I imagine before he got to know them, Kravitz absolutely HATED the IPRE crew. Like, the dude is competent, but the guys have a habit of completely humiliating anybody they end up fighting.
Let’s rewind a few years. Kravitz is doing his thing. Kicking ass, reaping souls and killing liches. Heads back to his office in the Astral Plane (because i refuse to believe that the afterlife is anything but a stupidly complicated bureaucracy) and checks in on his current list of bounties.
There’s the usual list of necromancers, immortals, escapees from the stockade and users of profane rituals, you know the types, the guys who have the twelve syllable names and such. But there are seven new people he needs to hunt down. And all of them have died at least eight times. You hear that? It’s the sound of Kravitz getting paid.
So who does he go after first?
Merle Highchurch, fifty-seven deaths. God. So much reward. Kravitz hunts anybody by the name of Highchurch down, but nobody has any clues as to where the guy is. Kravitz heads back to the office and checks out all the information he has on the guy. And surprise surprise, he’s a follower of the god of bloody travelers. Krav could hunt down this guy for the better part of a decade, and he’d only find the guy by luck. Great. Wonderful. Fine. He has six other bounties to check out.
Magnus Burnsides, nineteen deaths. Okay, so Magnus is MUCH easier to find than Merle, if only because Magnus announces his name to anybody who asks. Lives in somewhere called Raven’s Roost. He’d been there a few times, not a bad place. So Kravitz heads over there. And great, the entire bloody town is on FIRE and the populace is DEAD. As a reaper, he’s legally required to take care of wandering souls he finds wandering around. So he has to take a good month or so wrangling a good 600 people into the afterlife. Much to his surprise, Magnus has a wife who recently died. The woman stares at him for a moment before laughing, because apparently Magnus can get lost in a goddamn hallway and it would take a goddamn miracle for Kravitz to track him down. Goddamn it.
Taako Taaco, eight deaths. Taako is, unlike the others, a complete goddamn ghost. The most he can gather is that the guy is a wizard and an elf and that is generally it. It is by pure luck he’s assigned to the Glamour Springs case, and hears about Taako Sizzles It Up. Okay, THAT is easier to track he thinks. Except Taako apparently did a show in literally EVERY TOWN in the world at some point and is charismatic enough that nobody is willing to tell him much of anything. And then, like both Magnus and Merle, he has apparently vanished into the mist and NOBODY KNOWS WHERE HE IS GODDAMN IT.
Lup Taaco, twelve deaths. Kravitz is not surprised that Lup is related to Taako because she is even harder to find than Taako. There is literally nothing except the fact that she died in some cave near Neverwinter. There are literally no souls in that cave, and he checked. Twice. So where the hell is she? Who the hell knows. Who even cares.
Davenport, nine deaths. Is somehow just as elusive as anyone else. Because these people hate Kravitz. Kravitz checks everywhere. A few merchants in Neverwinter remember having met a guy named Davenport a few years back, and he seemed pretty cool, and he bought a can of soup once. Great. THANK YOU MERCHANT MAN. SO VERY HELPFUL.
Barry J Bluejeans, twelve deaths. Barry fucking Bluejeans. BARRY GODDAMN JAY GODDAMN BLUEJEANS. Kravitz has no end of words for this asshole. Unlike the others, Kravitz has met this guy. He has no idea what goddamn class Barry is other than a magic-user because WHAT SPELLS DOESN’T THIS GUY KNOW GODDAMN IT. Oh oh oh and get this, he’s fueled by the power of love. Love. As if a normal lich isn’t annoying enough to deal with, but this guy apparently refuses to leave without his wife. A wife who, COINCIDENTALLY, has the name of LUP. And Kravitz knows. He goddamn knows, in the depths of his heart, that this Lup is the exact same one as Lup Taaco. BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE HATES HIM.
Lucretia, ten deaths. Somehow even worse than Taako, Davenport and Lup combined. Because he has nothing on her. At all. No class, no god, no spell-list, no ANYTHING. Alright. Fine. Detective Kravitz time. Her name is spoken very very rarely, and she is apparently the leader of some mysterious organization called a Bureau? Fine. Where is this Bureau. What’s that? It’s hidden? You can only summon a way there if you’re a member? Of course. Obviously. Wonderful. Why not. Cool. Great.
So now. Let’s advance to the start of the story. Kravitz is called out to investigate Phandalin. He arrives, and is immediately hit by a wave of pure fire. When he wakes up? He sees four figures in the distance. And three of them are Magnus. And Merle. And Taako. And Kravitz is about to fight them, when a goddamn orb appears from the sky and carries them to a goDDAMN SKY BASE WHAT THE HELL I HATE THESE PEOPLE
And then he finally meets these people by complete chance in the lab of Lucas Miller. And he is so happy. Because for the first time in six years, he has THREE OF THESE JACKASSES in front of him. There is no possible way they can escape this.
Guess what happens next.
So now, finally, let’s advance to post-Story & Song. And he has all seven of these assholes in front of him. Defenseless. He could reap their asses right now. But he can’t. Because the Raven Queen has declared they’ve earned a pardon.
A few hours after the celebration party, Kravitz warps back to his office and screams for a solid hour.
EDIT: Somebody mentioned the whole Barry dies like twenty times over the course of a decade so now I have to establish that at least five of those were Barry staring Kravitz dead in the face, killing himself instantly and rising out of his body as a lich. Just so that Kravitz can know EXACTLY how petty Barry Bluejeans will be.