Epic arena battle

[pyroman]

I'm running an epic campaign and my players have gotten themselves into a bit of a situation. They need to fight in an arena for 3 rounds to get information if they survive. The players are all level 22 and there is a heavily optimized shadowbane inquisitor 10/rogue 3/paladin 9, a mystic spell thief, a diviner, a rogue, and a cleric. I was gonna throw a Chichimec at them for the last round, but I could use some ideas of challenging monster for the first two. Assume that the arena's owner can get his hands on pretty much anything.

[TroubleBrewing]

Dragons. Multiple.

Avoid using just one monster, as the action economy will swiftly overwhelm it.

Anything with spellcasting to rival the PC's, to be honest. Most of the high CR monsters are just beatsticks, which melt like crayons under a blowtorch against PC casters.

[pyroman]

Thanks. My group has been having scheduling problems, so its pretty unlikely that all of them will be fighting. If they do all fight, they've already decided to fight in pairs one at a time.

[Eldariel]

I've always liked Phanes, though how to keep one in captivity (Epic Ward "Temporal Lock"?) is another matter entirely. Solar is iconic and if the PCs aren't goody two shoes (or if it's evil or a replica or w/e), would work. Titan is kinda amusing too, tho sorta squishy compared to Solar with no real spellcasting to speak of. Infernals are always a good choice, too. Devastation Vermins are always an option (would make sense in an arena); they aren't terribly tough but they have big numbers so they can give the players something to play around with and find some alternative means of dealing with them. And yeah, Dragons offer fun way into epics.

Of course, some high-leveled Illithid (or in general, monster that scales with levels; something normally minor like a Choker could be a fun choice for posterity) could be interesting or maybe offer them a curbstomp to remind them that they are, indeed, among the most badass 0.0001% of the world's population.

[The Boz]

Round 1: "And the doors of the arena kennels open to reveal tall, grey skinned men with what appear to be squids for faces. There are ten in plain view, and even more may hide in the darkness."
Round 2: Do epic level summoner necromancers count?

[pyroman]

@Eladriel: the arena's owner is a phane (with some homebrewed modifications such as the ability to take human form). The party already had a rather one-sided fight with him and got their asses kicked, mostly because they were only able to hit with about a third of their attacks >:D (evil face)