Accounts among scriptures hidden in the deepest of corners in the deepest of libraries refer to the Moon. Tribes of lang syne deemed it as a deity, uncorrupt, unsoiled, and untainted. It served them as a beacon of hope, one which would protect them from the twilight to the morn, as stark contrast to their savage world.
History tells through legends that the natives of the Northern Continent, without doubt, were the first to encounter what is now known as Dust, coarse and unrefined. They speak of a tribe that had set the tundra ablaze in an attempt fertilize the land, when an explosion took place. Most of the inhabitants scrambled away from the site, but a lone youth, curious about the cause of such event, did not, and managed to discover an array of red crystals. Mystified by this occurrence, the youth presented them to the tribe. However, the villagers were skeptical about such mere gems and proceeded to disown the child and his apparently nonsensical ramblings. It wasn't until the youth used the crystals to, quote on quote, "set fire to ice" that the tribe chief realized the importance of such discovery. In the following years, the village led a quest to further hunt after the now prized possessions. Society grew exponentially.
Across the planet, the first faunus, just like humans, emerged from Dust. In Vacuo, where animals are greatly revered, legends tell of their god, Rhodis, who had gone to for a walk the Northern Plains, looking for men to bless with gifts. He then happened upon a lone nomad who had gone to tend his cattle with his trusty dog, but was being tormented by "daemons". Furious at this distasteful happening, he obliterated said daemons, but stirred up a storm in the process. The pastor's herd had managed to successfully retreat to shelter, yet the pastor lay in the field with his dog in his hands, who had been struck by a stray lightning bolt and killed. Rhodis, immediately feeling guilty, bestowed the lad with the dog's conscience alongside the man's own, therefore having his friend with him for the rest of his life. Other versions of this legend tell of how the man received dog ears from Rhodis, and all the such. However, these chronicles only detail the story of this particular individual, and do not explain the emergence of other species of faunus.
Modern historians attribute these tales as being modified through generations and generations from the original circumstance, hypothesized to only had been the act of the pastor and his canine companion being struck by a lightning bolt, while coincidentally being on top of a Dust deposit, therefore in some way genetically merging the man with the dog. Before declaring this as ridiculous, please bear in mind: semblances appeared through the same way. However, we must not get sidetracked. That is a tale we may reserve for another day.
Five hundred years later, as the newly established Kingdom of Atlas, with its capital being the existing village of the same name, grew in size and influence throughout the years, it set itself on a path for colonization. The first true hunters and huntresses, blessed by the Atlesian King, led the charge through the seas looking for land and riches. It was then where they encountered a massive landmass, bigger than any previous encountered before, and they christened it Vytal, in the name of King Eustace Vytal XI. In the following years, numerous expeditions were sent into the mainland in the hunt for an ideal place to settle, and they resulted as fruitful. A beautiful sierra in Eastern Vytal provided the perfect place to populate, and the Colony of Vale was founded, a merely 90 years after its mother kingdom was erected. With ingenious uses for Dust they managed to hold their stand against the creatures of Grimm, and built a system of walls modeled after the ones in their hometown (albeit, a more rustic version), predecessors to the ones we venerate so much today.
However...aside from the Grimm, they were not alone.
Vacuo. What was previously an arid desert had become a thriving empire, inhabited by the numerous descendants of the nomads first explained in the earlier-discussed legend. They too had harvested the power of Dust and had build a massive metropolis (or whatever you could call it in that time), plenteous in plantations and interlacing canals, and abodes and temples to Rhodis. However, only in more recent times had the populate be able to explore beyond the desert both protecting and hindering them. It was a feeling of curiosity for the unknown what drove them...unfortunately.
The First Encounter is recorded from the many perspectives of the many that were present. However, one that is found as the most accurate and realistic comes from the pages of a journal belonging to a young squire by the name of Xander Everett, currently held in the Vale Museum of Humanity. Translated from Old Mantlese, reads as such:
"Of the forty or so men that came with us on this trip, only fifteen are left, the ones missing either being eaten, murdered, or just brutally mauled by the Grimm; or left behind to their mercy, for we couldn't afford to carry useless, cowardly meat. Even so, I feel sorry for all of them, for they will never see what I have seen this day. I stand now in the middle of a clearing where the forest turns into desert, trying to communicate with a group of men of which we have never met before. Even Lord[illegible], normally a serious and antipathetic leader, has become like child riddled with questions, trading our measly belongings for things that they probably find measly as well. It is truly a blissful feeling. Luck has blessed us dearly."
Oh, it surely did. It surely did indeed.
Jumping forward approximately 550 years, Remnant is in a period of apparent peace. The three kingdoms, Atlas, in Mantle; Vacuo, in Western Vytal; and a third kingdom established not long after the First Encounter in Southern Vytal by former inhabitants of both Vale and Vacuo, with the name of Paragon. Aerial travel had been envisioned and communications between the continents became closer and stronger. However, racial clashes between the faunus and the natural Atlesians, which resulted in the faunus deportations to Menagerie, threatened to shake up the foundations of such communications. Added to this fact, the monopolistic Strum Syndicate, Remnant's largest Dust producer, amid massive backlash from the population, had initiated ambitious plans of mining the newly-discovered, massive Dust deposits in Remnant's Moon.
That is how peace, as all good things, eventually came to an end.
The Syndicate did all it could to protect its facilities from the hydrogen concentrations with their overcomplicated security measures and ridiculous procedures, but when you are dealing with highly-flammable Red Dust, said security is never guaranteed. And so, on the Fifth Day of the Eighth Month, on the year 1153 after the Enlightenment, for circumstances still unascertained, an explosion irradiated the cosmos, and the kingdom's shackles were fastened, for the moon, so uncorrupt, unsoiled, and untainted as it had been, was no more.
Effects of the Moon's defilement were felt immediately throughout the planet. The tides were utterly devastated, and with Atlas and Vale lying on lowlands, they were almost completely overrun by the rising waters. The other kingdoms were not spared in the slightest. Paragon was buffeted by debris showers, pummeling its buildings and shelters and reducing them to a mere carcass of their former glory. Vacuo suffered an even more calamitous fate, for one of the biggest lunar fragments fell upon their capital's eastern district, wiping out its population completely. All eyes fell upon the Strum Syndicate, that as paranoia, rage and pain grew by the day, had hidden itself behind Atlas's shield.
Paragon was the first to snap. In a violent blitzkrieg, its troops penetrated the walls of Vale, brutally slaughtering any citizen that dared to hamper their cause. They then proceeded to usurp the viceroy, installing a puppet government and cutting all connections with the motherland. Atlas, of course, did not take this lightly.
It all started with the racial cleansing. The Royal Police was given the commission to remorselessly annihilate every Paragonese immigrant in the kingdom. The few ones that managed to escape were either eliminated by the ever-multiplying amount of Grimm, or accomplished to do so, only to have to erase all traces from their previous lives.
Then came the airstrikes. Atlas stealth airships slid through the radar into the already-devastated Paragon and conducted the biggest bombing campaign ever known to mankind. It was such an overwhelming feat of power that the influx of heinous emotions prompted the creatures of Grimm to tear down the walls, ravaging every human in their way, conscious or unconscious, to satisfy their never-ending thirst for blood.
In the midst of the war, Valic insurrectionist groups initiated an underground training camp mimicking the hunter academies in Vacuo, Atlas, and Paragon, baptizing it with a rather fitting name by the time: Beacon. In time, proper Valic hunters not wishing to support either the Atlesian or Paragonese armies found their way to said camp, not to shut it down, but to further hone the participants of such. These first batch of future hunters were challenged extensively and firmly, and it paid off. However, they would not be important for at least four years.
Throughout the six years of war, all diplomatic treaties between the three kingdoms fell irrelevant. Great hunger emerged among the populace, which, added to the hectic stress of the war and the tripling amount of Grimm, proved as too much for most people. Thousands of citizens, estimated figuring around 25,000 to 40,000, fled the kingdoms towards the Eastern Continent. Only about 13,000 survived the voyage. These managed to form a society based on agriculture and mining, and succeeded in establishing the Principality of Mistral.
The first five years of war lay the seeds for a chiliad of grave events, much of which are still narrated today in the lore of our kingdoms' past. However, it was the war's last year which arguably presented the most game-changing events. On the Seventeenth Day of the Fourth Month of the year 1159, the Valic Coup d'État took place on the hands of the Beacon hunters. Non-Valic soldiers left aghast by the sudden change of events and fell short to contain the men and women clashing to take control of the City Hall. In a relatively short span of time, neither the Atlesian or Paragonese armies had control over any military equipment on the newly declared Kingdom of Vale, one who had immediately received complete and utter support from the Principality of Mistral.
Having a completely new member in the playing field holding about forty percent of the mass of the Royal Atlesian Army's assets posed a rather preoccupying scenario to the already battered down kingdom. As such, in as short as 45 days, the Kingdom of Atlas had prepared an accord, proposing it to the Kingdom of Paragon. Yet, when the Atlesian representatives reached said kingdom to present such accord, they encountered the direful happenings its population had been going through. Its capital lay in utter ruins, with most of its citizens having either left for the "much rumored Eastern Kingdom" (possibly perishing in the way) or emigrated to a quickly-recuperating Vacuo. What was left of "Paragonese Army" as to speak, was no more than random guerrillas with sabotaged equipment trying to win a war that was lost since the beginning. As such, the Treaty of Paragon was signed between Vacuo, Vale, and Atlas, and the Great War, after claiming fifty million lives, came to a bitter end.
In the next ninety years, Remnant transformed itself into what it is today. Shortly after the Great War, Atlas gifted the CCT to the newly-united kingdoms of Vale, Vacuo, Atlas, and Mistral as a measure so nothing like the war they had just gone through would happen again. And it didn't. Sure, mankind has had the short Faunus Wars (which most people don't even call a war in itself), the collapse of Mountain Glenn, and most recently the White Fang, but it has continued to trod on against all and any adversity, with its soldiers and hunters.
And yet...humanity is so sinful...and so unstable... They are rancorous. Some might argue they fight so well because it is the only thing they know how to do. What about when there is nothing else left to fight? What then? Will another Great War emerge?
Oh, and one last thing. As for the Strum Syndicate, it only took some whitewashing and bribing to erase Lord Strum's second last name from any source. All its assets were then...transferred to a corporation that had proven capable enough to carry them.
The Schnee Dust Company. One could say that they popped out of nowhere.
This is a tale of strife and horror...a tale of vengeance and wrath...a tale of broken friendships and evils...and here, oh reader mine, is where it all begins.
Author's Notes
So, this idea flushed into my head a while ago. The RWBY Universe has a lot of potential, and intend to use it.
I'm going to be focusing on this story from now on. Didn't really like where Bemoanings was going.
Yeah...this is going to be a rollercoaster.