"I want to know where the Avatar is. Or if he's alive."

"How much are you offering for it, who's the Avatar, how long can you hold the door in your world for me to look?"

"Name your price, long as it isn't ridiculous. The Avatar is the Avatar? I probably shouldn't hold the door more than an hour."

She asks Bar about currency conversions and names a price that might be unreasonable in Har but probably isn't for Varrin. "If I were looking and I saw someone, how would I know that person was the Avatar and not some other person?"

"Price seems fair enough... This could be really really important. Hmm... You probably need to pastwatch for him. The Avatar is Aang, of the Air Nomads. We know he was in the Southern Air temple just before the Fire Nation attacked the air temples in the year 0 B.C. - Before Sozin's Comet, that is. We don't know if he died or if he's in hiding or what. If you looked for the history there you might be able to find out where he went."

He asks Bar for a map and points out the Southern Air Temple ruins on it.

"What year is it now? And what time of year is it, and what time of year was it when the air temples were attacked?"

He answers these questions.

"Okay. I can look for you whenever you're ready to open your door."

"Totally ask me any questions you need to while you're doing it." Door: Open.

She does a binary search on the span of time when the invasion probably happened, to find the exact beginning. She looks for anyone who was there an hour before the invasion and was still alive a week later.

"I found seven people who could be the Avatar, what can you tell me that would distinguish Aang from the other seven? Age, height, scars, sex, anything?"

"Male. Twelve. Bald."

'Bald' doesn't actually help - almost all the airbenders are. As it happens there are no successfully escaped refugees that fit that description.

She looks for male bald twelve-year-olds who were there an hour before the invasion. ...Too many, okay. She starts from the invasion and checks for the last time anyone said "Aang" before then. Sounds like someone didn't know where Aang was. She looks for male bald twelve-year-olds present two weeks but not one hour before the invasion. There's only one. She finds out what happened to him.

"Avatar Aang escaped the invasion but fell into the... looks like the antarctic sea. And froze. Along with his flying animal."

"...Huh. Well. Avatar. There's no new one as far as we can tell... So he's alive down there somehow? Is he still there? Can you mark it on my map?"

"I can but ice moves. Show me where we are on your map?"

"Ice doesn't move that fast. If we take a big search party we can probably find him. We're here, north pole."

Takes her a while to find the spot on his map but eventually she does. "That's where he is now."

"Excellent. Very good."

He shuts the door. He brings out some coins.

"I want to pay you to find, like, a bunch of military intelligence on the Fire Nation too. But I have to think about what I want to know first."

"Oh, you've got a war, huh? I can win it for you. Let me know when you know what you want to ask."

"Yeah, there's a war. I'm not sure you can win it from here unless you want to move in. But I'll definitely be asking things. Like, things I would need to know to assassinate the Firelord." He makes a fierce expression of hatred. "In a few hours. Have to think about it."

"I'll be here reading at least that long! My time, not sure if it'll be the same time for you."

"It stays the same if we're in the same room." He grins at her and heads towards the bar.

And she goes back to her research.

Such fascinating lost magical techniques.

Varrin asks for and reads a scroll on war strategy from Bar.

He starts writing questions for a session where he holds the door open for Dareni again.

Intermittently he asks, could she tell him this, or that, or this other thing? Some war-appropriate things like Fire Nation politics, blackmail material or information on appropriate bribes, industry and inventions, base and prison and industry and fortification layouts and locations, whether certain people are still alive and where they are now. And a few seemingly inane things, like whether this or that person has a white lotus Pai Sho piece, or what kind of tea a certain person usually drinks.

She can get blackmail material but if he can't tell her exactly what she's looking for she'll have to do it by watching people for hours or days or weeks. She could eventually guess what a person could be bribed with but she doesn't read minds, she'd have to do it by spying long enough to get to know their wants and needs.

She can't search for industry or prisons or fortifications. She can search for people in chains or cages, or places where people paint "made by the such-and-such company" on things, or something like that, if he can tell her what he expects prisons and industry and fortifications to be like in the Fire Nation.

If he can show her a white lotus Pai Sho piece she can theoretically find every single one in his world. But she can't tell who owns things directly, will finding one in someone's bedroom or pocket be good enough? If Varrin knows when and where this person usually drinks tea she can watch them drink it but she's not familiar with tea, what's she looking for that will distinguish the kinds?

He can only sufficiently tell her what he's looking for in terms of blackmail and bribes for a few people. A wayward son, a matter of honor, old debts, ill-advised mistresses... Figuring out who reports to who, especially at the high levels of the Fire Nation military, might be more straightforward?

He can describe what industry and prisons and fortifications would look like. He knows a few sites that are probably industrial or prisons and wants, like, layouts or blueprints or guard schedules for those places if possible. He knows there's a Fire Nation supply base somewhere on this chain of islands and wants to know exactly where and what's in it, and how many ships there are, and how many men, and things like that. And this here is the Fire Nation's national symbol, anything with this on it bigger than a foot across he probably wants to know about. Chains and cages works for identifying prisons, too.

Yes, that would be good enough for the Pai Sho tiles. Especially if she happens to see them use it in a game. And there are a lot of words that can describe subtle differences in tea leaves, apparently.