Cataclysm Act 2

Letting my mind marinate on Crisis on Infinite Earths for a day gave me an idea for how to manage Act 2 of the Cataclysm Across the Cosmos. I had originally planned to 'write out' some of the heaviest hitters - once Stardust the Super Wizard gets involved, he's able to go toe-to-toe with Kid Eternity, so he kind of imbalances things. However, if I involve him indirectly, he could be an important player in the story, and end up having long-term consequences thereafter. This is one thing I'd like to incorporate - that the events of Cataclsym could potentially matter to your own game world (if you go that way).

Here's the elevator pitch for Act 2, assuming the elevator has like seven stops and the door keeps ignoring the 'door shut' button you keep smashing...

The actions of Kid Eternity on the ocean's surface (as he draws the sunken U-Boat to the surface where he can face his final fate), have disturbed the earth's core, and are destabilizing it. Doctor Haunt has called Stardust to compensate; Stardust is channeling cosmic energy, siphoning off the destabilized energy from the core that is shattering the world. Kid Eternity has summoned a bunch of villains and sent them to kill Stardust. So, the idea is that Stardust spends the whole Act drawing power from the core while a group of heroes tries to keep the swarming villains from killing him off.

- If he soaks D12+6 points per round, he's going to average 12 points per round; if he rolls average, he can soak 120 points in one minute - that's ten rounds. As long as he can keep siphoning energy, he should be okay. He has no access to his SP - he's using all of them to maintain this stunt.

- If Stardust soaks 100 points within 1 minute, he stabilizes the core and is able to go on to his next task, flying off to keep the moon from crashing to earth. He will spend the rest of the adventure using cosmic energy to push the moon around the earth. 

- Each time Stardust is felled, the core is replenished 2d10 points, and Stardust has to get back to soaking as soon as he's back up.

- Here's the kicker - if Stardust is actually defeated, then bad stuff happens. The 'big bad' is that Stardust himself is annihilated - his essence gets drawn into the core, and ultimately pulled into the next world that the heroes will inhabit. In effect, this puts the 'power cosmic' of the PD universe on the board for someone in the next world to capture, fight over, inherit, or reckon with. It becomes a big loose end for the GM to use in their adventures going forward. You could decide to have Stardust reborn a la Gandalf, or you could have another new character take on the identity. 

On another note, I'm starting to conceptualize Cataclysm as a hybrid comic book/adventure in a single package. I'm liking the idea of drawing the cut scenes and introductory passages, and then nesting the Acts between. Moving it from two things - part of a comic and a separate adventure - and into an interactive comic book seems a bit more on brand, and sets it apart a bit. The image above would not have been in the comic (since I was only going to draw part of Act 1), but if I end up drawing a page or two of each act as an introduction, it might feel more cohesive... I'll keep tinkering with it.  

Humble Beginnings

Recovering from chemotherapy is a lot of time just... kinda sitting. I had a radiation treatment last week that required me to minimize how much activity I was doing, and to avoid exercise... so. Yeah. A lot of sitting around. Energy has been relatively low, but the last few days I've started to bounce back, and I keep thinking of things to keep my occupied. I worked on the adventure for Cataclysm yesterday and did some reading this morning to try and get into the zone for that a little more, but I also started something else...

We'll see if this comes to fruition, but throughout high school, I had this massive poster of the Marvel Universe on my bedroom wall. I stared at that thing for hours and hours, considering all of the characters and imagining what it would be like to have a universe that big. Then, I flipped through my copy of S85 and realized - it's pretty good-sized. I mean, I have almost a hundred characters. I figured it would be really nice to have a huge poster that has all of my Doc characters in one place. It would take me a long time to finish, but it's something I can do during days and times where I just need to zone out and have something to doodle on. It would be a cool to have a big poster of 'my characters'. So... here's the anchor for the middle of the poster - Doc.
 

Spending Some Time in the Source Material

I spent some time going through my comic collection in the last month or two, sorting things and selling some older books on EBay. My collection includes Crisis on Infinite Earths #2-12; I am missing issue 1 for some reason (no idea if I ever owned it). This morning, I read through four or five issues and skimmed the rest and... wow. It's a lot. The pacing is really, really (really) fast, and worlds are just constantly getting wiped out. I get that it's the point, and I guess I'd have to put myself back in 1985 to appreciate the emotional weight of watching these worlds that you've read for decades get wiped out, but it's just a LOT. That, and a lot of it is redundant; I feel like it's the same emotional beats repeatedly, watching this hopeless battle play out. 

I'm saying I didn't love it. I was kinda hoping to be more impressed and inspired by it than I was. I understand that 2025 me is a bit more discriminating than 1985 me, but still. 40 years is a bit of time, and I obviously know a bit more about storytelling and pacing and those sorts of things than I did in middle school (you'd hope). All that said, it felt reading it more like an event than a story. It was trying to be a story, but it knew that it was an event. I recently sold the complete run of Secret Wars (same era) on EBay, and had paged through that as well before shipping it off - it wasn't quite this compressed. Secret Wars had a more manageable cast (of course), and a smaller scope, so it gets a pass for having to accomplish less with the same amount of room. It had more breathing space to tell a story.

I was expecting to get more I could beg/borrow/steal for Cataclysm Across the Cosmos, but it really didn't give me a lot. However, it did help me to decide that I'm going to go ahead and layer the Public Domain characters into my own world as well (and you can layer them into yours. Feel free). Ever since I moved backward from the 21st century to the 1980s as my default setting, I've known a few things are going to happen in Doc's future - one of these is that Echo City eventually becomes the main city of the game world. In previous iterations of the game, Meridian falls entirely during an alien invasion and becomes a toxic wasteland. I don't think I want to go there anymore, but I do like the idea that Echo City is directly impacted by the Cataclysm; the city is completely changed by the Cataclsym, its entire history and character changed. It's the more 'pulp' city anyway, and these characters largely have a pulp background, so just making it into a giant pulp action comics playground seems like a decent way to go. If Meridian is Metropolis (Doc's city, first and foremost), then Echo City becomes more like Marvel's NYC where everyone else just happens to be... and a place where I can maybe establish the next great team of heroes that includes a mix of my own original characters and PD characters as I've re-imagined them.

TL; DR

Let's be honest, I don't know if you really really want to read my six pages of playtest notes so far... but if you do, you do. I mean, it's a pretty comprehensive overview of building the Cataclysm Across the Cosmos so far. I'll summarize below:

I set up the first encounter, which ended up being 8 heroes against Gorgo. The heroes won after three rounds, but almost everyone suffered being felled once, and two characters were felled twice before they were able to drop Gorgo once. I was going to have the battle last for three drops of Gorgo, but I got to see what I wanted to from it, and was able to justify having Doc throw him out to sea story-wise, so it's all good. I had to ret-con the story as I went (no Doc at first, then added Doc), but it was no big deal.

I made a few adjustments on the fly, the biggest one being that a successful hit by a superhero against any foe deals at least 1 hit point. Gorgo's invulnerable of 10 against heroes averaging D12 damage meant that it was very unlikely he was going to suffer damage even if the hero rolled pretty well. Once I upgraded to 'all successful attacks deal at least 1 hp even if they don't', the fight sped up a little bit, and they were able to slowly wear Gorgo down. The complications I added at the beginning of the sequence also helped a bit to mix it up from a straight up fight to some strategy and something to do other than punch the villain. 

I went back and forth a bit on SP, but have realized that I have to limit SPs to the 'main character(s)' only or these battles are going to be quick. If all eight heroes had access to their SPs, they'd all be stunting immediately, doing all sorts of crazy stuff and ripping through Gorgo. Because only Gorgo and Doc had access to SP, it made the fight feel more comic-booky and less gamey, if that makes sense. I don't want it to feel like you're playing a tactical game; I want it to feel like you got dropped into the middle of a comic battle as they happen. In the big comic battles, a lot of characters get regulated to the background, doing their 'default' attack while a few others take center stage. The way I've set up SP here emulates that pretty well.

It was nice to crack out the dice and actually play Stalwart '85 again - it's been a few weeks since I actually played the game. I'm adding the Google Doc to the resources for Stalwart '85 in case people want to read through all this - I expect to continue it as I go. 

Unlikely Team Up

I keep wanting to start an actual play experience for Stalwart '85 that actually goes on for a while - I don't know if I'd actually want to do videos or anything, but I'd like to have an actual play that I use to keep the game growing organically. I mean, my home solo campaign I guess. I keep going back and forth between making new characters (I did just roll up Novus Null a few days ago...), but then I go back to the characters from the core rules. I have kept trying to think of the pair of heroes that might go together the best, and this morning I decided to try something else - who are two heroes I'd never think of putting together, and what would happen? Or, which two heroes would I most like to solo play with, and is there some way I could justify putting them in a partnership?

Sure! Zealot has always been a solitary figure to me - he's not much of a team player, and he's quite obsessive, so that doesn't lend itself to the buddy system. Conversely, Bronze Beacon is still relatively inexperienced, and so she doesn't bring a lot of confidence to a partnership. Yet, somehow, it seems like these two might end up being a decent fit together. So, I did a new drawing of them together, and was thinking that I could put them in Echo City (since that city is largely undeveloped), and set my campaign there. Doc could always pop in, but it would mostly be these two. 

I need some kind of hook that keeps them together for a bit, and a 'big bad' with some kind of plan in the background to get things rolling, but I think that this partnership might not be a bad place to start...

Slowly Delving my Megadungeon

I'm actually doing the thing I wanted to do... letting my Moridis' Halls Megadungeon sort of just organically grow over time. I've now played through eight sessions, and my characters are closing in on level 2. I've been logging the actual play as I've done it, and you can read it here if you really want to...

this morning they ended up killing a dragon that I thought they had no chance against after a series of unexpected events put them into a position where they kind of had no choice. It was fun to watch the social dynamics I'd set up for a section of the dungeon play out in a way I never would have expected when I created it. I was forced to react to the situation as it played out, and I was very lucky that my heroes were wearing some stolen garb so they could frame cultists for Mordis for killing a dwarf from a clan they might want to ultimately be friendly with... oopsies. I keep updating both this actual play thread and the megadungeon, and the link is over to the left under resources for Tales of the Splintered Realm.

In the interim, I've also started a map of level 2. I'm thinking that this thing has three levels proper. I threw down the grid and created all of the hook points to level 1, then started to drop in section of dungeons as I created them, starting to frame out connective tissue. I have only a few of the hook points back to the first level defined, and most of the rest I have some thinking to do. 

Felt Like Rolling Up a Character

Decided to crack out the Stalwart ‘85 rulebook and roll up a character for the halibut.

I’m going to play a super-tier character. Let’s start with D10+5 four times… 6, 14, 10, 14. Very good. I end up with D6, D12, D10, D12.

6 gifts

29 ESP

32 Fly

54 Melee

66 Phasing

68 Precognition

75 Resist (Null Energy)

This guy already feels a little Martian Manhunter / Vision-ish. The Latin word for New is ‘Novus’ - I don’t mind that, although I’m thinking he’s from the Null Zone but is actually a ‘good creature’ born there. He’s a rejected ‘creation’ of Hazaaek the Null Fiend. The D6 has to go in either Mind or Reflex, and I think I’ll let that end up in Reflex and pop the D10 in Mind.

Novus Null

Super Hero (D10); Hits 22; Move 30’ (fly 500’);

Might D12 (6); Mind D10 (5); Power D12 (6); Reflex D6 (3)

I will take Monstrous since he still looks like a Null Fiend of sorts. 

To draw him, I went back to one of my concept drawings for Hazaaek and re-did it - so visually he is descended from Hazaaek on my end.

I am back to the idea of making Project Javelin (or at least a splinter research arm) the ‘bad guy’ for the campaign, and an Amanda Waller type the mastermind. If she’s a high-ranking Javelin operative who just happens to be pushing the boundaries of what she can get away with, she’s got the full resources of Project Javelin at her command, which makes her a capable threat. Not sure why I defaulted to ‘her’ here, but Amanda Waller is a pretty iconic character, so I guess I’m looking to emulate her in some meaningful way. 

Maybe go with a female version of the Stalwart Sentinel - she’s an AI-powered android that has been given a mission to investigate ways to use ‘non-humans’ for superhuman interdiction. In effect, every ‘creature’ being studied here has, by some loophole or another, been declared ‘not human’, and therefore subject to experimentation. This could be aliens, outsiders, constructs… lots of options.

My first thought was to make this start with a prison break that then becomes the character on the run… which could work. However, I could instead go all in on one of my favorite movies, Shawshank Redemption, and have the entire story set in the prison, where he’s working from within to undermine it and investigate it. 

This gets closer to a dungeon crawl for Stalwart ‘85, and gives me a justification to stat out a full research facility. There’d be lots of opportunities for conflict (other prisoners, guard uprisings, new arrivals, testing powers in danger rooms - all that sort of stuff).

I’m trying to decide on a remote location to place this:

The dark side of the moon. This has its benefits.

Bottom of the ocean.

Inside a volcano.

Near the earth’s core?

Remote mountain range.

I kind of like putting this inside the volcanic mountains north of Meridian. It actually ends up being within an hour of the city, yet remote enough that nobody would ever know it’s there. Malamus the Magma King cannot be too pleased to be sharing one of his deeper volcanoes with such interlopers, but him and his posse invading the complex at some point could be an interesting plot hook.

I also like that there are lots of windows - the prisoners are well aware that they are surrounded on all sides by thick magma that burns at 1500 degrees, so ‘sneaking out’ is probably a very bad idea.

He's definitely got the whole Martian Manhunter vibe going; I could see him being a key part of building the next iteration of the Victory Legion.

More Randomness

There's no one big thing, so here's the small stuff that sort of all adds up...

I'm now a week removed from chemotherapy treatment #3. The side effect is just being super tired. I thought I had recovered after a few days, but the reality is that I'm still sleeping over half the day - I eat dinner and go right to bed every night, and often take another nap during the day at some point. Pain is almost nil, and there is no nausea to speak of, so I feel like I'm getting off pretty well so far. 

I had three different commission requests all come in within about a day, so I spent a large part of yesterday getting those done and sent out. It felt very good to get a few more things off the checklist for wrapping up Stalwart '85. I also did the formatting and posted a link for the softcover rules. If you did not back the KS but wanted a print edition, now you can get it.

I've been tinkering with the Halls of Moridis and doing an actual play for Tales of the Splintered Realm with some old-school characters. A 'session' is typically about an hour of me fumbling through an encounter or two and adding the write-up to the Halls. I'm taking a very casual approach to it. Something to busy my mind for a bit, I guess. I have permanent links for those things over on the left side...

Been listening to a LOT of the Decemberists. Good stuff. They have such a deep catalog, I have lots of rabbit trails to explore through Youtube. "The Tain" is kind of an obsession right now.

Flippin' the Script

Now that I have a firmer idea of how Daggerford is set up, and how it is settled into the nearby environs, I realized that the map of Moridis' Halls would work much better if I flipped it east to west, so that the sewer entrances were in the southwest corner, and the more remote entrances could be northeast of the town proper. I cleaned up the map just a smidge, inverted all of my concealed and secret door markings, and went back to an unkeyed master to work from. I had about a third of this stocked, and now I'm back to the drawing board (almost literally), but it's okay. I have some other ideas for things I'd like to do with some of these areas anyay, and I want to make the dungeon a bit more robust in general. This entire section was really the living and working areas of the D'Ro, with some of their upper prison pens, offices, and minor facilities. Their more experimental, magical shenanigans were on the second level, so while I an hint at such things filtering up from below, much of this is a straight-up dungeon crawl largely populated by undead and vermin that have wandered in from above. The D'Ro themeselves have largely relegated their mad works to levels 2-3, generally abandoning this area. However, I do know that at least three young dragons, all considered too weak by their mother Moridis, have been cast aside into these upper halls. All three have motivation to either get into their mother's good graces or at least muck up her projects, so all three could provide role-play and interactivity beyond waiting for heroes to kill them and loot their lairs.  

The New(est) Delvers of Daggerford

I went round-n-round in the old noggin about how to approach my actual play experience for the Halls of Moridis, and in the process went back through my actual plays and lots of notes for dungeon delving for the last few years (on and off). I decided to wipe the slate clean and start all over with a brand-spanking new group of adventurers, using the Tales of the Splintered Realm rules, although with an old-school edge - I went straight up 2d6 for all stats (organize as desired), and ended up with some deeply flawed characters. These are NOT heroes in any meaningful sense, but are literally a group of losers that a noble-minded elf has pulled together. I like that I spent all of their money, and she had thirty pieces of silver left - she has used this to pay off the debts of the other three (they appeared to her in dreams telling her to investigate the Halls of Moridis), and she has assembled her rag-tag coaltion. I mean, Sloth couldn't even afford armor, and most of them have CHA that gives a penalty. This is an old-school sort of group, and I couldn't love them any more.

Also, I have officially crossed a line as a game designer. For decades, I have repeated a process. I will get a few years past a game that I've written, pull it out, decide to play it for a while, start to immediately see where I could improve it, and start tinkering. Before long, I'm no longer playing the game, but instead working on the next edition. I don't think there will be another edition of Tales of the Splintered Realm. It's 'perfect' as it is. As I've been leafing through it, I've been pleasantly surprised, again and again, at how clean and sharp it is. For a moment, I had a pang of something akin to regret that I put friars in there instead of clerics (the only 'revolutionary' change), but then I watched the first half of Rogue One the other day, and realized that the church of the game world better aligns with that ethos - the true adherents of the faith are not armored clerics in churches, they are wild men like John the Baptist wandering the wilderness declaring that the true faith is not dead. Temples are often relics of the past or have been overcome by grifters and charlatans. The choice of character classes reflects this reality. You can easily build a 'cleric' or 'paladin', but the game is correct as it is. I was also astounded that I'd managed to get over 120 monsters in there - I started to think about how this game could use a larger bestiary, and then realized it didn't really need one - the vast majority of the classic monsters are represented and it's a great cross-section. I could literally play with just these rules forever... and I guess I just might.  

I did cheat JUST a bit and swap out Vessa's archer talent for two weapons in her Warden build - it's a minor swap, and I just have to accept she is no longer an official warden, but is a house-ruled variant... a mark of shame forevermore.

I'm looking forward to playing around with these four... 

Some Random Thoughts

I finished round three of chemotherapy yesterday, so that was something. I have three more rounds to go before we move into a 'maintenance' phase, and they're going to give me a rotation of radiation therapy directly on the tumor pressing against my spine for good measure in the interim, but I have a little time off. I was WIPED the last two days, but after a lot of sleep and figuring out how to manage my diet to rebound quicker, I'm feeling pretty spry today. I managed to update some links on the old blog here to make things a little more up-to-date and easy to access; a lot of my links were to previous iterations of Stalwart, and it made sense to at least have the first visit with the blog be with current stuff. I've got a FAQ, a dedicated post for S85, and a post about my other games that sort of summarizes all things in a bit of a handier fashion. At least I hope it is.

One thing I've been doing is organizing my Facebook feeds and following some things - I mean, there are some cool communities out there that I just had no idea about, and it's fun to reminisce about my favorite eras of professional wrestling and comics and gaming. One thing that jumped out at me was how much, in my wrestling fandom of the late 80s, I never really appreciated 'enhancement talent' (or 'jobbers'). It got me thinking that comics has its own tier of jobbers and enhancement talent, and that Stalwart '85 could use more of that. I have about 4 different illustrations I did when putting together Stalwart '85 that I never used because they ultimately came across as half-baked minor villains not worth the bother. A collection of several of these expert-level, one-trick villains might be a good first issue of "The Stalwart Phile" if I can get around to getting that going. I've got lots of ideas for it, so there's no good reason not to do it, and to keep pumping out content for Stalwart '85. I mean, I could do 20 or so of those and then collect them into a complete volume. Not a bad way to think about adding to the game over time.

I'm so happy to see the positive reception Stalwart '85 is getting as people get their hands on the print books. I was super happy with how they came out, and I'm glad to see that people generally share my enthusiasm. Every time I see a tag that someone posted a pic of their book, it gives me warm fuzzies.

I go back and forth (and back... and forth) about how I want to build the Halls of Moridis megadungeon for both Hack'D and TSR. Ultimately, it's a product for both, so I can build it simultaneously for both. I had planned to start it over with a new group of heroes (and I rolled them up), but then I thought maybe I'd take the characters I'd already been using for Hack'D and just come up with their comparable stats in TSR and keep going where I was. That seems like the better option - I liked those characters (they were based on the inside front cover of the Basic '81 rules - my favorite D+D image ever), so I could just keep going with them. Seems like I have some old notes to dig through and find...

My LEGO room is in full bloom. I've been able to track down a few sets I wanted, I've had many given as gifts (thanks to those who have sent those my way - much appreciated), and I've even gone through and pulled out some of my 10+ year old instruction books and cobbled together sets from way back in the day (I did the AT-ST from 2007 last week). It's a great room to just hang out in. I have all sorts of my old comics bagged and boarded on the walls, and I'm surrounded by nerd stuff. It's a glorious space in my basement.

For a guy who is battling 'terminal cancer', I'm actually doing quite well. I never know what tomorrow may bring, but I'm hopeful that I can still put this mother f-er into remission at some point, and squeeze another few years out of this body that kind of wants to quit on me.

Thanks for all of the support and good vibes. It's all been deeply appreciated.

Stalwart '85 FAQ

Some Questions People Have Pondered...

Q: How does stun work?

A: Stun means that you cannot act at all for the duration of stun, which may be in actions, rounds, or even longer periods of time. All actions against you are successful unless a 1 is rolled.

Q: Could you clarify action management?

A: It is generally an either/or proposition. As a character at tier D10, you can either take 2 actions at full strength, or 5 actions at a -1 downshift of dice. You can be at your best for a few actions, or water yourself down and spread yourself a little thin. It really comes down to the strategy of one foe where you want to concentrate attacks, or a number of lesser foes (or a time when you need to add some movement to your action management that round).

House Rules: Here are some rules I've been using to keep things keeping on...

Any 'super hero' (however you choose to define that - I'm going with expert tier or better) is able to deal, minimally, 1 point of damage with any successful attack. While you are still bulletproof against mooks firing their D6 pistols, the young archer apprentice with the D8 bow still has a chance of piercing your defenses every attack. I'm limiting this that any side or secondary effects requiring you to deal damage are not triggered unless you actually roll 1 or more points; this freebie point does not bring any automatic benefits with it, and is just an attaboy to keep at it. A superhero who hits another superhero in combat does something, even if it's quite minimal. 

My Other Games

My Other RPG Projects

	Hack’D & Slash'D $1 PDF Fantasy RPG using D12   Resources: * The H&S Living Companion * Halls of Moridis Living Megadungeon
Tales of the Splintered Realm $.2.95 PDF Fantasy RPG using the OGL Resources: * The Halls of Moridis - a Living Megadungeon * New Delvers of Daggerford Actual Play Report
	Shards of Tomorrow $2.95 PDF   Sci-fi RPG using the OGL
The Stalwart Age $2.95 PDF Superhero RPG using the OGL Resources: The Stalwart Age Blog is a semi-retired resource including background and character stat blocks.
	Cupcake Scouts the RPG (2E) $2.95 PDF An RPG of Friendship, Baking, and Monster Staking
Michael T. Desing’s Army Ants '81 PWYW PDF A simple military RPG… with bugs Resources: * Comic Book Volume 1 PWYW * Comic Book Volume 2 PWYW

Ye Olde Fantasy Itch

I've been watching Lord of the Rings, built the LEGO Rivendell set, started on the LEGO Medieval Village set (all fun), and have been doing a lot of cancer-treatment related stuff (generally less fun). I ended up in the ER for something of a false alarm over the last two days, but better safe than sorry and all of that. I'm feeling pretty well considering I'm two rounds into chemotherapy - although I am well aware it is likely to get more challenging the further I go.

I also got the vast majority of the Stalwart '85 books sent out (I am missing maybe three addresses still), and have the KS somewhere around 90% fulfilled. I still need to finish the adventure I am writing, the comic pages I am putting together, the web site, and (ideally) some online support. Those are all relatively significant things, but the physical books being out in the wild was the BIG thing (and what people were paying for). The stretch goals I feel okay if they take a little longer to get done. I'll get there, and they'll be better if I wait for inspiration to drive them forward. I tried working on them after shipping lots of books, and it felt like work. That's never good. So, back burner for the moment, but on simmer.

However, I took out the rules for Hack'D and Slash'D, but felt like playing something a little meatier and more 'classic D+D' - which is fortunate, because I have one of THOSE games, too. I started to think about a dungeon crawl campaign for Tales of the Splintered Realm, and decided I wanted to create a classic cleric class for that game (which will be easy enough to do), and then put together a team to explore Moridis Halls, which I am placing beneath Stalwart Keep to unify things a bit. I managed to figure out how the existing map fits under the keep, and it's going to require some revisions of existing concepts, but it's all pretty doable. Here's the Stalwart Keep map with the overlay of the Halls. It's not very pretty (the blue dungeon overlay is a bit awakward), but it gives a sense of how the two fit together... and provides a scale for the upper keep in reference.

I can see a few ways into it... 

• There is going to be a secret door connected to the western well.
• The northern well descends directly into a pool. This will be blocked from the rest of the dungeon by a heavy portcullis.
• There is a stairway down into the dark temple from an unnumbered building towards the east (north of building 4) that is going to be a secret society of dark friars that worship Moridis.
• The northern exit will go outside of the keep, to a secret entrance used by goblins (I think) that is further down the side of the hill. Moridis has been calling the goblins to her.
• The northern section also has an entrance used by a dwarven clan of brewers who use the mushroom halls to get the mushrooms used in their strange but potent ales. Their connection to the earth has also allowed them to hear the whisperings of Moridis from the deep. They would have motivation to get some adventurers to go down there and figure out what's going on.

I have quite a bit of free time on my hands, so starting a long-term fantasy solo campaign is not a bad way to use that time. If I end up with some publishable content out of it, all the better.