After the roper, the players assessed damage and resources, and decided they would continue further in.

They proceeded along a series of galleries, and reached a worked "dungeon" area that was actually the main prison part. They had been picking up clues all along the way- graffiti, a broken down barred door here and there, a row of shackled skeletons, a twisted poricullis gate.. minor stuff. But they knew they hit the prison for real once they got past the blasted iron doors.

So they started being stealthy- they put on their darkvision gear, and doused their own light sources.  They tried being quiet.

Unfortunately they walked right past a trap- a cluster of shriekers (another D&D classic!) The howling started ringing out through the complex. Bernard made a quick hack-job on the shriekers to shut them up, but it was too late.

At the far end of the hallway, I had a Slaughterstone Eviscerator (see.. I think MM3) alerted by the shriekers. It attacked in the bending hallway, along an area with stone benches and sluice gates.

This was kind of a cool battle. The Eviscerator has 4 blades, and takes an amazing full attack. Ganex and Bernard flanked it and locked it up (Bernard seemed to take the brunt of most of the creatures attacks). They fought it in the hallway, and managed to destroy it with de-animation and lesser orbs.

At the end there, they left it in pieces, scattered in the hallway.

Continuing further in-- they explored more prison areas, avoiding one major cell area. ("saving it for later").

First they discovered a series of actual prison cells, most of them empty. One they ran across had a famous villian I had used in a previous campaign- a lich called Lakrionis. He was being kept in an area of anti-magic.

They went back and talked to him for a while, trying to gather clues about the area and most importantly who the prison-captors were. Lakrionis is sort of my "pleasant gentleman menace" villian, and he eagerly took them up in conversation, and asked for them to release them. They declined. But they made a deal, that if they were ever to meet again "on the outside", they would meet as friends.

So that was kind of a fun roleplaying scene. Lakrionis let slip that the prison was administered by the Farwalkers, a group of extraplanar "law-enforcers" that had appeared earlier in this campaign and in some of my previous campaigns.

(Lakrionis later did escape, after they left. He'll appear in the final sequence of the campaign, I imagine. Or maybe not..)

Ok, so after scoping out the rest of this area of the prisons, they backtracked towards the main cell they had saved for later.

(more soon)

The door to the final cell was big- twice as large as normal. It had a little barred window but it was too high up for the characters to peek into, and their flight spells had long since worn off. They weren't quite running on fumes at this point- I think Ganex still had over half of his power point reserve, and Owyn had used most of his lower level spells (lesser orbs) on the construct. But he had some high-level spells as well. Bernard used most of his spells healing people, and he still had a wand for that as well.

I'd say they were about at 50%.

Ok, so the players puzzled out the door for a while, and took a peek in (Owyn eventually sent his familiar in for recon). They could see a massive cavern beyond the door, where a gigantic crystal showed flickering scenes from other places-- I described the scenes as having a celestial quality. There were mirrored areas throughout the cell as well, so every surface would show these scenes.

Inside, they could see the occupant- a large figure dressed in a ragged hooded cloak-- watching  the main crystal, in a catatonic state. Leaning against the wall was a rune-covered greatsword.

In the end, it was too interesting to let go by. Owyn picked the lock, and they moved in.

I wasn't sure about this encounter. The occupant of the cell was non other than Asrafel, the fallen angel they helped banish way back in session #40-something! She was very angry at them. She wanted her Codex Perilous back, and she wanted to be free. The 'punishment' in her cell was to be shown scenes of the realms of Celestia where she was forever barred from returning. Also, she had been stripped of most of her remaining celestial powers by Hamuran (the half-celestial Shedu who had helped arrest her originally). I had messed around with her stats, and made her into a modified deathbringer.

So, upon recognizing her liberators, I gave them about a round to decide whether they were going to battle or not.

I had her pull off her hood, take up her sword and reveal herself. "Give me one reason why I should not destroy you all.."

Owyn responded with "I can give you none.. Disintegration Ray!"

And that started the big battle in the main prison.

 (more later)