Salem

Salem is an ancient and extremely mysterious figure from Remnant's forgotten past and the primary antagonist of RWBY.

She is one of the few who posses the power of Magic and is also the master of the Grimm and is highly knowledgeable, cunning and manipulative.

She is the leader of a cabal of people with malicious plans and she operates out of Evernight Castle in the Land of Darkness. Her goals are to find the Maidens, take their powers, take the Relics from the Huntsman Academies and weaken Humanity by snuffing out their hope.

She was a part of the original Humanity, before being cursed with immortality and falling into a Grimm pool. She was married to Ozma before their ideologies tore them apart making them mortal enemies.

In "Ruby Rose", the first episode of the series, she serves as the narrator, giving the opening voice-over for the series, but credited only as the Mysterious Narrator in "Black and White" and "Breach" until her first on-screen appearance in the Volume 3 finale, "End of the Beginning". She is also the narrator of the first four RWBY: World of Remnant episodes.

Past
Eons ago, Salem was a human woman with fair skin, pale platinum blonde hair and light blue eyes. She wore most her hair in a half-bun style, with a small bun on the top, and the remainder of her long hair hanging at the bottom. Most of her bangs were tied back, barring several large locks that framed her face to her left.

She wore a white, two piece dress consisting of a sleeveless, diagonally overlapping white pleated top with a raised, pale blue collar adorned with a aquamarine colored rhombus-shaped crystal on the clavicle, surrounded by two smaller white rhombuses. Her long, high-waisted skirt was white with a faint purple tint - adorned with white diamond emblems and white wavy lines near the bottom hem, ruffled around the waist and completed with a purple sash. For accessories, she wore gray, circular earrings and a pair of dull brown bracers, and her long fingernails were painted pale lilac.

Current
Salem's skin is currently a deathly pallor, with jet black sclerae in her eyes, and glowing crimson irises that shine brighter when she is agitated. While she initially retained her half-bun hairdo for her now bleached, pale white hair, she has since re-styled it into a larger bun with six offshoots wrapped together that also suspends several obsidian-colored ornaments. Over the passage of time, she has since grown dark purple veins that line her face and arms, and now has a black diamond-shaped marking in the center of her forehead.

She currently wears a very long, short-sleeved black robe that obscures her feet and partially drags across the ground, complete with a long shawl emblazoned with three interconnected, maroon-colored vertical elliptic sigils resembling a trio of overseeing eyes above a series of maroon-colored diamond emblems. She also wears a ring resembling an insect on her right index finger.

Personality
Salem is insidious, patiently moving to undermine and destroy her enemies with cold, deliberate resolve. She is also highly intellectual, with a healthy respect for her enemy, mankind, which she recognizes as possessing both resourcefulness and ingenuity. She also acknowledges humanity's capacity to draw strength from hope, but she uses this knowledge to subvert and destroy them. She is humble enough to recognize that there are limits to her abilities and that she can only do so much for her subordinates.

She is very confident and self-assured, secure in her knowledge that she can best whatever Ozpin sends to stop her and her goals. She also appears to be cruel or sadistic, for she seems to relish the prospect of watching Ozpin burn.

In contrast, Salem is also fair and collegial towards her allies, giving credit where credit is due and showing genuine appreciation to those who are loyal. In enforcing this atmosphere of fairness, she also discourages unnecessary malignant and cruelty among her associates. When Tyrian Callows returns after having failed to capture Ruby Rose, she merely tells him that he disappointed her and walks away. She is also seen tolerating her allies unruly behavior to some extent, such as Tyrian's maniacal tendencies and Watts' snide and condescending attitude. In "So That's How It Is", Salem shows her fairness when she only blames Cinder, who was in charge of the mission, for their failure in acquiring the Relic during the Battle of Haven and forbids Hazel Rainart from taking the blame, even threatening him when he continues to attempt to do so. Salem knows how to manipulate people and has different methods for motivations for each of her lieutenants.

However, Salem is not above losing her temper, as she is particularly demanding when inquiring whether Cinder Fall has truly killed Ozpin or not. She later became angry with Lionheart after he started to become less afraid of her and be more outspoken in her presence. This display of sheer dominance shows Salem's rather imperious and demanding personality. Her biggest displays of anger are shown in "So That's How it Is", when she first binds Hazel to the floor after he tries covering for Cinder, and then when she destroys all the windows in her council chamber upon learning that Ozpin has already reincarnated and has acquired the Relic.

In the distant past, Salem was shown to be a kind yet lonely woman, but appeared to be slightly manipulative. This was shown when her lover Ozma died of an illness, she tried tricking the Brother Gods to bring him back and then when she tricked Humanity to turn against them, only for both to fail. After she jumped into the pool of darkness in another suicide attempt, she gained a destructive nature, though she managed to curb said nature for a while.

When she and Ozma reunited, she was shown to be truly happy and Salem was shown to be a genuinely kind and loving mother to her and Ozma's daughters. However, this did not stop her from murdering Ozma and, accidentally, her daughters in a rage when she learned they were trying to flee their home once Ozma realized the monster she had become.

Both Qrow and Raven describe her as a being who would make use of anybody to help further her goals, something Salem herself suggests when explaining her decisions to Cinder. Raven states that she would discard the people she uses if they become obsolete to her, which is later violently demonstrated when she uses a Seer to kill Leonardo Lionheart for trying to run from the Battle of Haven.

The World of RWBY: The Official Companion states that Salem's goal is to absorb the powers of the Maidens and rule Remnant as its dark queen.

Powers and Abilities
Salem, being a member of the first wave of Humanity has access to magic. She is shown to be able to fire blasts of magic from her hands and has shown even greater mastery over it than even that of the Maidens. In addition to her other magic, she appears to be able to project telekinetic force as seen when she crushed a Nevermore and shattered the windows in her council chamber in a fit of uncontrolled rage.

She was also cursed with immortality by the Gods, making it impossible to destroy her. She has lived for thousands of years, during which she acquired extensive knowledge of the nature of Aura and Dust, as well as an understanding of Human nature, society and history.

After the Gods destroyed the first Humanity and left Remnant she jumped into the Grimm Pools in the Land of Darkness which altered her body further and gave her more powers and abilities. Raven Branwen reveals that Salem is the Grimm's master. As such, she can command them to do her bidding. She also possesses the ability to alter the physiology of Grimm and graft Grimm body parts to a Human's body. She causes Beringels to sprout wings in "Our Way" and gives Cinder a Shadow Hand. Salem also has the ability to summon multiple Shadow Hands on command as seen in "So That's How It Is", when she used them to immobilize Hazel.

Qrow Branwen claims he has "seen the things she's made" and that "they are fear". She also possesses knowledge on how to steal the powers of Maidens, a feat of which was never accomplished before according to Ozpin's group.

She also possesses some form of superhuman strength, as she easily flips the massive table in her headquarters, all while seated.

Salem is also very effective at getting others to follow her orders through fear. She controls Tyrian with statements of approval or disapproval and controls Lionheart and others by conveying their well-being is contingent on cooperation.

Trivia

 * Salem alludes to the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.
 * She shares her name with Salem, Massachusetts, a town with a well-known historical event called the Salem Witch Trials.
 * She is the enemy of Ozpin, who alludes to the Wizard of Oz.
 * She is capable of magic.
 * In the Volume 6 post-credits scene, she creates an army of winged Beringels, referencing the Witch's winged monkeys.
 * The name "Salem" comes from the Hebrew word שלם (shalém), which means the state of being whole or intact. The name also has associations of witchcraft and the occult, due to the Salem witch trials, where many people were accused of witchcraft and executed.
 * It is also a cultivar of rosemary with pale blue flowers, which is also associated with witchcraft.
 * In an interview with Afterbuzz TV, writers Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross revealed that Salem's concept was done before the concepts for Team SSSN. At the first RWBY Panel at RTX 2016, they estimated that she was the ninth character designed (after Teams RWBY and JNPR).
 * Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross have also confirmed that any visual resemblance between Salem and the original Winter Maiden (from the RWBY: World of Remnant episode "The Four Maidens") was a coincidence and unintentional.
 * One of the fairy tales mentioned by Pyrrha Nikos in the episode "Fall" is "The Girl in the Tower". As several fairy tales turned out to be real or be based on real Remnant world events, the title The Girl in the Tower likely references Salem, as she spent her early life locked away in a tower by her father.
 * It could also be based on Rapunzel, the German fairy tale made famous by the The Brothers Grimm.