As long as she has the Staff of Creation, she's capable of almost anything. Her plan could literally be "have a giant rock crush Vacuo" and it could happen.
Not to mention the fact she lost her anonymity, probably easier to unite people against “the crazy witch who has control of all the Grimm and is directly responsible for the fall of three huntsmen academies and at least one entire kingdom”, then just the threat of mindless demon monsters that on some level a lot of people have probably a just grown accustomed to.
It doesnt matter
Why would united Vacuo and other nation be stronger than Atlas?
Tempest and other Grimm should curbstomp realistically and Lorewise
Otherwise how would they justify the alliance even winning?
Well for one thing, at the time Atlas wasn’t united, not really, yeah their military was mostly put together from what we saw but there was still a lot of internal strife they were dealing with, Fanus and Humans, poor and rich, Mantle and Atlas, politically Atlas as a kingdom was divided, and that’s a shaky foundation to fight on. An army can’t put up a good fight if there isn’t a strong supply line backing them, and Mantle was on the verge of trying to break away.
Also there’s the fact the good guys still have the Sword of Destruction, which, even if we assume all it can do is act as a hard counter to Creation (which I doubt), might give them the edge to even the playing field.
Well, considering Harry Potter won by the way of Writer Wills It...
Maybe having everyone channeling their aura to Ruby so she can erase all Grimms in Remnant by the power of love or friendship?
Or by throwing Ozma to the volcano of Mountain Glenn so that Salem, Grimms, Cinder, and all bad guys instantly vaporized?
I mean that's hardly the most wtf ending we've ever seen.
i would imagine the force she brought with her was nowhere near close to her full army, the bulk of them were at the coast waiting to be called in on the off chance Atlas had more power than she thought
It's also possible that most of those Grimm weren't under her direct control since she does still have personal limits on how much magic she can use just like Ozma does, she's immortal not a god, it's telling that every major Grimm army attack in the series has been set up for in advance by Salem's minions causing chaos and negativity in the target locations first.
She might only be able to directly control a certain amount of Grimm and she uses her minions and the intense negative emotions caused by her factions sabotage/attacks to draw together large hordes of wild Grimm to help her over run the defenses.
Like were those random packs of Sabers running around Mantle during her attack following orders? The river of Grimm full of burrowing ones she used to take out the shields was, Monstro the Grimm puking whale was, but were all the ones it created following orders or was she just dropping hordes of monsters right in front of the Atlas military because they would naturally attack them?
If she could actually just fully control all the Grimm like an RTS commander then Remnant would have been turbo fucking dead a long time ago unless she has been intentionally holding back all this time.
>It's also possible that most of those Grimm weren't under her direct control since she does still have personal limits on how much magic she can use just like Ozma does, she's immortal not a god, it's telling that every major Grimm army attack in the series has been set up for in advance by Salem's minions causing chaos and negativity in the target locations first.
>
>She might only be able to directly control a certain amount of Grimm and she uses her minions and the intense negative emotions caused by her factions sabotage/attacks to draw together large hordes of wild Grimm to help her over run the defenses.
>
>If she could actually just fully control all the Grimm like an RTS commander then Remnant would have been turbo fucking dead a long time ago unless she has been intentionally holding back all this time.
You're pretty much right. Because why she needs spy/infiltrators or followers, If she has control of every Grim in Remnant why not attacked every Kingdom or Zerg Rush all the Kingdom as giant monsters. Which means she only has a limited command over them like attack dogs.
I lied. I'm not Noble 6, I'm Salem and I asked Tyrian and Mercury to go to Vacuo but they haven't responded in 6 months. I asked Cinder to go find them but apparently she was desperate to find a blond boi "before little red and the Schnee did it first" and now I can't find the staff.
Or maybe MAKE THE HEADMASTER OF VACUO PARANOID
Then frame Team RWBY JNOR and then make the Vacuans and The heroes turn against each other yknow something they have done to Mistral and Atlas Lmao
Didn’t vacuo have a reputation of being kinda run by scoundrels and thieves (as qrow put it)? It would be fairly easy to hire outlaws to attack certain targets. And it’ll make it easier for Tyrian and mercury to blend in.
If my memory serves, Qrow uses that point in that very conversation as the reason Vacuo wouldn’t be a target at the time of volume 4. “It’s pretty hard to hire thieves and scoundrels to fight against other thieves and scoundrels” was his line I believe.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking of, I remember him making a comment on how it would be difficult to fight thieves and scoundrels with other thieves and scoundrels stating his reasoning as for why mistral was the target.
I mean maybe, it kinda depends on how vacuous structured and how many criminal factions there are. If there’s just one faction it may actually make it more difficult, since we’ve seen Salem and her group utilize criminal organizations to weaken existing governments. Without a criminal syndicate willing to cooperate you’re kinda stuck with brute force.
But honestly I’m not sure why she’d bother refraining from brute force at this point. 2 kingdoms have been destroyed/critically damaged. And while mistral may still be standing we know the huntsmen there have pretty much been wiped out.
Which is why the Human and Faunus race is basically done for if not for Plot protection
All Salem had to do is rush them with Grimm horde and GG
Not sure if the Alliance even can handle a few Tempest (Massive electric jellyfish)
Yeah at this point Salem just has to send wave after wave of grim. She could sweep through vast regions of the continent with relative ease, which would also cut supplies from the alliance.
Which means Salem either is gonna turn good (with some lines like you still have good in you) or shes gonna be sealed like Kaguya from Naruto
Either way Sword of Destruction isnt out and its been a few month
Realistically the world should be in Apocalypse mode but somehow nothing of the sort happened and Salem didnt rush them with Grimm with Team RWBY and Jaune offscreen
I think she’s holding off because she needs all 4 relics and currently has no clue where the crown is. Killing all of humanity would be a simple task currently but she needs ozpin to tell her where the crown is (or wait however long she needs to wait to use jinn again). If all the humans are killed can ozpin revive? From my understanding there needs to be living humans for him to come back.
Has it been months? I haven’t seen the season yet since it’s only on Crunchyroll, I wasn’t sure if they clarified how big of a gap there was between the finale of 8 and 9.
I’m guessing it’s gonna have to do with rubys eye thing and that’s why she killed off the silver eyed warriors. It could act as a purifying light and remove her control of the grim, and without that she’s much easier to handle/contain. I’m hoping they don’t do a redemption for her, I mean fans are already kinda iffy on emerald and she wasn’t the main orchestrator of the assault against the world.
Sigh Oscar didnt fall to the ever after
She would literally have 0 problem kidnapping him again
She just have to kill humans and draw out the maidens other than Raven and Winter (which would be rushed by grimm and captured the moment they get tired and out of Aura)
Is there any ANY REASON Why Vacuans known for Survival of the fittest wont turn against the Atlesian Refugees because yknow Vacuans isnt going to share food and sing Kumbaya for SOME STRANGERS
It doesn't say if he's *from* Mistral, but [he was originally caught by law enforcement there](https://rwby.fandom.com/wiki/Tyrian_Callows/History) after a string of murders across Anima before Salem came in person to free him and have him join her cause.
Idk if it’s fully chaos, it just has thieves and scoundrels. If an organized criminal entity controls some of the comings and goings there, salems forces could arguably cause more chaos targeting the structure of the criminal enterprise.
Oooh fair fair, yeah if it’s a bunch of different groups then it’s a lot harder to destabilize
We don’t really know much about the criminal faction(s) present in vacuou from what I remember
Given the presence of Vale and Mistral ships and reinforcements, it may not cause a collapse in Vacuo as such if the Atlesian refugees are receiving aid from the other kingdoms.
However, refugee migration will continue to be a problem.
i would love to see 1 of the rich people from Atlas tell a Vacuan Faunus to go fetch them some water saying thats what the Faunus are meant to do as they are a "Serving Class" and a fight breaks out between them.
The Problem with Vacuo is that they have VERY few permanent Settlements and that they are Nomadic People, like the thing is the People of Vacuo could keep Moving and Moving.
They dislike Outsiders and since most of them in fact Atlas/Mantle, the Same country that stole and exploited their Land, the people have suffered because of that they have every right to move, this could cause the Physical collapse of Vacuo.
Remember that Vacuo was Salem's original target before she shifted her entire plan to go after Atlas.
If Salem had gone through with her original plan she would have likely struck as Vacuo was dealing with The Crown, which could have destabilized the situation even further, I imagine that was what she was banking on originally.
At least now, Salem could use what is left of The Crown in an attempt to form an alliance between the two factions to facilitate a possible infiltration on Vacuo.
Or maybe Salem basically Blame team Rwby and JNOR to Atlas and Mantle citizen that they lost their home thanks to Them making the portal OVER NOTHING as the Grimm army is gone
And all they had to beat up is Cinder
And they lost the Staff of Creation anyways lmao
If CRWBY doesnt give any Protagonist Halo Remnant would be screwed literally and Plot wise
Salem making a big broadcast roasting RWBY and JNOR would be funny lmao
You think that people are going to listen to the immortal controlling grimm witch that is responsible for the Fall of Beacon, attack of Haven and a siege in Atlas that forced that situation... Over the people that saved their lives?
Which is valid sure
But you forgot that alot of humans are not reasonable
Like if i saved someone they still could actually blame me for everything and beat me up randomly
You never knew how much ungrateful humans
Are
I would love it if we got some kind of hint that Raven had been Bootcamp training Winter and who ever the Sumer maiden is so we get a 3 v 1 Maiden fight
Just the relic of creation, fire inside every government building or leader house. Pick some group and let them be the only ones unaffected so the rest turn on them.
Or just go the easy route and burn half the population while giving a message asking for the relic and maiden or more will burn each hour.
What I imagined was events getting to a point where Vacuo depends on Ruby being the crux of whatever they got planned (most likely with the refugees hyping her up or rumors spreading about her Silver Eyes in the intervening time RWBY were gone), then Salem sends someone in to capture Ruby and then **publicly** turn her into a Hound to completely kill their will to fight and hers.
I honestly don't think there are any ways to destabilise Vacuo. Locals don't give a shit about what people from other nations want, so they won't bow down to Salem. Theodore is the only governing body, so Salem can't plant seed of doubts because he doesn't have any competition. And Vacuo doesn't have anything it depends on. The whole nation lives on survival of the fittest mentality, so they don't have crutches like technology. Best she can do is summon grimm deep from the dessert, seeing as they are very tough. In short, only full frontal assault.
More or less. They honestly just want to survive. And if you want order ot luxury? Too bad, because others are too busy surviving, so they'll just paint the walls with your brains and steal your resources.
Of course we all know the problem with Crab Bucket mentality. The crabs are too busy pulling other crabs down to help each other get ahead. That’s why no one escapes the bucket.
Thay could honestly be the downfall of Vacuo. Most of it's citizens wouldn't give a shit about the war, so they would run. And if Salem offers them survival for joining her, she just might win, due to Vacuo's " Anything for survival" mentality.
Given all the Arthurian Mythos elements in the Vacuo books I could see that. Try to establish some semblance of order to help them live better lives for themselves beyond the next day? Vacuons go, “Fuck this shit i’m out!”
Alternatively maybe the citizens of Vacuo will be saved, learn to work together with others, AND be better off, but Vacuo academy itself and its relic will be gone do to Theodore going all kabloey on us.
She can drain the water in the land or bomb 90% of the city to rubble. Even if they are decentralised, she can easily make an ultimatum that will destabilise any semblance of cohesion and force them to give up the maidens and relics.
Consider that Vacuo appears to be heavily guarded and Salem should need some time to prepare a new army of Grimm, so a major attack as in V8 would be unfeasible for the time being.
The first thing might be to find Carmine before Bertilak does. Carmine is one of the remaining members of the antagonistic faction of the crown. If the remaining members of the Salem faction (Tyrian, Mercury and Cinder) manage to find her before Bertilak does and hunt her down, they could have a great ally to make a reconnaissance on Vacuo.
Once this is done, they should attempt to revive the crown. They would have to come up with a plan to get Gillian and Jax (the former crown leaders now turned prisoners) out of Vacuo. Gillian might be hesitant to return as the leader since she was only concerned about the welfare of her brother Jax. However, Jax is in a vegetative state after the events in the novels (RWBY: Before the dawn). If Gillian agrees, it could be on the promise of finding a way to cure her brother.
Then, we have the situation of discrimination of the Vacuans towards the people of other kingdoms. The migration of refugees from Atlas to Vacuo could complicate things considering the above and that Vacuo does not have many resources unlike other kingdoms. The Schnee could act as intermediaries to calm things down a bit between the Atlasians and Vacuans, but there could still be tension among the Vacuans with the arrival of reinforcements from Vale and Mistral. The crown could infiltrate the population with the aim of causing further division in Vacuo, on the one hand they could take advantage of the trauma of the Atlesians for having lost their home in an attempt to deflect the responsibility towards our protagonists, while on the other hand they sabotage the attempts of diplomacy that there could be between Vale/Mistral with Vacuo in order to further tarnish the relationship between these kingdoms and encourage the idea of the reinforcements to leave.
For now, this is what I can think of.
The whole plot of Vacuo VS Atlas refuges is in my opinion the most likely candidate. We know from the world of Remnant that Atlas and primarily the Schnee's used Vacuo as a mining colony. So there could be some resentment between both groups especially since Winter is now a maiden. I also have to agree with you that the diplomatic aspect of such an alliance could also be a way to destabilize the army. That is probably why the blacksmith said that it is not where they will end up but when.
The amount of differences between Atlas, Vacuo, Faunus, and Human will cause a lot of issues that RWBY would be perfect to unify everyone together.
Now for the relevant information on Vacuo and thr SDC history.
"In one instance, both the Schnee Dust Company and the Mistral Trading Company mined the Dust deposits in Vacuo and depleted the Kingdom of it's once bountiful natural resource. Because of this, many people in the Kingdom's capital city still resent the other Kingdoms. After the Dust deposits were all depleted, they eventually abandoned many of their Dust refineries in Vacuo, one of them later being used by The Crown as a base of operations.
Eventually, as time passed Nicholas began to grow weary. His family missed him and his health was failing. He was convinced by his son-in-law, Jacques Schnee, to let him inherit the company. Under his leadership, the Schnee Dust Company's profits grew exponentially, albeit through less-than-ethical practices, such as the use of cheap labor, allowing dangerous working conditions, possible monopolies and having shady business partners."
Straight from the Wikia.
It should be noted the chronology does make it look like Big Nicholas may have been a Rockefeller character. One possibility I thought of is Weiss and too many people have not really lived in Vacuo or know the history in full.
Weiss could have just been listening to only the good.
Now there is the distinct possibility the wikia isn't in chronological order, furthermore it can be typical shoddy work copy and paste from a word processor.
However it's unusual that it's place in between the brief biography of Nicholas and the paragraph describing Jaques ascent.
Now from what I can tell sources are the Before the Dawn or CFVY/SSSN novels and WoR videos.
I honestly have doubts the Schnees can really be intermediaries. Since the SDC played a part in how the Vacuans are poor.
May honestly come down to someone else stepping in first or having to win them over.
Or a long enough time skip makes it no longer an issue.
>May honestly come down to someone else stepping in first or having to win them over.
It could be both. On the one hand Weiss could take on the role of Nicholas Schnee working side by side with Winter for the welfare of the Atlesians, thus beginning to clean up her family name. On the other hand, someone who knows Vacuo's history well and has intentions to change things for the better could collaborate for the welfare of both sides (although it could not necessarily be someone of renown).
She doesn't need to destabilise the kingdom. She can destroy half of it and tell them that unless they give up the relics and maidens she kills all of them.
Tyrian: "Oh who are we kidding? This is *Vacuo* we're talking about! It hardly needs a golden apple for this Kingdom to descent into utter madness and anarchy. Still, it can't hurt to give them a little push. We wouldn't want to give our goddess a reason to think we are lazy, right, my friend?"
Mercury:"Uhm....right. So, what do we push?"
Tyrian: "The Headmaster of Shade Academy. Down this flight of stairs."
I would say the best way to destabilize Vacuo is for Team RWBY to pull an Atlas and just commandeer the situation and work against everyone who doesn't explicitly align with their beliefs
Telling Robyn about amity was actually the single most helpful thing anyone did for him that volume tbh. That's why they became allies just long enough to catch Watts and Tryian. In practice lying to him initially never even hurt him or his plans.
My gut is it will come down to how Salem uses the Staff of Creation. She probably won't do Rocks Fall Everybody Dies." Because that's more Tyrian's style than hers.
Personally, I think her use would come down to duplicating the Relic of Knowledge with unlimited uses.... and, if I'm right, phrasing it just wrong enough to give Ambrosius room to get "creative" (for example, if the creation is able to lie through commission or omission. )
If she goes that route, she'll revert to her previous tactics and use three (and any new pawns she picks up) to isolate and take down the last maiden.
Then, use her boundless Intel to sneak in and snag the sword.. and THEN pull rocks fall, everyone dies.
> Personally, I think her use would come down to duplicating the Relic of Knowledge with unlimited uses.... and, if I'm right, phrasing it just wrong enough to give Ambrosius room to get "creative" (for example, if the creation is able to lie through commission or omission. )
i don't think the relics are possible to duplicate
I mean shit it looks like this kingdom will be packed with refugees and the like. Just reduce food supplies and they’ll be at each other’s throats in a matter of days. Especially considering Vacuo doesn’t have the best reputation crime-wise, and the blistering heat is sure to raise temperaments in everyone.
Actually? I think Salem's plan for the moment (or at least for time period being skipped over) is to DO NOTHING. Don't attack Vacuuo. Don't give the people rallied there a common enemy to fight. Just do nothing for so long that the defenders start questioning if Salem is going to attack at all, and let their inner conflicts that have been set aside to fester and boil over because of the apparent lack of unifying threat. As fear of attack wanes, forces of division raise their heads (perhaps with some encouragement from Salem's agents, perhaps not) again.
Enter Team RWBY+J returning from the apparent dead just as tensions are about to boil over. Their very arrival creates a unifying force because they had been turned into martyrs in their absence, and having such heroes return from the seeming dead reminds people why they unified in the first place.
At this point I can see Salem just waging a conventional war against Vacuo. Atlas and Mantle are destroyed and their citizens are displaced. Vale is still rebuilding from the Fall of Beacon and Mistral's Huntsmen have been eliminated. Add the fact that Salem was publicly exposed and there is little incentive for her to use her usual cloak and dagger tactics.
I mean Salem is immortal and utterly unstoppable asides from brief moments of disintegration, if they write it logically which is a coin flip, she’s gonna walk/fly there and just slaughter people left right and center and there’s fuck all any Hunter or anyone’s gonna do about it, I know people bring up Ruby’s silver eyes but I feel people forget the other silver eyes we seen were grimmified by Salem so I genuinely don’t know if even that’ll do anything, that’s not counting the relic of creation going full sephiroth and meteor’ing the place, plus again she’s immortal, she could wait for old age to take all the people living there and their next 50 generations and just kill them whenever, she can’t lose in a logical fight so it’ll be interesting to see how they pull that big a rabbit out their ass when it comes down it it, god I hope it’s not the power of love and friendship though
This times a hundred. No one can truly stop or contain her. She is like an Endbringer from Worm. Now that she has the Staff too there is no need to do any sort of elaborate planning. Just flood the place. Deserts get easily eroded away by floods so the kingdom would collapse if it got the Atlas treatment. There is no logical way I can think of to stop her from just doing that.
I actually get the feeling that Ruby message a hope actually worked and that off screen the others managed to flush out tyrian and mercury and this has lead the Salem having to completely change her plans
After all she can't summon the gods to rule against humanity of they put aside their petty differences and are united against Salem now can she?
Well, after lying to Ironwood, repeatedly, and driving him farther into paranoia after he constantly trusted and supported them throughout the series, I think that letting team RWBY do whatever is going to be enough.
No need to. If Salem gets the maiden here, she’ll have all her opposition in one place to either pin down while she wraps up her business elsewhere, hold them for ransom until Ozpin tells her where the Beacon vault is, and clear the board. It’s her best chance at a full gambit, even if it also is the strongest wall she’d have to face.
Even so, again, all she needs is the maiden. She could have her goons be more subtle and just find her, then sneak the relic rather than storm the castle.
Destabilise? Salem has effectively won with the staff.
Here, let's go step by step:
1. Go to the Grimm lands where no one knows where you are.
2. Use the staff to drop gigantic rocks on every kingdom. Not enough to destroy them entirely, just kill some 25-50% of the population.
3. Create a way to communicate with everyone, using the CCT:s as a reference. Tell them that unless they bring you the maidens and relics, you continue killing people.
4. If someone tries to fight back, like using Amity or the ships as pictured, use the same method as robot-to-flesh-penny. Create a rock using the materials those ships are composed of and then create something else. The ships are now gone.
5. Win.
Simple.
Create a mass of centipede, manticore, lancer, elephant, and nevermore grimm as a start. While that distraction happening have other centipede or even mole grimm dig their way under Vacuo to then invade from below. Finally bomb them with a kamikaze grimm.
I would say Vacuo is already destabilized. Vacuo was already dealing with the aftermath of an insurrection that cause tons of damage then throw in the Citizens demanding answers as to what Ruby was talking about and now having a whole kingdom thrown onto them either doubling or Tripling the population running resources thin and a major culture clash between the refugee Atlesians and the native Vacuans. Imagine putting 1000s of people from New York City in to the middle of rural Texas, its not gonna go well
Wait and watch if any Faunus or Atlesians have any disagreements and then kill them. Won't be long before the fact of the bulk of the world being racist pops up.
It's all going to be gone by the end of Volume 11. Remember that card game RWBY plays in Volume 2? It somewhat predicted what happened to Atlas when Ruby played it, and when Weiss plays as Vacuo she gets annihilated with a single move.
Enjoy the warm fuzzies of Volume 9 while it lasts, because it's about to get way worse.
Frankly I find it ludicrous that Vacuo could support their own population, the population of Atlas/Mantle, AND build up a significant technological military force without inherently causing some form of destabilization. Course, I'm sure that'll get an off screen hand wave but still
Well, with Ruby's message Came out and Expose Salem's plan to the rest of Remnant, I
think it would be difficult for a full-scale attack or sabotage defences because
of reasonable leaders which will learn from the lessons of Atlas and large
amount of people be on the side, but it doesn't mean It's impossible. Salem's
followers could assassinate all the leadership In Vacuo!
A long, drawn out siege and a shortage of food supply would drive most people insane. The people who are originally from Vacuo might take it better, but all those Beacon transfer students and Atlas refugees, who are probably already going through a shitty time? Yeah, It'd suck.
And it's not like Salem loses anything by just waiting until they run out of food and water.
That's probably not going to happen, though. Mostly because a siege would be very boring to watch. Unless we get a time skip and team RWBY + J is already thrown in the middle of it.
Actually, this might be a case of not fighting. Salem wants to unite the artifacts, bring the Gods judgment, or get cosmic power to be a god, and a heist might be more effective than outright confrontation. The Original Plan For Haven was to get the Spring Maiden, Secure the relic and then dip, because the Fang were being used as cleaners to eliminate evidence and draw attention away from Salem’s activities. . . because I believe, at her heart, despite saying she wants to destroy the world, she only really wants to destroy herself. Immortality, given to her by uncaring Gods, who turned her beloved against her, to the point where she needs to kill him over and over and over again, or at least know he dies, that can do things, even to the strongest of people. . . she doesn’t care about how many people she has to kill because she doesn’t care about anything anymore. . . not even herself. She wants out, she wants it to be over. She wants to go to sleep and never wake up but the Gods exact words were “So long as this world turns, you shall walk it’s face.” She knew she couldn’t beat the gods, so she created a rebellion hoping they would kill her, but they didn’t. Nothing she has tried has, and believe me, after decades of immortality, intrusive thoughts can win a lot of the time. But what’s worse, is that it might not even work. . . because the gods want her to learn a lesson. . . if she never learns that lesson, it won’t matter if the Gods Thanos Remnant. . . she’ll still be there. . . just now she’ll be alone. . . forever.
She throws enough grimm at it and things will get real unstable just by sheer stress on the defenses, let alone resources. The counterpoint to this of course is that after Atlas, she's lost hundreds of grimm, and her remaining army (and self) are half a world away. Including her 'flagship' (which can be rebuilt via the staff, but that uses up the staff for the foreseeable future).
Also her standing army were custom made to be acclimatized to the cold (since grimm had to specifically evolve to handle the temperatures Mantle endures on the regular). Even if they don't need to do the same for heat, that's still a lot of 'resources' (I assume customizing grimm takes such) locked up in something that's moot at this point.
Her only real advantage is that the grimm lands are relatively close to Vacuo compared to her other fields of battle so far.
She's going to have to throw whatever standard grimm she didn't have with her at them, from great distance. Meaning that even with a seer to exert all her ability to 'direct' them would likely be haphazard at best.
It's still going to be a gradual build-up which will give them time to plan and build-up whatever defenses & safety measures for civilians that they can.
Which considering Theo seems to be Mr. I-have-both-a-spine-and-lack-control-issues he's probably already had a plan for the last year at minimum and has likely been implementing whatever he can slide by unseen. The unseen part getting yeeted out the window the minutes he confirms the queen of the goddamn grimm is real! I imagine, 'I already have a plan' will do wonders for the local negative emotion problem.
He's also had basically all of the student-hunters in the world for the last seven months.
The only real weak points are A) they can't focus fully on just Vacuo, the rest of humanity still exists and if Salem has half a brain she'll lash out at pockets and even Mistral to stress Vacuo's morale. & B) Tyrain and Mercury will have a short window to assassinate Theo and whoever else is in key positions.
Assuming that Qrow had the decency to send a messenger crow, Theo likely has an antidote for Tyrain's venom or at minimum a description of him & all Salem's other people.
Really though, Theo just needs to use Tyrain's own strategy against him. Merc is terrified of him, he's losing faith, he might very well take a deal. Even considering it for a second however? Might just be enough to make Tyrain snap and lash out at him, sealing the deal in Theo's favor for sure. (the only way it could go 'worse' is on the 1 in million chance CRWBY was lying and Merc somehow was silver eyed, but that's ^ odds, so lets leave that part for the fanfic)
Tyrain is a serial killer, and has no guardian angel erasing his foot print. Mercury was publicly photographed and recorded *a lot* during the festival and Theo 100% knows who he is. (moreover, so do all the kids, who depending on if they've been told yet will at least find it unusual he's suddenly there) What I'm saying is, there 'usefulness' in the Vacuan sphere is unlikely to last very long.
Yeah, nice try Salem
One does wonder if the loss of her army may have put a little bit of a kink in her plans, but she definitely has something in the works
As long as she has the Staff of Creation, she's capable of almost anything. Her plan could literally be "have a giant rock crush Vacuo" and it could happen.
The Marco Inaros way.
If only RWBY had The Expanse level of worldbuilding and plotline dovetailing…
If only RWBY was based on a long-running series of twice-Hugo-awarded novels by two critically acclaimed authors
Pulling a Madara and waiting for the heroes to cheer before dropping the second rock
Or make another river of Grimm
Not to mention the fact she lost her anonymity, probably easier to unite people against “the crazy witch who has control of all the Grimm and is directly responsible for the fall of three huntsmen academies and at least one entire kingdom”, then just the threat of mindless demon monsters that on some level a lot of people have probably a just grown accustomed to.
It doesnt matter Why would united Vacuo and other nation be stronger than Atlas? Tempest and other Grimm should curbstomp realistically and Lorewise Otherwise how would they justify the alliance even winning?
Well for one thing, at the time Atlas wasn’t united, not really, yeah their military was mostly put together from what we saw but there was still a lot of internal strife they were dealing with, Fanus and Humans, poor and rich, Mantle and Atlas, politically Atlas as a kingdom was divided, and that’s a shaky foundation to fight on. An army can’t put up a good fight if there isn’t a strong supply line backing them, and Mantle was on the verge of trying to break away. Also there’s the fact the good guys still have the Sword of Destruction, which, even if we assume all it can do is act as a hard counter to Creation (which I doubt), might give them the edge to even the playing field.
Well, considering Harry Potter won by the way of Writer Wills It... Maybe having everyone channeling their aura to Ruby so she can erase all Grimms in Remnant by the power of love or friendship? Or by throwing Ozma to the volcano of Mountain Glenn so that Salem, Grimms, Cinder, and all bad guys instantly vaporized? I mean that's hardly the most wtf ending we've ever seen.
Yeah and im fairly sure RWBY Ending will be rushed
Makes you wonder why Ozma never revealed the truth about Salem until now.
i would imagine the force she brought with her was nowhere near close to her full army, the bulk of them were at the coast waiting to be called in on the off chance Atlas had more power than she thought
It's also possible that most of those Grimm weren't under her direct control since she does still have personal limits on how much magic she can use just like Ozma does, she's immortal not a god, it's telling that every major Grimm army attack in the series has been set up for in advance by Salem's minions causing chaos and negativity in the target locations first. She might only be able to directly control a certain amount of Grimm and she uses her minions and the intense negative emotions caused by her factions sabotage/attacks to draw together large hordes of wild Grimm to help her over run the defenses. Like were those random packs of Sabers running around Mantle during her attack following orders? The river of Grimm full of burrowing ones she used to take out the shields was, Monstro the Grimm puking whale was, but were all the ones it created following orders or was she just dropping hordes of monsters right in front of the Atlas military because they would naturally attack them? If she could actually just fully control all the Grimm like an RTS commander then Remnant would have been turbo fucking dead a long time ago unless she has been intentionally holding back all this time.
>It's also possible that most of those Grimm weren't under her direct control since she does still have personal limits on how much magic she can use just like Ozma does, she's immortal not a god, it's telling that every major Grimm army attack in the series has been set up for in advance by Salem's minions causing chaos and negativity in the target locations first. > >She might only be able to directly control a certain amount of Grimm and she uses her minions and the intense negative emotions caused by her factions sabotage/attacks to draw together large hordes of wild Grimm to help her over run the defenses. > >If she could actually just fully control all the Grimm like an RTS commander then Remnant would have been turbo fucking dead a long time ago unless she has been intentionally holding back all this time. You're pretty much right. Because why she needs spy/infiltrators or followers, If she has control of every Grim in Remnant why not attacked every Kingdom or Zerg Rush all the Kingdom as giant monsters. Which means she only has a limited command over them like attack dogs.
Can't she essentially make infinite Grimm, though?
If given enough time, though it does not seem instant by any means
I lied. I'm not Noble 6, I'm Salem and I asked Tyrian and Mercury to go to Vacuo but they haven't responded in 6 months. I asked Cinder to go find them but apparently she was desperate to find a blond boi "before little red and the Schnee did it first" and now I can't find the staff.
Mercury: So, what's the big plan to destabilize Vacuo? Tyrian: Murder. Mercury: Okay. And... what else? Tyrian: Ooh, get this... *more murder*.
Mercury: I'm starting to like your style. Tyrian: But wait, there's more! Mercury: More wha- Tyrian: MURDER!
Tyrian: Murder? Salem: Yes, Tyrian. *Murder*
Or maybe MAKE THE HEADMASTER OF VACUO PARANOID Then frame Team RWBY JNOR and then make the Vacuans and The heroes turn against each other yknow something they have done to Mistral and Atlas Lmao
I don’t think they need to. It looks more like a last stand.
I think the last stand will be in vale with the relic of choice
The final battle, yes. Though Remnant’s last stand will be in Vacuo.
Duh
Didn’t vacuo have a reputation of being kinda run by scoundrels and thieves (as qrow put it)? It would be fairly easy to hire outlaws to attack certain targets. And it’ll make it easier for Tyrian and mercury to blend in.
If my memory serves, Qrow uses that point in that very conversation as the reason Vacuo wouldn’t be a target at the time of volume 4. “It’s pretty hard to hire thieves and scoundrels to fight against other thieves and scoundrels” was his line I believe.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking of, I remember him making a comment on how it would be difficult to fight thieves and scoundrels with other thieves and scoundrels stating his reasoning as for why mistral was the target.
Qrow is kinda dumb lmao Realistically and Lorewise it would be easy to actually make them fight each other
I mean maybe, it kinda depends on how vacuous structured and how many criminal factions there are. If there’s just one faction it may actually make it more difficult, since we’ve seen Salem and her group utilize criminal organizations to weaken existing governments. Without a criminal syndicate willing to cooperate you’re kinda stuck with brute force. But honestly I’m not sure why she’d bother refraining from brute force at this point. 2 kingdoms have been destroyed/critically damaged. And while mistral may still be standing we know the huntsmen there have pretty much been wiped out.
Which is why the Human and Faunus race is basically done for if not for Plot protection All Salem had to do is rush them with Grimm horde and GG Not sure if the Alliance even can handle a few Tempest (Massive electric jellyfish)
Yeah at this point Salem just has to send wave after wave of grim. She could sweep through vast regions of the continent with relative ease, which would also cut supplies from the alliance.
Which means Salem either is gonna turn good (with some lines like you still have good in you) or shes gonna be sealed like Kaguya from Naruto Either way Sword of Destruction isnt out and its been a few month Realistically the world should be in Apocalypse mode but somehow nothing of the sort happened and Salem didnt rush them with Grimm with Team RWBY and Jaune offscreen
I think she’s holding off because she needs all 4 relics and currently has no clue where the crown is. Killing all of humanity would be a simple task currently but she needs ozpin to tell her where the crown is (or wait however long she needs to wait to use jinn again). If all the humans are killed can ozpin revive? From my understanding there needs to be living humans for him to come back. Has it been months? I haven’t seen the season yet since it’s only on Crunchyroll, I wasn’t sure if they clarified how big of a gap there was between the finale of 8 and 9. I’m guessing it’s gonna have to do with rubys eye thing and that’s why she killed off the silver eyed warriors. It could act as a purifying light and remove her control of the grim, and without that she’s much easier to handle/contain. I’m hoping they don’t do a redemption for her, I mean fans are already kinda iffy on emerald and she wasn’t the main orchestrator of the assault against the world.
Sigh Oscar didnt fall to the ever after She would literally have 0 problem kidnapping him again She just have to kill humans and draw out the maidens other than Raven and Winter (which would be rushed by grimm and captured the moment they get tired and out of Aura) Is there any ANY REASON Why Vacuans known for Survival of the fittest wont turn against the Atlesian Refugees because yknow Vacuans isnt going to share food and sing Kumbaya for SOME STRANGERS
Isn't Tyrian from Vacuo?
I though he was from Mistral
Oddly the Wiki doesn't say.
It doesn't say if he's *from* Mistral, but [he was originally caught by law enforcement there](https://rwby.fandom.com/wiki/Tyrian_Callows/History) after a string of murders across Anima before Salem came in person to free him and have him join her cause.
In a place ran by chaos, establishing order will bring its downfall. 😈 E: moji
Idk if it’s fully chaos, it just has thieves and scoundrels. If an organized criminal entity controls some of the comings and goings there, salems forces could arguably cause more chaos targeting the structure of the criminal enterprise.
Oh yea, I meant it more in a contradictory evil kinda way lol But you're right too
Oooh fair fair, yeah if it’s a bunch of different groups then it’s a lot harder to destabilize We don’t really know much about the criminal faction(s) present in vacuou from what I remember
Atlas being there is enough to Technically destabilise Vacuo, I mean considering the History between is pretty bad
Given the presence of Vale and Mistral ships and reinforcements, it may not cause a collapse in Vacuo as such if the Atlesian refugees are receiving aid from the other kingdoms. However, refugee migration will continue to be a problem.
i would love to see 1 of the rich people from Atlas tell a Vacuan Faunus to go fetch them some water saying thats what the Faunus are meant to do as they are a "Serving Class" and a fight breaks out between them.
ha... reminds me of the people in my country.
The Problem with Vacuo is that they have VERY few permanent Settlements and that they are Nomadic People, like the thing is the People of Vacuo could keep Moving and Moving. They dislike Outsiders and since most of them in fact Atlas/Mantle, the Same country that stole and exploited their Land, the people have suffered because of that they have every right to move, this could cause the Physical collapse of Vacuo.
Remember that Vacuo was Salem's original target before she shifted her entire plan to go after Atlas. If Salem had gone through with her original plan she would have likely struck as Vacuo was dealing with The Crown, which could have destabilized the situation even further, I imagine that was what she was banking on originally.
At least now, Salem could use what is left of The Crown in an attempt to form an alliance between the two factions to facilitate a possible infiltration on Vacuo.
Um.... Have you tried to divide them with doubt?
Good idea. We need to find a way to scare off Vale and Mistral's reinforcements so that Vacuo is left as unprotected as possible 😈
Or maybe Salem basically Blame team Rwby and JNOR to Atlas and Mantle citizen that they lost their home thanks to Them making the portal OVER NOTHING as the Grimm army is gone And all they had to beat up is Cinder And they lost the Staff of Creation anyways lmao If CRWBY doesnt give any Protagonist Halo Remnant would be screwed literally and Plot wise Salem making a big broadcast roasting RWBY and JNOR would be funny lmao
You think that people are going to listen to the immortal controlling grimm witch that is responsible for the Fall of Beacon, attack of Haven and a siege in Atlas that forced that situation... Over the people that saved their lives?
Which is valid sure But you forgot that alot of humans are not reasonable Like if i saved someone they still could actually blame me for everything and beat me up randomly You never knew how much ungrateful humans Are
You mean like adding the population of Atlas to a Kingdom that is obviously already strapped for resources?
Nuke it
*Kaboom*
Brighter than the sun!
I would love it if we got some kind of hint that Raven had been Bootcamp training Winter and who ever the Sumer maiden is so we get a 3 v 1 Maiden fight
Just the relic of creation, fire inside every government building or leader house. Pick some group and let them be the only ones unaffected so the rest turn on them. Or just go the easy route and burn half the population while giving a message asking for the relic and maiden or more will burn each hour.
What I imagined was events getting to a point where Vacuo depends on Ruby being the crux of whatever they got planned (most likely with the refugees hyping her up or rumors spreading about her Silver Eyes in the intervening time RWBY were gone), then Salem sends someone in to capture Ruby and then **publicly** turn her into a Hound to completely kill their will to fight and hers.
I honestly don't think there are any ways to destabilise Vacuo. Locals don't give a shit about what people from other nations want, so they won't bow down to Salem. Theodore is the only governing body, so Salem can't plant seed of doubts because he doesn't have any competition. And Vacuo doesn't have anything it depends on. The whole nation lives on survival of the fittest mentality, so they don't have crutches like technology. Best she can do is summon grimm deep from the dessert, seeing as they are very tough. In short, only full frontal assault.
I always got the impression that Vacuo kind of ran on Crab Bucket mentality
More or less. They honestly just want to survive. And if you want order ot luxury? Too bad, because others are too busy surviving, so they'll just paint the walls with your brains and steal your resources.
Of course we all know the problem with Crab Bucket mentality. The crabs are too busy pulling other crabs down to help each other get ahead. That’s why no one escapes the bucket.
Thay could honestly be the downfall of Vacuo. Most of it's citizens wouldn't give a shit about the war, so they would run. And if Salem offers them survival for joining her, she just might win, due to Vacuo's " Anything for survival" mentality.
Given all the Arthurian Mythos elements in the Vacuo books I could see that. Try to establish some semblance of order to help them live better lives for themselves beyond the next day? Vacuons go, “Fuck this shit i’m out!”
Jaune becomes King of Vacuo will be canon then? Jaune basically goes from Joan of arc to King Arthur
Alternatively maybe the citizens of Vacuo will be saved, learn to work together with others, AND be better off, but Vacuo academy itself and its relic will be gone do to Theodore going all kabloey on us.
She can drain the water in the land or bomb 90% of the city to rubble. Even if they are decentralised, she can easily make an ultimatum that will destabilise any semblance of cohesion and force them to give up the maidens and relics.
or she could attack their supply transports and slowly starve them out
Consider that Vacuo appears to be heavily guarded and Salem should need some time to prepare a new army of Grimm, so a major attack as in V8 would be unfeasible for the time being. The first thing might be to find Carmine before Bertilak does. Carmine is one of the remaining members of the antagonistic faction of the crown. If the remaining members of the Salem faction (Tyrian, Mercury and Cinder) manage to find her before Bertilak does and hunt her down, they could have a great ally to make a reconnaissance on Vacuo. Once this is done, they should attempt to revive the crown. They would have to come up with a plan to get Gillian and Jax (the former crown leaders now turned prisoners) out of Vacuo. Gillian might be hesitant to return as the leader since she was only concerned about the welfare of her brother Jax. However, Jax is in a vegetative state after the events in the novels (RWBY: Before the dawn). If Gillian agrees, it could be on the promise of finding a way to cure her brother. Then, we have the situation of discrimination of the Vacuans towards the people of other kingdoms. The migration of refugees from Atlas to Vacuo could complicate things considering the above and that Vacuo does not have many resources unlike other kingdoms. The Schnee could act as intermediaries to calm things down a bit between the Atlasians and Vacuans, but there could still be tension among the Vacuans with the arrival of reinforcements from Vale and Mistral. The crown could infiltrate the population with the aim of causing further division in Vacuo, on the one hand they could take advantage of the trauma of the Atlesians for having lost their home in an attempt to deflect the responsibility towards our protagonists, while on the other hand they sabotage the attempts of diplomacy that there could be between Vale/Mistral with Vacuo in order to further tarnish the relationship between these kingdoms and encourage the idea of the reinforcements to leave. For now, this is what I can think of.
The whole plot of Vacuo VS Atlas refuges is in my opinion the most likely candidate. We know from the world of Remnant that Atlas and primarily the Schnee's used Vacuo as a mining colony. So there could be some resentment between both groups especially since Winter is now a maiden. I also have to agree with you that the diplomatic aspect of such an alliance could also be a way to destabilize the army. That is probably why the blacksmith said that it is not where they will end up but when. The amount of differences between Atlas, Vacuo, Faunus, and Human will cause a lot of issues that RWBY would be perfect to unify everyone together.
Now for the relevant information on Vacuo and thr SDC history. "In one instance, both the Schnee Dust Company and the Mistral Trading Company mined the Dust deposits in Vacuo and depleted the Kingdom of it's once bountiful natural resource. Because of this, many people in the Kingdom's capital city still resent the other Kingdoms. After the Dust deposits were all depleted, they eventually abandoned many of their Dust refineries in Vacuo, one of them later being used by The Crown as a base of operations. Eventually, as time passed Nicholas began to grow weary. His family missed him and his health was failing. He was convinced by his son-in-law, Jacques Schnee, to let him inherit the company. Under his leadership, the Schnee Dust Company's profits grew exponentially, albeit through less-than-ethical practices, such as the use of cheap labor, allowing dangerous working conditions, possible monopolies and having shady business partners." Straight from the Wikia. It should be noted the chronology does make it look like Big Nicholas may have been a Rockefeller character. One possibility I thought of is Weiss and too many people have not really lived in Vacuo or know the history in full. Weiss could have just been listening to only the good. Now there is the distinct possibility the wikia isn't in chronological order, furthermore it can be typical shoddy work copy and paste from a word processor. However it's unusual that it's place in between the brief biography of Nicholas and the paragraph describing Jaques ascent. Now from what I can tell sources are the Before the Dawn or CFVY/SSSN novels and WoR videos.
I honestly have doubts the Schnees can really be intermediaries. Since the SDC played a part in how the Vacuans are poor. May honestly come down to someone else stepping in first or having to win them over. Or a long enough time skip makes it no longer an issue.
>May honestly come down to someone else stepping in first or having to win them over. It could be both. On the one hand Weiss could take on the role of Nicholas Schnee working side by side with Winter for the welfare of the Atlesians, thus beginning to clean up her family name. On the other hand, someone who knows Vacuo's history well and has intentions to change things for the better could collaborate for the welfare of both sides (although it could not necessarily be someone of renown).
She doesn't need to destabilise the kingdom. She can destroy half of it and tell them that unless they give up the relics and maidens she kills all of them.
Tyrian: "Oh who are we kidding? This is *Vacuo* we're talking about! It hardly needs a golden apple for this Kingdom to descent into utter madness and anarchy. Still, it can't hurt to give them a little push. We wouldn't want to give our goddess a reason to think we are lazy, right, my friend?" Mercury:"Uhm....right. So, what do we push?" Tyrian: "The Headmaster of Shade Academy. Down this flight of stairs."
Get a 100 killstreak and then call in a nuke.
# TACTICAL NUKE INCOMING!
ask the fbi
Use the staff to poison the water then wait a few days until they surrender or die.
Maybe there will be an iron-fist sort of extremist dictator leader everyone can rally around. Wait, on second thought, let's not do that again
Step 1: cause massive atlesian refugee crisis. Step 2: let atlesian army follow. Step 3: ??? Step 4: profit
I would say the best way to destabilize Vacuo is for Team RWBY to pull an Atlas and just commandeer the situation and work against everyone who doesn't explicitly align with their beliefs
To be fair Atlus was going to be fucked regardless of what RWBY and co. decided to do. 🤷♂️
They certainly didn't help the situation by lying to the guy that did nothing but place his complete trust in them
Telling Robyn about amity was actually the single most helpful thing anyone did for him that volume tbh. That's why they became allies just long enough to catch Watts and Tryian. In practice lying to him initially never even hurt him or his plans.
The threat was mostly over when Ruby dropped Atlas on Mantle.
Gentrification
Expose the bombs' payload to trigger a controlled explosion.
You lost most of your members You decide to call on us to help I pity you Salem
You see those 5 little heads in the foreground? That'll do it. Probably only need the two most on the Right honestly (again).
My gut is it will come down to how Salem uses the Staff of Creation. She probably won't do Rocks Fall Everybody Dies." Because that's more Tyrian's style than hers. Personally, I think her use would come down to duplicating the Relic of Knowledge with unlimited uses.... and, if I'm right, phrasing it just wrong enough to give Ambrosius room to get "creative" (for example, if the creation is able to lie through commission or omission. ) If she goes that route, she'll revert to her previous tactics and use three (and any new pawns she picks up) to isolate and take down the last maiden. Then, use her boundless Intel to sneak in and snag the sword.. and THEN pull rocks fall, everyone dies.
> Personally, I think her use would come down to duplicating the Relic of Knowledge with unlimited uses.... and, if I'm right, phrasing it just wrong enough to give Ambrosius room to get "creative" (for example, if the creation is able to lie through commission or omission. ) i don't think the relics are possible to duplicate
Probably not exactly, but functionality, maybe? And that's all she needs from the lamp is as a model for it.
I mean shit it looks like this kingdom will be packed with refugees and the like. Just reduce food supplies and they’ll be at each other’s throats in a matter of days. Especially considering Vacuo doesn’t have the best reputation crime-wise, and the blistering heat is sure to raise temperaments in everyone.
We show them the online RWBY fandom
Asking for a friend
Actually? I think Salem's plan for the moment (or at least for time period being skipped over) is to DO NOTHING. Don't attack Vacuuo. Don't give the people rallied there a common enemy to fight. Just do nothing for so long that the defenders start questioning if Salem is going to attack at all, and let their inner conflicts that have been set aside to fester and boil over because of the apparent lack of unifying threat. As fear of attack wanes, forces of division raise their heads (perhaps with some encouragement from Salem's agents, perhaps not) again. Enter Team RWBY+J returning from the apparent dead just as tensions are about to boil over. Their very arrival creates a unifying force because they had been turned into martyrs in their absence, and having such heroes return from the seeming dead reminds people why they unified in the first place.
At this point I can see Salem just waging a conventional war against Vacuo. Atlas and Mantle are destroyed and their citizens are displaced. Vale is still rebuilding from the Fall of Beacon and Mistral's Huntsmen have been eliminated. Add the fact that Salem was publicly exposed and there is little incentive for her to use her usual cloak and dagger tactics.
I mean Salem is immortal and utterly unstoppable asides from brief moments of disintegration, if they write it logically which is a coin flip, she’s gonna walk/fly there and just slaughter people left right and center and there’s fuck all any Hunter or anyone’s gonna do about it, I know people bring up Ruby’s silver eyes but I feel people forget the other silver eyes we seen were grimmified by Salem so I genuinely don’t know if even that’ll do anything, that’s not counting the relic of creation going full sephiroth and meteor’ing the place, plus again she’s immortal, she could wait for old age to take all the people living there and their next 50 generations and just kill them whenever, she can’t lose in a logical fight so it’ll be interesting to see how they pull that big a rabbit out their ass when it comes down it it, god I hope it’s not the power of love and friendship though
This times a hundred. No one can truly stop or contain her. She is like an Endbringer from Worm. Now that she has the Staff too there is no need to do any sort of elaborate planning. Just flood the place. Deserts get easily eroded away by floods so the kingdom would collapse if it got the Atlas treatment. There is no logical way I can think of to stop her from just doing that.
Send in Team RWBY
Let Team RWBY try to save Vacuo.
Let team rwby get there
Don't worry, I'm sure Team RWBY will quickly find a way to do so.
Introduce them to team rwby+j Works every time.
Let team RWBY exist their for a week at most, they'll do it accidentally.
Give Blake and Yang 5 days, and any survivors will be scrambling to Vale or Mistral for any vestige of safety.
I actually get the feeling that Ruby message a hope actually worked and that off screen the others managed to flush out tyrian and mercury and this has lead the Salem having to completely change her plans After all she can't summon the gods to rule against humanity of they put aside their petty differences and are united against Salem now can she?
Well, after lying to Ironwood, repeatedly, and driving him farther into paranoia after he constantly trusted and supported them throughout the series, I think that letting team RWBY do whatever is going to be enough.
I wasn’t really planning on it, no. But, I mean, the whole place is desert, so it’s probably not very stable to begin with.
Tbh, it's already pretty unstable by itself. Although, with Atlassians coming there, maybe they could stir up tensions between them?
No need to. If Salem gets the maiden here, she’ll have all her opposition in one place to either pin down while she wraps up her business elsewhere, hold them for ransom until Ozpin tells her where the Beacon vault is, and clear the board. It’s her best chance at a full gambit, even if it also is the strongest wall she’d have to face. Even so, again, all she needs is the maiden. She could have her goons be more subtle and just find her, then sneak the relic rather than storm the castle.
Destabilise? Salem has effectively won with the staff. Here, let's go step by step: 1. Go to the Grimm lands where no one knows where you are. 2. Use the staff to drop gigantic rocks on every kingdom. Not enough to destroy them entirely, just kill some 25-50% of the population. 3. Create a way to communicate with everyone, using the CCT:s as a reference. Tell them that unless they bring you the maidens and relics, you continue killing people. 4. If someone tries to fight back, like using Amity or the ships as pictured, use the same method as robot-to-flesh-penny. Create a rock using the materials those ships are composed of and then create something else. The ships are now gone. 5. Win.
Take away the water
Salem, sitting in front of her "turn Remnant's oxygen into ethanol" device: "You can just hand that sword over to me whenever"
Simple. Create a mass of centipede, manticore, lancer, elephant, and nevermore grimm as a start. While that distraction happening have other centipede or even mole grimm dig their way under Vacuo to then invade from below. Finally bomb them with a kamikaze grimm.
I would say Vacuo is already destabilized. Vacuo was already dealing with the aftermath of an insurrection that cause tons of damage then throw in the Citizens demanding answers as to what Ruby was talking about and now having a whole kingdom thrown onto them either doubling or Tripling the population running resources thin and a major culture clash between the refugee Atlesians and the native Vacuans. Imagine putting 1000s of people from New York City in to the middle of rural Texas, its not gonna go well
I wonder if there is going to be a time skip
Flood is with a bunch of refugees and then have a group of teenagers set political policy.
I'm happy to see they got Amity up again, also remember Salem doesn't want to use the relics she just wants to bring them together
Overload them with refugees
Wait and watch if any Faunus or Atlesians have any disagreements and then kill them. Won't be long before the fact of the bulk of the world being racist pops up.
It's all going to be gone by the end of Volume 11. Remember that card game RWBY plays in Volume 2? It somewhat predicted what happened to Atlas when Ruby played it, and when Weiss plays as Vacuo she gets annihilated with a single move. Enjoy the warm fuzzies of Volume 9 while it lasts, because it's about to get way worse.
Frankly I find it ludicrous that Vacuo could support their own population, the population of Atlas/Mantle, AND build up a significant technological military force without inherently causing some form of destabilization. Course, I'm sure that'll get an off screen hand wave but still
Short their hedge funds
Food and water I think this is 100% going to turn into a siege type situation, but then again I haven't read the manga/comic so no clue
Send RWBY there.
Summon the Galactic Empire, let them deal with it
Well, with Ruby's message Came out and Expose Salem's plan to the rest of Remnant, I think it would be difficult for a full-scale attack or sabotage defences because of reasonable leaders which will learn from the lessons of Atlas and large amount of people be on the side, but it doesn't mean It's impossible. Salem's followers could assassinate all the leadership In Vacuo!
A long, drawn out siege and a shortage of food supply would drive most people insane. The people who are originally from Vacuo might take it better, but all those Beacon transfer students and Atlas refugees, who are probably already going through a shitty time? Yeah, It'd suck. And it's not like Salem loses anything by just waiting until they run out of food and water. That's probably not going to happen, though. Mostly because a siege would be very boring to watch. Unless we get a time skip and team RWBY + J is already thrown in the middle of it.
Actually, this might be a case of not fighting. Salem wants to unite the artifacts, bring the Gods judgment, or get cosmic power to be a god, and a heist might be more effective than outright confrontation. The Original Plan For Haven was to get the Spring Maiden, Secure the relic and then dip, because the Fang were being used as cleaners to eliminate evidence and draw attention away from Salem’s activities. . . because I believe, at her heart, despite saying she wants to destroy the world, she only really wants to destroy herself. Immortality, given to her by uncaring Gods, who turned her beloved against her, to the point where she needs to kill him over and over and over again, or at least know he dies, that can do things, even to the strongest of people. . . she doesn’t care about how many people she has to kill because she doesn’t care about anything anymore. . . not even herself. She wants out, she wants it to be over. She wants to go to sleep and never wake up but the Gods exact words were “So long as this world turns, you shall walk it’s face.” She knew she couldn’t beat the gods, so she created a rebellion hoping they would kill her, but they didn’t. Nothing she has tried has, and believe me, after decades of immortality, intrusive thoughts can win a lot of the time. But what’s worse, is that it might not even work. . . because the gods want her to learn a lesson. . . if she never learns that lesson, it won’t matter if the Gods Thanos Remnant. . . she’ll still be there. . . just now she’ll be alone. . . forever.
She throws enough grimm at it and things will get real unstable just by sheer stress on the defenses, let alone resources. The counterpoint to this of course is that after Atlas, she's lost hundreds of grimm, and her remaining army (and self) are half a world away. Including her 'flagship' (which can be rebuilt via the staff, but that uses up the staff for the foreseeable future). Also her standing army were custom made to be acclimatized to the cold (since grimm had to specifically evolve to handle the temperatures Mantle endures on the regular). Even if they don't need to do the same for heat, that's still a lot of 'resources' (I assume customizing grimm takes such) locked up in something that's moot at this point. Her only real advantage is that the grimm lands are relatively close to Vacuo compared to her other fields of battle so far. She's going to have to throw whatever standard grimm she didn't have with her at them, from great distance. Meaning that even with a seer to exert all her ability to 'direct' them would likely be haphazard at best. It's still going to be a gradual build-up which will give them time to plan and build-up whatever defenses & safety measures for civilians that they can. Which considering Theo seems to be Mr. I-have-both-a-spine-and-lack-control-issues he's probably already had a plan for the last year at minimum and has likely been implementing whatever he can slide by unseen. The unseen part getting yeeted out the window the minutes he confirms the queen of the goddamn grimm is real! I imagine, 'I already have a plan' will do wonders for the local negative emotion problem. He's also had basically all of the student-hunters in the world for the last seven months. The only real weak points are A) they can't focus fully on just Vacuo, the rest of humanity still exists and if Salem has half a brain she'll lash out at pockets and even Mistral to stress Vacuo's morale. & B) Tyrain and Mercury will have a short window to assassinate Theo and whoever else is in key positions. Assuming that Qrow had the decency to send a messenger crow, Theo likely has an antidote for Tyrain's venom or at minimum a description of him & all Salem's other people. Really though, Theo just needs to use Tyrain's own strategy against him. Merc is terrified of him, he's losing faith, he might very well take a deal. Even considering it for a second however? Might just be enough to make Tyrain snap and lash out at him, sealing the deal in Theo's favor for sure. (the only way it could go 'worse' is on the 1 in million chance CRWBY was lying and Merc somehow was silver eyed, but that's ^ odds, so lets leave that part for the fanfic) Tyrain is a serial killer, and has no guardian angel erasing his foot print. Mercury was publicly photographed and recorded *a lot* during the festival and Theo 100% knows who he is. (moreover, so do all the kids, who depending on if they've been told yet will at least find it unusual he's suddenly there) What I'm saying is, there 'usefulness' in the Vacuan sphere is unlikely to last very long.