So, this week saw everyone back and just in time for the big meet with the Emperor of Atlantis. The characters had convinced the Valhallans to join the fight to preserve Ultima Thule, and decided to bring the Soviets from the crash of SSSR-V6 back with them. The two members of the GPU unit that have been trying to recapture Olga since early in the campaign are convinced they’ll be needed to stop her, if her powers have truly been unleashed, but the characters — rightly not trusting them — leave them at home.

They head to the location they and the Atlanteans had agreed on — a neutral spot on an inland sea outside the control of Atlantis. There they found a high mountain range with a massive inland sea and near the northeastern spit of water, a huge crystal and metal building, like an upside-down ziggurat from which streams of water and clouds of steam escaped. The middle of this inverted pyramid was open, stepped leading down to a super-heated pool of water. Various “islands” with water features and gardens were suspended in the middle and the scale of everything was that of a place made for people bigger than Man.

Nearby, a large imperial ship in red and gold waited, and a few saucers were keeping the area secured. They landed on a pad, and Dr. Gould stayed inside the saucer with their pilot, planning on only revealing himself to win Olga over, if she was there; they knew he was of value to the emperor, and it was too risky to show him off. Gus Hassenfeldt, “Sky Marshal” Hunter, and Zara, with a small guard of panthermen to protect them, were directed through the upper floors of the structure to a massive suspended park with waterfalls and gardens.

There they found Emperor Mot (I settled on going with the classic Max von Sydow Ming for the general look and feel) and Olga — or Lady Morana (a Russian death goddess) — dressed in your basic black slinky femme fatale number, complete with cape, and their collection of royal guardsmen. After some banter between the sides, Gus tried to keep the conversation on peace-making: they only started the rebellion to reseat their friend Amon in Ultima Thule (done), and to rescue their friends Olga and Shria. Olga/Morana, however, doesn’t need to be saved. She is perfectly content to be the emperor’s right-hand and consort. Mot even agrees to return Shria to them, if they walk away and disband their rebellion.

Meanwhile, Olga has reached out and touched Gould’s mind, luring him to join them. There, he is surprised to find she doesn’t want to leave with them. She has everything she needs here, but they need him to save the Inner World from collapse. Mot needs him to help “turn the key” and save this world, and he needs Olga’s ability to supercharge the Atlantean technology to do it. They try to convince him to join Mot and his friends can leave in peace…he might even mean it, they think.

But Gould pushes too hard, trying to convince Olga to run away with them. She refuses — Mot has given her more than she could have out there: she has been awakened to her power, she has authority and resect, power, and when she is done with Mot, she will rule this world! The final dig — he also gave her a son. Gould falls apart and she is able to ensorcel him to leave while giving the guardsmen their orders.

The battle was fast and brutal. Gus takes out two guardsmen with rapidity, while Hunter hoses the emperor down with his Chicago Typewriter…but the .45s from the Tommy gun reflect away as the emperor raises his fist. There is a glowing ring with the symbol of the Terra Arcanum on it. He then uses telekenesis to launch Hunter over the side of the bridge to his apparent death below.

Gus grabs Zara and throws them both over the side into a water feature to escape the heat rays of the guardsmen remaining. They are sucked through some kind of tube and expelled into the central terracing of the pyramid, falling…

The gunfire snapped Gould out of it and he runs for it, just in time to see their saucer apparently explode on the concourse above! They are trapped. Then he sees his friends gone, the panthermen cut down by heat ray fire, and Mot closing on him. With a flick of the wrist, his telekinesis knocks the doctor cold. As he passed out, his last sight is Olga standing over him with that derisive look she always gives those enemies she deems beneath her.

This was a fun one, and mostly played off the cuff. I didn’t have much time to plan as I had a last minute hire at the local community college to teach history, and was scrambling to get through the paperwork and mandatory training.

I knew I wanted a big action set piece that was weird and exotic, and big — the same way the Star Wars settings like the Death Star interiors were BIG. This was their first meeting with the big bad, and we had to see him in a venue that was big, strange, and intimidating to give the character more impact, as well. The von Sydow Ming remains one of the all-time best biddies in cinema history and he was always in my mind when I was mentioning the guy as the sinister off-screen presence. He had to POP to make this work: he couldn’t be a push-over, couldn’t be anything but calm, menacing, but charming in his own way.

I was fortunate enough to bunce some ideas off of Runeslinger last night. I wanted something that had that hawkman city vibe from Flash Gordon, but bigger. He suggested the geyser idea, which I ran with and changed the venue to the giant upside down pyramid for the weird factor. He mentioned “spa o the Gods” and it all clicked. (One of the other players used the same term later in play and got a style point for it…)

Olga had to come off different. She was always quiet, violent, but with that defensive, abused quality that made her a bit human. Now they see her as a sort of Black Queen: confident, powerful, angry, and twisted. Mot has either made her into something obscene, or worse…released something that was always there. This NPC was always an enigma. I had early visions of her secretly being a GPU agent trying to find the Hollow Earth. I considered that she was just so broken that she was truly sociopathic, but hadn’t crossed the line into cold-blooded killer (but was close.) But when she got captured, I knew I had my angle — the abused creature of power that is finally trained well enough to be dangerous and now has her own agenda, which might be to see everything burn (Gould’s concern), unbridled power, or something else.

So again we pulled off a top-notch cliffhanger with a major PC captured, his girlfriend turned into a sorcerous villainess, the others falling to their deaths(?) and the emperor winning.