They know or can contact people who know all the things they expect to need to know about those! Are they envisioning a large formal factfinding mission or should Nelen just take somebody on a tour of some places in Vanda Nossëo?

Large formal factfinding mission, definitely. They want to tour lots of VN members - especially republics - and learn how their industries work and their shipping works and how their administration works and really anything that isn't a state secret.

(Government design is Mirimer's special interest.)

Okay! That will cost non-zero genuine scarce stuff but not very much and they can cover it. Do they want to design their own itinerary by looking at a list of member states or have a proposed one supplied?

They propose that Vanda Nosseo should include a list of everything optional and then they should add Societies That Look Cool to the list. Does Vanda Nosseo have a list of their member countries for people to take a look at?

Of course! It is on the internet. Would they like computers?

YES.

They don't know yet if the brain surgery kind is safe for locals so Nelen will pop up to the ship and be back a moment later with tablets.

TABLETS!

TABLETS!

TABLETS!

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome! They come with tutorials that are adapted from some intended for spontaneous adults, but you might want our translation magic to be able to read more things - machine translation is only okay and it's worse before native speakers have a chance to correct its foibles."

"How do you make a machine for translation?"

"- it's extremely complicated but it involves having a lot of text, especially written text, and using a machine algorithm to figure out what words appear in what combinations in what contexts."

... Sorimer will let this go to committee. GRUDGINGLY.

The Mirran Republic will organize committees! The government isn't trying to engage in any complicated spread-of-information management, as far as Vanda Nosseo can tell; they announce that travelers from far off have showed up and are interested in signing trade and travel agreements, the people of the Republic, confident in their superior everything, shrug and keep going, and 

The committees begin investigating things! The Trade committee is chiefly interested in preventing smuggling and not allowing Vanda Nosseo to distribute deadly weapons, and wants to know how Vanda Nosseo can do that before it approves of opening shops. The Magic one wants to import magic teachers, computers, and anything that works in all universes so they can steal study it. (It is run by Sorimer, who is VERY EXCITED about all these things.) The Prosperity/Justice one wants to tour Vanda Nosseo and study factories and courts and systems of government so they know what to steal. (The Mirrans are very politely stonewalling attempts to get them to join until the Prosperity/Justice expedition is complete and they can compare their options, which given the size of Vanda Nosseo will take years.)

... The environmental impacts one also wants to prevent smuggling, apparently? Out, not in. For, uh, magical reasons.

(And, meanwhile - a quiet conversation between the people who really run the Republic.

"So this is obviously a catastrophe. And the best thing that ever happened, but - you know, both.")

("I'm mostly thinking catastrophe," says the team pessimist.)

("I'm less sure about that," says the team optimist.)

("Mild shapestone poisoning can probably be overcome by Vanda Nosseo healing, and Mirran magic won't work outside our zone, which significantly limits the damage potential.")

("Their magic will. We can stack them. And there is literally nothing to stop someone drinking a vat of shapestone and going too fast to fix, and it will happen eventually if we have free emigration the way they want. The fact that their precogs did not catch this is pretty good evidence they don't exist.")

(Or that Ari manages to short-circuit this somehow, but she hasn't found a magical solution to shapestone better than death-and-reincarnation yet.)

("You know, Ari, we could just tell them everything. It's worked well in the past!")

("For all topics other than shapestone, sure.")

("Mirrans aren't aliens. We don't actuallly know how to deal with these people. Our best bet is to say nothing and buy time.")