Damn, damn, damn.Let ourselves be drawn out of the keep to talk to the Black Flame - me and Ide [1] went to leave a note at the graveyard and turned out there was a flunky waiting for us. Moved the meet to a plaza on the edge of town. Number two fellow (confirmed Killgarn is chief) gave us long story about Merdecin being crazy evil undead guy and how Black Flame was binding him there to protect innocent townsfolk. Sure. Even tried to clame Belsammog had killed tortured guy in basement - Belsammog using necromantic daggers these days? Right.
Then on the way back we hear the "other" side - noble guy, Black Flame nemesis, I think holding a vendetta from power struggle to succeed Mordecai. Black Flame are torturing Merdecin and *making* him crazy. No real new info here although I have hopes that I can get this guy working on the card thing for me. BF guy said they thought flame&shadow guy was some sort of demon from dimension of human tortured souls, and that they wouldn't mess around with conjuring him - I really hope that's true, and that that magic card wasn't Killgarn's "conjuring that guy" project.
Anyways, important bit here is that we left the keep - and now have to fight our way in past Killgarn if we want to bring Merdecin his box. Which we could have done freely if we had made up our minds sooner.
Is still not clear it's the thing to do - we opened the box, and it contains an apparently empty vial, freakily cold. Probably part of his soul or something. Keep all dream-wonky when we went back in - nightmare horse in the stable, walls turned into hedges, giant black tentacles springing up all seamonster-esque and grappling people. I tumbled through only to get cut off when they regrouped - am now between tentacles and portcullis, sharing small space with overly friendly flaming sponge, being directed by Killgarn, behind portcullis.
Ideally, one of two things will happen: either we'll break the binding on Merdecin holding him to this world and then the binding holding him in the room, so that he'll just leave, or we'll free Merdecin and he'll be a crazy murderous bastard but he'll go after Killgarn, who's the one who's been messing with him. Although admit I'd be happy just to get on the other side of that portcullis...
[1] Twitch. Yes, I know. But Cor doesn't.