Apparently my trusty magic dealer high-tailed it out of the Keep when I cleared out the Thorpe. I suppose this is because he was a also Hextorite or something? Or is this unrelated? Should have turned him in while I could ... EDIT: Found (presumably) this also reported in the bug thread: http://www.co8.org/community/index.php?threads/kotb-1-0-1-bug-list.11229/page-6#post-135579, but could not find comment.
Yeah, not sure why that happens. Did you see him run or was he just not there? Maybe this is a flag conflict - his "you're dead / you're in gaol" flag that would turn off the marketplace guy was wrongly triggered somehow...
He was just not there when I came back from the Thorp. I also checked his house, but he wasn't there either.
Probably a flag issue then. Handy hint - the standard Search function for Windows 98 will check for a string (like "game.global_vars[]") in any sort of file - later versions of Windows won't do it for .dlg files and other weird files that games use but Windows doesn't recognise as text files. I've marked this as confirmed in the bug list so it will be fixed in good time. Thanks for the feedback