They say that after the war against the Rough Beast, the gods, in their wisdom, saw the need for prisons capable of holding other great threats. And so the prisons were raised, in various locales, and warded such that even the mighty would strive against them and found their powers wanting.
Description[]
The Bastille of the Iron Lord is a tall building reputedly made of stone, although no known force has ever been able to damage its exterior walls, much less penetrate into the inside.
Most of the time, those surrounding it know it only as a great prison, where criminals from across the land can be sent for safekeeping. While this is true, its public face hides a much greater, and ultimately much more frightening, facility.
In truth, the Bastille of the Iron Lord is a prison falling under the authority of the archdevil Dispater, lord of prisons, who operates it under the terms of a strict agreement that Hell is a signatory of. The Bastille is a prison designed to cage the most fearsome creatures and deadly artifacts; mythic monsters, intelligent items, unkillable warriors, and other people that no normal prison could hope to contain.
The interior of the prison is a sealed demiplane impossible to breach from the outside; its barriers were created by Abadar, whose knowledge of properly securing high-value items is extraordinarily useful to the prison industry. That still wouldn't be enough to hold some threats, though. What separates the Bastille of the Iron Lord apart from other prisons are its two unique features: The Siphon and The Splintering.
The Siphon[]
The Siphon is a system that runs throughout the entirety of the Bastille of the Iron Lord, drawing magical and mythic power from every criminal held within. This does not utterly depower the criminals, but it does hamper their greatest abilities. Many of the prison's inhabitants generate magical energy simply by existing, and thus the prison has a near-infinite supply for its other systems. This is useful, too, because the Bastille actually needs that power.
The Splintering[]
The Splintering is the other unique system of the Bastille of the Iron Lord. This system duplicates the reality inside of the prison several times, while keeping them completely locked away from the main reality that others visit. Whenever it detects an unsanctioned change within the facility - such as casters using a time stop spell to freeze the prison and try to break an inhabitant loose - the Splintering erases that version of reality and copies one of the extras onto the 'real' world. Thus, anything that broke free will abruptly find itself back in its cell, even if it somehow got out of the prison before this safety override kicked in.
Although excessive for any normal facility, the Splintering is the type of effect required to secure the Bastille against the threats posed by inhabitants and their friends. Since the prison can revive guards and simply deposit jailbreakers back in their cells at any time, most prisoners have given up on fighting the system and remain generally docile.
The Splintering is definitely the greatest security system, but the Bastille is said to possess many more functions that help keep prisoners under control and resist external influence.
Day-To-Day Operations[]
Keeper Sorathel, Head Warden and manager of the Bastille's day-to-day operations
While Dispater is the nominal overseer of the facility, the truth is that he actually has very little to do with it, being too busy running the Infernal City of Dis and otherwise advancing the causes of Hell. For that matter, most of the pantheon is inherently skeptical of the archdevils, even though Asmodeus requires them to strictly uphold the terms of his agreements with other gods. (Trust, after all, is a valuable currency - and the other gods are too great of players for him to toss out that trust for smaller matters or petty goals.)
Thus, under the terms of the agreement establishing prisons such as the Bastille of the Iron Lord, its actual running falls to a celestial nominated by the prison's current board of directors. That individual (known as the Keeper) is currently Sorathel, an Empyrean Paragon angel who ensures the prison's rules are upheld, the prisoners aren't overly abused, and corruption does not weaken the prison from within.
Most of the staff spend their days processing paperwork, evaluating legal requests, and performing various other duties as needed. The Bastille is independent of all external judicial systems, but is broadly cooperative with individual systems that seek to make use of its valuable services.
Size And Structure[]
The Bastille of the Iron Lord is a morphic demiplane that expands outward to create additional cell blocks and prison facilities as needed. Most of its residents are there permanently, so it rarely shrinks more than a little at a time. It contains numerous compartmentalized areas, including particularly secure holding facilities that haven't had visitors for centuries. Only the staff know how many prisoners are actually kept within, but conservative estimates put it somewhere around the population of a large city, and it could quite possibly be higher.
Wardens[]
Wardens are individuals who hold a higher degree of authority within the Bastille of the Iron Lord, up to and including the right to incarcerate people under their own authority or release prisoners below a particular security level. Most Wardens focus on finding and bringing in any person or creature that the prison wants to hold, and the majority are willing to use almost any means necessary to accomplish this mission due to the extreme danger most of the prisoners pose to the outside world.
The prison exclusively deals with live prisoners, in part because many figures have creative means of escape set to trigger on their deaths. As such, wardens act to subdue whenever possible, although they do have leave to outright eliminate a target in the event they prove impossible to capture and refuse to come along peacefully.