Sometimes, an idea for a story gets into my head, and wedges itself in there so tightly that I know there’s nothing to be done but to write the thing. Given how many hours I’ve spent over the past week playing Middle-earth: Shadow of War for the first time, it was probably inevitable that I would get the urge to write some fan-fiction for it. At least this time, it wasn’t a whole novel’s worth (or a whole series of novels’ worth).

The story is available on FanFiction.Net: Last of the Nine. It tells the story of a brief meeting between Talion, the protagonist of the Shadow games, and a disguised Ranger of the North. The idea was rather irresistible, given that if we accept the departures from Tolkien lore that the game has already committed, something like this story almost has to have happened just offstage . . .

Okay, now that the imp has been exorcised, and I’m almost finished with my play-through of the game as well, maybe I can get back to my galactic modeling and preparation for the next Human Destiny stories.