The villain’s lairs make up nearly half of the chapters in Waterdeep Dragon Heist, and they are sadly completely optional. When I ran the adventure, I knew that I wanted to have my players heist the lair of my selected villain, the Cassalanters. Having just ran the villa in my last session, I want to talk a bit about ways to motivate players to enter the Cassalanter Villa, and some ideas on how to DM the lair itself.

Why Enter The Villa?

As written, the main reason for players to enter the Villa is if the Cassalanters end up in possession of the Stone of Golorr. This means that if the players are successful in recovering the stone during the Chapter Four encounter chain, then they are never given a reason to enter the Cassalanter Villa. I refused to gamble on my players failing to recover the stone, so I needed an alternative motivation for my players to enter the villa.

For my campaign, I decided that my players would need to enter the Cassalanter Villa to retrieve a missing eye from the Stone of Golorr, an idea I took from The Alexandrian Remix. I used retrieving this eye as a replacement for gathering the vault keys in Chapter Four, but I could have easily not used the missing eye and instead placed a vault key in the Cassalanter Villa. Either way, even if my players obtained the Stone of Golorr they would still need to heist the villa.

DMing the Villa

When I ran the villa, my players had the Stone of Golorr and had to enter the Cassalanter Villa to retrieve the stone’s missing eye. Following the advice given in The Alexandrian Remix, Golorr can see through his missing eye. This, combined with his legend lore, meant I was able to give my players plenty of information about the Cassalanters and their villa. To prepare my players for the heist, I gave a few key pieces of information.

  • The Cassalanters usually hold a series of Summer picnics leading up to their popular Founders’ Day celebration, any noble can attend these events
  • The servants hired by the Cassalanters are mostly if not entirely tieflings
  • Victoro Cassalanter keeps the eye on him at all times
  • There is an area hidden beneath the villa where the stone looses sight from his missing eye

This information gave my players a few ideas on how to enter the villa without getting into too much trouble, and guided them to find the hidden Temple of Asmodeus underground. As a DM, this meant I worried less about prepping the upper floors of the villa, as my players would be more driven to search the basement.

I used the Founders’ Day descriptions from Chapter Six of the adventure to give ideas how a party might look at the Cassalanter Villa. Other than this, I placed Victoro Cassalanter downstairs in Temple of Asmodeus for my players to run into and fight to retrieve the stone’s missing eye.