RWBY Unknowns

Haven Academy, in the city of Mistral, is on break when Qrow and Team RNJR arrive to meet Lionheart. With all the staff sent away (most, if not all, to their deaths), this supposedly explains the scarcity of literally anyone else on campus.

Still, the protagonists arrive in Mistral on a desperate search for allies, and even after Qrow’s leads turn up empty, no one even mentions Teams SSSN or ABRN or any other Haven students (not including Cinder’s posse). Despite spending over a month there, we neither see nor hear about any Haven students, not even the night before the attack.

It may be that all available huntsmen, including students, are occupied with kingdom defense against the Grimm, but the fact that no one among the protagonists even brings them up leaves this quite ambiguous. That being said, it is likely that Volume 6 will address this immediately, seeing as classes were to resume the very next day.

There hasn’t been an ask (Submit an Unknown) in over a week now so please ask away!

Despite Weiss spending time in the Schnee family mansion in the show, “Mama” is never referred to by name - only “Mother.”

The commonly accepted name for “Mama” Schnee is Willow, based on this image of Monty’s files for characters containing a conveniently obscured file for “...llow Schn...” between “...hite Fang” and “nter Sch...”

Dr. Arthur Watts is described as a “disgraced Atlesian scientist” by Raven, and Cinder dismisses him with: “Fly back home and tinker with your machines.”

His trademark “W” is visible both on Cinder’s scroll and at Lionheart’s desk, and points to him as the creator of the “Black Queen” virus that Cinder uploaded to Beacon’s CCT Tower.

In addition, his name and character inspiration further hint at some sort of electricity/technology-based abilities. He has not yet participated in any sort of combat situation, though he has a casual, arrogant air about him even when entering the hostile Branwen Bandits’ camp, and Lionheart is easily cowed by his presence (even if it is as a representative of Salem).

In the Volume 4 World of Remnant segment on faunus (which is suspiciously hard to find these days), Qrow breaks down faunus compatibility thusly:

1. Faunus Type A + Faunus Type A = Faunus Type A

2. Faunus Type A + Human = Faunus Type A, or Human

3. Faunus Type A + Faunus Type B = Faunus Type ???

The first two make a good amount of logical sense - nothing unexpected ever seems to come from those kinds of unions, as the children only possess a selection of species-based traits that their parents possess. We might wonder about the likelihood of a faunus/human child to be faunus or human, but otherwise this seems straightfoward enough.

But the third case is where, as Qrow says, scientists are “still scratching their heads.” Apparently, a child born of two different types of faunus could possess any faunus trait, not necessarily reflecting that of either of their parents’.

This is not a topic that has really been explored outside the World of Remnant segments, however, we do have one family of faunus for reference: the Belladonnas. Blake (a faunus with cat ears) is the child of Ghira (a faunus with panther claws) and Kali (a faunus with larger cat ears). While they all share cat-like traits, Kali and Ghira have two different faunus traits, which would seem to put them into the third category. This would mean that Blake’s cat trait is actually pure coincidence, and that she could have turned out to be any kind of faunus.

However, it may be that faunus with similar traits, or traits that come from similar kinds of animals, reproduce as in the first example - meaning Blake’s cat-family heritage is relatively “pure” and indeed goes back generations.

Either way, the randomness factor still exists. So how does an unrelated faunus trait manifest from two different faunus? It may simply be that, if you go back far enough in any faunus lineage, there are common ancestors, and this happens through uniquely expressive “recessive” genes. Or perhaps all faunus are “coded” with the potential for any faunus traits, and common parentage simply informs a common trait in the child.

For another time: If the only difference between faunus and humans is a single animal trait, and if all faunus have the potential to reproduce any kind of faunus, are faunus or humans just “modified” versions of the other? Which came first?

(a continuation of a tangent from this post)

Salem’s oddly cooperative Seer Grimm allows her to communicate with others from wherever the heck her keep is located all the way to another Seer Grimm in Haven Academy in Mistral.

But the first time we see this new Grimm is in Volume 4, Chapter 3: after questioning Cinder, she turns to the Seer and says “Reinforce our numbers at Beacon. The Relic is there.”

The last things we hear about Beacon Academy are that the Dragon Grimm is “kind of... frozen” and keeps attracting Grimm to the school, and (months later) that Glynda is working tirelessly to “restore Beacon to its former glory,” and that “there is still much work to be done at the school.” It is unclear exactly how successful the staff’s efforts have been in retaking Beacon from the hordes of Grimm, but it does sound like progress has been made.

“Reinforcing” Beacon would seem to imply reinforcements of Grimm, given that those are the dominant “numbers” there already, and sending numbers of any group of non-Grimm would surely be noticed by the staff trying to restore the place.

As for the receiver of Salem’s orders: at that point, everyone (excluding Cinder and company) on her “team” (that we know of) has been dispatched with a specific mission in or around Mistral. So who is Salem’s informant who has the resources to “reinforce” Beacon, likely with Grimm?

Salem’s “domain” appears to be stuck in a state of perpetual twilight, with crystalline stalagmites (Dust?) clustered across a desolate landscape of plateaus and Grimm spawning pools. Remnant’s moon is visible in most scenes, which implies that this is still somewhere on Remnant.

The northwestern continent appears to have the most rugged terrain which might host such a place - which may be why it has been conspicuously unmentioned thus far.

I’ve been sitting on this ask for a while, sorry. This is in part because there’s several good questions to be derived from it, but also some speculation that I’m fairly certain can be chalked up to Early Installment Weirdness.

“There’s no such thing as magic… right?” This line from Weiss is almost laughable to us viewers when Dust, Aura, Semblances, Grimm, etc are all essentially magical compared to our reality - but in Remnant, those are the norm. Human transformation, reincarnation, infinite multi-elemental control… those seem to be what crosses the line, simply because such powers (at least to the extent that the Branwens, Ozpin, and the Maidens have shown)are unheard of.

I don’t know that it’s entirely accurate to say that the academies suppress knowledge of magic - that is to say, the institutions themselves don’t (or wouldn’t), but the people running them certainly keep the secret. Only the headmasters and a few select informants even have a clue about extra-magical abilities and the related factual lore of Remnant. Maybe this is just semantics, but it’s important to keep in mind that the institutions as a whole aren’t going around silencing people on the topic of magic or something else in that vein of “suppression” - people just don’t know.

Is there “magic” that has already been shown but passed off as a “side-effect” of a Semblance, or a “Dust trick?”

It’s quite possible - Yang’s semblance may fall into this category. Cinder’s fights are littered with actions and abilities stemming from various (at times ambiguous) sources, that I intend to post more questions about. As for Cinder and Glynda’s rooftop fight, remember that the Maidens weren’t a thing at all until production of Volume 3 - so the “runic” fire blast is likely just some proto-Maiden-or-Semblance-related ability of hers that later became more defined with the concept of the Maidens, and so is definitely magic, which makes sense since she already had half the Maiden powers at that point.

I’m not sure what about Glynda’s fighting comes across as more “magical,” since between masterful telekinesis (her Semblance), Dust and Aura manipulation, it seems to make as much sense as any standard fight in RWBY - especially for one so early on.

And the Schnee “Grab-Bag” Glyphs do seem quite immense in scope, but given the training and energy that seems to be required to use those abilities as well as Winter and Weiss do, I’m hesitant to chalk it up to anything extra-magical, barring some as-of-yet-undetermined inherited Maiden/Wizard magic from a Maiden/Wizard-magic-influenced parent (which might then parallel Yang and Raven). But that’s some hardcore speculating.

The main questions I’d like to come back to from this post:

What is Cinder’s Semblance? What distinguishes it from her Maiden powers and Dust usage?

At the end of the campaign in RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, Dr. Merlot initiates his lab’s self-destruct sequence as Team RWBY defeats the mutant Deathstalker and escapes in the Bullhead aircraft Ozpin sent. Dr. Merlot is only ever shown on a screen, and is never seen in person, so his location in the lab and methods of escape (if any) remain unknown.

At the end of the credits sequence, if you have collected enough artifacts during the campaign, “THE END” becomes “THE END ...or is it?”

Given the ambiguous departure of the villain and the canon status of the campaign, it is not out of the question that he may return.

We are told that Grimm tend to die in captivity, and seem not to require material sustenance. Despite these facts, Dr. Merlot successfully managed to capture and transport large amounts of Grimm to his private island lab, where hundreds of specimens were subject to his experiments using a mysterious green liquid.

If nothing else we can at least conclude that he was not able to create new Grimm - only modify existing ones. We see mutant Creeps, Beowolves, and eventually even his deadliest “creation” yet, the Deathstalker.

What was (in) the liquid? How did he produce it? Was the liquid injected, ingested, or simply exposed (like radioactivity)?

Sun declares that he moved to Mistral, but grew up in Vacuo. During the Vytal Festival Tournament he confidently asserts that the desert is “my turf, too!”

He has never mentioned his home or his family, and seems to be somewhat ignorant of current events, even those pertaining to faunus rights via the White Fang.

He has on two separate occasions stowed away on a boat traveling between continents, and displays little consideration for laws or law enforcement (as any Vacuan might).

Also of note is the fact that Vacuo and Mistral are on opposite ends of the map or Remnant - and while on a globe, that distance may not be so immense, there is still a vast ocean between those continents.