Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-4830106-20130803022158/@comment-10390252-20130816192105

My guess (and I emphasise 'guess' - I don't have nearly enough evidence) is that 'Grim' refers to the force guiding and controlling the dark beasts. These beasts are part of the natural world on the RWBY world, which may be that old sci-fi standby, a failed Earth colony where environmental conditions led to a loss of advanced technology and the people forgetting the true history of the humans.

Anyway, the Creatures of Grim are dangerous; all predators but, in the end just animals with the sort of intelligene levels you would expect of large high-tier predators. The Grim is some kind of incorporeal mind that seems to guide them as a single unified whole in pursuit of the goal of annihlating intelligent life on the planet. It isn't clear why the Grim wants to do this; it is possible that it is some kind of perverse 'anti-Gaia' aspect of nature itself that reacts to higher sapience like the way antibodies react to viruses.

In any case, the Grim seems to be linked to the cycles of the world's moon. Like most large moons around terrestrial planets, RWBYLuna is tidally locked with one face always turned towards the planet. Unusually though, possibly due to a recent large meteor strike or possibly simply due to gravitational interactions with other planets in the system, the moon occasionally goes out of phase, turning to reveal its' dark half to the world about every 150 years (about five human generations). The revealing of the moon's literal dark side also seems to be associated with the Grim somehow. Approximately every 150 years, the Creatures of the Grim take on this bony aspect and start becoming more intelligent and co-ordinated. The Grim collective mind comes to the fore and the Creatures will ultimately launch a war to annihlate humans that will last for the entire decade or so between the moon beginning to turn its dark face to the world and the restoration of the light face to total dominance over the sky.

Another intersting characteristic of the Cycle is that the imminence of the Year of Dark, when the dark side of the moon is fully and continually turned towards the world, is always marked by an increase in inter-human strife. Those humans who are ambitious, greedy or unethical are emboldened to bad and worse. Scholars speculate that, despite its disgust for humans, the Grim is willing to work through those whose minds are susceptible to Dark influence because it knows a divided enemy is less able to fight.

Although the Dark Cycle is a well-known fact of the world to historians and Hunters, it is often overlooked or actively denied by politicians, corporate executives and the vast majority of ordinary people in the RWBY world. It seems odd but human nature never really changes. No-one wants to believe that, every century and a half, they will have to step back from their everyday lives, give up their luxries and ease to take up arms, fortify their lands and stand ready to repell the forces of a malignant incorporeal intelligence that absolutly will not tolerate their existence.

This time around, the push-back against the warnings of the coming of the Cycle have been particularly brutal. Ozpin has been publicly censured by the governor of Vale and ordered not to discuss it. His audio lectures (like the one Ruby was listening to in Episode 1) have been censored or outright banned. Ozpin may teach his students what he wishes but he will not be permitted to trigger panic, uncertainty and reduced economic activity over these fairy stories. The official line, uttered by politicians and media personalities firmly in the pocket of individuals like Kalder Schnee, the CEO of the Schee Dust Company, is that the Grim was banished once and for all five generations ago, the war in which the great heroes Auric Arc and Summer Rose fought and died. That the creatures have recently started an upsurge in attacks, such as the one that left Ruby orphaned, is entirely coincidental. Similarly, the growth of criminality is merely a sign of the need to increase economic activity so the impoverished do not need to turn to crime, nothing more.

Ozpin knows better and, within the walls of his school, protected by its ancient charter that protects it from all governmental interference, he is building the army he needs to protect humanity. He will save the world even if the world doesn't think it needs him to do so. It is an army that needs generals and leaders to inspire people to the fight. People like a remarkably pure-souled girl with silver eyes...

FWIW, it will turn out that the Grim influences the world through a series of Grim Portals more-or-less at the spot of dozens of Dust powered Beacons. The Beacons, built at the end of the last Great War, are meant to prevent the full power of the Grim from coming through to the world from a far larger Portal on the lunar Dark Side. However, several beacons are malfunctioning and some have been shut down as 'pointless extravagances' by short-sighted politicians'. This will all turn out to be Grim influence through powerful people like Kalder Schnee, political radicals like Adam and the White Fang and criminals like Junior's parents, "Papa" and "Mama" Ursus. The objective is to disable or weaken a majority of the beacons so that the Grim can come through again.

The first phase of the story will, in this scenario, be attempting to stop Crimson and the Grim's other human agents from their goal of disabling, either by cutting off Dust supplies or direct destruction/sabotage. That will fail and a new Great War will rage as an ill-prepared humanity, led by the few who believed in Ozpin, try to hold back the Dark Tide at a tremendous cost in life.

This time, there is no victory from arms. In the previous cycle, man was united and ready to fight; this time, they are divided and many humans even fight on the side of the Grim, foolishly seduced by offers of power and even rulership over a 'conquered' human rance. It becoms clear that victory is only possible by reactivating the Beacon network and thus cutting off from its armies the vast majority of the power of the Grim. However, to reignite the Master Beacon at Beacon Academy will require a sacrifice - one by a person of the purest and most innocent nature who is willing to die for all, friend, enemy and stranger bu giving the power of their simple soul as the ignition source.