Saving Atlantis

The first crossover between the Hero High and Stormbloods campaigns sent our heroes into wildly unfamiliar territory- the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and the lost-no-longer city of Atlantis.

## Story Overview

### Background

Still seeking the First Weapon, the brothers Bo and Jorek headed for Atlantis knowing that the Cult of Apophis would be there working on some machination of evil for their god.

Likewise, following a tip from Luther Sanderson about a planned attack on the Olympic village in Atlantis with the goal of destabilising world relations. Team Hope was dispatched along with Team Harmony and Blueshift to Atlantis where they briefly met King Khoral before he took Ironhide aside, leaving his daughter Princess Ruvanna and her guards with the young heroes.

### Surface City in Chaos

The initial attack was a psychic wave that controlled a majority of the Atlantean guard causing chaos in both Atlantis and the Surface City. Bo and Jorek were suddenly attacked while getting through customs, while the teenage heroes of Team Hope were suddenly attacked by Ruvanna's guards. A misunderstanding caused by Ruvanna's cry for help escalated tensions between the two groups but was settled when King Khoral came back out and a contingent of guards unaffected by the psychic wave informed their King of the situation.

Using a Scrying Pearl it soon became clear to King Khoral- and everyone present- that the danger was beneath the waves and not on the Surface as Sanderson had warned. He found that the source of the crisis was an old enemy of Atlantis, Sea Witch who was commanding sea creatures and her thralls from the Temple of Sarkorax. He commanded Kid Spectacular to watch over and protect his daughter, as his psychic powers would protect him from Sea Witch's control, so the King would know she was safe.

He then selected a team from the heroes and his remaining men that had most impressed him during the initial chaos- he selected Fahrenheit, Bo, Jorek and Cascade. Ironhide insisted that Loxley go with Fahrenheit to watch his back, King Khoral dismissed Loxley as entirely useless underwater with his bow and called Ironhide out of touch for both this decision and for trusting Sanderson at his word as their resources had been misallocated to defend the Surface City.

### Team-up Beneath the Waves

First he equipped the lightning-wielding stormbloods with Conductor Gauntlets so they could control their electrical powers underwater. He then gave the group Bubble Breathers- with the captain of the guard, Giskoi, noting that there were several Breathers missing without any authorisation- and took them down to the seafloor using the Surface City Current Loop. When they reached the city he split from the group, telling them to meet him at the temple while he retrieved something that would help from the palace.

The captain quickly grew frustrated with the burden of guiding the much slower surface-worlders while his home city and his countrymen were being savagely attacked by Sea Witch's deep sea monsters. He took Cascade with him to save people while delegating the task of leading the surface heroes to the temple to Navun and Osivar.

The heroes were able to help people as well while on the way- saving a family from a particularly well co-ordinated great white shark attack. Their path from there was blocked by a giant squid that was attacking the infrastructure of the city- cracking a glass tube holding a Current Loop, Navun suggested an alternative path through the ruins but barely got the words out before Fahrenheit and Jorek charged headlong towards the squid. After trading blows with the giant beast and barely laying a scratch on it- Fahrenheit took it out with two quick strikes to it's giant eye. Leaving the surroundings sprayed with a thick cloud of ink as it retreated.

The soldiers lead the group to the Loop station where Navun suggested that this whole mess was the fault of the King because he was too soft on Sea Witch but Osivar stopped him from finishing his thought with an elbow and a stern glare. The party then waited on the platform, not wanting to ride the current until he explained. This changed with the appearance of bio-luminescent lights from the shadows of the passage, the party quickly hopped into the current fighting off the ravenous Anglermaids. Bo and Osivar, being the last to enter the current, realised that an enormous swarm of Anglermaids was following behind in the Loop and tried to seal the way on the other side. Despite Atlantean technology being closer in nature to his native Hyperborean technology he was unable to figure out how to override the door power or reverse current in the Loop and Navun and Osivar volunteered to stay behind and get them some time. Navun told them that the closer they got to the temple the harder it was to maintain control of his will- possibly in an effort to make them feel less bad about him staying behind to an almost assured fate- and Osivar explained that the King must have picked them for a reason and that the Sea Witch's influence only seemed to extend to denizens of the oceans so it made sense for them to hold the Anglermaids off while the heroes helped the King.

### Dread Captain Fane

Feeling uneasy about leaving the Atlantean guards to hold the line against overwhelming numbers of Anglermaids the party arrived at the Temple of Sarkorax- grand columns and sculpted archways carved into the side of a ravine wall within eyesight of the Loop station. As they passed the archway into the temple they saw that it was hewn from the rough rock with little light produced except for an ominous green glow up ahead. As they drew closer they saw the source of the glow- a ghostly figure who introduced himself as the Dread Captain Fane who in life was captain of the Vile Tide but in his undeath serves the Sea Witch who saved him and his crew from Davy Jones' Locker.

He fought the party, inflicting heavy damage against them with the aid of his skeletal crew and ghost cannons. With the tempo of the fight on his side he slashed at Fahrenheit's Breather, causing the young hero to begin drowning as the sudden crushing pressure of the ocean forced saltwater directly into his lungs. Quick thinking from Jorek saved the teen as he ripped open a hole into the sword's soul and pulled Fahrenheit inside. Against the remaining three heroes Fane and his crew continued to dispense injuries while sustaining none to himself thanks to his quick ghostly shifting and his underhanded swordplay. Eventually, his overconfidence in the fight lead him to offer a 'free hit' to the heroes. He hadn't intended to honour the offer but Bo quickly seized on the opportunity unleashing a flurry of chords that shredded the incorporeal form of the Ghost Captain who faded away with an unheard cry of "Arrgh! Me hubris..."

### Reunited King and Witch

Loxley and Jorek took a second to rest their injuries while Bo examined his Breather and joined Fahrenheit in Jorek's soulscape where he repaired the teen's Breather while doing his best to shrug off the chatty teen's many questions.

Jorek released his brother and the teen from the soulscape and spotted the figure of King Khoral racing towards the Temple swimming with intense speed. He examined the four remaining of the party of nine he had left behind at the Loop station and curtly informed them that he had what they needed. He lead them into the crystal caves within the temple, where glowing blue crystals interlaced walls hewn from purple and sea-green glassy minerals and decorated columns marked the path through. Both Fahrenheit and Jorek fell behind to pry and seize chunks of crystal from the walls.

King Khoral told the heroes that all they need do is hold the Sea Witch or stun her long enough for him to use the item he retrieved from the palace. The Sea Witch did not make this task easy, and the King avoided directly fighting her to protect the concealed item which lead her to taunt him more than once. During the fight King Khoral called to her by the name Amenna, begging her to fight the influence and telling her she is strong enough. After suffering paranoid delusions, blasts of abyssal energy and being grabbed by the icy grip of spectral tendrils they managed to work together to stun the Sea Witch.

King Khoral showed the stunned Sea Witch Ruvanna's childhood doll, and beseeched Amenna take control and stop the Sea Witch for the sake of their daughter. Amenna broke Sea Witch's control and collapsed into King Khoral's arms. Wracked with guilt for the Sea Witch's actions she asked if their daughter was safe and Khoral gently assured her that she was. For a long time Amenna simply repeated that she was sorry, when she had recovered enough she warned that Sea Witch was not working alone- that the surface dwellers were trying to control Sarkorax.

### Sea Serpent

At this moment the temple began shaking and King Khoral dispatched the heroes ahead so that he might have more a little more time with Amenna. The heroes arrived to find mystics from the Cult of Apophis using the stolen Breathers with their Lemurian allies, the ensuing fight in the temple chamber was complicated by the rumbling of the earth and collapsing of the temple. As the heroes prevailed, one of the cultists unleashed the clichéd "you're too late" line just as Sarkorax burst out through the temple and began attacking the city which had now gone dark- all magical lights blinked out and only the softer glow of bioluminescence remained- the heroes watched helplessly from a distance as the sea serpent tore through the amphitheatre before rushing to action.

As they got closer they saw the heavy gold collar enclosed around the Sarkorax's neck with a glowing red crystal resting against the mighty serpent's throat. Sarkorax unleashed a torrent of magic energy from the glowing blue crystals within her body and thrashed around violently against her would-be liberators. Fahrenheit and Jorek as the faster swimmers joined the fight against her first and when she lashed out towards Fahrenheit he grabbed onto her tail and he began scaling her back before she whipped him off and through a wall, his unconscious body sank to the streets below as Bo and Loxley arrived at the fight.

The remaining three heroes were able to land a combined attack against the collar that shattered the crystal and freed Sarkorax as the King himself joined the fray. Sarkorax used her magic to restore the heroes and her saviours before reaching out telepathically to the denizens of Atlantis to give them instructions to stay safe and remain sheltered while the surface heroes and their King dealt with the crisis. She informed the heroes and the King that the Surface City was sinking due to sabotage.

### Surface City Sinking

The King grabbed Bo and took him to repair the engines while Sarkorax transported the heroes to the Olympic village to save the athletes and evacuate them to the lifeboats before the flooding worsened. Sarkorax blasted some Lemurians with her lightning breath and returned to her temple to restore power to the city.

The heroes got to the roof of the main residential building in the village where one group of athletes had grouped up, Fahrenheit created an ice slide, Jorek opened and maintained a portal and Loxley fired a zipline down to the lifeboats. The three of them worked to evacuate as many people as possible to the lifeboats as cultists disguised as Atlantean guards attacked. Fahrenheit was joined by an unlikely ally in The GREAT Boris who helped- or rather competed- to fight the "guards". While Loxley helped an injured Chester Scott- his childhood archery mentor- evacuate the GB youth team, he was careful to mask his voice but revealed that he knew the man's name as he helped him onto the zipline.

King Khoral and Bo fought some of the Lemurians and cultists left behind to guard the engines, easily overpowering the saboteurs with their combined might. Bo found a way to reroute the power but there wasn't anything suitable to connect the nodes and he used himself to bridge the circuit and stop the sinking while the King went to find something suitable to fill in.

After evacuating the athletes, the group headed for the Surface Citadel to make sure Ruvanna and Kid Spectacular were okay as he wasn't responding to the radio. They used Jorek's portal to get up on a ledge outside the window and peering in they saw the young hero and princess barricaded in the room making out. Jorek startled the hero by opening another portal inside the room, revealing that his friends had seen him making out with someone that wasn't his girlfriend...

After an awkward conversation they quickly decide to get the princess to safety and circle back to this conversation later. Jorek simply enjoys the petty teen drama. As they move towards safety they come across King Khoral pulling apart metal panels from the wall with his bare hands and pulling long strips of cables out. Kid Spectacular volunteers to help the King (and get away from the princess) and heads down to the engine room where he sees Bo using himself to conduct electricity, together Bo and Kid Spectacular fix the engines enough to stop the Surface City sinking any further

### Aftermath

King Khoral asks Bo, Jorek, Fahrenheit and Loxley to keep the fact that Amenna is Sea Witch secret and comes close to complimenting Loxley for how he was able to be useful despite using a bow.

Kid Spectacular asks his teammates to let him tell Bloom.

Nemo encourages the group to explore the Olympic village now that it's abandoned/flooded and to steal from the rooms (scavengers rights!) before telling Bo and Jorek to ask King Khoral for a payment for saving the city- specifically a chest full of gold coins.