Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-216.239.28.98-20140422001233/@comment-24891101-20140523203034

I've always interpreted the Grimm as a force of nature, a fact of life that humanity has had to fight off since time immemorial. They seem to be inimical to life, certainly human life, which, as we've established, has souls. Furthermore, they don't seem to participate in biology in the normal way, in that they dissolve upon death and seem to be immortal (the Deathstalker and cave paintings). This suggests they do not reproduce in a way we'd recognize. They are also considered distinct from animals (fish have been mentioned, as well as cats, with domestication implied, and Pyrrha says animals have souls), suggesting that they are wholly distinct from animals. They also seem to predate humanity (see opening monologue).

That they have animal cunning is no problem for their being soulless, but the animal like behavior is for this theory (the Ursa going for the sap, generally territorial behavior). For this reason, I'm inclined to think that the rapier wasps are not actually Grimm.

Wild supposition: Grimm sort of just appear, in places where there are no souls. They're very closely associated with darkness in the opening monologue. That, combined with the light (not leit) motif for souls, suggests that's where they come from, possibly.

With souls being quantifiable, I'm pretty sure they definitely have no souls, otherwise any idiot with a sensor could tell that they did. They're not evil, because they simply are, in the same way natural disasters are.

All of this said, there's gotta be a driving force somewhere.

I am also waiting for the potential sci-fi backstory reveal, that would explain how the Grimm got there, and why the world is called Remnant. I did rather like the setting more when there was no hint of the existence of normal animals, merely humans and CoG. It seemed more poetic, and would mean that man was more literally (less figuratively) born from dust.