LHM: Love the characters, hate the canon.

Sovvan Night Challenge 2025

2025-10-01T15:30:56Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

Welcome to the second annual Sovvan Night Challenge!

Autumn is the season of change, the season of harvest and the time to celebrate the year’s bounty. It is also the time to mourn the year’s losses. Sovvan is the night of the year when the veil between life and death is thinnest. Celebrated with a great hunt, feasting, songs, and dancing throughout the day, and bonfires and scary stories at night while candles glow in every window to ward off evil and guide lost spirits home.

The Challenge-
You have thirty days to create something for the theme of Sovvan Night from one (or more) of the prompts, it can be fan-fic, poetry, art, or meta analysis. Choose any characters from any period in Valdemar’s history or even your own OCs, just so long as it is set in Valdemar or the world of Velgarth.

Your Sovvan Night fic does not have to be set actually on Sovvan Night, as long as it fits into the overall theme. It can be scary, spooky, or horror-themed, it can be sad, bittersweet or tragic, it can even be a silly crack-fic or crossover with pop-culture Halloween standards. Just create something new!

The Challenge begins October 1st, with all works to be posted to Ao3 on October 31st (Halloween). You have 30 days to write, draw, or create something inspired by the prompts list. An Ao3 Collection to host all submissions will be made titled- Sovvan_Night_2025

The Prompts-

Autumn
First Frost
Harvest Feasts
Black Cat

Atmosphere
Fog
Full Moon
Candles

Mysteries
Disappearances
Weird Woods
Ritual

Ghostly
Ghost Meeting
Vengeful Ghosts
Possession

Death
Date With Death
The Shadow-Lover
Remembrance

Afterlife
In the Hereafter
Day in the (Un)life
Reincarnation

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An Alternate Ending

2025-08-18T19:02:51Z

Posted by: draconian_em

Hi! So I participated in Fandom Trumps Hate this year (super awesome, you should do it) and I've finished and posted my fic! It's an alternate ending to Magic's Price, rated M. I present Jagged Edges!

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Sovvan Night Challenge - Halloween Fic-Fest 2024 Complete!

2024-11-07T05:56:31Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

There was a great turnout for the Halloween Challenge! Ten brand new fics posted to Ao3 under the name collections/Sovvan_Night_2024

The Sovvan fics-

'A Sovvan Night Tale' by leannmanderson
'Cycle of Sacrifice' by dragonem
'Ignoble End' by Goldscion
'Absurd' by lirason
'Hearthfires' by ToothandClaw
'Pockets Full of Stones' by isnt_it_pretty
'Desiderium' by lirason
'In A Yellow Wood' by ladyfnick
'Years Past Peace' by Gildaurel
'Reunion After A Long Journey' by Blue_Jay_Jay

Many thanks to the wonderful and talented writers who participated in this year's Challenge, I think I will definitely do this again next year. (I'm also seriously thinking of doing an April Fools Crack-fic Challenge)

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Sovvan Night Challenge - Halloween Fic-Fest 2024

2024-10-04T18:24:09Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

A writing Challenge for the Valdemar fandom, thirty days in October to write a fic with the theme of Sovvan Night.

It can be any characters from any period in Valdemar’s history or your own OCs, as long as it is set in Valdemar.

Autumn is the season of harvest, the time of celebrating the year’s bounty. It is also the time to mourn the year’s losses. Sovvan is the night of the year when the veil between life and death is thinnest. Celebrated with a great hunt, feasting and dancing in the day, and scary stories at night while candles glow in every window to ward off evil and guide lost spirits home.

-The Challenge-

Write a new fic set in the kingdom of Valdemar (from the world of Velgarth by Mercedes Lackey) with any of these themes-

Autumn

Hunting

Haunting

Ghost Stories

Brush With Death/Near-Death Experience

Meeting the Shadow-Lover/Death

Afterlife

Reincarnation

The Sovvan Night fic does not have to be set actually on Sovvan Night, as long as it fits into the overall theme.

This is an open Challenge to inspire you into writing a totally new fic; it can be scary, spooky, or horror-themed, it can be sad, bittersweet or tragic, it can even be a silly crack-fic or crossover with pop-culture Halloween standards.

Anything goes! (Please remember to Tag properly)

The Challenge begins October 1st, with all fic to be posted to Ao3 on October 31st (Halloween), so you have 30 days to write. Please tag your fic with [Sovvan Night Challenge 2024] and I will make a Collection of them all.

No limits to wordcount, write as little or as much as you like, the important thing is to Just Write! (poetry and meta analysis welcome too)

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Fire and Ice- Chapter Seven

2023-07-25T04:34:40Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

Chapter Seven of my Lendel Lives AU.

The trial of the century! The queen decides to address the Leshara/Frelennye feud head on!

Tylendel finally gets to testify, the truth will come out!

Chap 7- Truth and Consequence https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/118298104

Savil POV at the start, mostly Vanyel POV, ending with a new POV- Lissa!

Warning- For Homophobia/Homophobic speech, Xenophobia/Othering (Evan is a gigantic douche-bag), Mention of Torture, Poisoning, and Violent Death. Blood/Gore.

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Fanfiction.net outage/possible vanishment

2023-05-28T18:15:24Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

Heads up to anyone who has work posted on fanfiction.net, they are having a major outage and cannot be accessed right now except via mobile (m.fanfiction.net). So if you have anything there and can at all manage to get into your account Back Up Everything you can.

No idea if this is some sort of server problem or preparation of shutting the whole thing down, but if you have anything that is only posted there go back it up quickly.

*Update*
So it seems to be a DNS attack, people are getting redirected to a spoof site, so if you manually enter the address it will still take you to the actual legit site.
(Still, take this as a reminder to back up your files)

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Reading Beyond and Into the West

2023-02-03T21:31:33Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

So I have a question for the community- I have been reading the new 'Founding of Valdemar' series (which is very good btw! Nice to see how it all started and it's intriguing to have a story with an adult character rather than an emotional teen). But I have a question, I know one of the books had a sort of brief history of the Founding as a sort of prequel bit, which mentioned when the first Companions showed up and Choose the king, his eldest son, and his herald, but I cannot recall which book that was in and I wanted to reread that bit over for context.

Can anyone remember what book that was in?

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Fire and Ice- Chapter Six

2022-07-15T02:29:44Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

Chapter Six of my Lendel Lives AU.

Tylendel gets some damn therapy. Lissa shows up ready to defend her favorite brother from any and all threats (the Fist of Sisterly Wrath!). Withen shows up to be an utter ass and try and take Vanyel home.

Warning- For Homophobia (cannon typical) and Homophobic slur (a rather antiquated one, cannon typical)

Tylendel POV, then Vanyel POV, ending with Savil POV.

Chap 6- "Thicker Than Blood"- https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/99108066

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Fire and Ice- Chapter Five

2022-04-16T01:22:55Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

Just posted Chapter Five of my 'Lendel Lives AU.

The Dreams and Visions episode. Tylendel starts feeling some of the negative side effects from the Power Theft. Vanyel has the first Foresight dream.

Warning- For disturbing imagery and flashbacks.

(Lendel POV turning into Van POV, then Savil POV)

Chap Five- The Ties That Bind https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/94232182

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Fire and Ice- Chapter Four

2022-02-20T04:08:44Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

So I've just posted the next chapter of Fire and Ice, my Lendel Lives fic.

A bit shorter than last time (Chap 3 was over 11K words!) but this is going to be a kinda heavy chapter with more confessions.

Chapter Four- Two Heartbeats https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/92167912#workskin

Tylendel has to turn his illicit notes over to Savil, and comes to some painful realizations.

We also come to find out his relationship with his twin wasn't quite as peachy as he let on.

(All Tylendel POV)

Warning This chapter has mention of the mother's suicide, as well as Canon-typical mention of under-age sexual activity, and mention of child abuse/neglect (vague)
(No incest or twincest)

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Fire and Ice- Chapter Three

2022-01-16T04:03:19Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

So I've just posted Chapter Three of my 'Lendel Lives fic.

Warm As Love https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/90734752#main

This is kinda the feel-good chapter. Vanyel has bonding time with Yfandes and some girl talk with Donni. Donni gives him good advice, explains a bit about being Lifebonded.

He has visitors, and finds out he has more friends than he thought.

Though not to be completely without angst- we also see what he felt during Tylendel's Confession.

(Vanyel POV throughout... All Vanyel Vision All the Time)

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last_herald_mage @ 2022-01-06T21:44:00

2022-01-07T05:53:39Z

Posted by: kris_morene

Hi, all!

My usual beta reader isn’t familiar with LHM, and I really need another set of eyes on my next chapter. I’m having trouble walking the line between necessary explanation and too much exposition and could really use an outside opinion. Would anyone have time to read over the next chapter and give me an opinion? It’s been written for weeks now and I’ve hesitated to post it because I don’t know if it really works or not the way it is.

Here’s what’s been posted so far, and if anyone wants to beta for me I can send the next chapter to you.

Rating is E, strong BDSM themes, the only non-con will be a more in depth look at the canon scene in Magic’s Price.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32251795/chapters/79934548

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Old Van and Stef in love, continued...

2022-01-04T22:43:19Z

Posted by: gildaurel

Happy New Year to all!

This is the final part I have written of happy, sappy old Van and Stef. If you read the first parts, you know that Van is injured, old, and stuck at his desk. For some reason, this idea absolutely fascinated me, because I feel like Van is such a perfectionist & I enjoy messing with him. So in this third part, he's even older, and even more pampered by Stef... you get the idea.

Here you go: ( The summer months had been warmer than usual )

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Yuletide fics!

2021-12-25T12:20:23Z

Posted by: fhionnuisce

Here are five more fics, currently anonymous until Yuletide reveals.

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2021/tags/Valdemar%20Series%20-%20Mercedes%20Lackey/works

From first glance it seems they are Vanyel/'Lendel (some fix-its, some not) and there is one crossover (with The Night Circus). (4 which appear not to be crossovers.)

I am savoring them. :)

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Fire and Ice- a 'lendel Lives AU

2021-11-22T05:24:30Z

Posted by: blue_jay_jay

Hello everyone! I'm Blue Jay-jay, been a huge fan of Misty's works and most especially LHM since back in the day. I've been on a huge reading spree since I heard the announcement about the possible moving series, re-reading the series, looking for fan-art, and then followed a link from DevArt to Ao3 where I discovered the treasure-trove of fan-fic you darling and lovely people have been making. I've spent a couple of weeks reading everything I could find, and about halfway through chewing my way through the archives I was struck by the writing bug and sort maniacally banged out this start of a 'lendel Lives AU. (I also started to write a prompt fill but then realized it was for a several years old prompt and didn't know the protocol for necroing things?)

For my AU (Which I am tentatively calling 'Fire and Ice') I am running off the idea of what would have happened if Tylendel has messed up building the Gate? What if he didn't make it to the Leshara's, didn't get repudiated, didn't kill himself, and has to actually Deal With the Consequences of his stupid actions.

So here for your reading pleasure, Chapter One- Darkest Night https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/86974228
(Starts with Vanyel POV, then has Savil POV.)

Got the next chapter uploaded! Chapter Two- The Morning Bright https://archiveofourown.org/works/34926076/chapters/88784815
Tylendel has to confess. This chapter starts with some Van POV, most of the chapter is Tylendel POV, and the end has some Savil POV for the adults talking segment.

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Hello all.

2021-11-10T18:05:37Z

Posted by: fhionnuisce

Hello all! So I was invited by thene. My heart's been really re-committed to LHM lately, probably because of news of the show, which I have major trepidations about. For a variety of reasons I found myself rereading Magic's Pawn and it's so brutal. Truly unkind to pretty much every character.

In an case, I will be trying to work my feelings out through fic before we see anything from the show (that'll be when the fandom starts getting weird as we all know.)

I recently was in a remix challenge and was surprised to find a Valdemar fic to remix, so this fic is a Van/Stef fic. I did this without rereading because it was heavily based on the premise of the first fic. The rules in remix are that you can change anything, but you can't change the pairing.

I went on intuition and memory and these are the results. https://archiveofourown.org/works/33517444

More fic to come, at least a few more anyway.

It's nice to meet you all and I hope you enjoy the fic.

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So, Last Herald Mage TV show?

2021-08-15T00:07:57Z

Posted by: rymenhild

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who is fascinated, and also apprehensive, about the news that a Valdemar TV show is in the works and that the first planned season will be Vanyel's story.

There are so very many ways this could go wrong... but it also reminds me how deep my Feelings about Vanyel and Stef and Tylendel and Yfandes go. Here's a discussion post -- I'd love to hear any Feelings any of you have about this! Here's to our sparkly tragic gay Herald-Mage!

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has been too long <3

2021-08-14T16:22:28Z

Posted by: thene

Um. 9+ years ago I started a series in the vein I think of as Scorched-Earth Fix-It, in which Van didn't die but a whole lot of other terrible stuff happened and keeps happening. However I am secretly all about the comfort and had always been trying to expand on that aspect, so I finally did add two more chapters to the part where Van & Stef are getting their shit together and banging again.

I went through a lot of iterations trying to get these two chapters to work, so here is a little reel of deleted scenes and conversations. let's start with Van blowing Stef for no particular reason:

( You did so much for me )

So, there's a bit in the new 3rd chapter where Stef suggests they take a break from having sex. Originally, they did, but it killed the pace so I went back and let them keep at it instead. But here is a bit of what they would have done with that break. (Text doesn't quite line up because [insert much version-weaving]. Also they were in Stef's room in this iteration, not Van's.)

( I have manners )

And another bit of dialogue that got cut:

( Then so we'd be. )

Finally, I originally played out the scene where Van tells Stef what happened - I then decided that was a waste of time bc people would have read what happened in the previous fic if they wanted to go through all the trauma. I also thought it might be best leaving it to the reader's imagination, to think of what Van might have said and how Stef might have responded - when I put it in text it seemed way too smooth. But here's how it could have gone:

( I got what I wanted )

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Shout it from the rooftops, guys!

2021-02-20T20:01:00Z

Posted by: mistyshadowsxx

Guys it’s happening, Lackey is writing about the founding of Valdemar. I literally just stumbled across this on GoodReads and I confirmed it is legit on Amazon. It hasn’t been published yet, it’s supposed to published on June 15th THIS YEAR. I’m so excited! She is calling the book Beyond and it looks like it’s going to be a series.

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Founding-Valdemar-Mercedes-Lackey/dp/0756417333

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I have an idea! A very good and strange idea

2021-02-18T23:17:52Z

Posted by: mistyshadowsxx

So I’ve thought about this for a bit and I finally want to say something about it. AU/fic of us authors getting thrown into the LHMverse and explaining to everyone just how fucked they are if they don’t listen to us. I mean explaining Ma’ar/Leareth, the coming mage-storms in the future, just all of that in one glorious fic of madness. I don’t know if this should be an entire fic written by ALL of us or one of us writes it and the rest give TONS of feedback on it. Either way I think this has potential to be great. The one where all of us writes would probably be done on the glowfic site that Swimmer963 has introduced us to. As I said, this has potential.

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Beta reader/Co-writer

2021-01-23T03:45:30Z

Posted by: mistyshadowsxx

These posts were originally on AO3, just thought I’d copy and paste them on so one more community knows!

Hey guys there has been a idea stewing in my head and since I’m not very good at writing long stories yet I was wondering if anybody would like to help me. It a Valdemar fic idea, more or less everybody has a guardian spirit, somehow they made themselves not invisible to everybody in the beginning of ‘Magic’s Price’. I would like to discuss the whole of the idea with a competent writer in hopes of the idea coming to life. As I said I’m not good at writing long stories and I basically want somebody to be co-author/co-writer. Please let me know via email if you are interested, my email is

mist_shade@outlook.com

Thank you

Also please do not spam my email as a ‘joke’ I understand most on here understand basic courtesy but I’m saying this for those who don’t understand.

Keep in mind I live on the west coast of the United States so say if you are on the east coast, I will not be able to reply immediately

Recently I’ve figured out I don’t need a co-writer per say but a beta reader or editor. Still I’m looking for someone who is willing to help me. Remember we are all in this for the fun, so yeah. If you are interested let me know! Not just via email but also

Reddit- MistyShadows-Icedust

Dreamwidth- misyshadowsxx

Fanfiction.net- MistyShadowsXX

Wattpad- MistyShadowsXX

And of course my email is

mist_shade@outlook.com

The Co-writer thing is still up for grabs if you want it, if you want to be Co-writer and editor/beta that is even better. Thank you!

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Yes, I did it!

2021-01-17T01:54:24Z

Posted by: mistyshadowsxx

So when I tried recovering my hotmail account it had me use an email besides the Hotmail one so now I just have that email so now I can create an AO3 account and now I have a ff.net account. YES!!!!!!!

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I’m a new user

2021-01-17T01:17:47Z

Posted by: mistyshadowsxx

I just recently joined on here, I was wondering if anyone was interested in my what stories, they are LHM and one is based off the “A Song for Two Voices” verse, here is link to my page

https://www.wattpad.com/user/MistyShadowsXX

I dunno how to make an actual link on my iPad sooo yeah

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Some epic collaborative-writing AUs of my LHM AU

2020-06-05T16:44:43Z

Posted by: swimmer963

I've been recovering from major surgery and, as such, have had a lot of (very brainfoggy) time on my hands. Conveniently, I happened to have just discovered the glowfic community, a genre of text roleplay that actually started out on Dreamwidth but has its own website now. Since I'm also constantly voracious for causing more Vanyel content to exist, but too out of it to write longform stuff on my own, this has been great. I'm really proud of some of the absolutely ridiculous fics that are coming out of this. Glowfic can get insanely high context really fast (it consists almost entirely of crossovers), but at least some of my threads make sense as standalones (for people who've read A Song for Two Voices, since they branch off from that rather than original LHM canon.)

So, if anyone wants some weird crossover Vanyel (and Leareth) content:

therapeutic ethics: diverges from early book 3 of ASFTV. An off-brand Mindhealer from another world lands in Valdemar, yells at Lancir for his questionable practices around consent, helps Van work through some of his issues, and things go from there.

after summer is winter, after winter summer: TYLENDEL RESURRECTION! Set right before book 3 starts; a half-human half-Lovecraftian-god pair of twins land in the Pelagirs, stumble onto Van and Savil traveling back to Valdemar with Starwind and Moondance, and decide to use their own brand of magic to solve Vanyel's biggest problem. However, this creates lots of additional drama.

here in the angle of house and barn: A badly-abused Sith apprentice and her droid accidentally teleport to Valdemar, and end up saving Vanyel's ass on his first mission in early book 3, and then deciding whether to stick around and keep helping.

hey, god is dead, did you know: this is starting to get higher-context. Instead of going to k'Treva after the, uh, drama with a certain trial in mid book 6, Vanyel goes home to Forst Reach. At which point he stumbles onto a magical door to an interdimensional bar, and meets Cam, an extremely OP character from yet another world who has a serious problem in need of solving with otherworldly magic. Of course, the person you actually want if you need "insane levels of knowledge about magic" is Leareth...

Now will never come again: debatable whether this counts as Vanyel content, since Vanyel is replaced by Abras, an alt of my friend's headcanon of Bruce Banner. Starts with Tylendel's death and goes from there. Abras is a lot like Vanyel, with a few differences, and IMO it's a fun and interesting contrast. All the other characters are around as usual. Continues with a sequel, the laws of truth I will obey.

in the shadow of the sky (kind of abandoned, hopefully will pick up again at some point): no Vanyel, I'm afraid. Baby!Ma'ar (my version of) on his first reincarnation, runs into a character who he might be able to actually trust.

There are a few more (see my author page on the glowfic site), but they're mostly "my version of Leareth teleports to someone else's setting", so are not LHM content per se.

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Just a weird crackfic of my AU

2019-11-20T16:53:02Z

Posted by: swimmer963

So this showed up in my AO3 notifications the other day, and...omg WHAT. Someone wrote a Leareth-POV prequel crackfic of my freaking million-word AU, aaaaaaaaa. So much what even. It's 3k words, so nice and short, and it's hilarious, and it has WORLDBUILDING. It's...not precisely the Leareth characterization I would've done, but it's not wrong, and it's neat enough that I miiiiight have to make an official headcanon that something like this happened in my AU (maybe this is a dramatization of said events).

IMO it might even make sense as a standalone short story about one of Ma'ar's adventures over his many lives, although it slightly spoils book 3 of my AU.

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