#but i got swept away in angus investigating barry

[kravkalackin]

concept: au wtih angus and barry meeting before the canon story, perhaps with angus trying to solve the mystery of who barry is and why he has died multiple times? Angus who explicitly knows that Lucretia is lying from the very beginning, because he knows Barry, and Barry is not evil.

this au is my aesthetic 

A man died in Neverwinter last week. That isn’t very unusual, and it’s certainly not strange for Angus to know about it. Most people would think it is, would try and shield him from scary things like death and murder, but Angus isn’t afraid. It’s a part of his job, and he loves his job and would especially love if people took him seriously when he was on a case. 

Barry Bluejeans, it’s an easy name to remember. Angus jots it down in his book, along with several other victims, trying to see if they’re all connected. In the end, poor unfortunate Barry gets tossed aside. It turned out he didn’t have anything to do with his current case, just an unlucky guy who went into the wrong alleyway at the wrong time. 

It’s a long while later, and Angus feels like he’s starting to gain respect for his detective work. Angus is out near Greenhold, investigating a cult that seems to be behind several disappearances. 

One of the names sticks out. Barry Bluejeans. It’s not hard to remember where he last heard it, and Angus thinks it odd, that two victims happened to share such a strange name. He puts it aside, hope it’s not too late to find this guy and ask him some questions. 

It is. It’s too late to ask anyone questions by the time he gets there. The cult is decimated, whatever ritual they were trying to do having apparently backfired spectacularly. There are bodies when he gets on the scene, more than Angus is used to dealing with, and if he’s a little afraid by it no one else is around to see. Most of them are cultist, but there are a few victims, laid out in a circle with their throats slit. 

Barry Bluejeans is among them. It doesn’t make any sense, and he’d only seen the first Barry’s body from a distance. The resemblance is uncanny though. He tucks that bit of information away, and quickly runs from the scene to get the proper authorities to clean this mess up. 

Angus isn’t on a case this time. He’s trying to find one, but he’s also just trying to eat his lunch. His ears are open though, and when he hears a beat up gang of adventurers, a gnome, two humans, and a tiefling, awkwardly discussing funeral arrangements, he listens in as he eats his sandwich. 

“Like, blue flowers would be appropriate right? He liked puns,” the gnome says, nursing a head injury. 

“Yeah no, but uh, are we gonna go back for the body? I don’t- whatever that thing was...” the tiefling asks, and one of the humans very quickly shakes their head. 

“I think we can all agree that Barry would approve of us staying the fuck away from that thing,” they say, and Angus perks up at that. It might just be a coincidence, but a proper detective doesn’t let any stone go unturned. 

“Excuse me,” he says, immediately getting the group’s attention. “Can I ask what happened to you all?” The group looks at each other, obviously uncertain. The other human smiles softly at him, leaning towards him on the table slightly. 

“We’re adventurers little guy. We just got in a little over our head is all,” she says, and Angus tries not to appear too visibly annoyed at how gentle she was being with him. He knows he looks young, he is young, but it was still frustrating. 

“What did you say the name of the person who died was again?” he asks, and that certainly got their attention. 

“It was... Barry. Barry Bluejeans,” she says, and every question he asks after that about Barry goes about how he expected to. He matches the description. There were strange things though. 

After he died, something happened, and none of them could properly explain what. Some sort of figure had appeared, in red crackling lightning. They all ran before it could do anything. They try to get out of giving him the exact location, but it wasn’t too hard to Angus to figure it out from the information they gave him. 

It’s the same damn corpse when he gets there. 

Something weird is going on with Barry Bluejeans. Flipping open to a new page of his notebook, he writes the man’s name down at the top page, and starts to compile all the notes he had on him from previous cases. Anything he managed to get from his old adventuring party. 

Angus tries not to touch dead people if he can help it, but no one else is here to do it for him. He goes through the guy’s pockets, and he doesn’t find much. He does find a coin though, and when he grabs it, it starts to speak. 

“Your name is Barry Bluejeans. You are afraid of the dark. Your very favorite thing to do is swim in very cold water on a very hot day. Your mother...” 

It goes on, and Angus listens intently. It’s directions. To what, Angus isn’t sure, but he does know one thing. If he can follow them in reverse, he should be able to find the source of this mystery. Find out how Barry Bluejeans keeps dying over and over again. 

Sticking the coin in his pocket, Angus heads off to solve this new mystery.

[rinrinp42]

Becoming Grim

Here’s the first part of my Kravitz backstory fic!  It is going to switch between “modern” (aka post canon) and his past in flashbacks, but I am going to do my best to distinguish between the two even outside of context clues.

Also!  Because this is a Kravitz centric fic, there’s a lot that I’m pulling from D&D lore, but when you are just looking stuff up, it sometimes gives you older edition stuff, and sometimes I don’t have data/wifi to look stuff up and make it up instead.  Don’t read too much into what is/isn’t currently correct in 5e.  Also also, I pull some things from Real Cultures and while it’s usually just terms, I try to still do my best to keep the cultural significance there.  If you see something that is not doing so, please let me know.

Lup lets out a huff, blowing a stray hair off of her newly reformed face.

"What the actual fuck was that?" she demands.

Kravitz glances at her before kneeling down next to one of the corpses.

"Those spells were a lot stronger than a necromancer at their level should have been able to do," Barry added with a frown.

Kravitz wondered if it was always going to be like this - the two of them pointing out the obvious while he investigated.

"So Kray Kray, what type of thing could do that?" Lup asked, leaning over his shoulder.

Ah, conversation, not just stating the obvious.  It had.... been a while since he had someone to work with.  He had forgotten that colleges talked.

"Might be a Deal either with a Demon, an Outer Being, or a Fallen God looking to reclaim their place.  Or some sort of artifact created to boost power.  Or even a Cult to one of those three."

"Why would a former god work with necromancers?" Barry asked from next to the sacrificial table, "I mean, The Raven Queen is it when it comes to Death."

Kravitz gave a hum at that.  Something about all this felt... familiar.

"What's that?" Lup pointed at a medallion the man had been wearing, now facedown on the dirt.

Kravitz reached out and flipped it over.

A flower with five points was emblazoned upon it.  One Kravitz knew well.

"Hot diggity shit!  Is that an eye in the middle?" Lup asked, snatching it from his hand.

The world faded away.

Kravitz ducked behind a tapestry just as the palace guards turned the corner.

Good, he would be able to sneak out now.

The medallion of his Lord Father hung like a noose around his neck as he slipped through the passageway.

He stepped outside of the castle and took a deep breath.  Was it possible to long for something he had never known?  It must be, given how he longed for the mountains his mother had once called home.

He shucked his vest and jerkin, trading them for a cloak he kept here.  He pulled the hood up over his head, doing what he could to hide his Marks, and tucked the medallion into his shirt.

As incognito as he could be, he headed away from the castle.  The farther from the castle, the worse off everything was, many in the castle only ventured down to torment those residing here, but Kravitz came to learn from them and offer what aid he could.

He slipped through the meager market and to the home of his mentor.

Kleeck glanced up as Kravitz slipped into the hut.

"Right on time," the Aarakocra nodded to him, his feathers fluffing out in joy.

Kravitz smiled at him and sat down, placing the dulcimer in his lap.

"Warm up scales," Kleeck ordered, "then compositions and Winds.  Morgran left some instructions for those before he had to go."

Kravitz nodded and they began.

All too soon the hour and a half he could slip away was over, and he had to return to the castle.

"Kravitz," Kleeck said as the teen pulled on his cloak, "please let Kuori know I think of her still."

Kravitz gave him a smile and nodded.

"I know Mother thinks of thou as well."

With that he slipped from the home, ready to make his way back.

A wrinkled hand grabbed his cloak, drawing him to a stop.

An elderly elf gazed up at him, straining her neck to look at his face, even as her hunched form tried to bring her gaze lower.

"Oh Sweet Prince, Lord of the Forgotten Souls, we beg of thee, plead with thy Lordly Father on our behalf, for we are weak, and the Demons that flit from plane to plane haunt our heels," she begged.

"I, I am not," Kravitz stuttered, "Our Lord works for all who reside here."

She shook her head, "Thy Lady Mother, Queen of th' Feathered Omen and thou, oh Sweet Prince, art of a different cloth than the King.  Thou and she care for we lowly souls.  Thou art our only hope."

She dropped his cloak.

And Kravitz fled from this wise and old elf, dodging through the crowd, hand pressed to the medallion, reassuring him that it was hidden.

"Kravitz?  Hey, Kravitz?" Lup's voice jolted him back.

He blinked at her worried face.

"You okay man?  You just, like, zoned out.  I don't want to tell Koko that his boy's broken, ya know?"

Kravitz stood, towering over his Elven companion, reaching out and pulling the medallion away from her.

"I'm fine.  Old memories."

Barry glanced over upon hearing his clipped voice and frowned.

"You recognize this?" Lup asked, her eyebrows raised.

"It was long ago, and the person it belonged to doesn't exist anymore," he snapped, twirling his scythe, "Come on, we've got more bounties to get to.  The Guards will have grabbed these Souls already."

He stalked through the newly created portal, trying to feel as if he wasn't fleeing.  The medallion felt like ice in his grasp.

He focused on the food in front of him, trying to ignore the looks he was getting from Taako.

"So Krav, Lulu said you had an interesting day at work?" Taako finally asked, his voice light and nonchalant in the way only people desperately interested in the answer can be.

"Not really," Kravitz mumbled, inspecting the salad.

He could feel Taako's eyebrows raise.

"That's not what Lup and Barry said," he left the sentence open, waiting for Kravitz to add to it.

"Damnit Taako!  I don't want to talk about it!" Kravitz snapped, slamming his fork down.

Taako narrowed his eyes.  The wizard stood up, chair skretching across the floor.  Kravitz winced at the sound, and even more as a blue Mage Hand grabbed his plate.

"Come on Ango, we're going to Fantasy Olive Garden," Taako said, holding his and Angus's plates.  From the glare he was giving Kravitz, the Reaper was not invited.

The boy detective slipped from his seat with a nod and hurried to gather his shoes and coat.

"Taako," Kravitz started, shame curling in his stomach.

"I think," Taako spoke over him, "you should finish up anything you need in the Astral Plane.  We'll talk later."

Kravitz frowned at that, but the two disappeared with a casting of Blink and Kravitz was alone.

"Damnit!" he swore, letting his skin fade away leaving him as a skeleton.  He ripped a portal open and stalked through.

He roughly pulled his flesh back on as he stalked into Shadowfell.  The little trinkets and cuffs woven into his dreads kept catching the firelight as he stormed past them.  A few of the Guards scrambled back as he stalked forward towards the Hall - so different from the castle he grew up in.

"MY OWN, WHAT TROUBLES YOU SO FOR YOU TO ENTER THUSLY AT SUCH A TIME?" The Raven Queen asked from her throne.

He paused, taking in the various Souls waiting for their turn to make their cases and winced.

"I needed to speak with you my Queen," he bowed at the waist before looking her in the eye.

She regarded him for a moment, cocking her head to the side.

"HADES, ANUBIS, NEPHTHYS, CONTINUE FOR ME," The Raven Queen intoned.

The three Celestials nodded and stepped forward to stand in front of the crowd.

The Raven Queen turned and swept from the Hall and out into Shadowfell around it.  The two walked in silence until they came to a great ger and entered, The Raven Queen tossing one hand towards the fire pit as they did so.

Kravitz watched as the goddess slipped first the great headpiece from her head, and then the feather robe.  She shook out her own dreads, little jewels and gold pieces tinkling in the firelight.

"Now tell me, what is it that ails you?" she asked, one long-nailed and bejeweled hand resting on his cheek.

He pulled away and sat on one of the small stool-chairs.

"It's in the report, but I saw a medallion today.  It was, it bore the mark of him," Kravitz told her, his voice bland as he stared into the fire.

Behind him, The Raven Queen stiffened.

"I, I didn't react well.  Lup and Barry apparently were concerned and told Taako."

"And how did he take it?" she asked, perching on the seat next to him.

"He, he was inquisitive," Kravitz told her, "He has no idea what happened, not today nor back then, and I just knew he was going to push."

She made an encouraging noise as he faltered.

"I, I snapped at him, told him I didn't want to talk about it.  Worse, I did so in front of Angus."

"Oh Kravitz," her voice was a strange mix of sympathetic and disappointed.

"I know, I know.  I just..... I don't know what to do."

"You are going to think about what you can share with him and what you will tell him you can not.  You know his Story, or near enough to most of it, but he does not know what you have had to face."

"He knows I wanted to be a conductor," Kravitz offered.

"And you would have been amazing," she told him, standing up and placing a cold kiss on his forehead before pulling on the robe and great headpiece once more, covering her body in feathers and giving her the vistage of a raven.

"STAY HERE FOR THE NIGHT.  I MUST RETURN TO THE HALL."

With that she swept from the ger.