Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-184.157.23.183-20140208055601/@comment-15374346-20140826002228

Since it hasn't been brought up yet, I think I'll be the first to share my opinion on this subject: The Atlesian Paladin(s), and the disturbing number of them Cidner has access to.

I had a bad feeling about these things since I saw the first one in the trailer. Then, Ironwood introduces it as a weapon to fight the Grimm. Yet, something bothered me about it; Ironwood has come to Vale with a fairly large entourage of soldiers and airships that are far from civillian transport, to a festival of all things. We know he's at least aware that something is coming, though we're not sure if he knows of Cinder's involvement/control over said approaching force. Then he goes and introduces the Paladin and combat drones to the public, claiming them to be the next step in the war against the Grimm. But are they really just that?

Lets go on to what we've seen of the Atlesian Paladin in "Painting the Town...": We are shown that the Paladin is incredibly powerful and deadly in its own right, being able to move at speeds fast enough to at least catch up to a car at average speed, and possibly move even faster. Along with this, it has a number of weapons and armaments capable of giving its opponents  an incredibly hard time, having punched Yang of a ll people through a solid stone pillar. Yet, it has also displayed multiple weaknesses as well.

For one thing, it was taken down by four Huntresses in training, something that, although somewhat probable considering that they are Huntresses in training and are also granted the rightful titles of the main characters, but remember that this thing is made to fight the creatures of Grimm, monsters that are capable of doing some pretty heavy damage. It was taken down by those four, and failed to respond properly to a number of obstacles: The smokescreen, made from mist, something that can occur naturally in the outside world. If this thing is to fight the creatures of Grimm in their territory, it would most definetly need to be able to see through natural obstacles like that. Another issue is its fragility. Something like that, which can't always move fast enoguh to respond to an attack, usually requires to be built  like a freaking Tank! Seeing as how Yang was able to punch it into pieces, quite literal in this case, it shows that it isn't quite as perfect for said operation.

This has lead me to believe that the Paladin is still a  prototype.

Why would Ironwood release a weapon thats still in prototype phase to the general public? Its simple, considering that the Paladin is still so very intimidating, along with the drones: He's making a show of power to send a message to Cinder and her associates: "Come after our cities, and these will be waiting for you." He's trying to intimidate them and possibly make them back down. The only problem is that Cinder is obviously not going to fall for this, seeing as she has gotten her hands on these things before they left manufacturing. Seeing as Ironwood would start having them produced, albeit still being prototypes, in order to keep up the power show, would grant Cinder access to the same weapons, which she probably knew were in the development before he even decided to introduce it. And although the Paladin is somewhat faulty in some areas, it is still capable of causing incredibly large amounts of damage, especially in the hands of somebody like her.

The fact that Cinder, the big bad and mastermind of this whole plan, has her hands on multiple Paladins in whats so disturbing. In the end, Ironwood, although with the best of intentions, is nothing more to her than a '' Pawn. ''

Which makes one wonder; if she is smart enough to simply turn Ironwood and his forces into a stepping stone of her plan, then what is going to happen when she reaches the major phases of this plan? What is coming cannot be predicted for sure, but one thing is definetley obvious: Its going to be Big.