And then the boat turned 180 degrees

The battle over with The Third, they are standing in her room searching around when the priest disappears and the paladin reappears. The paladin moves for the next door and opening it they see a human male standing at the ready (he did hear through the walls) fully ready to fight. The paladin rushes forward bursting through the Forbiddance and attacking for little damage. Everyone who entered the room had to look at a Symbol of Death and very quickly the paladin was alone, the rest of his party dead on the ground. The evil priest takes a step back and casts a spell and the paladin finds himself dazed, paralyzed, and weakend  from a Blasphemy spell for two minutes. The evil priest tries a spell, the paladin saves, tries another, the paladin saves, priest vanishes, reappears, casts another spell.
Blackness for all.

Time passes.

"He will be mine!" Thrommel commanded pointing at the paladin. The First shook his head, "We have bigger plans for him. You can have his companions as they are of no consequence to our plan."

Awakened to conscious thought again, this time there is a hunger inside you and a new found power that excites you. Soon, books are made available that tell in detail about the true history of the temple and just what the plan is. The wizard makes a series of rolls about the process of returning Tharizdun and he can't seem to figure out just how they are going to do it and he doesn't think its actually possible. The Temple begins sending them out across the land on missions to acquire items or aid in the capturing of slaves for sacrifice or feeding. Weeks turn into months, and nearly a year later the Temple sends them as emissaries to a place called Skull City, a city of necromancers dedicated to undeath and the Tomb of Horrors that they sprung up around.
A simple two day journey by air to the Vast Swamp, and to a large city with black stone walls, an undead gate guarded by Dark Nagas, and a city of mostly undead or aspiring necromancers. An gnarled, magic twisted old man takes them on a tour of the city proper. The mad Danele, prophet of Acererak, so haunted by visions of evil that he gouged his own eyes out after painting a 40 foot mural on the wall. A crazed woman clutching a book approaches them and speaking in halting, broken words she says that she was there, inside the tomb with her friends, but they are all dead now. For some reason (wink) she feels compelled to give them the book she carries. The Journal of the Tomb, detailing Desatysso's group that entered the Tomb some time ago, that ended with sadness and seeming a wizard who went to the next level, what ever that is.
Heading to the Black Academy the party meets Leon the entrance guardian who says no one enters without a good reason. Being a human who is alive, the wizard uses his dominate ability to gain entry and replace the paladins longsword with Leon's greatsword(hehe). In the foyer of the academy, they meet Mistress Ferranifer, a vampire necromancer who is also the headmaster to the school. They explain that they are emissaries for the Temple and that they only wish to begin a dialogue to better ties for the future.