If your this concerned with tracking I think you want to take a look at the LoRa mesh network/devices.
randomwords
From the article, they want the city to pay $200 million, the state to pay $50 million, and the wild plus their billionaire owner to pay $238 million.
Hardly seems fair.
The reason downtown Saint Paul is dying is twofold. One, no one lives there. Two, since no one lives there, unless there is an event, there is nothing to do. The damn place closes up shop at 6 pm on a Saturday.
Obviously I don't know your game, your table or your players so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Why is true resurrection out of range but plane hopping isn't? This seems like a great opportunity to have them complete a quest for some high level NPC who does have access to true resurrection, possibly with motives that run contrary to the PCs? You can have the dead PC run another character for the duration of the side quest.
If they are already half way to the plane where this character's soul is, bringing the dead PC back to the material plane would revive them as far as I was concerned. Good luck getting them back though, also if it were my table there would be consequences to reviving this way.
Just as a side note it sounds like you are looking for the "correct" answer for what would happen in the forgotten realms, always remember you are the DM, correct can be whatever you want it to be.
Best of luck from a fellow DM! Hope you have a great next session, sounds like you are really invested and your players are lucky to have you.
Fuck Republicans