She can do that! They can also do an earpiece though that puts the person on the ground in the awkward position of repeating things they don't understand.

Well, they can do Tongues for the duration of the spell and fall back on the earpiece if necessary. To start with, Mhalir wants to send them down to one of the richer-looking cities; they seem more likely to have a sense of what's going on more widely across the planet, or at least continent. 

She casts Tongues on someone on the expedition.

And Mhalir watches the various screens, somewhat anxiously, as the shuttle descends. 

The city is done with radial symmetry, in the shape, from the air, of a rose; the streets are paved with colorful stones and glass. The buildings appear to be mostly wood.

...the local humanoids look different than the ones in the other cities. Taller, neater, with more hair and none of the odd coloration. They could pass for human individually, though not really collectively; they're taller and move differently.

Whoever approaches them first is inevitably going to stand out, Mhalir thinks. And Tongues is limited duration. 

He desperately wishes they had a Thoughtsenser to scope the area first, but none of the human Thoughtsensers from Ma'ar's world, even the ones who agreed to work with Yeerks, wanted to volunteer for long exploratory hyperspace trips. 

"Find a place to land the shuttle at the outskirts," he transmits. "Approach one of the locals and - play it by ear, I think, but likely it makes sense to pretend you are from some remote village. The shuttle should still have some Velgarth clothing, that might stand out less than ours." 

"Acknowledged," Ashran 452 transmits back. 

The shuttle hovers, cloaked, and scans for any abandoned fields or buildings to land in. 

This field isn't growing crops right now, and is quite a distance from the nearest outbuildings, which are some very pretty wooden barns.

They request permission from Mhalir, receive it, and take the shuttle down. 

Ashran, whose host is an Earth human named Eliza, don the Velgarth clothing - it's a lot less pretty than anything spotted in the footage but at least fits with the local technology level, roughly - and leaves the shuttle, which lifts off again to hover and follow her. They search again for the closest passerby and provide directions to her earpiece. 

The closest passerby is nudging some cows out into the field, singing to them as she (he?) does so.

Ashran approaches. She hasn't tried to speak foreign languages with Tongues before, and isn't sure exactly how it works, but... "Er, hello?" 

 - the stranger stops singing. "- hello. Are you all right?"

"- Yes, I'm fine. I'm not from around here, though - er, where is 'here'...?" 

" - well, I haven't named the farm. The nearest town is Lothran, it's about a day's travel along the coast. - we could go faster, probably, if you're having some kind of head trouble."

"I'm not having head trouble," (she is SO CONFUSED), "I'm just new to the area. I can head to Lothran on my own, I just wanted to know more about it." 

"...I mean the thing where you, uh, have to walk up right close to someone and talk out loud to hear them? Is that...have you always been like that?"

"...Yes?" She is not for now going to mention her earpiece or radio. "Er, in my - area, some people can talk with their minds but not everyone, and I can't." 

(Does everyone here have telepathy? She hopes Mhalir is getting this; she's not going to ask because talking to herself out loud will stand out even more.) 

" - huh.

Well. Lothlan has a school of music and a school of fashion and a market, though not one with Dwarves. The gardens are beautiful. They put in new fountains last year and I think the advantages of the old ones weren't fully considered."

(Eliza is making a bit of a face, internally, about the superposition of 'school of fashion' and the visible technological level here, it seems out of place?) 

"Oh, I see," Ashran says out loud, as though all of this makes perfect sense. "Dwarves? I've never met one of them." 

"They're all right. Sort of singleminded, but, lots of people are sort of singleminded." The person prods a recalcitrant cow along with a slap. "But they don't come through Lothlan, they prefer the bigger cities."

"Oh, I see. Where's the nearest of those?" 

"Brithombar, probably, it's two weeks by ship down the coast. It's where King Círdan lives. I've never been, though I have a friend who moved there and shows me all the theatre and concerts."

"- Wow, can you talk to them from that far away?" 

"My soul isn't - malfunctioning, or whatever is up with yours, so, yes."

(Eliza is now mentally snickering, wow these people do not hold back at all. Interesting that they have souls too - or believe they do, Eliza used to, she was a Christian until she was kidnapped by aliens and eventually ran into enough weirdness that she admitted that Earth probably doesn't have afterlives.) 

"Mmm," Ashran says. "Er, how long has Círdan been King?" Mhalir would be so much better at coming up with smart questions to ask, here, but unfortunately he's up in orbit being his usual paranoid self.