Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25122143-20170413232822

A thought occurred to me relatively recently while rewatching Volume 3 (And seeing alot of jokes about Qrow, Jaune, and/or Glynda wanting to become Maidens) so I decided to share it here. The thought is, given the method the Ozluminati were using to remove Amber's powers, could they have superceded the rules that the powers have to go to a young woman? Allow me to elaborate.

-What we know about the Maidens and their powers (And I'm taking this directly from this wiki): The Maidens are the hosts of a great power. The powers have been transferred from host to host for thousands of years, by way of the host's Aura. There are always 4 of them, one for each Season, which they are said to be the physical embodiments of.

Once a Maiden dies, the powers either go to the last person in their thoughts, if that person is a young woman, or else a random young woman. The powers are bound to their host's Aura, and could theoretically be artificially transfered to a new host by taking the current Maiden's Aura and combining it with that of the intended new host, but it's unknown if this is true in practice, as Cinder assassinated Amber before the transfer could be completed.

-What we know about the Ozluminati's plan: The Ozluminati had recovered Amber's comatose body and were keeping her alive with state-of-the-art Atlesian tech. Half of her powers were stolen by Cinder, and it was believed that the other half inside of Amber would go to Cinder as well should she die.

As such, the plan was to use more Atlesian tech (Atlas' focus on Aura Research even prior to Amber being attacked is interesting, and could be worth a discussion of it's own, but I digress) to remove Amber's Aura, to which her powers were bound, and give it to Pyrrha Nikos, who fit the criteria of a young woman.

-My Question: Given that the Atlesian machine could presumably take the Aura of any being with a soul, regardless of whether or not the Aura had any powers bound to it, and give it to any other being with a soul, could the Ozluminati have given Amber's Aura, and, by extension, her powers, to anyone, regardless of age or gender?

Under normal circumstances, the power could only go to young women, but this wasn't normal circumstances. The powers would be being transferred artificially for the second time (Counting Cinder's thing with the weird Roach Grimm thing) in known (To us) history, and it would only be half of the powers.

If so, Ozpin never would've had to bring Pyrrha into it, and could've just given it to himself, or Glynda, or Qrow. Anyone, really. We don't know whether or not Ozpin already accounted for this and concluded that it wouldn't be possible, or if this was a crucial oversight on his part, but I personally hope for the latter. It would play into the lyrics of Sacrifice and Dividem and make the actions of the Ozluminati all the more questionable.

Going off of the assumption that it would be possible, does that mean, say, Mercury or Tyrian could've used the weird Roach Grimm Glove and stolen Amber or Spring's powers instead of Cinder? Does that mean, say, Oscar or Qrow could get the Maiden Powers in the future? Maybe not, but if this is true, it's a possibility.

Regardless of the potential future possibilities that this question being true would bring, I'm getting ahead of myself. What do you think of this analysis? Do you think it could've been possible to supercede the Maiden Rules with the Atlesian machine, or not? If so, what do you think this means for the series, if anything, and if not, please provide your reasoning as to why you don't think so. Hopefully, we can get a good debate going and maybe even make some breakthroughs. :)

 