one person who's intimidating of talking to a million gold coins.
Or considering that coins are called "dragons" in Waterdeep maybe it could be read as "one dragon shy of one million gold" and that could be Aurinax.
Just some ideas to throw out there.
Oooooooh clever.
JH: Maybe your party could find a third option?
Me and my group, in a completely separate game: Yeah, third option sounds good.
JH: Maybe you could wait until 15th level and storm Nessus?
My group: Why wait?
(Note: We started this before this article came out, as a group of 4 level 5 characters and 4 NPCs of equal or lower level. Fun times on out YT channel.)
You know, in the scenario of saving the 99 innocents and being unable to save the children, I like to picture a scene. a group of adventurers, ranging from big burly barbarians to small sneaky sorcerers all using some of their money they spent the whole adventure getting in order to treat two small children to one last day of fun before the inevitable happens.
I prefer the John Constantine approach to this, offer the 2nd through 4th most powerful devil lords the souls of the two innocent children. Make separate deals with all of them. In order for all out war in the 9 Hells to be avoided, the 4 devils would have to agree not to take the souls. Of course, you then have 4 really irritated devils on your trail, but it would make for interesting scenarios.
The fiddling contest
;)
The devil went down to Georgia reference...Btw I did cheat asmodeus in a fiddle contest and won their souls,ownership of hell and a magic golden fiddle that auto nat 20s performance,persuasion and Slight of hand Checks
My group is currently trying to get a law passed to make sure that child slavery is definitely illegal which would mean that by law, the Cassalanters cannot bargain with this children's souls. Since devils are Lawful. I also believe the fact that the children are good they can't have their souls taken as by even the laws of the abyss devils aren't supposed to take the souls of anybody that isn't evil. Hopefully we can get that passed and get to the gold first and save 101 lives
If the party were to kill the parents would that make the "deal" null and void because they would no longer be enjoying "Good Health" or "Long Life"?
Would this get the children out safely?