The Secret Chapel

It sure looks like Hell. Big bone throne. A pit at the center. Fire and darkness around the edge.

But this is the “secret chapel” mentioned by Victoria in Chapter I, the “underground cathedral” pictured in Marcus Gordon’s chronicle in Chapter II and the setting for the vision Samuel experienced in Dr. Hermann's morgue in Chapter V. (It’s also the setting for the portrait of Mordred Gordon that appears above the fireplace in Black Mirror’s main hall.)

Odds & ends: And there are a couple of visual clues that you’re still at Black Mirror: The creature heads atop the two columns nearest the throne are identical to the ones at the left front corner of the castle and all the columns exhibit the spiraling vines we noted in the castle’s main hall.

You’ll find Samuel picking himself up from the circular platform above the pit. You can’t do anything but the essentials: Look at the altar at the platform's center and take the ritual dagger from atop the blank book. Right-click on it in inventory to see this weapon has a name -- Vorpal (a word invented by the 19th century writer Lewis Carroll to describe a lethal blade in his nonsense poem Jabberwocky ) -- and is coated in dried blood. That should give you a sense of its only use.

Back out of the scene and use the dagger on Samuel's head. His blood flows into a cup on the near side of the altar and then through a trench in the altar's outer rim, opening up five color-coded openings as it goes. Match your five keys to the keyholes: yellow (left) and red (right) at the bottom, blue (left) and white (right) in the middle and green at the top.

When all the keys are in place, words materialize in the book. Click on them and Samuel reads them. (Don’t try to translate. It’s sounds like Latin but it’s just gibberish and corresponds to no actual tongue.) A dark voice whispers back from the wings and the platform descends and expands to reconnect with the rest of the room.

Mordred Gordon won the battles but he’s lost the war. The Black Mirror has closed and whatever nastiness was in the works when you had your vision in the morgue has been thwarted.

Epilogue

We’re not shown how Samuel makes his escape. Perhaps he zaps back to the catacombs through an unseen portal like the one that brought him down here. Or perhaps this is one of those multi-dimensional events at the successful conclusion of which any out-of-their-element persons are ejected back to their proper spheres. Mordred presumably winds up with matches being held to the soles of his feet forever after by a gaggle of cackling imps ... and Samuel at an anger-management seminar at the old fish market in Willow Creek.

But that’d be a fairly upbeat ending, and The Black Mirror is not destined to end happily. There’s one more death for Samuel to arrange -- only this time he knows he’s doing it. The next time we see him, he’s atop a tower at the castle, and the game ends almost as it began.

Odds & ends: Why suicide? Why not? Knowing what he now knows about his activities of the previous week, Samuel can no longer live with himself. “My soul has blackened from sins that cannot be undone,” he tells us in his final speech. And if the unburdened Bates had made his story known to the authorities, Samuel would surely have wound up in jail for the rest of his life. “Mordred made me do it” probably wouldn’t stand up in court.

In the same speech, Samuel also says something rather strange: “I always feared that my past would resurface and cast its shadow over me.”

Now what past is that? The only thing we know about Samuel prior to his appearance in the Black Mirror common room is that he left the castle 12 years earlier following the death of paramour Cathrin in the fire that damaged the old wing. Samuel’s openly taking responsibility for that fire back in Chapter I suggests this was an unfortunate accident. Is he now hinting this was somehow deliberate? And if not, what does he mean by “my past”? (The past week? That wouldn’t make sense.)

With Samuel dead and Mordred locked up in hell (or wherever evil 13th-century Gordons go when they die), you might well think the story is over.

Nope! A sequel, Black Mirror II, is currently in the works at Germany’s Cranberry Productions for a 2009 release by publisher DTP Entertainment.

“Twelve years ago an unspeakable darkness was banished from Black Mirror Castle forever,” reads the text that accompanies a September 2008 trailer for the game, “or so they thought.”

The trailer reprises some of the events of the original game and then switches to a top-of-the-stairs shot of the exterior of the Black Mirror castle of 1993 -- quickly replaced by an almost identical picture on the screen of a handheld camcorder.

The person aiming the camera seems agitated. Evidently the castle is supposed to be vacant ... and it appears occupied. The camera cuts swiftly between lighted windows, both upstairs and down, and then zooms in on a indistinct female figure that appears at the glass door on the balcony above the front door.

And then a surprise: Blood spatters on the glass door and the figure sinks from sight. Before you can take it all in, the same fate befalls the cameraman. A darkness seems to boil across the frame of the fallen camera as the screen goes black.

Who’s the woman? Not Victoria, surely! Possibly a compatriot of the cameraman? I can’t say. As of December 2008, few details of the Black Mirror end of the story have been released.

However, a handful of screenshots have been issued -- five from the town of Biddeford, Maine, where the game begins, and four from the Black Mirror estate in England. These last comprise of the aforementioned top-of-the-stairs view of the castle (but with new protagonist Darren out front); the front gate (shown from a different angle than in the original game; the castle is now visible in the background); the main hall (with all three parts from the original game now on one angled-down screen) and a hitherto-unseen parlor with covered furniture and a large mirror decorating the far wall.

That last shot’s particularly interesting. In this mirror, which appeared on a poster at a German games convention, Darren sees old protagonist Samuel Gordon. I guess this link to the original game could just be for promotional purposes but, if not, it’s a strong signal the two stories will be connected. (The picture is referenced in a German-language preview at http://www.adventure-treff.de/artikel/vorschau.php?id=116 and accompanies an English translation at http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,918.)

And it’s also a literal mirror -- a notable change from the original game where the “mirror” was a euphemism for a glimmering green pool down in the underground cathedral.

Not shown in the screenshots, but mentioned in the preview, is a change in neighboring Willow Creek. The pawn shop has been turned into a wax museum with exhibits based on the murders.

We may yet learn how some of those poor people actually died!