Everything we know about the GRIMWALDS
The Grimwald family have their (literally) shadowy fingers in every (proverbial) pie in the Craft Sequence. Although they only show up in ‘person’ in two books, their small roles are absolutely essential to the plot and to the state of the Craft world.
So let’s get into it. Who or what are they? What do they want?
Strap in for some actual facts taken from the books, and some truly wild speculation.
Warning: here be spoilers.
Who (or what) are the Grimwalds?
She’d never heard of a Grimwald convicted of anything, but they hovered in the background when you read about Craftsmen going down in flames. Legitimate businessmen, people called them, with an emphasis on the first word that no one ever used when talking about, say, a bakery.
Four Roads Cross, 42
The Grimwalds are described as a family, as businessmen, as being behind a variety of Concerns (meaning Craft-y organisations) stretching around the world, and as having followers. There are seemingly a number of them, but we only see one representative at a time on page – and due to their unusual physical description, they could be the same figure.
You’ll note that I’m trying to avoid the use of the word ‘person’. It’s not remotely clear exactly WHAT the Grimwalds are.
The two times we see them – in Full Fathom Five and Four Roads Cross respectively – we get the following physical descriptions:
Behind Ms Kevarian sat her client, a shadow in a white suit, a smudge of grey with a broad and gleaming grin. Fingers like wisps of smoke never seemed to rest. They laced together and unlaced, and trailed down his lapels and along the chair’s arm without seeming to care whether the glass edge cut. He hadn’t spoken since they shook hands.
…
The Craftswoman’s client produced a full moon from his sleeve, walked it along his fingers, and vanished it again. His fingers left black trails in the air.
…
A forked tongue twitched out from between the grey man’s jagged teeth.
Full Fathom Five, 26-31
At the rear of the trail, escorted by a Craftsman with a gold watch and skin darker than Tara’s own, strode a thing that looked human, though made from shadow. Lines of darkness trailed fingers that walked a featureless silver disk down and up.
…
Grimwald turned to her. Within the nothing of its face, its teeth were pure white and sharp. It offered her the coin, and she accepted. The coin was not silver at all, but cool, and rocky, and rough. The shadows on its surface were the same as the shadows on the moon.
Four Roads Cross, 406
The Grimwalds appear as literal shadows in the shape of humans, wearing suits, with visible jagged teeth. We have never heard them speak or smile; their only interaction is handing Tara the moon-coin in the quote above.
Their businesses are sprawling. Two are directly referenced in the series; Grimwald Holdings, and Grimwald Savings. The former has a ‘starburst’ logo, and has some dealings in the Southern Gleb.
What do they do that makes them seem important?
We’re going to look at this chronologically; so, Four Roads Cross before Full Fathom Five. However, many readers (including me) will have read the books in publication order, so will experience this the other way around. It doesn’t really matter, but some of my speculation rests on the chronological order.
In Four Roads Cross, the Grimwalds are involved in a crucial part of the plot – seemingly in league with Ramp against Alt Coulumb / Seril / Tara. Cat and Raz seize a ship that happens to have a cargo of debt zombies. They can’t wake the people as the cargo hold is a temple for a Kavekanese idol and Kos has an agreement to recognise idols; therefore, they claim the ship for Seril and give the people refugee status under her.
The people awake. As do the demons they are housing, which then immediately attack Seril.
Long story short (reread Four Roads Cross for the details), the people are rescued and wake up in Alt Coulumb. It turns out that the bank that called in their debt was Grimwald Savings, and it seems clear that the Grimwalds are therefore working with Madeline Ramp to take down Seril.
However, as Tara astutely observes in the final chapter:
“I don’t expect you to have full knowledge of your, ah, firm’s operations. But I believe you recently supplied a shipment of indentured laborers for delivery to Alt Coulumb. You sourced them by early foreclosure on the credit lines of a divine refuge in Agdel Lex. The indenture’s purpose was to smuggle demons into Kos’s city—but the person smuggled were instrumental in disrupting the smuggler’s plans. Which is a bit neat, if you ask me. Almost as if the person Ramp approached for help meant her to fail.”
Four Roads Cross, 406
In this final chapter, too, the Grimwald Tara is speaking to is working with her and the King in Red to rescue Shale and build a body for an ancient goddess trapped in a mountain.
We next see a Grimwald in Full Fathom Five, the client of Elayne Kevarian investigating the drowning of an idol, and Kai Pohala’s attempts to save the idol. Seven Alpha – the final idol face of the goddess known as the Blue Lady – was created by Mara Ceyla on behalf of the Grimwalds. They signed off on the trade that led to her demise, a trade that was manufactured to kill her. Once Kai dived into the pool to try and save Seven Alpha, they hired Elayne to investigate – and ultimately led Kai to discover the existence of the Blue Lady, and help Izza to free her from the pool.
It seems very convenient that the two individuals involved here are a Grimwald – already involved in a convoluted plot to save Seril – and Elayne Kevarian – who appears to perhaps be the first person to have broken into the pool and spoken to the Blue Lady. It also seems highly coincidental that this happened at the exact same time that Cat and Teo (who met through Tara, AFTER Four Roads Cross) are attempting to break into the pool to rescue the shard of Seril stored there.
Max Gladstone is too good a writer for this level of coincidence. It seems clear, therefore, that the Grimwalds are involved in a major plot behind the scenes that is at least related to the endgame plot of the Craft Sequence, pulling in all our main characters so far. In their two appearances, they have been connected to Tara Abernathy, Kai Pohala, Teo Batan and the Twin Serpents Group, Elayne Kevarian, Cat Elle, Seril, and the Blue Lady. No other individual or organisation so closely connects this many of our main characters.
So, what on earth are they up to?
To put it simply, we don’t really have a clue what’s happening with the endgame of the Craft Sequence, nor what the Grimwalds are up to.
Therefore, it’s time for some wild speculation.
WILD SPECULATION
This section is split into sub-sections because we are indeed going to treat this like a uni essay.
Schwarzwaldens
Although we have no defined origin of these beings, I posit that they are likely connected to the Schwarzwald.
The Schwarzwald is yet to be visited in the Craft Sequence, but pops up as the origin of some very important characters – Maestre Gerhardt, who originated the Craft and started the God Wars in Alikand; and Eberhardt Jax, the inventor and entrepreneur Kai meets in Ruin of Angels and who takes her into space. He’s Elon Musk but trans, Black and far more charismatic.
(Yes, we will be writing about him more in future, as he deserves.)
We don’t know exactly what the Schwarzwald is like in the world of Craft, but as Gladstone has created locations with direct real world analogues, we can assume it’s somehow related to Germany. The Schwarzwald (or Black Forest) is a real place in Germany, and is where many of the most famous European fairy tales originated, as collected and retold by the Brothers Grimm. It’s a part of Europe I myself know well.
It really is what you think of when you think of fairy tale villages and deep dark forests hiding monsters and child-eating witches. From a brief reference in the opening chapter of Ruin of Angels, we can assume this is exactly what Gladstone intends:
Ley sculpted the gaptoothed ramparts of her keep, like castles from the kind of Schwarzwald fairy-tale picture books where kids got eaten.
Ruin of Angels, Chapter 1
And how does the world of Craft work? By belief. By stories. The gods gained power because people believed in them and that shaped reality. Magic works through belief rewriting the world. So if the Schwarzwald is the origin of fairy tales…are fairy tales real in the Craft Sequence?
It feels pretty likely.
And how does this connect to the Grimwalds? It’s their name that stood out in my mind. You’ll notice the same ending as in Schwarzwald – forest. And Grim seems very connected to the Brothers Grimm (as well as the obvious connection in English of grim). A quick Google search for the origin of the name Grimwald brings up few results; the first is a wiki page for the Forgotten Realms, and the second is Wikipedia. All it says is: “Grimoald, Grimald, Grimoart, Grimwald, Grimuald, or Grimbald is a Germanic personal name.” Very little information, but the German connection is there.
We also hear of the Grimwalds literally eating people, and they are depicted as having sharp teeth visible in their shadowy forms – could this be a play off the likes of the witch in Hansel and Gretl?
Seril and the Blue Lady
It seems clear that, in their two main featured appearances, the Grimwalds are trying to move the dial in favour of our protagonists. In Four Roads Cross they are instrumental in saving Seril. An idol they had built turns into a goddess and is killed, and they hire Elayne Kevarian of all people to investigate – at the same time the Cat and Teo are trying to break into the pool on Kavekana’ai and recover a shard of Seril.
Through all of this, their shadowy fingers are described as playing with a silvery disk. We get to see this disk up close in Four Roads Cross:
Lines of darkness trailed fingers that walked a featureless silver disk down and up.
…
The shadow’s head inclined. The disk flashed. Was it silver after all?
…
An odd patina marred the surface of the coin.
…
It offered her the coin, and she accepted. The coin was not silver at all, but cool, and rocky, and rough. The shadows on its surface were the same as the shadows on the moon.
Four Roads Cross, 406
The Grimwalds are therefore intimately connected to both Seril and the Blue Lady; and remember that Izza brings Seril into the mythology of the Blue Lady, describing her as ‘the mother’.
Are they worshippers of Seril? Did they know about the meta-goddess behind the idol masks of Kavekana? Was the Blue Lady their first idol that became a god, or did they have connections with the Green Man, the Great Squid, the Red Eagle, the Wind Woman? Were they trying to create gods? We do see in Four Roads Cross, after all, that they can build a body for Firekeeper, the goddess in the Godmountain. What is their connection to Elayne Kevarian, the Craftswoman who a) seems happiest to work with gods and religions of any we’ve seen other than Tara, and b) may have been the first person to accidentally break into the pool and speak to the Blue Lady?
Craft, magic, and fairy tales
We don’t know exactly what power the Grimwalds use or how they channel it, but they are clearly immensely powerful. They seem to work in legal and illegal businesses, with the former covering for the latter, and we’re told they bring down Craftsmen in flames. But which Craftsmen? Ones like Tara and Elayne? Or ones like Alexander Denovo? Whose side are they on?
It’s also unclear whether they use the Craft. When the Grimwalds build a body for Firekeeper, they “spun a nerve lattice from gold and necromantic earth.” We know necromantic earths are key for large scale Craft projects, so there’s a distinct connection there, but they are never referred to as Craftsfolk. They have a Craftsperson with them in their appearances, but appear to have hired them – like Elayne.
Then there’s the connection to Seril, and the Blue Lady. They seem to have a shard of the moon – a mix of real (moon rock, which no one in the Craft world would have access to yet) and a silver disk (part of the mythology of Seril). Is this another shard of Seril? Are they followers of Seril, somehow? Are they part of her mythology and history, like the gargoyles?
And finally, there’s my hypothetical Schwarzwald connection. The Grimwalds are something that slip between Craft and religion, have a form we’ve never seen before, are immensely powerful, and have a reputation for seeing Craftsfolk burn, and eating people. But when we see them, they’re on the side of the ‘good guys’.
Fairy tales always contain a message, one that’s appropriate to the time and place of the telling. They warn against particular actions, lest the big bad wolf get you. And we know that in the world of Craft that belief creates reality.
Could the Grimwalds somehow be part of a fairy tale come to life?
The Grimwalds and Maestre Gerhardt
Gerhardt is the main Schwarzwalder we’re aware of in the Craft Sequence, and he set off something huge – both the development of the Craft, and the God Wars that destroyed half the world. He bridged the gap between religion/Applied Theology, and the Craft. Yet we know surprisingly little about him. We see a bit more in Ruin of Angels when Raymet and Gal reach the Anaxmander Stacks and confront him there, dying but never dead. There is a hint of a woman who loves him, and who ultimately kills him and saves the world.
My possibly wildest theory is that Gerhardt could be a Grimwald, or otherwise connected to them.
They are beings that bridge the same gap he bridged. They seem focused on solving the ultimate problem he caused, the rift between the gods and the Craftsfolk. They know some secrets of the world that no one else seems to know. And there is – in this theory at least – a connection to the Schwarzwald.
Conclusion
To conclude, we basically still don’t know anything. But the Grimwalds are clearly up to something, and are clearly part of the Craft Sequence endgame. They seem to be on the side of Tara, Elayne, Kai, and our other protagonists, intimately connected with Seril and the Blue Lady, and fixing the issues caused by the current world order.
Whatever they are, and whether or not their connections to the Schwarzwald, fairy tales, and Maestre Gerhardt are real, they’re important.
What do you think? Do you agree with any of the theories here? Do you have one of your own? Let me know in the comments and on Twitter.
