For those of you who don't know much about RWBY, this will be an infodump about Remnant. For those of you who do, this will be an infodump about what the Undersiders know about Remnant. For both, there's some characterization and headcanon explanation.


Welcome to Remnant 0.5

Lips

Aisha relaxed for the first time in days. Weeks, maybe. The Nine didn't leave a lot of breathing room for anyone, and the world didn't want to give her a chance to breathe. Then Dragon and Coil and Noelle and the weird demon things…but right now, the world was giving her a chance to relax.

The others were taking this various shades of badly, but Alec and Aisha were fine. They didn't leave much behind. Games and computers, cash and infamy, all those material things. Yeah, that sucked big time, but not that big, you know? One thing the two of them had in common was a fucked-up family. Alec was raised by a supervillain, Aisha was raised by a…well, mostly by Brian, if she was honest, and he was usually with Dad, who she saw sometimes but never really bonded with. Neither Aisha nor Alec had many roots in Brockton Bay, and most of them got brought here.

All things considered, things were fine for Aisha. Aside from the broken leg, and the fact that her friends were all miserable. And that they were at pretty much constant risk of being killed by demon boar-bird-things. Or maybe these people. If there was one thing being an Undersider taught Aisha, it's that paranoia is always a safe bet.

Not that Aisha had to try hard to get paranoid. The room had a couple windows in it, but they resembled what you might expect in a military base or prison or maybe a PRT building, more than a house. In case that wasn't bad enough, there wasn't much else in the way of decoration; the room was simple and practical and boring. Also a bit crowded. Seven teens in a room made for one doctor, a couple patients, and maybe a visitor or assistant was tight for those unlucky enough to not get a bed. Sabah and Lily were sitting in one corner, Taylor was leaning on a cabinet next to Brian, Rachel sat near the door, and Alec was standing in the middle of the room, pacing a bit. Lisa was still getting the atlas.

"How long's it been?" asked Rachel.

"We still don't have watches," Alec said. "How would we know?"

"I don't know! It's just…how long should it have been?"

"Don't worry," Brian said. "She's not stupid. If something bad happened…would happen to her, she'd figure it out before it was too late and get us."

"Unless it was a monster attack or something," Alec said. "Raar."

Taylor shook her head. "If the village was about to be attacked, I'd probably notice them. If there was an attack underway, all of us definitely would."

"And Lisa would notice before anyone else," Lily added. "She..."

Rachel shrugged. "I guess. But why is she taking so long?"

"We don't know," Taylor said. "Maybe she's delaying, trying to get some impressions of what this place is like. Maybe she found someone important, and is trying to get him more likely to like us. Maybe this Oak's house is really, really far away. We don't know, and I don't think it matters that much. She'll come back, sooner or later, and we'll figure out what to do from there."

Rachel nodded.

A few more minutes passed, everyone still brooding a bit over everything going on. Or maybe several—like Brian had said, they didn't have watches, and there was no clock in the room. Aisha heard a door open, footsteps, then the door to the room opened. In came Lisa, carrying a large book.

"Thanks for all the help, Ms. Acea."

"It was my pleasure. Is there anything else you need?"

"I think a little time to talk things over with just my friends would help right now."

"Well...alright. Sure you don't need you head looked at?"

"I probably just need to rest, I'll be fine."

"Well…Let me know if you need anything else."

"Of course." Acea left the room.

Lisa closed the door behind the doctor. "First off," she said, "she's just in the next room, listening in case we decide we need something, or if someone starts screaming in pain, or whatever, so keep it down. Especially if it is about…"

"Anything dangerous?" suggested Taylor.

"Yup. Second off, names."

Brian frowned. "Names?"

"Why can't we use out normal names?" asked Rachel. "Who'd know us?"

"Well, to start with, the four we introduced ourselves to in the forest. But we only told them our first names, which is good. I got a general hunch about the names around here, what people expect from names."

"What do you mean?" Sabah asked.

"Well...you know how you wouldn't expect a German to be named Jean Valjean or someone from Japan to be named Shaun Jones? The names here follow patterns, too. The biggest one, the one I've been able to definitely identify, is color. First: Aster Acea, next room over. Asteracea is some kind of plant, and what kind of clothes is she wearing?"

Sabah spoke up. "Um, her dress is mostly like a wrap dress, but the sleeves remind me more of a shirtdress, and the—"

"Sorry," Lisa said, "I wasn't specific. What color is she wearing?"

"Mostly green," Sabah said. "Some yellow."

Lisa nodded and held up one finger. "Now, remember little miss Aurelius, the little girl we passed on our way into the village?"

"Aurelius is the Latin word for gold," Alec said, rolling his eyes. "And she was wearing yellow and brown. The brown was probably dirt, does that count?"

Lisa held up a second finger, ignoring Alec's question. "Does anyone want to guess what color Oak's clothes were?"

"Brown?" Brian said. "Maybe green?"

Lisa smiled and held up a third finger.

"There were a lot of others. I stopped to chat with as many people as I could, get their names. The hunter guy in red and blue? Raul Sangua. Surname is a mixture of sangre and agua, blood and water. Little girl in pink, name Lily. Big gray guy, name Remus."

"That's...odd," noted Lily. "Why do they do that?"

Lisa smirked. "Well, on the bright side, the PRT still thinks I'm omniscient."

"Bad news," Aisha said, we're screwed if anyone cares about out names."

"Not necessarily." Lisa pointed to herself. "Lisa. I remember reading that 'lis' means 'fox' in Portuguese or Polish or something." She pointed at Sabah and Lily in their corner. "Lily, a flower. Sabah, do you know what your name means?"

"...Sunrise, I think. Or sunshine."

Lisa nodded. "Good." She continued pointing her finger. "Brian, brown. Unfortunate, but it's there. Aisha, ash, which is gray."

"Is the color-name-thing really that arbitrary?" Alec asked.

"Seems so. And Rachel means 'ewe'."

Rachel looked Lisa and frowned. Alec started to crack up.

"Like a sheep."

Rachel glared at Lisa, and then at Alec, who burst out laughing. After a few seconds, someone knocked on the door.

"Everything's alright," Lisa said. "Laughter's the best medicine. We could use a bit more, and we've still got stuff to sort out."

There was a pause, and in the quiet everyone heard Acea walk away. After a moment, the conversation resumed, a bit quieter.

"Right. Perhaps not the best fit for her, but it fits her clothes."

"I see," Brian said. "And what about me? My clothes are black, not brown."

"I also notice you've left out Taylor and our most esteemed member," Alec said.

"Luckily, surnames work, too. Hey, I don't make the rules, I just observe them. The question is, what names would work?"

"Blanche," Alec said immediately. "It means snow. Unless you can think of anything meaning 'smart' or 'the Great' that would fit white?"

Lisa snorted. "If I did, I wouldn't inflict it on the world."

Alec turned to Rachel. "See, it's because if you—"

"I'm not an idiot. You are."

"Oh. What an incredible burn. It hurts."

"Shut up."

Taylor glanced out a window. "What about me?"

"Do you see something?" Lisa asked.

"No."

"I was thinking maybe 'Violet' for your false surname," Lisa said, "but that's not quite right—"

"It works. Fits, I think. We can always just say my clothes faded and get different ones, if it comes up."

Lisa nodded. "I'm thinking Brian and Aisha should take on the false surnames of Sturm, which should help deal with similar problems Brian has. As for the rest...not important, I suppose, but 'Wilbourn' and 'Lindt' don't really fit this world. Well, Lindt kind of does, but it's not the kind of association you'd want in a world where names seem to mean a lot more than just something to call people by."

"How sure are you?" Taylor asked. "Of all of this, I mean."

"Of colors, maybe eighty-five percent. Of how important names are...forty or fifty, but better safe than sorry. And now, for the part you all came here for."

Lisa opened the book she had brought in to one of the first pages. "This is Remnant, the world where we find ourselves."

It was a map of what Aisha assumed was the whole world. She identified five or six continents, or maybe only three if the one in the north and the one in the southeast were just big islands and the continents in the east were considered just one, like some people thought North and South America were. Out of those three continents, the two little ones looked more like dragons standing on rocks than actual continents. Even the not-dragon-looking ones looked weird; Aisha was pretty sure coastlines shouldn't be so jagged, and the orientation of the island chain things looked weird, too.

Lisa pointed to the big continent, the one that didn't look like a dragon on anything. "This is Vytal, the continent we're on. It has two kingdoms, Vale and Vacuo," she said, pointing to each kingdom's capital. "There are two other kingdoms, Atlas and Mystral. See these dotted lines?"

"Borders?" Lily guessed.

"Nope. The kingdoms are literally just the single cities. Technically, at least; they have close ties with nearby towns and such, even though they aren't technically bound to the kingdoms by fealty or constitutions or anything."

"So, the kingdoms are just a city each?"

"Basically. The dotted lines are the approximate boundaries of the 'Civilized Zone' around each kingdom. Huntsmen in the kingdoms patrol those areas and deal with any Grimm threats they find. Beyond that are the Wilds, with the occasional wild town or village, beyond the typical protection of the kingdoms. That's where basically everyone's assuming we're from, so our stories will need to work with that. Luckily, smaller wild settlements get destroyed and built pretty frequently, so we shouldn't have too much to worry about from that."

Lisa turned several pages. "This is the area around Vale. This is where we are," she explained, pointing to a spot near the dotted line. "We probably showed up around here, so it would probably make sense to say our village was around here. I'm thinking next to this stream and this mountain. Sound good?"

No one spoke up. After a moment, Lisa pushed the atlas to the side. "We'll need to have a reason to have left...but like I said, those towns get destroyed a lot, so we can just say our village got smashed and we ran. Simple. But next on Remnant 101, Huntsmen. They're warriors who fight monsters called Grimm. We met a few Grimm on the way here, I don't think I need to remind you. There's a lot more than two kinds, and I get the impression that they get a lot bigger and nastier than the boar one we fought. It's called a boarbatusk, by the way. Not sure you caught that."

"Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that the thing that almost beat us, would have beat us if we didn't have someone who can hurt Endbringers on our side, was a little one? That's fu—"

Taylor glared at Alec. "Keep your voice down."

"Yes, mom."

"I'm not sure my bolts actually hurt Leviathan," Lily said.

"Well, that changes—"

"On the note of Endbringers," Lisa said, "the big ones definitely aren't on their level. The people here don't show any signs of the specter of impending apocalypse which everyone back home feels.

"The Grimm are hunted by Huntsmen. They're a bit like knights, I think. They don't all have noble birth or whatever, but most are born to rich families—upper-middle class or higher, by our standards. They're trained from a pretty early age, probably starting by the time puberty starts at the latest, and their weapons use 'folding-frame' technology. I don't know what that is, but from what I do know, it sounds complicated and expensive. There's also people who aren't technically Huntsmen, who didn't get trained at a Huntsman school and usually don't have a Huntsman's folding-frame weapon, but still hunt the Grimm. If Huntsmen are knights, these would probably be mercenaries or elite soldiers or something. Our quartet falls into that category, I'm guessing."

Aisha frowned. "Um, what?"

"Lisa means the four people who tried to save us," Rachel said.

"I dunno about you," Alec interjected, "but I feel safe. Not as safe as before I learned we almost got killed by a baby Grimm, but still safe."

"Moving on," Lisa said, "remember the pink girl I mentioned? She had mouse ears."

Alec frowned. "Uh…you mean, like, there's a Disney World here, right, not…furries?"

"Well, the ears are furry, just like normal mouse ears. And she's not alone. Her parents have mouse ears, and from Aster's reaction when I asked about them, they're pretty common. They're called faunus, and I don't think they're all mice."

Aisha sighed. "Okay…that's just weird. Someone pinch me, I don't like this dream."

"They're real. Keep—"

"Ow! I wasn't serious!"

"Keep an eye out. Let's see…names, kingdoms, Grimm, Huntsmen, faunus. Ah, I've got it. Dust." They way she emphasized the word, Aisha figured she wasn't talking about the kind that got everywhere and turned into bunnies.

"Dust?"

"Yup. Passed by the general store, noticed what I thought was powdered gems or something until I realized it was glowing. It's called Dust, and apparently it's so ubiquitous that everyone's expected to know about it. That reminds me, if anyone asks, I got hit in the head with a branch about an hour and a half before we met the Huntsmen."

"What is the dust?" Lily asked. "Why was it glowing?"

"Like I said, I'm not omniscient. I'm leaning towards it being used as some kind of power source, but that's still speculative. Whatever it is, there's not much call for it right here, but some Huntsmen use more or less raw Dust and it's apparently useful for improvising things if you're very careful and a bit desperate. Don't know much more just yet."

Taylor cleared her throat. "Let's summarize. Some of us need to change our names, because our real names would stand out. This world has four kingdoms, which are just cities, and which have monster hunters called Huntsmen, who hunt monsters called Grimm, like the ones that attacked us. Their folding-frame weapons sometimes use Dust, which is important for other things. Anything else?"

"Yeah," Lisa said, "but nothing I've found out yet. Anyone else feel like dinner?""