TokenVariants VS lessfog

The Token Variant Art module can handle this (scroll down to Image to User Mappings). You'll probably need to write some macros to change things on the fly though.

Token Variant Art - Makes it possible for a token to have purely visual token variations. Better than Wildcard since it isn't forced to be random. Very unintuitive to work with however.

There is a short clip under this release: https://github.com/Aedif/TokenVariants/releases/tag/2.14.0

if you want more control with your wildcarded tokens there are a few modules that can help, for example token hud wildcard will add a simple right click menu to a token to chose which image to use (not officially updated to v10 but it should work), token variant art will give you A LOT more options about using multiple images on a token, even different images for different players if you want.

I used Token Variant Art for this... it is pretty nice and maintained. I have worked with Aedif and he has made enhancements to the module recently. https://github.com/Aedif/TokenVariants

There is also a not fully automatic , but still very useful feature on Token variant art module https://github.com/Aedif/TokenVariants .

Token Variant Art (only really active when I'm preparing the game)

Less Fog - Makes the fog of war easier to see through for a GM. Gives a button to toggle between a token's vision and the GM's vision when a token is selected.

Less Fog - lets you control the fog colour for the DM separately from the players. Useful for the DM so they can see what's going on while having tokens selected.

Less Fog

Sounds like you're talking to the right people; good luck getting things set up. For the default lighting changes I was referring to the less fog mod. Not sure it works in v9 (or really in v8 either) but it's something to look at.

Less Fog can make the Fog of War effects transparent for GMs. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. You can make it so that even though you only have the token's vision, the areas of that map that are black to the player are just dim or greyed out to you, so you can still see what you're doing.

You could use a mixture of using Less Fog and pre-exploring the area. Drag a token that all players have observer or better access to around the area to fully remove the fog of war, then use Less Fog to change the opacity of the Explored areas to taste.