Well, to cut a long story short, after a whole bunch of this nonsense, we eventually realized that different people could touch different items, and after a whole bunch more nonsense, I eventually solved the puzzle, the wall came sliding open again, and off we went, burdened down with a deal more treasure (in solving the puzzle, all of us but Haley and Prihelm wound up getting one of the items on the pedestal). Strangely, the items felt familiar, somehow! I really didn't understand it at the time, and I'm still not sure I believe the explanation that Alamon eventually offered. (This came much later, and since it will make even less sense than it does if I give it to y'all now, you'll just have to wait.)

Now that we had what Prihelm was convinced was the stuff he needed to enter the Burning Tower, we headed over in that direction. He looked a bit strange burdened down with as much treasure as he was, and personally, I was convinced that he would walk into the wall of fire and come out the other end scorched to a crisp, but this was not the case. He disappeared from view and came back a few minutes later with what I can only assume must have been the holy sword that old Artoise had been babbling about. Personally, I wasn't especially impressed; it looked just like any other sword to me! But Prihelm insisted he had the right blade, and came back out through the wall of fire, with the holy sword, my chainmail, and all the rest, but without any eyebrows. Very amusing.

It was at this point that we noticed that Haley had somehow managed to attract the attentions of some evil god or something; she'd been complaining about being cold for kind of a while, and when Tolec went over to "share his body warmth with her," he almost got frostbite! We didn't know it at the time, but subsequent research on Haley's part suggested that she was turning into something she calls a Cold One, whatever that is. For the moment, though, all that really matters is that touching her was extremely painful and she never stopped talking about how cold she was. On the other hand, she was extremely useful to have around when it was getting too warm for the rest of us, not that she appreciated being used to cool the room down too much... But I digress. I have to watch that; this story is long enough as it is!

Going back to the throne room, we were, after still more searching, able to find a way down into the basement of the castle again, and from there, it was only a short trip into the catacombs! We wandered through these crypts for quite some time (and with a great deal of confusion, might I add; they were not well laid out!), running across undead periodically (as I recall, a small horde of zombies, a few shadows, and even a wight!) before we eventually ran into a locked door. Something told us that Darkhelm was on the other side (it may have been all the weird pictures on the door that suggested considerable pique with Torm), so after preparing ourselves as best we could, I unlocked the door, and in we went!

Unfortunately, we weren't quite right about Darkhelm being on the other side. It would be more accurate to say that it was Darkhelm and a whole heck of a lot of undead. I'm really coming to despise those slimy nasty things! Naturally, Prihelm charged right in and challenged Darkhelm to defend himself (Pri is somehow convinced that this fallen paladin is responsible for the destruction of his homeland, although I personally find this extremely unlikely), and Darkhelm obligingly picked up this gargantuan sword and started dueling with our resident knight, leaving the rest of us to take on the undead.

Well, it was a grand and glorious struggle, the telling of which would take far more time than I can spare, but suffice it to say that we were able to dispatch the undead eventually, and then settled down to wait for the victor of the duel going on in the middle of the crypt. Prihelm seemed to have been getting the upper hand, and Darkhelm was starting look pretty desperate, when with a mighty blow, Darkhelm disarmed the poor boy. Honorable duel or not, I couldn't let the bastard kill Pri, so I regretfully intervened, saving our paladin's life (and was he grateful? Not one bit. Humans. Puh!) and dispatching Darkhelm. As usual, I had saved the day! Where would these people be without me?

Alas, Darkhelm wasn't quite as dead as we'd thought he was. The wound was mortal, but he dragged himself back to consciousness long enough to take off his helm and reveal a face identical to Prihelm's! He gave some standard long evildoer soliloquy that boils down to his claim that he was Prihelm, that this had all happened before and would all happen again (three times, I think he said), and that Prihelm would eventually betray and kill all his friends and become Darkhelm! Personally, I think the entire story is preposterous (as if Prihelm would betray me!), but the others seemed to buy it without any reservations (humans are so gullible sometimes) and sat around arguing about what we should do while Darkhelm gloated for a bit before dying at last. Al in particular seemed to think the entire thing made sense; his explanation for why the items we acquired from the treasury seemed familiar is that they had been ours in the past and we somehow were able to sense this (he has this big long theory about time travel and all sorts of odd things like that. I think he's gotten more than a little too much sun recently!). Clerics!