There's about 6 chests and 4 cabinets in the fortress where I get "You were unable to pick the lock". For example, the 2 cabinets right outside the tiny room with the Discharge Papers you need to finish the promotion quest.

Is there a way to open them?

Does the Disarm Trap also double as a lockpicking skill by any chance? I have it mastered (level 7), but didn't bother putting further points in. I tried raising it to 9 and going back, still couldn't open them.

I'm using Grayface's patch, could that have introduced a bug?

I've seen this question come up repeatedly, usually with the answer that "some of the chests in the Warlord's Fortress can't be opened". I'm not sure whether that's a Greyface patch issue, though.

I can't speak for the truth of it myself; I don't recall being unable to open any chests there, but I don't use Greyface's patch and it has been years since I've played.

I ran into this starting with GrayFace's latest patch. The only thing I can think of is that, before the patch, several of the chests/cabinets never had anything in them, anyway, so I'm not sure it matters. The changes list is not helpful, though it could be worth looking at in case I missed something.

Now that I think about it, I posted a question on his YouTube page, though I don't know how likely a response is; there is no email address available anymore, just social media I'm not on (except YT). If I get a response, I'll post it.

My copy of the game (with patch) had several instances in the Fortress of chests in different rooms being the same chest - I could put something into one and take it out from another. This is why, if we empty each as soon as we come to it, we keep finding empty ones. Don't remember exactly which, or how many. Maybe the latest patch has disabled the duplicates.

Got a response a month ago, but didn't check until tonight:

"It's a fix for duplicate chests. I thought that phrase would be fitting, but I see that it's confusing. All I can think of is I could change it in English version."