Marcus Gordon's Tomb

Once the puzzle is solved, you'll hear a crumbling sound of stone on stone ... and no signs of attendant movement. The exit you’ve opened must be hidden.

You'll notice that Samuel has turned around and is looking toward a carpet ... and that the carpet’s now interactive. Look under it to find a descending staircase. Drop down into the dark room below at the bottom look at the aperture at the base of the stairs. It's just like the one beside the big door upstairs. Get back up there, grab your strange object out of the opening, descend the stairs again and insert the object into this new hole. The room lights up ... and the entrance closes behind you.

You’ll find a way out after you complete the next puzzle. (And then you’ll have to find a way out of your way out.)

This is Marcus Gordon's tomb. To get at his remains, you'll have to spell out the answers to riddles found in four books at its corners. The order doesn’t matter.

These are all fairly basic. The book at the left rear reads: The more you take away, the larger it grows. That’d be a hole. (There's even a picture of a dark aperture to suggest the answer.) Just spell it out vertically by rotating the four bands of letters on the nearby column with left or right clicks. Once the answer’s in place, the column descends into the ground.

The book at the right-rear reads: Cities without houses, rivers without water, forests without trees. As per William's diary, the answer is "map."

The book to the near-left reads: It can't be seen, but it can be heard. It will not speak unless it's spoken to. Echo.

Finally, the one at the near-right reads: Black when bought, red when used, gray when thrown out. Coal.

After the final column descends, Marcus's tomb rises from the ground. Open it up and take the key and book from Marcus's breast.

This 13th century text is an account of the struggle between Marcus and Mordred Gordon that vaguely recalls the tale of the good King Richard and the evil Prince John from the Robin Hood saga. One big difference: Mordred used a dimensional gate called the Black Mirror to summon "entities of shadow" to fight for him. (The Mirror is the light source behind Mordred in the painting above the fireplace in Black Mirror’s main hall.) Marcus struggled heroically though their ranks to strike down his brother. But before Mordred died, he cursed the Gordon line.

"Of your blood others will rise with your name, bearing my curse! One of your heirs will convert five souls of five mortals. This will be the catalyst to bring my anger back to life! And I will return! When your days have ended, there will be no one to stop me!"

This rather narrows the field of suspects in the murders, doesn't it? If you buy into the family curse, the killer must be Samuel, Robert or some unknown heir. (And speaking of heirs, we haven't seen William's will.)

And whose soul is next?

No new exit appears when you step back from the tomb. But an item that previously wasn't interactive now is click-able: the fallen brazier in the foreground. Right-click on it. Samuel nudges it with his foot ... and a rat runs out and makes for a "suspicious spot" in a niche in the right wall. Follow it. You'll hear sounds of a cave-in. The screen goes black.

Odds & ends: How the heck did William get out of here? His diary establishes that he’d visited the tomb and tried the puzzle, but couldn’t beat it.

A few notes on the chronicle.

1) Don’t just click through the book. Really read it. The game periodically drops non-essential items out of inventory to make room for new ones, and this one won’t survive Chapter II. (You can find the beginning of the chronicle as the backdrop for the main menu, but the menu itself blots out a significant share of the text.)

2) The chronicle makes clear that the Black Mirror closed when Mordred died. The keys were then divided among “the lord of the Gordon manors” to prevent the gateway from being reopened.

A vision in Chapter V implies that the Black Mirror has opened or will open. But that’s still three chapters distant at this point and our protagonist has no advance warning of the event.

So why is Samuel assembling keys to close a portal he does not yet know is open? True enough, this was William’s plan as well, but, having read a chronicle that William never saw, Samuel now knows more than William did.

3) As noted earlier, there’s no mention in the chronicle of the strain of madness William mentioned in his diary.

William regarded the madness as the Gordon curse. But he was working from different sources: “the chronicle of the manor” and the records in his library. He never opened Marcus’s tomb, never read Marcus’s own chronicle and never learned that Mordred had vowed to return.

Was he wrong? Is the Gordon madness a separate thing from the Gordon curse?

The game never settles the issue.

To be sure, the two murders to date are evidence of a kind of madness -- but of a possessed-by-evil variety rather than the undefined madness on which William reported. (William does write that the madness of his forebears had “a perverse purpose of some kind,” but no evidence is offered that either William’s ancestors or the young James ever tried to kill people.)

Then again, it will be implied obliquely in Chapter IV that James’s madness and the murders are not entirely unconnected -- that the spirits of Gordons past may also be driving the artist in James to in some way document the curse.

So where does that leave us? I suspect the designers wanted us to interpret the madness and the curse as the same thing in order to serve up a plausible suspect in the murders. (More on this in Chapter IV.)

But, if so, by stipulating 200 years of Gordon madness without a hunt of accompanying mayhem, they’ve compromised this theory’s plausibility and left the game’s mythology out of sync. Some hints of a murderous streak in Gordon family history -- a run of unexplained disappearances, for instance -- might have tied these two threads together neatly.

The Old Mine

Where are you? Samuel gets to his feet in a dark, industrial-looking room. All the non-paper elements of his inventory and William's diary are missing. (Don’t worry. You’ll get most of them back almost immediately and one a ways down the road.)

You'll see a mechanism on the wall to the right. Click twice on the valve just to the left of the mechanism -- it's behind Samuel when he gets up and thus easy to miss -- and then twice on the mechanism itself.

You'll find three levers, each with three possible positions, and an on/off button. When the levers are in the proper positions, this button turns on the lights.

This little puzzle may look like trial and error. It isn't. There's a clue here to their correct arrangement: Below the on/off switch is the number “573.” These correspond to the required positions of the levers. That is, middle, high and low, where "high" is the down, full-power position and low the upper one. Move the left lever down to the central position, pull the central lever all the way down and push the right lever down and then up to the top. Hit the button.

The lights come on. Samuel automatically collects most of his missing possessions and can survey his surroundings. (If the lights don’t come on, you haven’t turned the valve to the left of the levers.)

Odds & ends: The camera’s broken and you’ll leave it behind. And, oddly, you won’t recover the music box from William’s desk. Don’t worry. It’ll magically turn up again in Chapter IV.

You can’t leave this utility room right away. A live wire dangles before the gate at the left side of the screen. Don't touch it ... or at least save your game before you do. (It’s worth doing deliberately once just to see the nice death scene.) It's the first of several things in The Black Mirror that can kill you.

To the left of the levers is a little storage closet. See the metal box in the lower left corner of the shelves? It contains wire cutters. Get ‘em, turn the power off (using the button again), use the cutters on the cable, turn the juice on again and try the gate.

Safe now, but locked. Right-click on the gate to learn the key is on the other side. But, hey, it's just a chain-link gate and you still have wire cutters. Use them on the gate, reach through the resultant opening to grab the key and then use it on the gate. And while you're here, grab the rope that's slung over the fence to the right of the exit. This helps you remove an obstacle a little down the road.

On the other side of the gate, you'll see clearly that you've entered an abandoned mine. Ah: The passages beneath the cemetery mentioned by the grave-digger in Chapter I!

Getting out is going to be something of an ordeal. The lift isn’t working and you’ll need to collect some odds and ends to open a path and make repairs.

For starters, get the rag from the skeleton in front of the barrel to the left and the sharp rod from the earthen mound to the right of the barrel. Both will be important tools in your escape. The switchboard on the wall between the two tunnel entrances can be pried open with your rook knife but to no meaningful effect at this point. (Samuel says he can't use the fuses it contains. No more than you can use the rag or rod right now, Samuel. You’ll be able to take the fuse after you discover a use for it later.)

Head left down the left tunnel to the elevator shaft. Told you so. The control panel midway up the shaft's right side is broken. And the engine room to the rear is currently a dead-end. The technophobic Samuel is reluctant to use the control panel beside the big machine here. That leaves the apparent trap door below the oil barrel beside the lift.

Try the hatch. Yeah, that’s not happening. But, having tested the exit, you can now try to push the barrel.

And that’s not happening, either. Full of oil, it’s far too heavy to move.

Could you make it lighter? Possibly. Pierce it with the sharp rod. That does it. Once the barrel’s contents have spilled out, it's light enough to be moved by hand and Samuel automatically pushes it out of the way.

However, the trap door remains immovable. This is a pattern with The Black Mirror; everything's double-locked.

But there is that mining cart off to the right. And there is that rope in your inventory. Tie one end to the trap door and the other to the cart ... and then discover the cart is also immovable. A right-click determines that the brakes are on (and takes them off), so give it another try. The cart moves down the tunnel, never to be seen again, the trap door comes off like so much aluminum foil and you can descend a ladder two levels to a dark room.

(There’s nothing to be found one level down, but you’ll board the lift here later in this sequence.)

At the bottom, you’ll see a red glow to the left. This is a switchbox. The rusty lid won't open by hand, so give it a little help with your rook knife and you'll discover why the lights are out down here. Three of the four wires -- red, green and blue -- have come loose and you'll have to reconnect them to their respective clamps and then push the button to the left to restore the power.

No clear-cut clues this time -- unless you count the red light at the top center. (As it happens, the red wire does go with the middle clamp.)

But heck, there are only so many mistakes you can make with three wires and three clamps. (The correct order, from left to right, is green, red and blue.)

With the lights on, you can poke around a bit in this lift room. A right-click on the skeleton on the ground to the right of the switchbox yields a small key. This unlocks the left-hand locker against the rear wall. When you open it, you'll automatically get a revolver. Keep clicking on the open locker to collect a box of bullets and plans for a large machine (which turns out to be the one in the engine room on the upper level).

Odds & ends: On the table, you'll find a diary that provides a running account of the mine's operations. It’s a good tale: Things go from bad (workers believe the mine's new shaft is haunted) to worse (a cave-in).

But despite Samuel’s suggestion that the journal might help in his escape, you won’t find anything useful within -- just explanations for some of the conditions here. Evidence of cave-ins can be found behind the lift on the upper level and in the corridor marked “Level 2” just left of the utility room where you entered the mine.) But there is no sign of a ghost in the mine. The only other entities here are the bats you’ll disturb as you move left after leaving the utility room.

You're now equipped to try and restart the lift. Make your way back to the top of the ladder and then to the engine room at the back. Use the plans from the locker on the panel and the big engine starts up. But the lift remains inactive and when you get down to the bottom of the ladder again, you'll find steam gushing from a pipe to the left of the switchbox.

Click on the steam and Samuel says he should block the leak. You do have the cloth from the skeleton upstairs, but it doesn't seem suited to this purpose. Samuel says he'd be burned.

It’s the right item in the wrong condition. This isn't an especially rational solution -- as you know if you've ever tried to pick up something hot with a wet oven mitten -- but the rag needs to be wet down first. And if you haven’t been watching carefully, the source is a little obscure. Truck up to the oily pool to the right of the machine in the engine room, dip the rag in this heady elixir and then descend the ladder yet again and use it on the pipe.

It works -- for a few seconds. The machine can't take the strain of operating at full power and quickly blows a fuse. You'll identify this problem when you look at the fusebox between the formerly-steaming pipe and the switchbox you repaired earlier.

You have seen fuses before -- in that switchbox just outside the storage area where you entered the mine. Get up there again, pry it open with the rook knife if you haven't already done so and take the fuse it contains. Down the ladder one more time -- this place has more running around than Black Mirror! -- and use the fuse on the fusebox.

Nothing happens. You have to hit one more button. (No, not up on the big machine upstairs. That's still running.) Just use the generator controls below and to the left of the formerly-steaming pipe and the machine starts up again at full power ... and stays there. Whew.

You already know the lift controls at the top of the ladder are shot, but one level up from the lift room you'll now find a red light winking on control panel to the right of the ladder. Hit it. The lift descends. Hit it again to raise the door and then enter. You'll automatically be lifted to the surface. The exit is to the right.

Save before you do another thing. This is an easy place to screw up your game.

Look at the exit gate. It's padlocked. But not securely. Right-click on the lock to learn one side is rusty. Use the bullets on the revolver -- it turns out there are just two in the box -- and then the revolver on the padlock. Thanks to your preparation, you'll aim at the lock's weak spot and, blam-o, off it goes with your first shot.

And that’s important. If you don't inspect the lock closely before you fire, it'll take both bullets to knock it off and, with an empty pistol, you’ll die in the sequence that follows. For once past the grate, you run smack into a "dark wolf." This beast is here to provide an alternate theory of the crime that's going to occur between chapters II and III. It will wait impatiently for about 15 seconds and then launch itself at you, so act quickly: Select the gun from your inventory to stop the countdown and drag it onto the wolf to fire your second bullet. The creature lets out a yelp and collapses, and you’re home free.

Odds & ends: In addition to being out of bullets and de-selecting the gun, any attempt to run away or run around the wolf or simply left-clicking on the wolf without the pistol in hand will make Samuel dead.

When you walk right off the screen, you'll automatically remove to the common room at Black Mirror for a chat with Robert and Victoria. Robert's off to the asylum in the middle of the night on an unspecified errand. (It’s the last time you’ll see him.) Samuel talks briefly with Victoria about his planned trip to Wales and then heads for bed.

Other Old Mine hotspots: the wooden boxes just left of the exit from the utility room, the barrel lying on its side near the switchbox, the rusty container to the left of the trolley, the flywheel on the big engine in the machine room and the broken ladder in the upper left-hand corner of the same chamber, the dark corner to the left of the lift shaft one level down the ladder reached through the trapdoor, the barrel to the right of the shaft on the same level , the righthand locker against the far wall in the lift room, the elevator (after Samuel arrives at the exit level), the boxes to the left of the gate and the pile of dirt on the near side of the lift (both on the exit level) and the full moon after you leave the mine.

Chapter III: hidden legacy

Bad dreams again. A vision of a full moon much like the one you saw when you left the mine. Wind chimes that look like torture implements hanging from a tree. A child's body on a bloody altar. A familiar red symbol on a menhir stone. (Afterward, in an evident slip-of-the-tongue, Samuel confesses that these are "past memories." Did Samuel make a pitstop on his way home from the mine?)

We’ll find Samuel standing at the locked front gate of the Wales estate with a trimmed-down inventory. (The Black Mirror map, the black sphere, Marcus Gordon’s chronicle and the mine diary have all vanished--the last two for good. The map and sphere return in Chapter IV.)

It looks as though he'll be standing there for quite a while. No one answers the doorbell. Is it even ringing? After the second attempt, you'll be able to examine the mechanism more closely with the now-traditional right-click. Apparently the wires within are barely connected. You'll need to slip something in there to hold them in place.

The rook knife? You can try. It does that encouraging glowing thing when placed over the doorbell, but the blade is too thick. You'll have to come up with something else.

Odds & ends: In fact, you can try any inventory item on the doorbell. Usually, Samuel won’t make any response when the wrong item is used. Here, and only here, he says, “No, that won’t do.”

Thankfully, you’re confined to a small space and there just aren’t that many places to look. You'll have to click twice on the space that would be occupied by the missing left leg of the statue to the left of the entrance to learn a nail is embedded in the column behind it. Click a third time to take the nail and then use it on the doorbell.

Sure enough, the wires now connect and the caretaker comes to the gate.

Odds & ends: Then again, you can be stubborn and keep pushing the broken button. You’ll get unique responses on the third, fourth and fifth tries and nothing thereafter. (Try to press the doorbell while the caretaker Louis is standing at the open gate for another unique line.)

Other hotspots: the upper central section of the wall to the right of the gate and the gate itself. You’ll get a unique response the first time -- Samuel calls “hello?” in a soft voice calculated not to ever get anyone’s attention -- and then just messages that it’s locked.

And now you have a new problem: Louis won't admit you. In the wake of a recent experience with would-be robbers, he doesn't believe you're a Gordon. You'll have to produce one of your original items -- the mourning-card for William's services (a questionable form of personal ID if ever there was one) -- in order to make an impression.

Use it quickly. This is another timed sequence and you have about 10 seconds to select the card from your inventory (which stops the countdown) and drag it onto Louis’s suspicious frown.

Odds & ends: If you run over the time limit or de-select the card, Louis says he doesn’t have time for this nonsense and goes his cranky way. Samuel can then try again -- with some new, rather emphatic words that seem directed at the now-invisible caretaker.

Once Louis is persuaded, he leads you into the presence of Eleanor ... who seems to be playing on piano the tune from the music box you found in William's study! (You’ll be able to ask about this a little later.)

Eleanor has a wide range of topics, but limited knowledge. The key and symbols are meaningless to her, and she doesn’t put much stock in the family curse.

However, she does:

- reveal that, during a visit two years earlier, William appeared downright obsessed with her family's tomb

- give you (via the “key” topic) the run of the house to seek out the second symbolic key. This topic was evidently designed to prevent you from just running off and exploring the estate without her say-so, but it proves meaningless. (See the next exchange with Louis below.)

- attach the name from William’s diary (James) to the man in the torn-up picture ... after Samuel offers the heretofore-unknown tidbit that the man is “William's protégé." (Where’d that come from?)

- report that her husband Richard can probably be found in his chemistry lab in the old house in the garden (but only if you haven’t yet met Richard)

- ask you to have Louis to fix the doorbell.

This last topic is the only one you have to use. Eleanor is your means to redirect Louis around the estate. As he moves from place to place, he’ll invariably leave something behind.

Odds & ends: The precise connection of the Black Mirror Gordons to Eleanor is never spelled out ... though a right-click on Eleanor does reveal she and Victoria are old friends. (For what it’s worth, both women are identified as countesses in the credits.)

And the game never does arrive at a firm spelling for the nice lady’s name. In dialogue, she’s “Eleanor.” Point the cursor at her and she’s “Eleonor.” And in the credits, she’s “Elenor.” Yikes. We’ll use the common spelling of “Eleanor.”

Other hotspots: In the piano room: the mirror and wooden jewel box behind the piano (the latter hosts a puzzle later in this chapter), the fireplace, the coat-of-arms above it and the picture to the right, the flags above the archways at the rear, the near chair on the right side of the table and the stairs to the second floor. In front of the house: the window at the right side of the ground floor and the white flowers to the left of the fountain.

You can't explore the main house. Your bedroom and indeed the house in general is conceptual; the only interior location is Eleanor's piano room. When you leave, you'll find yourself outside the front door.

Odds & ends: Here you can check out the fountain. Note the lovely reflections on its interior walls. And note that the cursor stays red over it even after you've elicited the description. (Samuel compares it to the "ill-fated" fountain at Black Mirror.) This suggests it will later find some snuggly home within the game.

It never does. Why? This may indicate simply that you can also click on the pool at night -- a bit farther along in the game -- and get a slightly different description. And conceivably the fountain was at some stage in development an alternate water source for the upcoming “oxidant” puzzle.

Further left, at a fork in the path, you can ask the caretaker to repair the doorbell -- provided you've spoken to Eleanor on this subject.

That kicks things along. To fix the bell, Louis will bring out his toolbox, which contains two useful items, You'll need one to enter Dergham Gordon's tomb and the other to interpret what you find within. Get him away from the toolbox and they're yours.

But that's still a little down the road. Regardless of when you make the request, Louis won't start work on the doorbell until you discover the secret door to Richard's laboratory.

Other hotspots: the red-leafed tree just above the fork.

If you like, you can return to Eleanor now with an update on the doorbell crisis and a new “piano” topic. (She’ll disclose the tune is “from a distant memory” and that’s that. It’ll surface twice more before we’re done.)

Continuing left at the fork takes you first to the old house in the garden and, farther left, to Dergham Gordon's tomb. Head this way and Louis tries to stop you. Samuel then claims to have received Eleanor's blessing -- whether he has received it via the “key” topic or not -- and Louis backs off.

The tomb is locked up tight -- even tighter than you can imagine at this stage. You can ask Louis to let you in but he won’t agree (regardless of which approach you take) and Eleanor won’t authorize it. She wants the dead left in peace ... and Samuel just wants to take pieces.

But you’ll learn one thing from the former exchange: Louis has the key to the crypt.