Hello,

I enjoy history, cartography, languages, reading and writing.

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Anyway; tis new fanfiction time. This has been brewing in my brain for a while and now is as good a time as any. I cannot promise you fast updates - I can promise that I will do my best to bring you quality fanfic. Being an amateur historian and very amateur linguist, I figured I'd flex a couple of those hobbies in a new fic:

About Harry Potter and the Assassin's Creed:

Once again, new fic = complete overhaul of writing styles, techniques, and so on.

An attempt to do an irregular crossover between two storylines that would take serious work to make gel, and to put Harry into a reasonably realistic world that is entirely out of his comfort zone and have him deal with it with in as close to canon characterisation as possible, also an attempt to write an exciting and epic quest/adventure story that realistically transforms a canon depicted character into something more and an opportunity to showcase my favourite period in history. This is Harry Potter taken from a crucial canon point (5th Year divergence) and inserted into a random part of the middle ages, with the early Assassin's Creed game lore coming in at a much later point. Yes, this will be Assassin!Harry, but not how you might think. You don't need an in-depth knowledge of Assassin's Creed to enjoy it.

I am going to be keeping the story extremely close to real history throughout - fortunately, AC does this in a lot of ways, and via some of the older-world lore in both universes the two blend together very well - so for example, William FitzOsbern* leading the people's revolt in chapter one is based on the nearest you can get to eyewitness accounts of the real event in the Spring/Summer of 1196, as is the end of FitzOsbern. I shall try to maintain that standard.

The entire book is planned out, so its just a case of me being able to find the time to sit down and get it on paper. All the same, please enjoy, and I'll try to treat you better than I did during Unforgiven. Please read, please review, please be honest.

*Note: a lot of sources, particularly online, cite this man's name as FitzOsbert. While the two are technically interchangeable, some of the older reference books I use have it as FitzOsbern or Fitz Osbern, and it stuck. It's the same guy either way, but historical sourcing for little-known figures can vary massively, even for such small things as names. Wikipedia uses both spellings depending on the article you read. If you ever particularly want details or confirmation on a character, practice, spelling, location or anything, I'll do my best to help you out, and don't be shy about pointing out any mistakes I've made.

Language Notes for the First Chapter (for anyone interested)

Old/Middle English:
Pre-Chaucer English, in the uncomfortable transition between Anglo-Saxon, Old-English and Middle-English, is not easy to get to grips with. You need a comprehensive knowledge of the English Language to take even an educated guess. William FitzOsbern’s famous passage “I am the savior of the poor. Do ye, oh, poor! …” roughly translates the speech to the crowd which is read within the chapter, but it is delivered in the height of the moment, just before a battle, with informal delivery and masses of abbreviation. The language otherwise is authentic but difficult to get through – fortunately, Harry isn’t supposed to know what they’re saying. This definitely helps me out in the next chapter, because unless you spoke French (actually Anglo-Norman, see below) then the English language was entirely regional, and those fluent in the Middle-English of London would have trouble understanding locals in any town just a day’s walk or less from London in any direction. I will not be providing translations for every line of Middle-English in the story – if you want to know exactly what they’re saying, I’d recommend a Middle-/Modern-English dictionary and a good dose of guesswork.

Anglo-Norman:
Easier. Though native French speakers can find it difficult to decipher in large chunks, short sentences can usually be figured out. ‘Sargant li paur’ is roughly ‘Leader of the poor’. ‘Guyerez efacer li caucie’ is roughly ‘Prepare to clear the causeway’. ‘Li’ replaces the modern ‘le’ in the masculine. ‘Caucie’ is nowadays ‘chaussée’, etc. Old d’Oil French had a few distinctly annoying differences from any other type of French, specifically with ‘W’ and ‘GU’ being interchanged, as in ‘werre’ and ‘guerre’ (‘war’). That’s why modern English has words like ‘guarantee’ and ‘warranty’, which mean the same thing, and why Guillaime and William are the same name. I’m using artistic license in the transcription, as I’m not fluent in Anglo-Norman and there is no precedent.

A Quick Plug:

Here is a link to - if you haven't already come across it, it's a rather excellent little tool that allows you to find fics based on what other users have favourited. If you put the story ID number (found in the URL of a story you like) in the search engine, it'll pop up a list of stories on that people who have favourited that story also have in their favourites. It's a pretty nifty recommendations tool and it's averaging nearly 30,000 hits per day. Add your profile to the database to help it grow and if you like it, donate to it because he's having to use a dedicated server to handle the influx of users, and that costs dollah. This project may be ending soon because of the costs involved in maintaining it. Make the most of it while it's there.

Story Updates (for HPAC):

They're on their way. They'll debut first in the DLP WbA, then Patronus Charm, then here on .

Fanfic

Unforgiven is still up, though abandoned, and still gets new favourites, readers, and so on despite being a while out of commission. I'm still annoyed about how it turned out and all the drama involved, but thank you to everyone who stuck by it and came back when I posted the notice at the end.

Various other oneshots and drabbles (most will be from the Thank God You're Here challenge thread on DLP) such as Why is it Orange? - my first ever attempt at a crack!fic/comedy - will be posted periodically. I usually do these as writing exercises and to kill writer's block, and they sometimes work.

Depending on how it comes out (and whether I can submit it in time or not) the DLP February Awards competition has a Dark Arts flavour and I'm trying my hand at a proper Dark!Harry fic, on this account, as Grinning Lizard. If it's ever to the point where it's even half decent I will post it - it's a short story (compared to my others) at probably 20k - 30k. Working title at the moment is Shell and it's from a plot bunny that Celestin and TheLegionofMelissa share credit for.

In other news, VoiceoftheNephilim has entered into a beta'ing / collaborative editing partnership with me recently, and has helped to make the latter bits of HPAC legible. He's a cracking good author and you'll find his fics in my favourites - if you haven't read them already, get on it. I apologise in advance if our joking about writing a Gangsta!Harry collaboration ever truly comes about.

I think that's about it. Thanks for the time and, as always, peace.

G.L.