WotW Part 1: The Secret Ingredient Is Fire

Alternate titles: We Better Take Her Eyes, Escape By Arson's Light

The Way of the Wicked is an adventure path made for Pathfinder. In it the player characters begin as prisoners condemned to some grizzly fate for an equally grizzly crime. They are as a rule horrible people, and in the course of this adventure are expected to perform many fantasy villain clichés. I am adapting it as I go to DnD 5th Edition.

For this unwholesome adventure has been assembled a dastardly duo.

John Lucidum - Disappointing second son of a petit bourgeoisie human family, wizard, and pyromaniac. Attributes sorted by ascending importance. Burned down his family farm and home when it became clear it would fall to him after his older brother went away to join the Knights of Alerion. He hates farming.

John Lucidum as portrayed by
Mackenzie Crook. Imagine he 
has both of his eyes.

Timmy the Goblin Boy - Is a fungus ridden goblin druid and most definitely not a boy. Forsaken twice over. First exiled from Faerie for the crime of eating one of the most delicious beautiful flowers in the House of Beauty. Then caught passing around pamphlets advocating for various radical freedoms and shouting about how 'the man' (presumably they mean the King but who knows with such people ?) keeps everyone down. They were tried for sedition in the mortal realm.

After being captured and sentenced for their crimes our intrepid villains were taken to Brandescar prison, a fort on the southeast coast turned secure holding pen for the wretched. The castle sits on a small rocky island, connected to the land by bridge. Frigid sea below slowly saws through sharp cliff faces. 

There in the courtyard, hemmed in by high stone walls and lungs full of salty air they were each branded with a runic F for forsaken, a tradition going back hundreds of years. They knew that for three days they would wait before being led to their final fates.

The most foreboding Brandescar Castle

The first floor of the castle hall has been ripped of furnishings, the windows bricked up, and the space divided by walls of iron bars. Save for our desperate duo there is one other captive. A great hulking man, his head as big as your torso and fists the size of your head. An ogre. He snores and snorts, many shallow spear wounds to his chest are open and weeping. When Timmy decides to wake him from his intermittent rest they learn that the ogre is named Grumble and that he had been a bandit on a local trade road. He is waiting to be executed.

Conversation With A 'Friend'

After some hours of getting acquainted the sergeant arrives and informs John, quite roughly, that a guest has arrived for him. The sergeant has a strange distance in his eyes and voice, as if he's talking to someone somewhere other than here. John is taken out to a side room. It's long and thin, filled with a battered and worn table, the walls have dark patches of spatter stains and the floor around the nearest chair is off colour from the rest of the flagstone. 

In the centre of the room, framed by all the grime and entirely out of place, is the most beautiful woman. Dressed as a mourner, she has clearly been weeping and greets John as if he is a close relative, which is quite confusing for the man who killed most of his closest family within the last cycle of the moon.

The woman, who introduces herself after requesting the sergeant leave them alone, immediately drops her sobbing. She introduces herself in quite the business-like manner as Tiadora, claiming that she has come to offer them their freedom, and revenge on their condemners, if only they will reach out and take it. If they spring themselves from this joint and find their way to a manor on the nearby moor they will meet her master, who is quite interested in their 'skills'. 

Map of Castle Brandescar. Our duo began imprisoned in 18c. The room where John met Tiadora is 20

John is a stubborn and impulsive man, though they have three days before they are carted off in which to plan, watch patrol routes, listen to conversations, etc, he instead tries -  and fails - to make Tiadora his prisoner. Fortunately for him as he is sprawled on the table after his failed lunge the woman's eyes light up as if Michaelmas, Hanukah, and Diwali have all come at once. "Oh John, you've made my day"

The woman hikes her mourning dress, crosses the table, puts herself in his arms and he dutifully takes her hostage. Her sobbing immediately begins again, this time accompanied by begging please don't do this. The sergeant opens the door and there is a short confrontation. With John threatening to kill their guest the sergeant retreats with his men down the stairwell. John considers making his escape selfishly for some moments before his rational self-interest decides to release the goblin and the ogre, the key ring is on a wall hook right beside him. How portentous.

As they make their way out together a gang of guards come back up the stairs. The goblin unleashes growths of moss and clinging grass around the landing. John throws ineffectual gouts of fire at them as they stumble through the inexplicable undergrowth. Grumble brusquely pushes his way to the front of the group and with one sharp extension of his huge arm his fist connects with the face of one of the attacker. The man is sent reeling to the floor, nose crushed and body limp.

Down The Chimney Escape

The sergeant again retreats down the stairs and the rest of his entourage tail after him through the sticky moss, gouts of fire lashing at them as they go. Timmy releases a thick fog from who knows where which fills the room, rolls down the stairs, and into the huge fireplace that dominates the room. John, Timmy, and Tiadora descend down the chimney after convincing they convince Grumble to head down the stairs, and after Timmy decides marginally in favour of not extracting the eyes of the one dead guard in the room.

Emerging in the kitchen John enacts a cunning plan. He casts Disguise Self, appropriating for himself the appearance of the deceased guard one floor above sans obliterated nose before proceeding into the next room, a dining hall. Where two kitchen servants greet the camouflaged man. Timmy huddles around Tiadora's feet, hidden from view by her dress.

When the sounds of guard dogs barking, men shouting, and ogre screaming in the adjacent hallway turn to fighting the servants flee out a side door in the kitchen. John sets the dining room ablaze, and they search the kitchen cabinets for knives and cheese, before following the servants out into the courtyard.

Smoke now billowing out the side of the keep all hands are scrambled with buckets and water. The sergeant sees Tiadora with John and instructs him to convey her from this place. Glancing over their shoulders they witness Grumble finally succumb, a spear to his belly and dogs ripping at his legs bring him to the ground of hallway filling from the ceiling with smoke. The party proceeds out the gatehouse, which John lights as they pass through, and across the bridge to the gatehouse. Behind them a column of smoke is beginning to form. 

They quickly persuade the gate guard to go help, take the dog on duty after persuading him with a little stolen cheese (they name him Béchamel), close the portcullis behind them and walk on toward the moor, tower of smoke creeping towards the heavens behind them.

So begins the odious adventure of our not-yet-great villains