User blog comment:Withersoul/How would man have fought against the grim before using dust?/@comment-10390252-20130902144144/@comment-10390252-20130902153154

@darkcloud1111,

Not necessarily stronger or smarter but certainly more driven and more focussed.

The humans of Vytal have been effectively in a permanent state of cold war/seige with periodic genocidal assaults. In such a scenario, society would be a lot more cohesive (it's hard to see your neighbour as your enemy when there are honest-to-hades hellbeasts attacking you intent on genocide) and also more aggressive and with mentality of "everyone is a warrior". We wouldn't think of letting a girl of Ruby's age to run around with a high-caliber sniper rifle-cum-razor-sharp scythe when she's gone along the block to the local store to pick up a magazine. Yet this is so common in Vytal that Roman didn't make the 'Huntress' connection until Glynda nearly shot his Airjet out of the sky.

We are looking in on a world where, in all probability, children... ALL children, not just prospective Huntresses like Ruby... are taught to fight, to operate lethal weapons and to be willing to kill from a very early age. Survival, not just of the nation but of the entire species, demands it. This means that we can expect all the characters, even heroic ones, to be moderately psychotic by Earth standards but, when all of history is just a long series of barely-averted genocides, standards of 'normal' are going to be different.