Grimhold is a city built from what was left behind.

After the Collapse, people did not abandon the old world. They climbed into it. They wedged homes into ruined towers, ran cables through cracked stone, relied on fungus that glowed where the lights no longer worked, and learned how to keep things running without ever truly fixing them. Grimhold grew upward and inward, layer by layer, not because it was planned, but because it was necessary.

This is not a city of kings or gods. Order in Grimhold is made by people who show up every day and do the work: hauling water, repairing lifts, settling disputes, keeping clinics open, and stopping small problems from becoming fatal ones. Survival is the baseline. Everything else has to be earned.

Magic exists, but it is not a solution. It is infrastructure — patched, inherited, misunderstood, and often dangerous. Enchantments wear out. Runes fail. When something breaks, it leaves scars, and the city remembers what was done to it.

The Grimhold series begins at street level, with people who are already tired, already compromised, and still trying to do something decent with what they have. A doctor keeping a neutral clinic alive. A mother and daughter who refuse to be separated. Neighbours who turn maintenance into tradition because forgetting is worse than the work.

As the city grows denser, pressures build. Gangs, scarcity, failing systems, and quiet power struggles start to overlap. Choices linger. Compromises harden. Grimhold is shaped not by grand victories, but by the accumulation of small decisions and by what happens when survival is no longer enough.

Grimhold is not a backdrop for shining heroes. It is a place where ordinary people are forced into difficult action, and where every choice carries a cost.