He approaches with his hands far away from his weapons, attempting to look as harmless as possible, and stops a ways away.

Would anyone like to come attempt to communicate with him?

After a while someone comes over and tries to do that. 

He has a book! They can draw pictures!

Veron thinks he'd like to get a starting vocabulary set up. Is the orc willing to help him do that, by giving words to pictures that Veron draws?

The orc would be delighted. The orc has a baby and feeds the baby mashed-up crickets while they talk.

Aw. That's cute. In an eating crickets kind of way, anyway. Which is a valid way to be cute, just. Crickets.

Nouns are pretty easy when you can draw pictures. Fish! River! Tent! Sun! Tree! Orc, elf, human! (represented by stick figures with tusks, pointy ears, and round ears, respectively.)

They make faces when they give the word for Elf.

Yeah, no wonder.

He makes a sympathetic face and does not linger there.

Vocabulary continues. He takes careful, methodical notes. This is going to be his fourth language, and it's more approachable than Sssaktsth by, approximately, a fuckton. He's not fluent in either it or Dethek, but he's conversational. That can happen with a fourth language.

He's slowly moving away from simple concepts to more complex ones. Numbers, measurements of time, terms for groups of people, male, female, adult, child, happy, sad, safe, in danger...

The orc is very cooperative! The fishers catch some fish and offer him some.

... Yeah, okay. He's a little sick of travelling food, anyway. He can have some fish. Would any of the orcs like to try his travelling food?

Sure!

It is kind of dry and some of it is a bit tasteless, but not all of it's tasteless! And it's probably very novel.

LIttle bit! They share it around and nod politely and mix it with crickets and practice vocabulary.

Cool. That works out, then.

More vocabulary!

... One of his collar's shadows whispers, "It'ssssss done. Iiiii have tthem."

Veron touches his collar, and nods, as if to himself.

He points at himself, then at the woods. "I'm going to go," he explains, in slow, easy to parse tones.

Orcs agreeably wish him well.

He bows politely, and then off he goes, to find a dark and out of the way place.

Ksxksskrth rises out of the ground, Veron's clothes and armor neatly folded under one elongated arm, a set of books folded under the other. "Heeere you arre."

"Thank you so much, I appreciate it. I know you've got more important things to do than, uh." He considers a good way to word the phrase 'do my laundry and bring me books.' Yes, with his unparalleled charisma and wit, he can surely string together an impressive phrasing that truly encapsulates how his friend's work is ultimately meaningful, important, and valued. "Doing my laundry and bringing me books."

The shadow nods, gravely. "Ittt wasssss little tttrouble. Aaanything elssse?"

"No, thank you."

Another nod, and Ksxksskrth dissipates, departing for the Plane of Shadow, leaving Veron alone.

He changes back into the newly laundered armor, then sits down and starts poking through books on mental protections. He clearly could get something that successfully communicated with Elves, but he's only got their word for it over if it'll keep everything else from them, too. Maybe if he were new at this, he'd take their word for it, but he's not. Maybe they're like formians - always in close mental contact with one another, for benign cooperation and unnerving coordination. It could be a tool, not a weapon. Then again, maybe they're like illithid, weaving twisted webs of thought and ensnaring and dominating innocent victims until they have their perfect slaves. If he had to wager a guess, he'd categorize the Elves as more of the former than the latter, but if there's anything he's learned from his years of being a professional lost person, it's that preparation is really not a bad thing.

The books are good ones, as far as he can tell, but the contained concepts are - hard to wrap one's head around. If he hadn't had training with the Seer, he'd find it impossible to visualize any of it. As it is, he just has a lot of trouble with it. He soon gives up on just reading it, and breaks out his journal to rephrase and draw diagrams and slowly claw his way to understanding the theories at play. Shortly after that, he starts to get an idea of why people will sincerely lose themselves in studying this; it's damned complicated, and there's a lot of nuance. The tricks the Seer taught him had seemed so complex at the time, but it's becoming more and more obvious how simple they were. How little they scratched the surface of a very deep, very hard to define, very subtle and downright tricky art.

Suffice to say, he's not going to grasp it with a brief crash course. Even if that brief crash course lasts for hours, heedless of the darkening sky. He doesn't actually notice night's fallen, thinking thoughtlessly that he's glad the sun's not so bright now. Cloud cover, or something, if he had brain to devote to things that weren't about protections against telepaths. Until he wonders if the likely cloud cover means that it might rain, and looks up to check, only to see stars and a moon. Oh. Right. Day and night cycles: a thing, in places that aren't the Plane of Shadow or the Underdark or Hell or the various dungeons he always seems to find himself in. And he has perfect vision even in pitch darkness - especially in pitch darkness, even. He doesn't have as strong of an aversion to light as proper denizens of the Plane of Shadow, but he has some. It's harder to read in bright light than it is in pitch black.

But most species have a diurnal sleep schedule, especially the ones he'll fit in with. So he closes his books and wraps them in a spare cloak and packs them away in his bag, and then sets up his tent so he can go to sleep.

The next morning, he spends another hour or two trying to piece together something that will keep him mostly safe. Except there's no real concept of 'mostly' safe, not unless he devotes literal years of his life to psionics, training his will and his intellect to sharpened points and practicing with them like one would practice with a sword. He doesn't have time for that. He cannot learn all of the ins and outs of mind to mind combat in the hopes of keeping it safe. Instead, he focuses on keeping the things he needs to keep safe as safe as possible. The set of tricks he has to throw off a telepath long enough to skewer them, all of the tricks Veron would have to skewer someone, and, more importantly than everything else combined - his True Name.

If anyone gets a hold of that, he's quite literally at their mercy.

He gets the important parts of his head as protected as he thinks he can get them in a reasonable amount of time. Then, shoving the echoing hum of the syllables of his True Name into the back of his mind, he packs up his camp. Time to go visit the Elves.

He doesn't cross paths with another patrol. 

The city will do fine, then. The guards at the gate were Elves. He can just go say hi to one of those.

Is the one he spoke to before there again?

He is.

Excellent! Veron will just wait until he's not busy, then go say hi.

"Hello again," he says, attempting to recreate the earlier method that seemed to work okay with the patrol. On top of his attempts to keep certain things very very protected. Ugh. He's going to give himself a headache. "Sorry to bother you again after I uh. Freaked out and ran off immediately. You mentioned a translation booth? Do you know where I could find it?"

On your left down that street.

"Thank you!"

Off he goes, down that street, looking for anything suitably translation-booth shaped. ... Is there anything suitably translation booth shaped or is he going to need to start playing charades with passing citizens?

This one has signs in six different languages and three different alphabets!

He recognizes none of them! He's going to be so novel!

"Hello!" says Veron, unfortunately very practiced at being a novelty. "I am from very far away and do not speak the local language at all."