It's not all that long after DZ has gone back inside before someone knocks politely on the door to the workshop.

She answers the door promptly.

"Ah, hello there miss DZ - Her Highness is busy tinkering, but she sent me to deliver this for you."

The device - and it is clearly some sort of device, it's got glowy lights and everything - is handheld, and made of a silvery metal.  It has a keyboard in the Villarosan alphabet, as well as some sort of scroll wheel.

"She said to tell you 'think of this like a text-only point-to-point comm', and that she's already paired it to the household's services as well as to her personal device - do you need anything about how to operate it explained?  She seemed certain you'd know, but these devices are Her Highness's invention..."

"I'm familiar with the concept, yes, thank you. Could you please wait while I see if I have any questions about it? It should only take a few minutes."

"Of course."

She's done her best to make this easy to use, so hopefully someone from space who's actually used to computers will have no trouble whatsoever.

And indeed it doesn't take long at all for DZ to figure it out, and to send a message to the kitchen asking about their schedule in the process. "I don't have any questions, thank you."

"Oh, very good.  Any questions that aren't to do with the message device?"

The kitchen notes that it cleans during the midnight shift, and that there is therefore reduced service during those hours - pre-cooked foods only.

(The Duchess has not established a household meal schedule, being as she keeps odd hours herself.)

"If you aren't busy, Her Highness left before I could ask for an overview of your world, and I expect that master Deskyl will want to know where we are when she wakes up."

"Oh!  Well.  I can't speak to the whole wide world, there's a lot of it, but you're presently in the kingdom of Villarosa - and in the Ironspine Mountains.  I could show you a map?  Can't bring it out here, though."

"I shouldn't leave yet, but I appreciate the offer. Whatever you can tell me will be useful, we teleported here by accident a little while ago and haven't had a chance to speak to anyone else."

"Oh, goodness!  Where from?"

"A different universe. I don't think we're going to be secret, exactly, but I haven't had a chance to ask my companion what she's comfortable with sharing about it."

Well, that's that line of inquiry neatly stonewalled.

"Oh, well then.  What would you like to know about Villarosa, then?  I'm no expert, I just work here, but you do pick up a few things."

"Is Villarosa the country, or the geographical region, or something else?"

"It's a country, yes."

"What's it like? Compared to its neighbors, or in terms of how people usually spend their time?"

"Mm, well, that can get pretty complicated, 'cause there's questions of what our people are predisposed to compared to half our neighbors, being as they aren't the same sorts of people - and nevermind the sun-blasted crusaders and their patchwork theocracy next door.  Or rather, do mind them, they're human enough the comparison doesn't fall apart before you make it.  Even if they can barely be said to be an organized country - it's a mess of sectish infighting.  Utterly barbaric, killing people because they don't believe in your particular orthodoxy of Light worship.  Probably why we don't have more priests here, really, with that as an example of how badly it goes.  And really, a good arcanist can outdo them in effect.  You don't see priests building tram networks, and those've done rather a lot for us."

"It sounds like master Deskyl will appreciate that we came here instead of there, then. Your neighbors aren't human?"

"Some of them.  There's no one 'all of this territory's people are this thing', even for the xenophobes.  But you get more dwarves in dwarfholds than anything else, for example, and it's pretty rare for there to be anyone but elves in one of their covens, even if there's other people who live in their hunts.  And of course the ocean-dwellers don't mix with us airbreathers all that much."

"And what are those kinds of people like?"

"I mean, stereotypically, dwarves are good enchanters, if not really imaginative - it's a cultural thing, they don't want to be gnomes, who are if anything too imaginative - elves go all in on - nature red in tooth and claw - there's the mountainfolk, what was their name, the bird people, who're communal - the drow are a matriarchy, I don't really know how that works as a government but clearly it does..."

"But you'd want to ask someone who's been there, more than me, because I can only guess, really.  Maybe one of the off-shift watch.  A lot of them have travelled."

"Maybe later, thank you for the suggestion. What do you do?"

"Miscellany, really.  Run things around, do what needs doing.  Figure out what needs doing, too, sometimes."

"So things like the comm must be new? Are there any other new things like it?"