The mossy rocky formations are completely unlike anything Garrus has seen in Palaven. At least, one expects that he would remember rocky formations that float off the ground. Directly in front of him there is a boulder three times his size that is lazily spinning around his axis. Off to the west and in the distance there is a village that's completely covering a rocky floating hill (One assumes it's rocky, it is very  thoroughly covered by clustered buildings).

He is atop a rocky hill. He can see a grassy plain beneath him dotted by rocks. Beneath the village there is a cluster of farms.

This definitely isn't Palaven.

He checks if his omnitool can ping a location. Nope.

Assume zero resources. He sets his 'tool to survival mode immediately and has it scavenge the trace eezo from the smoking wreckage of his bike. Then he uses the built-in defab unit to turn the wreck into several manageable bars of pure metal, a fist-sized diamond, and a block of dense plastic, all of which he stows in his backpack.

He unfolds his assault rifle and holds it across his chest; it'll serve him better than a sniper rifle in a pinch, and if he's in a position to use a sniper rifle at all, he'll have ample opportunity to switch weapons. As an afterthought, he sets it to reuse thermal clips, rather than fire-and-forget. Sustainability is more important than speed, at this point.

Investigate natives. He could probably get a grappling hook onto that floating hill, but he's not sure if that would be seen as hostile. Better to investigate the farms. He sets out at a steady, sustainable jog, his rifle held at the ready, and sets his field of view to 360 degrees. (Wide-open spaces like this give him the creeps. He's not letting some sonofabitch sneak up on him.)

There are barely any constructions on the ground and the ones that are appear to be... wide and very low. They look like some kind of storage given that the farmers bring food to them. It's possible that the storage is actually underground.

Eventually, he is close enough to take a good look at the natives. Most are humanoids with feathered wings sprouting from their backs. Sometimes their feathers cover their scalp and other parts of their bodies. Sometimes they have claws. There is at least one other kind, maybe two: he spots people with purple-skin and white hair and people with bright red skin and dark hair too. Astonishingly human-looking all of them.

(He's close enough for a good look sooner than he might be. That visor isn't just for show.)

...huh. Maybe... genetic engineering? That'd be a fucking nightmare. Or maybe this is like the Asari, just another example of how completely fucking arbitrary evolution turned out to be.

He gets close enough to flag down an avian. "Hello! Do you know where I am?" he tries in English.

The "avian" does not approach, but turns toward him. Several other do the same. No one, is obviously hostile. His appearance causes mild curiosity.

The one avian replies in Non-English.

Alright. Looks like he has to jury-rig machine translation for an unknown language. What fun.

He nods to the assembled aliens, then takes a seat on a nearby rock and pulls up a coding program on his omni-tool. Holographic code scrolls rapidly as he begins to splice a generic VI-aided learning algorithm into his translator's corpus.

This could take a couple of hours.

People give him confused and suspicious looks. And startle a bit when the holograms pop-up, but after nothing more dramatic happens they elect to resume work. Someone, who might be some kind of supervisor or security, positions himself to watch Garrus from behind. He thinks Garrus can't see him. There is no further hostile behavior.

Time passes, people go about their business, which includes preparing for the arrival of small hot air balloons which are subsequently loaded with cargo. This is how Garrus will learn that red-skinned people can breath fire. Which they use to give lift to the balloons back into the village.

People have settled on a status of mostly ignore him, so he will have his hours without any incident worse than the occasional staring.

Garrus sets up a recorder as well, to accumulate a corpus for the new language from the passers-by. 

After a couple of hours, he thinks he's got something. His fingers twitch rapidly.

"Hi," says a surprisingly realistic voice from the glowing orange glove on his arm. "Can you understand?"

A purple-skin blinks and answers. "Hi? Yeah, I understand," he says tentatively.

"Cool! I speak this now. Where are we?"

"Minorus town!" Says the person, apparently delighted at Garrus' contraption. "If that's what you wanted to know."

Garrus' mandibles click thoughtfully. "No. What-" he points at the ground. "What this are we on?"

Head tilt. "I don't know- you mean the East-hills plain? The road? How far away are you from? I don't recognize you form."

"I am from very far away. You can't get there by walking. You could fly there... I think... but it would take a long, long-" he gestures expansively. "Long time."

Purple-dude listens to the translation. "Oh, okay. Are you looking for directions?"

His mandibles vibrate in the negative, and the synthetic voice becomes clipped and neutral. "I can't get home, if those balloons are how you get around. It's hard to even explain how far away my home is. At this point, I'll probably have to learn to live here or somewhere else nearby."

"Ah, sorry for that. I think you could go to the Ventari temple and ask for help there?"

"How would they help me, do you know?"

"I don't know. I think they run soup kitchen and give shelter sometimes? They could help you find a job. Though, maybe it would be better if you went to the Mage Guild office instead." He waves at the holograms, like this is self-explanatory.

"...this isn't magic. You have magic?"

Blink. "You mean it's an artifact? And yeah, of course we have magic. It's not common where you are from or something?"

"It's... kind of like an artifact, I guess. I've never heard of real magic, unless you're talking about- picking things up without using your hands, moving things without touching them, that sort of thing."

"Yeah, I am talking about that. I don't know what you mean with that not being real magic."

"Oh. We call that <biotics> where I'm from - we don't think of it as magic, because we know too much about how it works. I can't do it, though."

Purple dude thinks for a second and shrugs. "If you can do useful things with this," he waves at the hologram again, "or other useful things then the Mage Guild is a good place to look for a job."