Out of Character:
An hour's travel as the dire wolf runs due north of Sulgoran's Axe, a rounded monstrosity was carved out of the walls of the Gorum Mountains. The labyrinth of tunnels and tainted chambers that made up the maximum security prison were gouged from the living rock and barred with raw damascus gates. In winter months when strong winds lashed the mountains, the halls mingled their moans with the prisoners who were tortured by guards, each other, or their own minds.
The prison had no official name, and no official benefactor, although gold flowed into its vaults from conduits that ran throughout the Northlands. The warden lived in Knife's Edge, and hid his identity behind those conduits, who stayed loyal out of both fear and respect for the warden's wealth. The prison housed only those prisoners whose crimes or secrets deemed them unfit for national jails, yet who had managed to avoid the death penalty. A sub-race of orc-drow hybrids who called themselves the Gorum'Fael served as the prison's guards. They spoke only in the coarse grunts of a little-known orcish dialect, and were forbidden from communicating with the prisoners lest it be using their truncheons. Outcast by the wild of the north and civilisation to the south, they found their calling in that pit of the damned. The Gorum'Fael liked to think the place got its unofficial name specifically from the shape their gnarled and pointed ears; both the prisoners and the public called it Devil's Keep.
In its bowels the prisoners toiled twelve hours a day, mining and refining ore from deep beneath the crust of Althanas. When their bodies could no longer lift a shovel or carry a bucket they were tossed into cramped chambers, locked in with meager rations and the imprinted stench of former occupants.
Dangling into Berevar, the largest chambers of the prison were blocked from freedom by a thick glacier which hugged the cliff face. Rumors of escaped convicts who managed to squeeze through crevices in the ice often circulated, but the deadly tundra at the other end of such tunnels intimidated most prisoners more than the prison.
The prisoners were a mixture of drow and dwarves, men and orcs, and a small population of demons. What few elves got sent there seldom lasted long. They were worn down by overwork and undernourishment, beaten down by the clubs and heavy leather boots of the Gorum'Fael. But in the eyes of many the spark of rebellion still burned. And in the well-oiled mind of one century old drow, a plan of escape and revenge had morphed and molded to perfection over thirty long years.
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