"...It's a long shot, but was there any sort of - big thing, that kept happening when Deskyl was taken offsite?  Did - hm - do you have enough data to speculate on Pritruth's...emotional state, I suppose - before and after these incidents?  His motives?"

"I don't know of anything happening, but that's not surprising to me; off-site most likely means off-planet in this case. The other servant droids did note that he seemed anxious before the first time master Deskyl was taken and showed mixed signs of relief and anxiety afterward, with the anxiety being consistent with being unexpectedly engaged in keeping a captive Sith. We have no significant guesses about his motives; he works with a number of other Sith formally and informally and there are plenty of opportunities for one of them to have made some sort of demand of him but I don't know of any specific evidence of that happening."

"Yes, well, I mean 'things so big you'd notice them happening off-planet'.  ...Though, now that I think about that, it's not like the Empire is going to be in favor of free flow of information, exactly."

"I'd expect most events that significant to be at the warfront, which we were well back from - the travel time is consistent with it, though, in a fast ship."

"...Well, that's interesting."

"...Don't know what they could have been doing, at the warfront, that...

"...most likely requires a Force-sensitive, has a lot of cognitive load - causing fucking memory loss afterwards, or maybe it just never gave a chance for memories to form to begin with from some kind of overload...  Worth enough to make Pritruth pay the costs of keeping his apprentice captive, which - implies strategic advantage, especially given that it kept happening...

"...the hell were they doing, extra-Sithy battle meditation?  Can you even do that with the Dark Side?"

"...Ah, my apologies for the language."

"...But that does hang together, I think.  If it was the warfront.  I don't know why it would cause that, but assuming that whatever...", she refrains from letting out another expletive by main effort, "they were doing did make battle meditation fry someone's brain...and, now that I'm thinking of the damage I saw, having to encompass who-knows-how-much of a battlefield with nothing but yourself really seems like it would fray one's Spirit...

"I could see that sort of thing being ordered, by some very big and scary fish should it come to their attention."

"...Was there anything you know Pritruth to have been involved in, that could be related to that sort of thing?"

"One of his apprentices is stationed there and presumably some of his business contacts are as well but I don't know anything about what any of them do there."

"...Well.  I guess we have a hypothesis, at least.  Even if it's rather still a mystery."

"There could be any number of other reasons, yes.  Just because this one doesn't seem wrong doesn't mean it's right.

"...I can say that if Alicia's information about the technique she mentioned is accurate in what she has implied of it - do remind me, what is battle meditation, exactly? - that that guess seems, at least, coherent."

"...Our actual Force expert isn't here, but - my understanding is that it's a massive telempathic coordination.

"Which...

"Oh, hell, that really does make just a bit too much sense.  That, especially the Sith version of the technique, would..."

She gestures, widely, inchoately, hoping that words will come to her by the time she's finished.

She doesn't have any, by the time she finishes gesturing.

"...Attempt to compress everything into one person's skull?", comes a guess.

"...Yes, that, exactly.  I don't know if that's - actually plausible - but it really does hang together."

"Master Deskyl is trained in Sith battle meditation, I can ask her next time she's awake if you'd like."

"...I would like to leave the question of whether, when, and how to broach the subject to your best judgement, if you wouldn't mind.  You know her better.  But if that is - genuinely what you'd recommend, given the totality of the circumstances - then, yes, if you wouldn't mind I'd like to know what she thinks."

"I can ask about battle meditation without telling her what exactly we've been talking about. If you want her input on the topic more broadly I'll want to broach that carefully, yes - are you expecting to be able to do anything with the information or is this just out of curiosity?"

"...I am - concerned for her, and I know that if I had been in a position like hers, I would rather desperately want to know what had happened to me.  That, and - should there be battle-shock lurking, best to have some idea where - though my gut instinct is that merely living in the Empire could provide sufficient cause.  Perhaps not for someone who lives beneath the government's notice, but - what was it you said, Alicia?  The accepted way to be promoted was to kill whoever held the position above yours?  ...The Phoenix Kingdom parallels really grow more stark and concerning with everything I learn of this Empire, come to think of it.  Or perhaps I should say that the Phoenix Kingdom parallels the Empire, because in truth I'm starting to expect that the Phoenix Kingdom manages to be the less awful theocracy.  Which is something of an achievement.

"...On the other hand, judging by the look on her face, Alicia has let her tendency to try to solve things that look like they could be puzzles get ahead of her tact."

...Yeah, that's kind of true.  "...I will admit that I don't know what I'd do with the information if I had it.  Besides, well, make sure that Deskyl knew if she wanted to.  Attempt to figure out something that could protect against something like that in the future?  But I can do that without knowing anything."

"We've discussed master Deskyl's preferences and expectations extensively and she's been expecting that she would most likely never learn what happened; even if she had managed to kill Lord Pritruth she wasn't expecting to have time to go through his records before she had to flee his other apprentices. As to trauma reactions, most of the things you'll want to be careful of should be relatively common sense, especially since she is quite calm for a Sith even now - don't try to restrain her or touch her without her consent or startle her, don't threaten her or me, don't try to touch or separate her from her lightsaber, things like that. Also, it's not a trauma-related issue, but if you see her eyes change color to red and yellow, that's extremely dangerous and you should assume she can't be reasoned with in that state; she'll most likely have an unsettling aura up as well in that case but she also sometimes uses the aura communicatively."

...Ah.  So that is canon.

"...What one expects to happen is not always what one really wants to happen.  Though..."

"...Mm.  Nevermind that.  A pointless thought."

That it's not always safe, in the middle of things, to admit that you want something better than what you can expect, is true, and equally useless to mention.

"She would prefer to know what happened if that's possible, but I don't think it's wise to get her hopes up if you aren't confident that you'll be able to find it out."

"...I don't think we're going to hit that confidence interval unless the Force is a truth detector, or I pull something impossible out of my - ahem.  Or if something comes back to her during her recovery."

"...While I wouldn't bet against Alicia's ability to produce a bizzarely useful problem-solving device in a pinch, I wouldn't want to say that it's the right kind of possible to recover the data we would need to investigate this properly."

"Yes ma'am. The Force is useful for determining the truth in some cases but not this one, for what I suspect are similar reasons."

"...Sorry, which reasons do you mean?  I'm not sure that I have the right reference."

"Master Deskyl would need to have access to someone who knew what happened to her to use the Force to get that information directly, or be in the same universe to get enough information to go and investigate, if that was a viable option."