The Novel
The Grimm Forge
By R.J. Stenson
Peter Grimm is going nowhere fast. Worn down by routine and the quiet sense that his life has already been decided for him, when he's offered a way out. A medieval-themed, televised survival competition, complete with rules, guardrails, and a prize big enough to restart everything.
What he gets instead is a fortress that shouldn't exist, a bargain he never agreed to, and a world that doesn't play by any rules he was told about.
Synopsis
The Story
Peter Grimm is an emergency dispatcher. Calm under pressure, invisible everywhere else. When a mysterious invitation arrives offering him a spot in what looks like a high-stakes medieval reality show, he takes it. The money is real. The rules seem manageable. And anything is better than the life he's been living.
But the fortress he wakes up in isn't a set. The creatures hunting the corridors aren't actors. And the bargain that was made on his behalf, with something ancient and burning at the heart of the world, is very, very real.
The Grimm Forge is the origin story of the world the game is set in. The disciplines, the miasma, the forge fires that rebirth the dead... it all starts here. This is where the first Grimms made their bargain. This is where the Guild was born.
119,000 words. A debut novel written one shift at a time by an emergency communications specialist with the Maine Department of Public Safety.
"He surged forward, every muscle screaming, and the light sharpened into a door. A simple thing. Wood reinforced with iron. The kind of door that belonged in a fortress that obeyed rules. He could make it. He had to."
The Grimm Forge, Prologue
The Author
R.J. Stenson
R.J. Stenson is an emergency communications specialist with the Maine Department of Public Safety who writes between calls. The Grimm Forge is his debut novel: 119,000 words built one shift at a time.
The game is a solo project built alongside the book. Both are part of the same world. Neither is finished.
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The Connection
Book + Game. One World.
The Book Tells the Origin
Every mechanic in the game, including the disciplines, the miasma, the forge fires, and the Guild, has a story behind it. The book is where that story lives. Read it and the game becomes richer. Play the game and the book becomes more vivid.
The Game Lets You Live It
The game is not an adaptation. It's a continuation. You're not playing as Peter Grimm. You're playing as the Grimms who came after, in the world that the events of the book made possible.