Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20190126081959/@comment-14909251-20190220235519

Alhazad2003 wrote: She won't drop the city immediately, she needs it moderately intact in order for her forces to a) find the Winter Maiden, b) infiltrate Atlas Academy, and c) obtain the Relic of Creation.  And I can imagine eliminating Ironwood will also be one of her goals.  Destroying the city from the get go jeopardizes her overall agenda, and regardless of how enraged Salem may be at the moment, throwing away her master plan in a fit of anger would be seriously OOC for her, at least right now anyway. You see, this is why I keep talking about the whole idea of a war or conflict being part of the plan, because this scenario makes no real sense. Assuming the Winter Maiden is present and active, what are they gonna do when they find her? How are they going to get her to cooperate? Cinder isn't present so unless that stealy trick works with men or Emerald or maybe Salem were to do it, there isn't any way they are getting the Winter Maiden abilities and thus no way they are getting into the vault.

Furthermore, how are they going to infiltrate Atlas? Both Watts and Tyrian, for different reasons, would stand out like a sore thumb. Presumably they would need a distraction big enough to divert all attention away from the Academy and not leave them on high alert at the Academy. Only other way I can think is them getting in during an attack on the Academy itself big enough to make it easy for them to reach the vault.

They also have to be able to get away after they successfully obtain the Relics. So, it isn't enough to have a big attack distracting people, but it needs to be so big that they won't be able to stop the bad guys from getting away with the goods. Unlike the other Academies, it is suggested Atlas is surrounded by the city. We have to presume it is in one of those heavily urbanized areas. Given CCT towers seem to be around the Academies and in the highest locations in the Kingdom, that big building at the center of the largest seems a likely candidate.

Whatever the case, this is not as simple as infiltrating the other Academies, even without considering that they had an inside track to facilitate in the past cases. Seems they do not have such a thing with Atlas. Beacon and Haven were relatively isolated from the rest of their respective Kingdoms. Likely Atlas is right in the midst of all the activity so any attack is going to need to be able to prevent anyone from impeding them at the Academy.

I don't see how they make that happen without considerable disarray. Being able to pull that off with just Grimm would go against everything we've seen up to now suggesting Salem depends very much on having some other form of assistance, often expecting significant manpower of the humanoid variety. Doing the whole "hacker man" strategy for disabling defenses is all too repetitive and looks kind of ridiculous given they would already know about this vulnerability.