Vacuo

It's not exactly a shirt and tie kind of place.

Vacuo is a kingdom in Remnant, located to the west of Vale, on the same continent. Like the rest of the kingdoms, Vacuo is ruled by a council representing its people and their interests.

Vacuo is first mentioned in "The Stray", when students from Vacuo are said to be visiting Vale for the Vytal Festival. Tukson planned to flee to Vacuo from the White Fang before he was murdered by Mercury Black and Emerald Sustrai.

Geography
In "Welcome to Beacon", it is heavily implied to be a desert area where people adapt to living within the harsh environment. "Round One" shows an environment very similar to a savanna or scrub land where several Faunus watch TV from a camper's van in the desert, potentially depicting Vacuo. In "New Challengers...", Nebula Violette states how the desert terrain gave them a "home field advantage". This hypothesis is further backed up by the name of their academy; Shade. As the other three Huntsman Academies are named after things that would give people hope and protection, it makes sense that an Academy located in a desert would be named after something that would protect its people from the desert heat.

History
Around eighty years before the events of the series, Vacuo and the other three kingdoms – Mantle, Vale and Mistral – were all fighting each other in what was known as the Great War. After years of bloodshed, the four kingdoms signed a truce on the island of Vytal. The end of the Great War led to a period of peace for all four kingdoms. The new-found peace was celebrated with the Vytal Festival, a biennial event where the people of Remnant gather to celebrate their unity and diversity, in which the kingdom of Vacuo continues to participate.

Following the end of the Great War, four new academies were created in each of the four kingdoms to train Huntsmen, warriors trained specifically to fight the Grimm. Shade Academy was founded in Vacuo.

Academy


Vacuo's huntsman academy is named Shade. Students from Shade Academy do not appear to have a standard uniform like the schools of the other three kingdoms. Before being dispatched to their missions from an assembly at Beacon, they appeared in different assortments of casual clothes.

Trivia

 * During a RWBY Livestream, Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross hinted at the name of Shade Academy through exaggerated, incoherent pantomime.
 * The phrase in vacuo is Latin for "in a vacuum" or "in isolation".
 * Sun Wukong has been stated to come from Vacuo. He later moved to Mistral and began attending Haven Academy.
 * In the World of Remnant episodes "Vytal Festival Tournament" and "Huntsmen", the kingdom is represented by the color orange. Vytal Festival tournament contestants from Vacuo also have Aura monitors with an orange background.