Trying to track down someone in a new reality is no small undertaking. In a best-case scenario, BTI researchers will establish an RF-capable connection next to a coffee shop, sneak onto the wi-fi network, suss out internet protocols, and go on the local equivalent to the internet to hopefully find the target by her social media presence. This, of course, makes a thousand assumptions about the similarity of that world to our own, and requires that reality's civilization to be at a certain point. Pre-internet (or even post-internet) societies may require more complicated and expensive procedures, from skimming public records and media to sending an agent to do detective work on their own. When a reality is still struggling to understand anything more complicated than a water wheel, or worse, when it turns out that magic is the dominant form of technology, finding any specific person can be nigh-on impossible.

In this particular case, as is so often the way, success came about through one part forethought, twelve parts luck. An audio recorder had been snuck into the rafters of a small tavern known the Chartreuse Cerberus, set to record the comings and goings of the myriad travelers that passed through, in hopes that one of them would have news that could lead to discovery of the subject. Over a period of nearly four months, it was only accumulating approximately an hour's worth of useful audio in any given week; it was just marketable enough to publish, but only barely covered the cost of its acquisition. Between the middling results, Ms Mahigan's general disinterest in magical worlds, and the questionable ethics of keeping recording equipment in a typical fantasy reality, active observation was slated to be scrapped until evidence surfaced that there was even a subject to find. However, when analyzing the final batch of audio, an extremely relevant conversation was uncovered.

The specifics themselves were muddled; the participants wavered around on details, and there were enough internal inconsistencies to imply they were either less sober than they claimed, or they may have been making up details and embellishments on the fly. When they could agree, they painted a picture of a witch taking up residence near the village, with the usual accompaniment of mischief and maladies that follow. Many of the complaints involved a local dairy farm freezing over, though specifics tended to be related in a hushed whisper that the equipment couldn't catch over the ambient noise. The confirmation came when a group of patrons spent a solid twenty minutes arguing about her appearance, eventually resulting in the above composite.

There are now seventeen recording devices in and around the tavern awaiting further data.

Art: mei5683