GRUNDVAL
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GRUNDVAL · CHAPTER ONE

There is more than one way to change the world.

Hollowfort was built on a graveyard older than the Kingdom itself. Tonight, the dead rise from beneath its stones — and the foundations of the Kingdom begin to look less certain. Three paths lead beyond the prison. Each asks you to decide what is worth building.

THE SETTING

Grundval

The realm calls itself the foundation. It has spent a generation proving it is not one.

A fifteen-year war emptied a full treasury and returned nothing worth keeping. Taxes climbed, harvests failed, the southern provinces burned, and the men who came home found a crown that could no longer pay them. What replaced prosperity was fear, and fear has to be administered.

So the Kingdom stopped trying its enemies. It disappeared them instead — into fortresses like Hollowfort, raised over ground that was already a graveyard, where the executed are buried beneath the stone without rites and left unrested.

The realm built its order on a mass grave and called the arrangement civilization. One night, in one prison, that arrangement fails.

THE QUESTION

Foundations

Three paths lead beyond the prison. Each asks you to decide what is worth building. Competing claims — hierarchy, knowledge, anarchists — and no narrator who picks a winner.

The CrownHierarchy and force. Without a scaffold, borders fail and mobs rule.defence, home · Seryn Holt — kill what she calls the risen leadership in the Political Wing.
KnowledgeReplace the labour and the ruler becomes redundant.magic · The Sorcerer — kill Ossian Rhee before the chapel seals the ritual away.
AnarchistsNothing above them. Villages already govern themselves.freedom, the wall · Nils Harrow — kill Aldous Krell before anything else.

Spare the Inquisitor and the ritual seals away. The quietest ending is the one where you decline all three foundations.

BEFORE THE NIGHT

What the fortress is known for

IThe crown used Hollowfort to disappear anarchists and other political enemies.
IIMass executions were carried out inside the fortress.
IIIBodies were interred beneath the prison; rites for the dead were denied or perverted.
IVFor decades the living kept order above, while the dead waited below.
THE FORTRESS

Truths and consequences

Built on a site of countless executionsThe walls remember violence
Political prisoners buried beneathThe dead have a claim on this place
Souls left unrestedThe ritual has fuel waiting underfoot
Wards and locks define the fortressWhen they fail, the whole hierarchy fails

Atmosphere: torchlight, fog between corridors, distant bells that stop mid-ring. Ancient, unjust, and suddenly awake.

INCITING INCIDENT

A forbidden ritual

A sorcerer enters Hollowfort and completes a rite. Souls of the executed return to buried bodies. Guards die or flee; cells open; the hierarchy becomes contested ground.

His identity and motive stay open. For the beta version, the ritual is the spark — the uprising is what you live through, and every faction reads it differently.

THE NIGHT HOLLOWFORT FELL
01Guards die or flee.
02Cell doors fail or are forced open — including yours.
03Inmates pour into corridors; not all are friends.
04Risen prisoners walk with memory and grievance — not all with the same politics.
05The hierarchy — warden, towers, gates — becomes contested ground.

Tone: massacre and opportunity at once. Freedom arrives soaked in blood.

THREE ROUTES

Foundations under pressure

Each loyalty route is one foundation acting in a cell block. Talk to a faction face, commit to a branch, kill one route boss — the gate opens with that ally waiting.

AnarchistsDestroy the prison system; kill Aldous Krell first. Chaos; vengeance before freedom.Face: Nils Harrow · Target: Aldous Krell · Book: freedom
The CrownRestore order and contain the uprising. She is honest, exhausted, and has never asked what her orders are for.Face: Seryn Holt · Target: the risen leader in the Political Wing · Book: home
KnowledgeComplete the ritual; remove holy opposition. The treatise argues; the man never does.Face: the Sorcerer · Target: Ossian Rhee · Book: magic
THE LIBRARY

Six books, one war, no arbiter

Enemies drop them. NPCs hand them over. A smuggler sells one. They contradict each other on everything that matters.

The Fifteen-Year WarRoyal archiveFound in the fortress — the crown's own volume on the war.
The Great Defence of King VarrickMinistry of TruthMinistry edition. Sold as useful history, not as creed.
The Freedom of ManElias VennHanded by Nils Harrow on the Anarchists route.
The Kingdom Is Your HomeCommander Edric HaleCarried by Seryn Holt on the Crown route.
The Power of MagicProfessor Aldren VaelGranted on the Knowledge route.
Patient 47 — Clinical ObservationsPrison medical departmentTied to Marek Voss in the Infirmary.

The game never tells you which one is right.

THE CAST

Who you meet inside

Nils HarrowPRISON CELL · EXIT GATEA resurrected anarchist who gives his name freely and sends you after the Warden before anything else. He hands you The Freedom of Man and treats the uprising as a revolution resumed.
PellCENTRAL CORRIDORA black-market trader who sells restoratives and useful history — not creeds. He treats books as tools and the collapse of the prison as a market opportunity.
Seryn HoltCENTRAL COURTYARD · EXIT GATEA crown appointee in royal lion heraldry, holding the courtyard as order frays. She offers passage if you put down what she calls the risen leadership — and carries Commander Hale's book as if she means it.
TobinTORTURE CHAMBERThe prison executioner, courteous and broken. He burned his fiancée on lawful orders and has spent years hoping that if the dead can walk, she might be among them.
Marek VossINFIRMARYA royal infantry officer imprisoned for a diagnosis. He still talks like a soldier who buried men the archive says never existed.
Walk Hollowfort yourselfChapter one: sixteen rooms, three route bosses, one gate.
SEE THE MAPPLAY