So I've been wanting to do something to somehow condense FoW's bullshit worldbuilding and story into one easier to digest place. Because let's face it the early articles are google translate horrors and even once we got a decent translator on board we're still suffering the same issues that Magic does in terms of telling stories. Namely that the plot is spread out all over the fucking place. So I wanted to make a thread to collect my current work on this project. Not sure how this is going to be presented but the current idea is youtube videos. I suppose a podcast could work but I would like the ability to display pictures from the game to help better illustrate this madness. Also because the art of FoW is really pretty and one of the game's major strong points? If you like the aesthetics anyway.
My current plot summary based off the collected articles from Grimm 1 and 2: There are apparently magic stones in a place called Earth. We are not on Earth but we are going to talk about Earth like we are I guess. Blue moon prophets declared that there were consequences to using the magic stones and that the world would end when a red moon arose. Grimm Glynn is a prince of the Light Palace and really digs Fairy Tales, he believes the prophets. His sister Lumia is a rowdy tomboy that hates studying. SUDDENLY DRACULA BEGINS TERRORIZING THE COUNTRYSIDE. Alongside him are the other corrupted stories of Jeanne d'Arc, Snow White and Cinderella. Their evil is not adequately explained as of now but it is a problem. One day a girl claiming to be Little Red Riding Hood shows up and declares Grimm can defeat Dracula. Believing the prophets Grimm listens to her. She gives him a magical book that awakens his abilities as a Ruler, a user of magic stones. In particular his specialty is awaking fairy tales out of their books and borrowing their power. The pair leave to stop Dracula even though Lumia expresses concern. On their quest they run into a village with a creepy prophet. The creepy prophet is hated by the villagers because he always gives bad fortunes. The most recent was that 'old demons will rise up' and they deem it bullshit because it makes no sense. Hearing this Grimm and Little Red aren't too sure about him. He asks Little Red who she is and she confidently declares she is Little Red, duh. Hearing this he tells the pair that they will get the power to defeat Dracula if they bring Hope to Pandora. They decide to take this lead because reasons I guess and leave the village. The villagers are aghast at this positive future. SUDDENLY FALLTGOLD APPEARS and with him Grusbalesta's stone. With this and the Necronomicon Alhazred decides to test his powers with a book powered by Despair. His power is to erase things from stories and with this he erases the village. Only the scholar Rajadeem seems to remember it existed at all. This done the pair leaves to the Tower of Despair which will rise soon. Grimm and Little Red meanwhile find Pandora and somehow give her Hope. With her in tow they continue along until they run into Jeanne d'Arc, who hates humanity for reasons that are still not adequately explained but likely have to do with the being falsely murdered thing. They get into a fight and Christie, a vampire hunting elf, shows up and helps them beat her. This group then heads off to Alvarez. At Alvarez they handily defeat Dracula who doesn't believe it happened at all. Upon his defeat the first of the 800 lies of Nyarlthotep unravels. Realizing that she's not Little Red and that the book isn't a book of Hope she seals Grimm in it. As he's fading Alice appears with Moojdart and receives Grimm's Will and promises him to go to his sister Lumia with it. Pandora meanwhile Despairs and is locked in the rising Tower of Despair. She's used as a battery. Alice then heads to the Light Palace. Lumia has fallen asleep during a lecture and dreams that Aesop is telling her about the war with the Great Old Ones, fought by Kaguya and the Six Sages. She wakes up only to be scolded and reminded that her brother left three months ago to fight Dracula. She expresses again that she feels like the Dracula situation was all planned ahead of time, which Aesop finds weird but ignores it otherwise. SUDDENLY ALICE APPEARS. She explains that Lumia's guess is entirely correct and that Little Red is a fake. Alice has Lumia touch Moojdart which turns her into a 'Restorer' of Fairy Tales, compared to Grimm's 'Narrator' status. She also gives Lumia a book and tells her to get Almerius, which is currently powering the palace. The pair leave to go save Pandora. The pair save Pandora and defeat Alhazred in the now flying Tower of Despair, which was built by the Great Old Ones to war with the Moon. Lumia gets trapped in the Necronomicon though and as she is fading she gives her Will to Pandora. It is locked in her box and no one knows what the fuck is going to happen with it. Meanwhile Riding Hood has been living in Refarth for 1000 years which feel like 100 because of Fiethsing's apparent space-time gravity field. She along with the other residents fought against the Great Old Ones. She has a chat with Melfee about not knowing who she is and how she's trying to remember. She gets a premonition and tells Melfee to go home. Little Red shows up and Riding Hood remembers who she is. The two fight because Riding Hood wants to be the only one and because Little Dread wants to unlock more of her lies. Using Fiethsing Riding Hood defeats Little Dread. Because we blew up Fiethsing's rock and because Alhazred is a shit the castle begins to crash to the earth. While the Reds are falling Little Dread creates a wormhole with her powers and out of it pops out a Great Old One. Alice watches this and comments that 'This is all happening as according to plan isn't it, Kaguya' and goes off to save the day. Again this is based solely off the articles, most of it coming from Grimm 2's. Grimm 1's articles are incredibly sparse and there's only two of them. A good bulk of the plot events of Grimm 1 are only really revealed in the Grimm 2 articles. I'll be finishing off Grimm 3 and 4's articles before I head on to actually getting through the cards in the sets. This is important to work on because there's a lot of plot shit that only ever gets addressed in the cards. The situation with Zero, Magus of Null for example is only told through a series of like five different cards. Given that she later becomes a main character and given that her being able to use Darkness magic at all is a major plot point and vital to her themes this is important. At the same time one tiny line in an article is the only reason we know where she was and thus why we can infer how she ended up as a Magus of Null.
And the second chunk of summary. This comes from the lore articles for Grimm 3 and 4. After this I'll be working on the card summaries and then create combined summaries, because as I said FoW's plot is incomplete without both. In all this that I'm going to post we know nothing about Jeanne d'Arc's motives or why it's important that we mention Zero was at the gate. Just to give two examples: In terms of backstory shit we are now getting an entire lowdown on what happened 1000 years ago. We learn that Magic Stones come from the stars and the cost to using them is that they 'strain the stars'. This strain awakens the Great Old Ones from their slumber in the cosmos. Humanity used the stones so much that the Great Old Ones awoke and began to wreck havoc on the world, which is still not Earth. Six very powerful mages who called themselves the Six Sages rose up to fight the Great Old Ones in the Magic Stone War. They weren't powerful enough to fight back the hordes however so an otherworld mage named Scheherezade decided to help. Using her power of 'Perfect Story' she can blur the lines of reality and story. Since the world doesn't have a moon she pulled a moon and a Princess Kaguya out of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Sherry told her of the situation and asked her to help. Kaguya agreed and drank the Elixir of Immortality declaring that the tears she'd shed now would be her last. Kaguya and Sherry go to help the Six Sages with the power of Fairy Tales and the war rages on for years. The world is almost destroyed by the war and most of civilization has been razed to the ground. Fearing that the planet won't survive if they keep warring the Six Sages and Kaguya seal the Great Old Ones behind a magical gate that will only stay closed if people don't use the magic stones. Kaguya then heads to the moon to keep watch over the world. Zero is left to watch the gate and the other five sages turn themselves into True Magic Stones to help guard the world until they're needed again. One of the Great Old Ones slipped through however, disguised as a Fairy Tale. Humanity recovers and finds magic stones under the earth and begins to make use of them. Realizing that this is what will destroy the seal, Kaguya goes and warns Prince Grimm that when the moon turns red the world will be threatened. He believes her and his prophets. Along with Kaguya two others know that the seal will break. Little Dread, who at the time believes herself to be Little Red Riding Hood, declares that she'll save the world from the coming calamity because she has to. This is actually her memory of one of her lies and the key to unlocking the first lie: that she is Little Red Riding Hood. The third person who knows is Alice who warned Grimm of the coming threat. As said in an earlier article, she apparently knows Kaguya somehow. How is not adequately explained. Along with Kaguya two others know that the seal will break. Little Dread, who at the time believes herself to be Little Red Riding Hood, declares that she'll save the world from the coming calamity because she has to. This is actually her memory of one of her lies and the key to unlocking the first lie: that she is Little Red Riding Hood. The third person who knows is Alice who warned Grimm of the coming threat. As said in an earlier article, she apparently knows Kaguya somehow. How is not adequately explained. Back in the present, as Riding Hood is falling from the Castle of Heaven she puts all of her power into Fiethsing. This causes a giant wind blast that destroys the rest of the castle. Out of it comes Fiethsing, one of the Six Sages. She hears the wind and knows what is happening and leaves to help with the war effort. The moon turns black which summons more Great Old Ones. They rally behind Little Dread who has become Nyarlthotep fully. Kaguya leaves the moon and begins to rally the Six Sages, Pandora, and Alice. A second war starts. Even with the combined power of all of these mages it isn't enough to stop the Great Old One's power as they are immortal. Realizing that now is the time Pandora opens her box and reveals Grimmia, the combined Hopes of Grimm and Lumia. Grimmia fights alongside them and deals great damage to the Great Old One's host. It still isn't enough though because they are eternal so Kaguya gathers forth all her millennia's long power into one blast of light that turns all the immortals in the area mortal. Some of the Great Old Ones are lost in the blast, others are reborn as humans. Kaguya herself can't take the strain of mortality and dies. The moon turns blue again and with its job done begins to fade from sight. A few days later at the Light Palace a celebration is held for Grimm and Lumia. Pandora is standing at Grimm's side, they appear to be a couple now. Around the same time Fiethsing and Zero find a shining bamboo grove at the center of Kaguya's blast. Inside the thicket they find a baby and agree to raise it together. During the battle with the Great Old Ones Alice had been battling a dimension hopping demon called Blazer. Blazer had helped in the destruction of Earth with another. With the help of the March Hare, Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse Alice is able to force Blazer back to mortality. Before she finishes him off though the Mad Hatter suggests she lets him slink back to his master so they can track him. She agrees and begins the chase. While chasing Blazer she meets Fieth and Zero and the new baby Kaguya. They talk and Fieth guesses that she's from Earth. This is confirmed and Alice speaks in the past tense about Earth. Alice also states that Earth had a real moon. She is given a magic stone by Fieth and Zero, and Alice declares she'll be back when Kaguya is older. Alice leaves to continue the chase on Blazer. During this conversation Zero makes mention of how Fiethsing never keeps her promises. Zero asks Fieth why she brought up Earth. Fieth says that it's something she'd heard earlier after waking up. It was a hunch that Alice was from Earth. She was curious because Grus had discovered that the Magic Stones are etched with the memories of Earth. Given that fact and the fact that memories of Earth's real moon is what saved their world at all Fieth is naturally curious about what this all means. They realize together that given how Alice spoke Earth was destroyed by something. Alice has finally tracked Blazer down to another world, Attoractia.
Got a google doc for this all going. Edited versions of the lore summary posts will be in it. Clarifications will occasionally be made in the comments, mostly so I can remember shit if it's important for later. Or if I have to combine sections for some reason. Generally things will be split up cluster by cluster, and set by set. A separate set of docs for the glossaries will be created soon too. After I get through the rewrite of the summary posts based on the card flavors. Current glossaries that will be made: Characters Placenames Important objects Other worldbuilding concepts (think Will and Despair)
Villain motives which will be the sole thing added to the plot summary from CMF's cards: 'given the whole vampire and werewolf problem a lot of people are dying or becoming inhuman themselves and so they all head to the castle Alvarez because that is the only place that will welcome them. Dracula makes them his undead slaves because he wants to create a night without end and rule over the world like a tyrant' 'Snow White took a bite out of the Poisoned Apple when the moon turned red because she was curious. It was bitter and gave her a horrible nightmare that caused her to Despair. She then became a violent sadist who was out to punish the world with her apple and red hot iron shoes.' 'Jeanne d'Arc heard the voice of a Great Old One pretending to be God. He told her to go out and kill the sinners. She listened to him and this pissed off Charles VII who had her burned at the stake. Pissed about this and full of Despair she makes it her goal to achieve the false reality the false God gave her and sets out to kill all the humans because she hates them.' 'Cinderella gets the least amount of explanation, but it seems to be that when the moon rose the Fairy Godmother's magic dissipated. She Despaired and became a bitter sadist like Snow White, who did things like openly mock her sisters for cutting off their toes to put on her shoes. She also goes through a series of princes because she needs dick super bad and she like saps their life away.' 'Little Red is actually Nyarlthotep disguised as Little Red Riding Hood. She thinks she's out to save the world by destroying Dracula but what she actually needs to have happen is for the seals of Hope and Despair to be released by Pandora and her box. Killing him unlocks the first of the 800 lies she has believed for years, this being that she is Little Red Riding Hood and is going to save the world by killing Dracula. She's doing this so she can remember who she is and usher in the destruction of the world by summoning the rest of the Great Old Ones' 'Also some shit about how there are Deep Ones wandering around for...some...reason and everyone is like well that's weird and vaguely disconcerting'
Other clarification to be added: It's not the moon turning red that is causing this. It's the seal on the Great Old Ones weakening that is causing the increase in monsters and Despair. Deep Ones are slipping through and shit is literally telling lies and pretending to be God. The moon turning red is just Kaguya's warning sign. It's like the bat symbol.
