GRIMOIRE Guide

GRIMOIRE is the gamification layer of Syn_OS, turning cybersecurity learning into an MMO-style progression system. This guide covers day-to-day play; for the full catalog and category breakdown see the GRIMOIRE overview and Lab Catalog.

Launching GRIMOIRE

GRIMOIRE ships as a terminal client (grimoire-tui, wrapped by the grimoire command on PATH). Launch it from any terminal:

grimoire

On first launch, GRIMOIRE creates your local player profile automatically — no account or network connection required to start playing. Navigate the TUI with the arrow keys / Tab, and Enter to select; press ? for a context-specific help panel at any screen.

Choosing Your Path

GRIMOIRE offers Blue, Red, and Purple team progression tracks that shape which quest lines and skill trees are emphasized early on — you are not locked out of the others.

Path	Focus	Starting quests
Red Team	Offensive security	Reconnaissance, exploitation
Blue Team	Defensive security	Log analysis, incident response
Purple Team	Both	Threat hunting, detection engineering

Player Progression

Experience Points (XP)

You earn XP by completing labs, submitting correct flags, finishing daily and weekly challenges, and — as covered in the First Security Scan tutorial — by running real security tools against your own targets and GRIMOIRE lab targets.

Leveling and unlocks

GRIMOIRE Public starts every player with a curated tool/lab starter kit and unlocks additional tools, labs, and ALFRED capabilities as you progress. See XP & Progression for the full unlock ladder.

Labs

Labs range from short guided tutorials to open-ended challenge labs and multi-stage war games. Each lab runs in an isolated sandbox — separate from your host system — so you can practice safely against a deliberately vulnerable target.

Start a lab from the TUI: Menu → Labs → [category] → [lab name] → Start. The lab brief lists objectives, available tools, and a difficulty rating before you begin.

Achievements

GRIMOIRE tracks achievements across categories — CTF flag captures, lab completions, tool usage milestones, and community contribution. Check your progress from the Profile → Achievements screen in the TUI.

Factions

Faction	Home base	Focus
Dark Army	Crimson Spire	Offensive tradecraft
Azure Watch	Sky Citadel	Detection, defense, SOC workflows
Gray Syndicate	Shadow Nexus	Neutral, all-rounder path

Choosing a faction shapes your narrative path and mission-board priorities — it does not lock you out of any lab category. Join or check your faction from Menu → Factions in the TUI.

Faction Wars — The Shared World

Faction wars, competitive contracts, and co-op labs play out in a shared world that every Syn_OS image can join — Master, GRIMOIRE Public, and Church of Malware players compete in the same world together. Church of Malware members carry additional access into it (see Membership & /claim).

By default your image connects to a local, single-player world server — the safe default. To join a shared/hosted world, set the endpoint your admin gives you:

export SYNOS_WORLD_SERVER=ws://<world-server-host>:9000

The world server is authoritative: your faction control, contract progress, and leaderboard standing are owned server-side, so competitive results can’t be tampered with locally. Your machine does the simulation and rendering; the server just keeps shared state honest. Running your own world for a private group is a mesh-node setup — see the World Server architecture doc.

The GRIMOIRE Daemon API

For integrations and dashboards, grimoire-daemon exposes a local REST API (default http://127.0.0.1:8090/api/v1/...) covering player state, labs, war games, factions, trading, and post-lab debriefs. This is intended for local tooling (like the synos-ops Security tab), not a public network service — it’s not something most players need to touch directly.

Troubleshooting

Lab won’t start

systemctl --user status grimoire-daemon
journalctl --user -u grimoire-daemon -f

Flag not accepted

Flags are case-sensitive; check for trailing whitespace.
Confirm you’re submitting against the currently active lab session.

XP not updating

grimoire-seed --seed-labs   # re-sync the local lab catalog if it looks stale

If the issue persists, see the general Troubleshooting guide.

Support

Bug reports: GitHub Issues on the project repository
Security issues: contact@churchofmalware.org