The City Watch showed up at the tavern to investigate the gunfire. Fortunately, the gatling turret was concealed away - Sigurd notes that the bullets seem to be made of a special substance that makes the bullets disintegrate when they stop moving. Valetta clearly has spent a lot of work into making sure her little toy was undetectable as possible. Jalester headed up the conversation with the Watch, informing them of the situation regarding the Bregan D'aerthe. As a result, the City Watch patrols in the North Ward are going to be stepped up as much as possible, though as there's still a gang war going on that needs to be contained, it might not be as great as the party would like. Still, the reports have been filed and it's been made clear that Jarlaxle has had enough of the party's meddling. He's not sure how Laeral is going to proceed with that, but she's aware of the situation, though causing a war with Luskan and even also Lantan (who is allied with Luskan) is not something she wants to risk. As for the Cassalanters, it definitely does not look good for them. The City Watch managed to find the Temple of Asmodeus under the villa, and the Gralhunds have confessed to everything after being turned over to the City Watch by Tyr's Hall of Justice in exchange for a plea deal. Before a confession could be extracted, though, Victoro apparently used his Polymorphed son Osvaldo as a distraction and sicked him on his interrogators (Laeral, specifically), and he and Ammalia fled using some kind of teleportation magic, likely a Plane Shift spell from Laeral's guesses. The Han family has been assisting with the situation, but it appears that Victoro and Ammalia have realized they have been busted and are now on the lam from the law. They are wanted, dead or alive, for their crime of effectively killing Osvaldo Cassalanter - and invoking the future death of Elzerina and Terenzio (more on that later), along with their murder plot and the disappearance of countless citizens - servants who weren't part of the cult but ended up finding out too much. It gets worse - apparently, Victoro's office was looted, and the records of all of his contracts and deeds have been stolen by an unknown party. It's suspected the Black Viper might be involved, though it's unclear as a calling card was left in things that were definitely looted by the famous thief, and no such card was found in Victoro's office. However, Solo was able to surmise through what scant records he could find while aiding the Lord's Alliance of what Victoro might have been aiming for. It's pretty clear he gave up the soul of Osvaldo in exchange for wealth and power, evident by the Cassalanter resurgence and even winning the Garden Party two years in a row. Solo is familiar with fiend dealings and believes that Terenzio and Elzerina are set to meet a similar fate at some point, likely on their 9th birthday, which is ten days after the Day of Wonders. The Cassalanters had to find Neverember's gold in order to avoid bankrupting themselves, and then the plan was to hold a party on the Day of Wonders and use the Midnight Tears to kill one shy of a hundred people - beggars and miscreants that wouldn't be missed, likely - while also sacrificing one shy of a million gold pieces. The Cassalanters have most of their money tied up in investments, but those could easily be liquidated into coinage for this purpose. If the Cassalanters could complete this sacrifice, the clause in their contract to Asmodeus would be fulfilled and the children would be spared. Speaking of the children, they were found hiding in the pantry, apparently having used a secret entrance to get there. They have been placed under protection by the Lord's Alliance and Solo's family is helping to look after them. In addition, most of the upper staff of the estate has been arrested for being complicit in the whole plot, though their sentences will likely be minimal since they weren't masterminding things. Laeral has tasked Solo with investigating for a way to break Osvaldo, Terenzio and Elzerina from their fate, but it's not looking promising, and their parents' foolish, selfish decision may have sealed their fate for eternity - Asmodeus is not someone you can easily get out from under the thumb of without some kind of recompense, and his plan has already wreaked havoc on the city by getting many of noble status involved in his cult.. Jalester says the Cassalanters' assets will likely be seized by the city - perhaps not surprisingly, hardly anybody came to the Cassalanters' defense, for fear of being outed with their involvement in cultist activity and having their name smeared by this massive scandal - but without the contracts and deeds, figuring out what all of that actually is might be difficult, and it's going to involve a lot of investigative work to figure out the paper trail. In addition, they will probably be stripped of their noble status, which is really unfortunate as it further disgraces the name of Caladorn Cassalanter, who was an amazing leader in the city during his time in office. The chaos at the villa erupted just before the judges' arrival. Needless to say, the Cassalanters will not be winning this year. The actual winner this year was House Ulbrinter - Remalia Haventree's house - but the finale concert was cancelled by the Musician's Guild and postponed to a later date pending city investigations. At Remalia's request, it will instead be held at Lightsinger Theatre in one tenday's time to give the city time to sort things out and give folks a chance to see Ireena and her friends perform without the negative air surrounding the event hanging over the performance. Jalester says he's going to have plenty to keep him busy in the coming days, so he will be indisposed of for a few days while he helps Laeral and the Lord's Alliance conduct some investigations. If the team needs to get a hold of him, they are invited to come to the Palace of Waterdeep and have Enigma show his Lord's Alliance ring. Speaking of Enigma, Laeral is grateful for all of his hard work up to this point and has recognized his efforts, She says that if she can complete the final task of bringing Urstul Floxin to justice, she is willing to promote him to the rank of Stingblade within the Lord's Alliance, though any formal ceremony will have to wait until the matter of the gold is settled. The team opted to spend the night at Fala's loft, at their request, as their living space was currently a shambles. However, the next morning would bring at least a silver lining - the Han family had showed up to check out the damage, along with the other residents of the alley. Hendrick, Solo's brother, introduced himself and his family and explained that while currently Solo is busy helping Laeral with the Cassalanter situation, he intends on paying a visit to the tavern to repair it, courtesy of his son Bureidi (who is paying for the supplies provided by Tally's carpentry shop) and a handful of castings of the Fabricate spell, which can create goods with raw materials in a matter of minutes as opposed to what might be days. Apparently, Solo practiced many crafts during his early years of Sanctuary's rule, and had the practical knowledge to bring the Fabricate spell to its full effectiveness. Renaer also visited the tavern to see what had happened for himself, and informed the team of many things they were already aware of, but more importantly, he highlighted that the whole Cassalanter thing was probably one of the biggest scandals to hit the nobility of Waterdeep in a long time. If the greater public found out, it would likely shatter the faith of the common man in the nobility for a very long time, so many folks were on full damage control in the background. Hopefully it wouldn't cause any further disruption to Waterdeep's already volatile state of affairs! Some of the other residents also had some things to say about recent happenings in the alley - they united to help the team in their time of need and if there was anything they could do, they'd band together for it. Correo Sky-Strider, the mailman, informed the team he witnessed a peculiar site at Emmek's shop this morning, when he was confronting the hired mercenaries about some kind of payment issue. He had overheard that the mercenaries' contractor could no longer pay them and they were leaving, and then they did promptly just that, leaving Trollskull Alley with great haste. Leaving Emmek Frewn's pub largely unguarded. Emmek stormed back inside in a huff. Vincent Trench, who made a surprise outside appearance, asked the party to meet with him in his office, as he had something important to discuss. He had confessed that 'Nevercott', who was actually Jarlaxle in disguise of course, had confronted him about his identity and threatened to expose him if he had done any more meddling into Jarlaxle's affairs. It was a rare opponent that could match Vincent's investigative skills, which he took something of an affront to. What particularly displeased him was that Jarlaxle decided to shoot up the party's tavern and make a big mess of things in Trollskull Alley, which would hurt the businesses of everyone here. He had taken quite a liking to the alley's residents, and to Trollskull in general, and decided it was time to let the team know what his 'true nature' was - that of a rakshasa, a powerful fiend! While the team was initially alarmed, they didn't really get a sense of any hostile intent from Valantajar (which was Vincent's real name, or so he said), and he continued on stating that his time in Waterdeep had changed him quite a bit, becoming quite fond of the city over the years, and had lost much of his violent tendencies that are common of his kind. As he wouldn't risk exposing himself by acting against Jarlaxle directly, he asked if the team would do him the honor instead, if at all possible. In addition, he said that Emmek Frewn annoys him and he would love to see his eyesore of a pub go up in smoke, and wouldn't mind seeing him removed from the picture either. Regardless of what the team did, 'Vincent' offered the team a goodwill gesture, of one free investigation into any one subject matter. "It's on the house." It was clear that Vincent had every intention of also protecting the alley in any way he could, in his own way. Now that things with Vincent were settled, the team could watch Solo do his magic on their tavern, slowly but surely repairing it with the spare materials provided throughout the day as lumber and glass formed themselves to replace the broken materials. The place looked better than it did even before the gunfire - it looks like no expense was spared on high quality aesthetic materials, and the tavern really stood out amidst the alley as a central hub for travelers. Hopefully it would be able to overcome this new setback. Valetta came by to collect her 'item', and informed the team that she was no longer going to tolerate Jarlaxle's shenanigans, her reputation be damned. She let them know that if they really wanted to put Jarlaxle on ice, they should come find her at the House of Inspired Hands, as she seems hell-bent on sacking the Sea Maidens' Faire in retaliation for trying to rip apart the tavern. Valetta was clearly not a woman to be crossed! Also, the team received a visit from Ingrid Jophiel and Yakusheva Borzova, the last two judges from the garden party, and apologized for what had happened to their tavern. Yakusheva met with Yuan and confirmed he knew Phames Goodhill, and invited him to come to Barovia sometime to share in communing with nature, as a fellow barbarian, before complaining about the fancy noble dress she was forced to wear before being dragged away by Ingrid. It was up to the team to decide how to proceed from here - they could focus on collecting the other keys for the Vault or pursue one of their (rather numerous) enemies. There was still plenty of work to be done. How will they proceed? Find out next time, in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist!!