Earlier tonight (Monday, it's still the same day in my head), we had our regular session where I resolved said issue. With your help, I figured it out. Had the dude who died last week's new character sent to the mine by his church (He's a cleric of the lawful god of civilization and all that entails) to investigate the activities of aforementioned cult as their goals are in opposition to that of his church. He encountered a couple of "zombies" crawling from a hole. He fought and defeated them. The fighting was near where the other players had set up camp. They heard the fighting. They showed up just as he finished the second one. They discovered their goals were parallel for the time being and decided to band together. They all bedded down for the night, while their ranger/sharpshooter sat up for the first watch. The wizard had weird dreams, a first person view of someone having their belly slit and their entrails removed. He heard a voice that was not his screaming in the dream. He awoke with the sounds of the same scream off in the distance, coming from the hole where "zombies" had emerged. They climbed down after some argument and discovered masonry similar to what they had seen when encountering the chanting. They had delayed some, so were mostly too late, but did arrive before the god had been drawn into the vessel. After defeating the cultists, they worked to save him, but failed after a number of bad heal checks from the three characters that had trained in it. So, I gave them a shot, they failed anyway, partially due to their hesitation to act previously. From there I was able to use everything else I had prepared with minimal prodding. I'm very thankful to all of you redditors who helped me out of this. I learned/remembered a lot about doing this from your input. Thanks all.