Carissa prepares Detect Thoughts and Invisibility and Tongues and the teleport to get back to the ship if she needs to, and she and Mhalir accompany the next expedition.

And Ashran 452, this time with a long-haired wig appropriately tied back and braided with ribbons and a ship-fabricated outfit that roughly matches their footage of what farmers nearby wear, advances into Brithombar while Mhalir and Carissa hide behind a building, looking for someone local to talk to. 

This person is laying paving stones by hand, and singing, as usual.

"Er, hello? Are you busy?" 

The person thinks at once that that's really really weird, who interrupts people out loud, she said hello when he came into view like a normal person and he didn't answer. "Are you all right?" she asks rather than answer the question 'are you busy', the answer to which should be in evidence with the paving stones. 

"- Er, yes, sorry - I have a malfunction with my soul, it means the telepathy thing doesn't work. I'm from a farm far away and I'm trying to learn things about the city?" 

"I didn't even know that could happen." She is still not totally sure that could happen but it's not really her concern. "What did you want to know?"

"Er, right now I'm especially wondering what gods people in the city worship?" 

(Eliza feels like this is an incredibly awkward conversational non-sequitur, but Ashran ignores her.) 

<...You can start reading her mind now> Mhalir indicates to Carissa. 

Detect Thoughts.

The person is baffled by the question. "What gods they worship? They...mostly don't? I guess Ulmo.....is around sometimes....but not very often. Do you wish you were golden or something, because there's not any more of that in Brithombar than on a farm."

She's saying more or less exactly what she's thinking; 'wish you were golden' comes with a literal mental image of people with blonde hair.

"....Er, right, but - what do you know about the gods in general? How many of them are they, what sorts of things do they do?" 

She suppresses a flash of irritation. Having your soul broken would probably be annoying. And she - looks it up, with a mental motion kind of like Mindspeech - "There's fifteen. They....came here, and fought Melkor, and asked who wanted to come back to their planet with them, and left with the ones who did, and now they mostly hang out there, except Ulmo, who is friendly with some people here, I think." She has not stopped laying paving stones. "Do you need one of them to fix your soul?"

"...Er, go back to their planet? What planet is that?" 

"Valinor? It's the planet the gods made because there was too much design conflict on this one and they didn't like how it came out." She is again saying exactly what she thinks.

"There was, er, design conflict. Over the - planet," Ashran repeats, blankly. 

She concludes that he has some kind of brain injury making him very stupid and socially inappropriate. Poor thing. Probably she should take him home or something and make sure he can at least feed himself and clothe himself and figure out whether he has family he wandered away from. 

"Yes. Artistic disagreements, you know how those are."

(Eliza is not the one reading thoughts but she's nonetheless fairly sure they're making so many social faux pas right now.) 

Ashran ignores her. "Why did the other gods fight Melkor, anyway - what was He doing that was bad?" 

- oh, this probably requires some delicacy. And maybe assessing the extent of the brain damage. She sets down her paving stones. 

"He was doing a lot of bad things, some of them things that are scary to hear about when you're all alone with your soul not working. He has stopped, now, and no one will let him do bad things again." She's not thinking specifically about what they are, just that they're inappropriate to tell the brain damaged about.

(Eliza can't IMAGINE that whatever Melkor's done is scarier than the war against Hell, regardless of whether their 'soul' is 'working', but she lets Ashran handle this.) 

"What sort of bad things?" Ashran says, insistently, hoping that even if the person doesn't answer, Mhalir will be able to read their mind and get something useful. 

"He hurt a lot of people very badly," she says vaguely. She is thinking that she doesn't entirely understand the details herself. "And he made orcs, by torturing Elves until we came out differently, twisted and misshapen and in pain. But it's over, it's not going to happen again."

"That's - what - how do you make, er, a different species by torturing people, that - isn't how biology works -?" 

"....well, I guess it works differently if you're a god," she says, not sure how you'd know anything about biology if you don't even know who any of the gods are.

"Is there anywhere else I could go on this planet where they'd know more about the gods?" Ashran says, stubbornly, thinking that Mhalir would definitely be better at thinking of questions and hopefully he'll prompt her if she's failing to.

"I guess you could go to a library, and ask someone to read the books to you?"