#the rogue prince: private investigator au

[the-rogue-dragon]

@qanedanegros Neera gets a semi plotted starter;

🔥A SERIE OF MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARENCES HAS been keeping the police busy for the past weeks. The case had made it to the news, and the people were already claiming for justice, while others were accusing the girls, for being the reason they disappeared. Their jobs as escorts was not well seen for the most conservative people of Westeros, it was disgusting to hear and read their comments on the matter. Of course most of the people screamed for justice and for the girls to be found either way.

Daemon had heard of this case for more than once source, being one of the best private investigators in the city. The police had contacted him days after the first case, when they realized they couldn't do anything on their own. But by then, he has already been contacted by Mysaria, the owner of the business that worked with these girls. Mysaria has been a friend of his for a long while now, and Daemon has been her client in several occasions as well. She had decided to put her assistant Neera in a safe place, and what was better than former cop now turned PI, Daemon Targaryen.

That was how Neera was now in his apartment, at the side of Mysaria who drove to his place to take her, and her belongings. "Are you sure you don't want to stay too?" He asked his friend, but he knew the woman was going to be doing her own job trying to find her girls. Daemon was already inside of the case, so he was working on getting as much information as he could.

[secret-engima]

Okay, but anon and I are like on the same wavelength because I HAD THE SAME THOUGHT!! So now I’m like, where would the hidden enclave be, and when did they form? THEN I had the idea - what if they are descendants of THE original bastard LC? Because Ardyn was 33 when he first ‘died’, and if all LCs are as... /irresistible/ as we have Regis portrayed, then he could have sired a bastard before meeting and falling for Aera. Only Aera helped hide said bastard from Somnus before (cont in next)

a-world-in-grey said: Everything went to hell in a handbasket, and said descendants wouldn’t take the LC name because they view Somnus’s betrayal as him disowning them, so instead they take the name Vitae as kind of a ‘fuck you’ to the LC line and don’t regard LCs or their ‘Kingsworn’ very highly at all. And I could see them having Leviathan as their patron, the Tidemother, which is also their way of saying ‘fuck you’ to Bahamut. Leviathan is very pleased. And being sea farers makes it easier to up and vanish. (Cont)

a-world-in-grey said: But then the Great War happens and the Vitae do NOT appreciate shit happening in Altissa(?)/Accordo(?)/ THEIR TURF, which kick starts shit and brings Mors attention down on them maybe. Idk. But this would definitely be a Yeet the Prophecy AU because the Vitae aren’t gonna stand for Bahamut’s bs.

Me:

Ooooh oh I like this too but what if it’s BOTH. What if it STARTED with the hidden child and then they heard of the Legend of Adagium’s Curse and so they started just- TAKING the kids from Somnus’s line before they could be killed and adding them to the blood line?

And as for where it would be- um. Like-.

You’ve seen my AUs. Where do you THINK I’m going to put it? You get three guesses and the first two don’t count.

On a more serious note though, Galahd (seriously where else did you expect me to put them this is ME you sent the ask to) is A JUNGLE. A VERY SECRETIVE JUNGLE FULL OF SECRETIVE PEOPLE. No one’s going to bat an eyelid at another Clan forming and then mixing/marrying with the neighboring Clans (LIKE THE ULRIC AND THE ALTIUS HAHAHAHAHA) or just straight up folding into one of the pre-existing clans that happens to look similar enough to pass physical inspection (LIKE THE ULRICS. WHO’S UP FOR LC-NYX). No one is going to question the disdain/hate for mainlanders and their politics or their nomadic habits as some of them regularly slip off to the mainland to keep an eye on things/sail the world to explore things in total disregard for modern borders and political situations. No one is even going to QUESTION when every once in a few centuries one of the wanderers comes in potato-sacking a traumatized, nearly-executed-for-their-magic child and claims the child as part of their Clan and raises them to be just as secretive and feral as the rest.

Seriously, Accordo/Altissia is a major trade hub, nowhere on Lucis main is safe, Niflheim is NIFLHEIM and Tenebrae are allies to the Lucis Line who might … forget eventually … just why they gave sanctuary in the first place (or get drawn into a war if their hiding of these people got out). Galahd is already hinted at/HCed to be private and mostly unknown to the rest of the world and any wild stories of magic and healing spells and the calling down of the Storm would be passed off as strange jungle myths and legends. And Galahd would grow very quickly PROTECTIVE of these magic users who are just and strong, who freely wander the isles blessing them with their magic, healing the sick and defending the needy and singing the Storm into existence when danger tried to sail in from the mainland. They would be protective of their Peacekeepers and Healers and Storms and TideSingers and would have LITERALLY NO REASON to ever tell outsiders about them, especially not when it becomes clear that they have Issues with Somnus’s line. So Galahd keeps it to itself, the Clans all coming to know the Vitae(Ulric? I am so tempted to make this an Ulric Clan AU ngl this is probably going to become an Ulric Clan are the LC offshoots AU) as Theirs and Trusted and Secret no matter what bad blood rises between the rest of the Clans.

Until Mors pulls back the Wall and Niflheim tries to invade and for the first time in centuries Galahd’s greatest secret has to not just fight, but WAGE WAR.

There are a LOT more of them living in Galahd then there ever were LCs on the mainland.

Niflheim doesn’t stand a chance.

The news gets out and people lose their MINDS at the word of a SECOND WALL rising to protect Galahd, a Wall not commanded or created by their King or Prince. And of course Mors HAS to know, he HAS to know how this happened and who is holding that Wall and he’s already shown no hesitation in flinging his son off to Accordo in the middle of a war so he-

Orders Regis and his group to go investigate, find a way past the Wall, make contact (bring this rogue LC to heel, because of course they assume its just a lone illegitimate but powerful child) and somehow they find a way in and-

All of Bahamut’s Prophecies.

U n r a v e l

(Basically I want to make an AU where Regis and Co get YOTE straight and hard into culture shock shenanigans and intrigue and have to deal with both Galahd culture but also FERAL MAGIC USERS who look at LCs and see Betrayers and Kinslayers but will not (cannot) raise a hand against him physically because that would make them Kinslayers too. But they CAN confuse him and run rings around him, try to scare him off with their ways and magic. They don’t expect him to stay. They don’t expect him to learn.

They don’t expect him to look at their Immortal Healer King who they have been slowly, painstakingly healing over the centuries and cry on his behalf, they don’t expect Regis to look at their King’s one hundred and thirteenth-great granddaughter Aulea and fall head over heels in love.)

Aiiiiii this is not going to be a one-shot collection I can feel it.

Somebody give me a name for this thing. If you’re all going to be horrible (wonderful) enablers give me a name for this monstrosity.

[thewebofslime]

MOST OF THE Americans arrived in Port-au-Prince from the U.S. by private jet early on the morning of February 16. They’d packed the eight-passenger charter plane with a stockpile of semiautomatic rifles, handguns, Kevlar bulletproof vests, and knives. Most had been paid already: $10,000 each up front, with another $20,000 promised to each man after they finished the job. A trio of politically connected Haitians greeted the Americans when their plane landed around 5 a.m. An aide to embattled Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and two other regime-friendly Haitians whisked them through the country’s biggest airport, avoiding customs and immigration agents, who had not yet reported for work. The American team included two former Navy SEALs, a former Blackwater-trained contractor, and two Serbian mercenaries who lived in the U.S. Their leader, a 52-year-old former Marine C-130 pilot named Kent Kroeker, had told his men that this secret operation had been requested and approved by Moïse himself. The Haitian president’s emissaries had told Kroeker that the mission would involve escorting the presidential aide, Fritz Jean-Louis, to the Haitian central bank, where he’d electronically transfer $80 million from a government oil fund to a second account controlled solely by the president. In the process, the Haitians told the Americans, they’d be preserving democracy in Haiti. It was too good a deal for the band of semi-employed military veterans and security contractors to turn down. But a day after the Americans landed in Haiti, they would find themselves in jail and at the center of a political uproar, with Haitians asking what a group of foreign mercenaries was doing at the central bank and who they were working for. Within three days, Kroeker and his team would be released and sent back to the U.S., having somehow managed to escape criminal charges in Haiti. Many details of the operation remain murky, but based on interviews with Haitian law enforcement and government officials, as well as a person with direct knowledge of the plan, a picture of the clumsy effort emerges. What at first resembled a comedic plot about a group of ex-soldiers looking for a quick and easy mercenary score was in fact a poorly executed but serious effort by Moïse to consolidate his political power with American muscle. Neither Moïse nor the Haitian Embassy in Washington, D.C., responded to requests for comment. None of the Americans spoke directly with Moïse or received official paperwork from the Haitian government authorizing them to undertake the mission, according to the person with direct knowledge of the operation. Yet Jean-Louis and the plot’s other key organizer, Josué Leconte, a Haitian-American from Brooklyn and close friend of Moïse, do not appear to have been rogue operators. The Americans arrived at a tumultuous political and economic moment in a country with a history of unrest. Since last July, when Moïse tried to raise fuel prices by as much as 50 percent, intermittent protests have paralyzed Haiti. Thousands of demonstrators march in the street during a protest to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse on Feb. 7, 2019. Photo: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP From 2008 to 2017, Venezuela provided Haiti with about $4.3 billion in cheap oil under the Petrocaribe Accord, which Venezuela signed with Haiti and 16 other Caribbean and Central American countries. Haiti had a particularly favorable deal: Forty percent of the money owed to Venezuela was repayable over 25 years at an annual interest rate of 1 percent. In the meantime, Haiti was free to pump its revenue from that oil into the Petrocaribe fund. The fund was supposed to support hospitals, clinics, schools, roads, and other social projects, and helped prop up the Haitian government after the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016. But Trump administration sanctions on Venezuela and financial mismanagement by the Haitian government led the Haitian central bank to halt payments to Venezuela, and the Petrocaribe agreement effectively ended in early 2018. A Haitian Senate investigation found that the fund’s nearly $2 billion had been largely misappropriated, embezzled, and stolen, primarily under Haitian President Michel Martelly’s leadership between 2011 and 2016. Moïse came to power in 2017, after the Port-au-Prince district attorney accused him of money laundering. The corruption allegations, combined with the end of cheap Venezuelan oil and credit, created a perfect storm of popular outrage. In recent months, Moïse and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Henry Céant have been vying for power, and Moïse’s decision to back the Trump administration’s recent efforts to undermine Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro set off a new round of popular street protests in Haiti, with protesters calling for Moïse to step down. Under the Haitian constitution, that would have made Céant the country’s leader. The Americans were told that the Petrocaribe fund is controlled by Moïse, Céant, and the central bank’s president, Jean Baden Dubois. Because of the widening political rift between the president and the prime minister, that arrangement left the $80 million effectively frozen, according to the person with direct knowledge of the operation. Leconte and Jean-Louis told the Americans that by moving the money into an account Céant and Dubois could not access, Moïse could more effectively lead the country, hence the promise that they would be supporting Haiti’s democracy. The fund was the government’s only significant economic instrument, and the move would secure Moïse’s position and freeze out his prime minister. It is unclear what Moïse intended to do with the money once he gained control of it. Leconte paid the Americans for the operation, according to the source with direct knowledge. Leconte and his business partner, Gesner Champagne, who also met the Americans at the airport in Port-au-Prince, were acting as cutouts, giving Moïse plausible deniability, the Americans were told. In return for helping Moïse, the president promised Leconte and Champagne that he would give a nationwide telecom contract to Preble-Rish Haiti, the engineering and construction company Leconte and Champagne run together, Jean-Louis and Leconte told the Americans. The Banque de la République d’Haïti in downtown Port-au-Prince on March 8, 2019. Photo: Kim Ives/Haïti Liberté JEAN-LOUIS, KROEKER, and his five teammates arrived at the Banque de la République d’Haïti in downtown Port-au-Prince around 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 17, roughly 36 hours after the Americans had landed. In addition to being a presidential aide, Jean-Louis was the former director of the national lottery, which is run out of the central bank. It is unclear if his previous job was related to his having been selected to transfer the money. The Americans pulled up in three cars and got out. They were heavily armed and stood protectively around Jean-Louis. The bank was closed, but Jean-Louis told a security guard at the door that they were there on bank business, according to the source with direct knowledge. Suspicious of their intent, the security guard refused to let them in. Instead, someone alerted the police. A two-hour standoff ensued on Rue des Miracles. Penned in by the police, Kroeker called a seventh member of his team to help negotiate their release. Dustin Porte, an electrical services contractor and former member of the Louisiana National Guard who spoke French, showed up and spoke to the police on his team members’ behalf. The contractors eventually surrendered, telling the police that it was all a big misunderstanding — and that they were there on a government mission, according to the Miami Herald. The police asked the Americans why, if their mission was legitimate, they hadn’t gone through official channels, a senior Haitian law enforcement source told The Intercept. “Because the president doesn’t trust you guys,” one of the contractors replied, according to the Haitian law enforcement official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about what happened. Haitian police arrested Kroeker, the team leader; former Navy SEALs Christopher McKinley, 49, and Christopher Osman, 44; former Blackwater contractor Talon Burton, 51; and Porte, 43. They also detained the two Serbians, Danilo Bajagic, 36, and Vlade Jankovic, 40. Photos of their weapons and tactical gear, which included six semiautomatic assault rifles, six handguns, knives, and at least three satellite phones, soon surfaced on social media. Haitian police sources say that some if not all of the mercenaries brought their arms with them and that the makes, models, and serial numbers of the weapons have been provided to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. U.S. authorities have so far failed to bring charges against the contractors for illegally traveling out of the United States with their weapons, which requires a license. Jean-Louis had apparently managed to flee during the lengthy standoff. But after the Americans were booked into the jail, Michel-Ange Gédéon, the director general of Haiti’s National Police, fielded calls from Jean-Louis, senior presidential aide Ardouin Zéphirin, and Haitian Justice Minister Jean Roudy Aly, who claimed variously that the Americans were conducting “state business” and there doing “work for the bank,” according to a well-placed police source. In each case, the callers conveyed that Moïse had authorized the Americans and that they should be released. Gédéon refused. Join Our Newsletter Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. I’m in Céant did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Shortly after the Americans were arrested, he took to the airwaves to call the team “terrorists” and “mercenaries” who had been trying to get to the bank’s roof so they could assassinate him and unspecified parliamentarians. He later walked back the statements, saying that they were a “hypothesis.” On Monday, Haiti’s parliament voted to oust Céant as prime minister, but Céant has remained defiant. “There are MPs who have decided to do something illegal and unconstitutional and that goes against principles, republican traditions, and parliamentary traditions,” he told the Haitian daily newspaper Le Nouvelliste. “I am still in office as prime minister.” THE CAPER MIGHT have been successful had any of the American participants had previous experience conducting a clandestine mercenary mission in a sovereign country. Instead, they were a mixed bag of mostly military veterans, including one former SEAL who had recently been charged with assault for a road rage incident in southern California and another who was a body builder with a sideline as a country music singer. There was Kroeker, who among other ventures ran a truck suspension business; Burton, a former Army military police officer and State Department security contractor; and Porte, the owner of a small electrical contractor that won a one-time $16,000 contract with the Department of Homeland Security. Kroeker, according to a person with direct knowledge, had assured his colleagues that the mission would be easy. But while the Americans were well-armed, they lacked other basic provisions of a secret security operation for hire: insurance coverage, a medical evacuation plan, legal authority to bring their weapons into Haiti, or an escape plan if things went bad. “They had no idea what they were doing,” said the person with direct knowledge, who requested anonymity to speak publicly about the clandestine mission. A list, created by Haitian police and acquired by Haïti Liberté, of the serial numbers of weapons the mercenaries had. After the State Department secured the Americans’ release, everyone involved in the operation scattered. By the time the Americans were freed, Jean-Louis and Leconte had fled Haiti. Leconte flew back to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, according to the person with knowledge of the operation; a day after he landed in New York, his Facebook profile was taken down. On February 24, Leconte ran away from a reporter who asked for comment outside his Brooklyn home and hid in a parking garage. Chris Osman, one of the ex-Navy SEALs and the only member of the team to publicly discuss the Haiti operation so far, wrote on Instagram that he was in Haiti doing security work for “people who are directly connected to the current president.” Osman hinted at the Haitian political intrigue behind the scheme, posting that he and his colleagues “were being used as pawns in a public fight between [Moïse] and the current Prime Minister of Haiti.” Osman has since deleted his post. Leconte and Champagne had discussed a possible follow-up contract with Kroeker if the money transfer was successful, according to the person with direct knowledge of the mission. It is unclear what that assignment might have been.

[the-rogue-dragon]

🔥EVEN WHEN HIS APARTMENT WAS NOT BIG ENOUGH for more than one person, he couldn't find in himself to deny Mysaria's idea of having Neera staying at his place. It would not be for long - he guessed - only for as long as the case continued, and he was certain that they would find the person behind these disappearances rather quickly. The police had him in the case, and he was the best in the area, there wouldn't be any resting until he found this criminal and the lives of these girls could carry on without having to live in fear.

"I know it's not big enough for three, but it's all I can offer." He knew already that Neera was going to be taking his bedroom - since there was no guest bedroom - he also knew he was going to take the couch in the office, for the rare occasions when he felt like sleeping. "You need to stay out of this case. I know you worry, but the best you can do now, it's to support the other girls, and try to keep the business closed, as much as it's possible." Money could become a problem now that they wouldn't be working, and income would not be going their way. "I will talk to my brother... see if I can get a loan from the enterprise and help you and your girls."

Mysaria knew that when Daemon suggested talking to Viserys it was serious, given that the brothers have not been on speaking terms for a while now. "And you don't need to pay me at all. We will manage here, I'm sure." He gave a short nod to Neera, as she looked around. "She's a guest, and under my protection, the last thing I will ever do is to charge you for this." And he didn't even need to charge her for his services either since the police would take care of his fee.

Once Mysaria was gone - after saying goodbye to Neera - Daemon locked the door behind her and turned around to face his guest for the foreseeable future. "Come, I will show you around. There is no guest room, so you will be taking mine, and I will stay in the couch of the office." Which has been the room she had already seen. Taking her to the bottom right he opened the door. "Your new bedroom. Here you've access to the bathroom, and at the end of the hallway there is the kitchen." He explained. "I made room in the closet for your clothes. If there is anything you need, you can ask me for it."