My party was battling the lich in the nexus room. As per the listed tactics he summons a bunch of monsters and when the party defeats them and gets closer he blasts them with an unholy blight. The party then surrounds him and starts trying to whack him while he's in the nexus. When a couple of them aren't able to hit him (he's got a pretty good AC with all those buffs) the halfling paladin decides to enter the nexus. I inform her that both her and her war dog mount take three negative levels. The next round the half-celestial fighter decides to also make contact with the nexus - he takes 6 negative levels and dies. The next round the human fighter decides to also touch the nexus and takes 5 negative levels.
Finally the paladin is able to bull rush the lich out of the nexus and the cleric hits him with dispel magic and gets rid of most of his buffs. Shortly thereafter he flees and the party moves on to the last encounter. Because they are so depleted Kaurophon manages to kill two of them with a cone of cold before he's bull rusheded into the plasm.
Afterwards I asked why they kept going into the nexus and one of the group said that they thought *that* was the test of sacrifice. D'oh!
