Ruins of Azlant Gameplay I

Eliza shakes her head. "I can't remember a thing. It's cut out of my head, all I can feel is the hole where it used to be," she explains, one hand balled up in a fist on the side of her head. Her shoulders slump as she shrinks into herself. "I'm sorry I can't help."

"It's okay," Aisha keeps a smile on her lips and places her hand on Eliza's shoulder. "It's not your fault, and we'll work on getting your memory back together. For now, can you make sure you don't talk to anyone about this except Ramona and I? We've told everyone so far that Soren's sick."

Eliza nods. "I can do that much, at least," she says quietly.

"You can do more than that," Aisha pats her shoulder again. "You're brilliant and capable, you just had a terrible thing happen to you. If you need anything else, my door's always open." She rises back up to her feet then. "For now, I'm going to go and see if we can get this solved. Stay safe." With that, she turns and heads to seek out Carver and explain the situation to him.

Carver listens to the situation with a growing expression of concern. He shakes his head once the story is done. "I'm afraid I don't know what this could be. I'll look through the old Pathfinder journals to see if there's any mention in there of anything similar."

Aisha's brow creases when she gets that answer. "Please do. I'm going to ask Perrell as well, but if she doesn't know anything we'll need to do research and find out as soon as we can. For now, try to keep this between us and Ramona, and I'll fill you in if the situation changes. At the moment the official story is that Soren's sick."

"Are you sure it's the best idea to tell Perrell?" Carver asks. "Anything you tell her, especially if it has to do with a danger to the colony is guaranteed to not be a secret any longer."

"That's a good point. That being said, she has a pretty deep pool of knowledge and might know exactly what this is," Aisha frowns, idly playing with her hair as she thinks. "I could pose it to her as a hypothetical, claim that it's something the Strix we met today brought up in the region and ask if she knows anything for us to be ready for."

"That could work, if you can pull off the lie," Carver says. "It's a bit out of the ordinary, though, and Perrell might still suspect something. But whatever you decide, keep an eye and an ear out around the island for any other strange going ons."

Aisha pauses there and considers the factors at play, then shakes her head. "It's not worth lying to her over, that could just cause more problems and not solve any. You stay on your guard too, and let me know if you find anything, I'm going to talk with Ramona on how to move forward."

With that, Aisha returns to Ramona and relays what happened, starting with Eliza's hole in her memory and subsequent breakdown, then Carver's lack of knowledge - though she does not include his promise to dig through Pathfinder journals - and finally her decision not to talk to Perrell and the reasons for it.

"We need to have a more in depth discussion about this," Ramona says, after the explanation is done. "Ideally without Soren present, but he still needs to be watched and under guard, for now."

"What if we ask Carver to watch him for the moment, as he's already aware of the situation?" Aisha suggests. "That would free up the five of us to talk away from Soren."

"We could ask Rayland to, as an alternative," Ramona suggests. "I trust his discretion, and he'd do it without knowing the full story. Carver's insights could be useful at the meeting."

Aisha agrees to that, then goes to fetch Rayland for that purpose. She explains that Ramona needs someone to watch Soren and that the official story is that he's sick, adding that he shouldn't ask what the full story is yet. With him in tow, she returns back to Soren's house with a normal but fake smile. "Hey guys, Rayland's agreed to keep an eye on Soren and make sure he's okay for now while we go report back to Ramona."

The party heads to Ramona, where first, she summarizes all the information she's been told thus far to catch everyone present up to speed. "Does anyone have any additional questions or comments on that?" she asks, once that's done.

Jax's scowl deepens on hearing Eliza's missing memory. "So whatever was controlling Eliza has a hand in this situation too." he muses. "That doesn't make me feel any better about this."

"We need to figure out what to do right now," Aisha points out. "We can't do much until we know what's happening, but we can only keep Soren or 'Soren', whichever it is, locked in the house for so long before rumours start to spread and his friends demand to talk to him."

”Do you think Koloshkora or the strix would know?” Kaimana asks, rubbing the back of his neck.

"It's possible," Aisha purses her lips. "Skalorah in particular seemed to know a lot about the island. I can ask Koloshkora tomorrow when I go to talk to her, I don't even think we need to tell her all the specifics. Them being detached from the colony would also stop word from spreading from them to here."

Jax nods. "I agree. And the sooner we can solve this the better. I don't feel like getting nearly killed again because we weren't prepared."

"Alternatively," Ramona points out. "We could let Soren go, and try to keep an eye on what he's up to. It's a little risky, but it does mean we avoid the issue of holding him for too long."

"Is there someone regularly here that would make sense to keep an eye on him?" Kaimana asks, frowning slightly. "We're out a lot, so..."

"I could assign the clockwork spy to watch him," Amissa offers. "If I gave it instructions to come to Ramona if anything suspicious happens, I think that would probably be the most reliable method of surveillance."

Jax opens his mouth to protest, but closes it again as Kaimana and Amissa talk. A moment of silence passes while he considers their proposal. "...I still don't like this, but I understand you need to consider the colony's reaction as a whole as well. As long as he is watched, and guards are available in case he attempts something dangerous, I will be satisfied until we know more."

"I don't like this either," says Amissa. "I have a really bad feeling about what's going on. The best case scenario is that Soren's being used as a focus for someone to spy on us - probably the same someone that Eliza was being controlled by. That's not something I'm very comfortable with. But..." She trails off a bit, frowning. "But causing a panic is bad too, and would hurt us more in the long run. So we'll have to settle for the clockwork spy, and immediate action in the event that something happens."