LHM: Love the characters, hate the canon.

 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. 

This story is getting HARD to write and I'm not super happy with this draft yet, especially re: pacing, there is way less intense action and it's much more a bunch of loosely connected side plots than I would prefer, and it probably doesn't end in the right place, but it's already taken me forever and is at like 180,000 words, so here, have a rough draft :)

(Note: I have made a bunch of changes to book 5 since the last draft I posted here, which means there isn't perfect continuity between the old book 5 and this section. I've listed major plot-relevant changes below, and I've also linked to the more recent and improved version of book 5.) 

Book 6 MOBI
Book 6 EPUB
Book 6 RTF 



Covers:
*Savil and Van trying to patch things up after the events of the end of book 5. Drama.
*Some clarification on what Leareth is up to, in case you were curious.
*Lots of magical research.
*Stef and Medren have adventures.
*Political drama. Vanyel is not great at politics. 
*There miiiiight be a side plot where Need shows up.
*Jisa getting trained as a Mindhealer.
*Checking in Lissa, Karis, Shavri, Tran, etc etc etc (there are too many characters in this series and they are all amazing and deserve their own side-story, damn it Mercedes Lackey)


New Book 5 MOBI
New Book 5 EPUB
New Book 5 RTF








Major plot changes made from last draft of book 5: 
-Rolan doesn't come back right away, and Tran gets re-Chosen by Delian instead. (Justification: I think it loses a lot of the impact of Taver's death to have Rolan immediately show up as a replacement) 
-Jaysen still dies but no longer calls Final Strike (because my friend thought there it was too much "a chain reaction of spontaneously combusting Heralds") 
-MOST IMPORTANT: the mystery of Leren's assassination attempt is resolved within book 5 and Vanyel finds out it was Leareth's plot. (I mean, I *think* this was canon already, but main thing is that Van already knows what's up by the beginning of book 6)