Blackpond in Owls head mine

So I saw a bunch of Red Bandits and started killing them, then realized they weren't attacking if I didn't after killing Blackpond.

Did I just kill off a quest?

If I did, I'm thinking there should be a pop up giving the option to continue to attack an NPC if they are essential to a story line. I think I killed off the mother of a child who was being held hostage in some rocky area too.

Killing off NPCs in storylines is a flaw. IMHO

 

Am pretty sure that he will respawn just fine. However its worth noting that the Hidden Vale quests are horribly out of date and broken. I had been trying to complete some of these but then one of the devs posted that people should not waste there time doing them at present due to their borked state.

 

From when I did those quests (a long time ago so I may well be wrong now!) he will respawn each time you go in the mines, so you won't 'break' any quest that way. As Gorthyn says, I seem to recall his part of what was to be a longer storyline was not there in full, or even much at ll... but that may be me simply missing what I was meant to spot, I am remarkably good at that.