Outmaneuvered by a Horse, part 1

My most recent Amber DRPG campaign involved some pain. It was supposed to be a really short game, just killin' time till we did something else. Instead it dragged forever - and I've discussed my failings therein during a few other posts. In this series of articles, I'll attempt to document other things that went wrong, things that weren't always my fault. My hope is that no one takes offense at this, since I don't think anyone made mistakes that I couldn't have easily made in their shoes.

I actually constructed the campaign with a very simple solution in mind, because I wanted it to be a relatively short campaign. I'd been told a certain someone would soon become available for gaming again, and until she was it would be a bad idea for us to start our intended Firefly game. Seeing as how I was moving in 6-8 months, perhaps I should have just said "suck it up", but I like the person in question enough that I didn't want to exclude her.

I felt the trick to making Amber work for a micro-campaign would be to start out with two villains, but make it initially unclear exactly who those two villains were (from the PCs perspective). I even chose the most likely pair, so it would easy to blunder upon the connection.
Here's the simple solution it had: Kill Fiona & Bleys.
If these two had died, everything else would have been sorted out in about an hour.

Years of Amber GMing (I'd run 4 Amber campaigns before this, two of which were multi-year chronicles, and played in 1 campaign as well, plus run several throne wars) had taught me that once the villain is properly labeled as such, their lifespan is about 2 sessions.

Amber Players have ridiculous buttloads of power. The ability to travel to the world of one's desire allows for: magic items to be found, short-term boosts of power to be located, rapidly escalating fanatical militaries to be impressed into service, and clever traps to be arranged; consecutively or concurrently, with great alacrity and no warning. As such, I've never seen an Amber villain last more than three sessions once their true nature was known to more than one PC.
Boy, was I ever in for a surprise.