Hall of the Vanquished

Cultists of Levistus use the bind to Hell spell to permanently divert the souls (or, in the case of outsider foes, the bodies) of those they slay to Baator. The souls of their mightiest victims are stored here, in the Hall of the Vanquished—a combination museum and training ground carved deep into the Stygian ice.

The hall consists of a series of interconnected display rooms. Icy avatars of famous heroes, archons, demons, chaos beasts, and other typical baatezu opponents stand dramatically posed on pedestals. An information plaque, carved in unquenchable fire on slabs of ice, describes each creature's capabilities or recalls its legendary deeds. This information focuses on practical advice useful in combating similar entities.

Devils and visiting cultists can apply to museum authorities to have specimens temporarily thawed for test combats in one of the hall's four training chambers. Letters from the layer's diabolical notables ensure approval.

The vanquished are released from their frozen state by the utterance of a trigger word, as devised by the caster of the original bind to Hell spell that brought them here. Museum staffers do not learn the trigger words for new arrivals until they are contacted by the swashbuckler-priests responsible for each soul's demise. However, as fanatical upholders of law, Levistus's worshipers rarely delay the necessary paperwork for long.

The files containing the trigger words for all the frozen souls are located in the Records Storage room. The door is locked and trapped.

The hall's guards, overseen by an implacable ice devil named Zaguror, stand careful watch against intruders. Friends of newly captured mortals occasionally stage raids against the museum to rescue the souls of their comrades, and they are sometimes successful.

Mortal souls taken outside the museum dissipate, returning immediately to their proper afterlives. Soul forms of extraplanar creatures, however, remain intact and must be physically transported to their home planes. For obvious reasons, it's easier to move an ambulatory soul form to its home plane than lug around a frozen specimen. The bodies of outsiders need only be freed from the ice to flee to their home planes (assuming they have the ability to travel between planes).

If transported to their rightful afterlives, such souls can then be raised or resurrected. If killed inside the museum, these diverted souls merely return to their pedestals with new expressions of frustration and torment etched onto their frozen features.