Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-15108745-20131026065056

I'm not sure if this should be called speculation or fanfic material but I'm going to call it speculation anyways. Thanks to Zolnir for giving me some ideas and for putting up with my inane propositions interesting ideas.

The Two Forces

In the world of RWBY, there are two forces that always work in tandem. They are (you guessed it) the forces of creation and destruction. I'm not going to say that there are gods in RWBY that can personify these forces. I personally like to think of them as natural forces like gravity. They are truths that are known to exist and can be felt, but not personified or brought into physical form. Anyways, at some point in history, the force of destruction gained the upper hand and started to run rampant. Why did it do this? I prefer to think of it like the asteroid that is theorized to have wiped out the dinosaurs or a disease that infects and wipes out a large population. It is a freak occurrence. The rise in power of the force of destruction gave birth to the first Grimm.

Creatures of Grimm

So what are Grimm? Well, they are described in the series as "creatures of destruction." Basically, I think of these creatures as beings that have been "infected" by the rampant force of destruction. The force of destruction seeks out beings that possess a soul and proceeds to take over the creature by destroying the soul. This changes its nature and its physical form. Both humans and animals can be affected. However the process is much slower for humans. This is because of the complexity of the human mind in comparison to that of an animal. Humans can indeed turn into a creature of destruction, but it would take a considerably larger amount of time compared to the conversion of an animal. In addition, humans have considerable control over their souls via Aura. Aura is a physical manifestation of the soul and it can be trained and hardened just like a muscle in the body. Hence, their souls are much more protected than an animal's soul. Thus, animals are the first to be turned into these creatures of destruction. The name "Grimm" was eventually coined by humans to describe these creatures. It is synonymous with destruction.

First Signs

Many decades passed as animals slowly began to disappear from forests. Humans did not know why the animals were disappearing or where they went. However, certain remote parts of the land were showing troubling signs and settlements that were set up by pioneers were being attacked and destroyed. Over time, the Grimm were building up their strength and the proximity of all of the animals in the forests eventually led to the formation of Grimm Queens or Grimm Overlords. I'll call these Grimm-Minds. It is a sentient being that is able to lead the forces of Grimm. If you are wondering how this intelligent creature was able to form from literally a bunch of soulless monsters, keep reading.

The Grimm-Minds started off with a few skirmishes just to test the waters. Eventually, one launched a full-scale attack on a major human city and completely razed it to the ground and slaughtered everyone inhabiting the city. Any skepticism about the existence of monsters was now banished from the minds of humans all over the world. This spurs the humans to start resisting.

Full Scale War and the First Faunus

As humans begin to fight back against the Grimm, this leads to the creation of Faunus. How?

Well, basically, when the force of destruction "destroys" an animal's soul, it doesn't quite destroy it completely. This is because, while an animal is not able to think like a human, it can still think for itself, i.e., it still has its base instincts. This leads it to develop a small amount of resistance to the force of destruction. This can be seen in the series when the Ursa Major displays bear-like behavior and when the Alpha Beowolf is seen sounding a retreat. If you haven't realized yet, this is how the Grimm-Mind is able to form. It's because the creatures are not 100% mindless, so a Grimm-Mind is able to form if enough creatures come together and coalesce.

So, basically, every creature of Grimm has a little bit of its original animal soul floating around inside of it. This is the remnant of the animal's soul that resists destruction. This remnant is then able to pass through to other creatures, e.g., humans, and nest inside them. In other words, humans probably fought the Grimm with weapons that didn't allow for long distance killing. Guns were probably not so common in these years. Thus, there was a chance for Grimm and humans to come into close contact with one another and a chance for humans to be wounded through direct contact with a Grimm. In this moment of direct contact, some amount of the animal's soul would pass through to the human. This is how the first Faunus were created.

Now then, the first Faunus actually did not have physical features like animal ears. They probably had slight animal-like tendencies and behavior, but the obvious physical features started to appear in the children of these first Faunus. As the Grimm Wars went on, these features became more and more obvious and more and more children began showing up with animal features and animal tendencies.

Society's reaction was at first, shock. People were disgusted. People were fascinated. Eventually, there was a large percentage of children being born like this and society could no longer try to spend time figuring out how to "fix" them. The children would be born and raised as a normal child in society. Eventually, these second-generation Faunus grew up and began to take part in the War. So, the two sides were able to get along as two parties that share a common enemy.

End of the War

Now, the development of Dust occurred. I'm going to go with the interpretation that it's a natural Aura enhancer that was refined and used as a weapon during the Grimm War when the humans had exhausted all other options. Dust was found to be an excellent way of combating the Grimm and gradually, the creatures of Grimm and the Grimm-Mind were defeated.

Humans and Faunus were able to enjoy a number of decades (possibly even a couple centuries) of peace. As human history in our world has shown, though, peace never lasts for very long. Eventually, the Faunus and the Humans began to fight one another. The reason for this is simple: the Faunus are different and (in some respects) better than humans. They have perfect sight in the dark. They are possibly stronger and faster. As such, they become a cause for jealousy and sometimes a scapegoat for some of the problems in society. This grows into hatred and eventually, the humans determine that the Faunus should be extracted and isolated from society. The Faunus resist and speak out for their rights to coexist with humans. Talks eventually lead to nowhere and the resistance turns violent.

The Faunus War

I'd say that this war was much more recent than the Grimm Wars. How recent? Well, I'd say that it's comparable to WWII or the Vietnam War. So maybe 60 to 30 years ago. There were many battles that probably took place but in the end, both sides suffered large losses and the fight was essentially even. So, a truce was called, but it was a very shaky truce. People are still smarting from the wounds, both physical and mental, inflicted during the war.

Now

And this is now where we stand: some decades after the Faunus War and several decades (probably a couple centuries) after the Grimm Wars. 