And for now they're going to gather information without risking either of them personally, because Mhalir is willing to trust Carissa's gut feeling on it even if he's a little dubious that its source is just 'these people don't seem Chelish'. 

They sleep and once Carissa has Tongues prepared three times, she can cast it on the landing parties; one shuttle headed to the other continent that they haven't visited, and one headed to the first continent, with people picked out to explore both Lothlan and Brithombar, or at least their best guess of what corresponds to said big city based on their satellite maps. 

They can all get ninety minutes of translation. 

The largest city on the coast with Lothlan is a precise, symmetrical one mostly with buildings of elegant white stone, and docks that are angled to, from a distance, give the impression of rays of light from a large complex of buildings on the shore. 

The other continent has some of the cities in the dense sprawling style of the other kind of humanoid.

It's slightly risky to send in all three at once, especially since they don't have existing intelligence on the other continent or its local humanoids, but the people sent in all have concealed weapons which they're pretty sure the locals can't detect, and shuttles nearby. 

Mhalir pays particular attention to the party sent to land nearish the dense-sprawling city. He's curious if this other species of humanoids will seem equally creepy to Carissa. 

Eltran 238 disembarks from the cloaked shuttle a ways away from the settlement, and follows the directions provided through his hidden earpiece to approach the nearest local. 

In the outskirts of the city, it's not too dense; buildings are mostly two-story, with trees between them. There's a bunch of children playing on a rooftop that seems at least moderately designed for that, with awnings that'll mitigate a fall. The nearest adults are a pair mucking out a pigpen, one of them with a baby tied to her back.

Up close, the other humanoids are - a bit grotesque? Their faces are lopsided, their ears scarred and ridged, their eyes bulging and bloodshot, their veins visible in the places where their skin is pale. They seem cheerful, though. 

They look somewhat surprised by Eltran's approach. "Are you lost?" someone hazards after a moment.

"- Uh, yes, a little." Eltran had not realized at all that he and his human host would fail to blend in this badly! "Well, I'm - from a really small farm, see, and I decided to leave and go look for a city - what's this city called -?" 

"You want an Elf city," the man says. "This is Erdegar, and it's lovely, but Elves hate it, as I understand it."

"Maybe not all Elves," says the woman. 

"Well, I've never heard of any Elves wanting to live here."

Elves are presumably the other local humanoids, then? 

"I think I want to hear why you all think it's lovely, then," Eltran persists. "It's definitely better than my little farm! ...Your children seem very sweet, uh - are they your children, playing there -?" He's discreetly trying to peer at them and see if they seem disfigured as well or if it's just the adults. 

The children are disfigured too! The adults look mildly suspicious of his claim but quickly abandon this in favor of pointing them all out. There's Terr, the oldest, and Nietse, and Kleo, and Abde, and Sava who is the baby. 

"Erdegar has trolleys that go the whole length of the city," the man says, "and the people are very friendly, and the mayor has grand ambitions of growing it to support five times as many people by the time the children are all grown - bigger, and taller, and also underground."

"That's very fast for a city to grow! ...Um, it seems like it to me, anyway, I - don't know how fast your cities would usually be expanding. What powers the trolleys?" 

"I have no idea. Not horses, it's some fancy modern thing."

"It's how they do it in mines," the woman says. 

"Whoa, that sounds fascinating! Will they let me look at it up close, if I go into the city?" 

"I can't think why not."

"I think I'll do that!" Eltran glances around. "...Do most people here have this many children?" 

"...well, some just got married and haven't yet?"

"Right, that makes sense. ...Uh, what's trade like in this city, and how do people generally make a living...? All I know is farming, I'm not sure if I could make my way here." 

"I don't really know what trades Elves find tolerable," he says a bit dubiously. "I'm not sure what work people do in cities. I suppose some of them are soldiers and some of them serve the King and some of them write religious texts and such."

“Oh, writing sounds like fine work. What religion do you practice here?”

"We follow Melkor, the god who made orcs and defied the other gods for us."

...Ooh, the Visser is going to find that very intriguing, Eltran thinks. 

"I see. I don't know much about any gods, really - what's Melkor like, how and why did he defy the other gods for your people...?" 

"Melkor is the god of growth and change and - things not staying in an inadequate state just because there aren't obvious improvements nearby. He made orcs, because at the time the only peoples in the world were elves and he thought they were - well, it's good to have elves, but not everything should be elves, right. The other gods hated us and went to war with him over creating us, and he surrendered because a war among the gods would destroy the world, and they took him away. But he has been explaining to them how he sees things, and their hearts have softened, and he's been released, and will return someday."

"Interesting! Thank you, that's - definitely something to think about. Uh, I think I'm going to head into the city now and try to get a look at the trolley? It sounds so impressive. Do Elf cities have that or is it - more a thing you have because Melkor thinks growth and change are good...?" 

"I don't think Elf cities have that because Elves...don't care about getting places quickly and they care a lot if their cities are very pretty so it'd get held up in argument for a century."

"We haven't met any Elves," says his wife. "It's just what you hear."

"That sounds kind of frustrating!" Shrug. "Which way should I go from here to see the trolleys?"