"You have good priorities and sensible questions and I have faith we'll come to an agreement for nuclear physicists eventually."

She wonders how much of that is flattery but it doesn't seem likely to matter much.

"I swear that while I do like most people I meet you struck me at once as one of the people I like most of everyone I've met."

That's interesting. Why?

"The making yourself known. I would like to have the relationship with myself and my goals that made that work for me. It's extraordinarily compelling. And it makes you very reassuring to be around; it is clear what you want and what you care about and how people can do right by you. A lot of people are very hard to do right by. And, like I said, very sensible priorities and good judgment."

Elspeth has had to talk to people who were put out about forcible turning being illegal before but none of them ever complimented her priorities while she did it.

"Given the information you have your demand makes perfect sense and you're going to get more information. I don't really have grounds for a complaint."

She laughs a little. "Okay."

He points out to her where all of the people she might want to talk with are, and then leaves for a meeting.

Elspeth goes looking for the nearest person-she-might-want-to-talk-to and introduces herself.

The ambassador from Tumunzahar is delighted to meet her. He's about three and a half feet tall and very bearded. Her translator - mind-affecting magic categorically does not work on Dwarves, they can't sense her truth or talk with her telepathically, so she needs a translator - communicates that the ambassador regards meeting her as a good use of his time.

Elspeth will pick up more of the language over the course of the conversation but there's no substitute for volume of vocabulary and nobody has offered her a dictionary to read (...is there one around?) so translator it is. Hello ambassador. Elspeth is from another world and curious about local politics!

Sure! There are two major Elf kingdoms - the Noldor and Doriath - and lots of Men also live in the Noldorin kingdom. There are seven Dwarven kingdoms and they trade with the Elves, because Elves haven't got much common sense and need to trade for lots of things. He talks about commodity prices in earnest and at length.

In what way do Elves not have much common sense?

Elves hadn't invented currency until the Dwarves explained it to them. Elves are really annoyingly fastidious! Oaths! Oaths are dangerous and kind of ridiculous. Soul-bonding! Dangerous and kind of ridiculous. The King murdered half his own family! Dwarves select their leaders by popular vote and they have term limits and things. Elven leadership wields absolute power, that can't be healthy. 

Many human governments back home have the voting and term limits thing! Elspeth's mama wields absolute power but a popular vote by vampires would have eating people and turning them against their will legal so that's a special case in Elspeth's opinion. She likes the truth oaths, they are a little bit like the thing she does that the Dwarf cannot receive. Which is sort of like her mama, the immunity to mind magic thing, but she can make an exception for Elspeth as needed.

Yes, vampires sound like a case where the normal incentives don't produce very good results. He's very curious about Elspeth's world and how Elspeth's mother ended up running it.

Elspeth can deliver a history lesson! She has literally written history textbooks on this topic.

The history lesson is very appreciated! The Dwarf ambassador would be delighted to pay her in history lessons of his own, though he has not written any textbooks. 

That would be lovely.

So he tells the story of the founding of his Dwarven kingdom, and the story of how the Noldor swept in on stolen boats and conquered the whole aboveground continent from the Enemy.

Elspeth is not sure why an evil god uses armies of orcs. Vampires are probably a step or two down from evil gods in terms of power, and do not use armies of humans, and this is not just because vampires are traditionally secret from humans.

Yeah. The Elves might be underestimating their Enemy because defeating his ground troops was so easy for them.

Does the ambassador think it would be a good idea to level Angband in spite of that?

Oh, definitely. Angband breeds orcs and then the orcs march out to their inevitable violent deaths and also the Enemy tortures prisoners in various horrifying ways but uniformly so, when released, they beg the first people they see to kill them. So levelling it seems entirely reasonable.