Alright, here is another World of Remnant segment, this time about the team of new characters that were introduced at the very end of the previous chapter. Together, they are known as Team GALE, a group of Huntsmen and Huntresses from Shade Academy in Vacuo, somewhat mirroring Ozpin and his inner circle of Qrow, Glynda, Port, and Oobleck at Beacon Academy, and to a certain lesser extent also mirroring Team RWBY. This is a chapter I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I put a lot of thought into designing Team GALE and coming up with their character traits and the themes behind their names.
Ever since their founding after the conclusion of the Great War, Remnant's four great Huntsman academies have gone on to produce many Huntsmen and Huntresses of exceptional skill and renown. There is one team of Huntsman in particular from Shade Academy that has gained much notoriety in recent years, the Huntsman team known as Team GALE. Located halfway across the world from Vale in the Kingdom of Vacuo is Shade Academy, often considered by many to be the sister academy to Beacon, which it shared good diplomatic relations with before it fell. In fact, the two academies are often said to share many similarities with each other, most notable of all being the traits of its students and staff.
As the superstition goes, it is often thought that nearly everyone alive has someone out there in the world who they share a nearly identical existence with, their lives often mirroring each other and following down similar paths. These doppelgangers if you will could be considered kindred spirits, yet through fate they will never meet, and will likely never know of the other's existence, all while still living parallel lives. One of these such parallel existences is reflected in the lives of the members of Team NDGO of Shade Academy, who share many similarities and traits with our heroes in Team RWBY, even though the two have never actually met before. These similarities also extend to some of the teachers of Beacon and Shade, with the lives of those who taught Team NDGO also mirroring the lives of who taught Team RWBY. These teachers at Shade Academy who were responsible for the training of Team NDGO are none other than the members of Team GALE.
Taking a look into their lives, the first and most prominent of Team GALE would likely be the Huntress Aurora Gayl, one of the chief instructors of Shade Academy. A favored teacher among the students of Shade, her infectiously happy and charming personality, as well as her energetic and carefree attitude, has won her the love and adoration of a great many students there. Being somewhat of a headmaster to Shade Academy, Aurora has many responsibilities and duties that she must often attend to, but even so she still finds time for leisure and relaxation, and could usually be found participating in her hobby of tending to the large hanging gardens of the academy and harvesting their fruits and produce.
Another well-known fact about Aurora that many of the students at Shade are aware of is the existence of her daughter Dew Gayl, who as a result of her mother's fame and popularity has become one of Shade Academy's most revered star students, along with the other Huntresses that compose Team NDGO. Although being an illegitimate child, Aurora still loves her daughter very much, and the two share a very close relationship. There was however one secret about Aurora that was even more well-kept than the nature of her daughter's parentage, and that secret was the fact that Aurora is actually one of the four Maidens of the Seasons, having become one in recent years after the previous Maidens had passed away. Aside from Aurora, the members of her team who act as her protectors are among some of the only people who are aware of her secret, although her daughter Dew has begun to suspect that there is something is special about her mother.
In person, Aurora may not seem like much of a fighter, but when provoked she could assume a serious persona and would show no mercy to her enemies and anyone or anything that would try to hurt those she cared about. When not using her Maiden powers in battle, Aurora would resort to the use her personal weapon Nightshade, a small and modest-sized weapon that could change between the form of a semi-automatic pistol or a razor-sharp dagger laced with a deadly poison.
Moving on to the next members of Team GALE, there was the Huntsman Leon Roland and the Huntress Eclair Mauveine, who like Aurora were both also instructors at Shade Academy. While he was a loyal and caring friend, many of the students of Shade often thought of Leon Roland as being one of the strictest and most iron-clad instructors there, his personality matching with his earth-based Semblance. Eclair Mauveine on the other hand, while not as strict of an instructor as Roland was had a very sharp, witty, and reserved personality, fittingly reflected by her own lightning-based Semblance. The final member of Team GALE and the next most prominent was Giorno Gayl, the twin brother to Aurora Gayl, as well as an instructor at Shade and the official leader of Team GALE.
Due to her usually carefree and nonchalant attitude, Aurora believed herself to be unsuited for the role of being a team leader, feeling that she lacked the ability to properly lead a Huntsman team on missions, and instead she allowed her more calm and collected brother Giorno to take on the role. Among all of those close to her, perhaps nobody else in the world knew Aurora better than Giorno did, and the two shared a very close bond with each other, both in battle and in their everyday lives. This bond between them also extended to Giorno's niece Dew, who he was almost like a father-figure to, having helped to raise her and then eventually helping to train her in the ways of becoming a Huntress, with Dew even adopting his fighting style of using a spear in battle. Unlike Dew's spear however, Giorno's own weapon was an unusual one, being an ancient spear that seemingly granted him the ability to control the wind. This power, coupled with Giorno's own natural wind-based Semblance, an ability that many members of the Gayl family shared, including his sister and niece, made him a truly formidable opponent. When working together with Aurora while she used her Maiden powers to amplify her Semblance, the two formed a nearly unstoppable duo in battle.
As for the origins of Giorno's weapon, that was a mystery in and of itself, along with the weapons of his teammates Leon and Eclair. The story goes that after becoming stranded in the desert during a mission gone wrong, the three of them had lost all of their weapons and equipment, while Aurora on the other was fortunately able to hold onto hers. After trekking through the desert for quite some time, they eventually arrived at a small town located in the middle of an oasis where they were able to be rescued. While they spent time in this town, the four of them had come across a merchant there who specialized in the sale of ancient and rare artifacts, and from him Giorno, Leon, and Eclair were able to buy three new weapons to replace the ones they had lost. Little did they know, and as soon come to find out, these three weapons that they had purchased from the merchant were far from ordinary. In fact, they possessed many unique qualities and strange powers, some of which bordered on the mystical. As it turned out, these three weapons that they now wielded were actually three of the twelve Legendary Weapons of Remnant, which many had thought to be lost to history. To find even one of these weapons was incredibly rare, even more so to find three of them in the same place at the same time. As it turned out, even the merchant had been completely unaware of the true nature of the weapons he had sold them.
The members of Team GALE quickly became very fond of these new weapons, and after rigorously training their auras they were eventually able to master the strange powers of the weapons. Aurora however found that she was unable to wield any of the three weapons, as it seemed that powers of the Grimm within them were incompatible with the powers of a Maiden that she carried within her, and thus she was unable to bond with them, and as a result was rejected by all of them. The weapons themselves were quite powerful, and each one of them possessed a unique elemental ability that served to further augment the Semblances of their wielders. The first of these weapons was wielded by Giorno, the spear known as Gungnir, which had been forged from the talon of a very large Nevermore Grimm, imbuing it with the ability to control and manipulate the winds. The second of these weapons was wielded by Leon, a large curved broadsword named Durendal that had been created from the tusk of an uncharacteristically vicious and aggressive Goliath Grimm, imbuing it with the ability to control and manipulate the surrounding earth. Finally, the third weapon was wielded by Eclair, an impressive recurve bow named Vijaya, which had been created from the antlers of a strange Kirin-like Grimm, imbuing it with the ability to control and manipulate lightning, the properties of which also transferred to any arrows that were fired from it. Together with these three weapons, Giorno, Leon, and Eclair served as the protectors to Aurora, and with the powers of a Maiden within her, the four of them together as Team GALE were indeed a force to be reckoned with.
Well, there you have it, the introduction to Team GALE of Shade Academy. Now that I think about it, the Kingdom of Vacuo, along with its Huntsman Academy of Shade are probably the places in Remnant that we currently know the least about. Maybe sometime in the future an awesome idea for a spin-off series that Rooster Teeth could make would be a show about Team NDGO and their lives at Shade Academy. It could work really well as something akin to RWBY Chibi, where it would be a miniseries shown between the seasons of RWBY in order to hold us over until the next season.
Okay, now I'll do a breakdown of each of the members of Team GALE and what their influences were, starting with Aurora. Aurora was probably my favorite member of Team Gale to make, and as you might have noticed, I left it pretty vague as to which Maiden she actually is. At first I originally thought of having her be the Spring Maiden, hinted at by her love of gardening, but with recent developments in the series it seems like we might be seeing the actual Spring Maiden soon. So I then decided that maybe it would work better if she was the Summer Maiden instead, especially considering how outgoing and social she is like the Summer Maiden in the story was, as well as Vacuo being in a desert area, which would fit well with the season of summer if we are going by the climates of the kingdoms.
Either way, I left it open to interpretation as to whether she could be the Spring Maiden or the Summer Maiden, but in the future I might decide to go ahead and make her the Summer Maiden. By the way, her green hair is not connected to her maiden powers, but rather to her association with the element of wind, which is often symbolized by the color green in fiction, and in RWBY wind-based Dust is also colored green. Another fun fact about Aurora is that I was originally going to make her last name Gale, but then after doing a little bit of research I found out that there was already a character in RWBY that had that last name, Dew Gayl, who also had an association with wind. I then decided to make the two of them related to each other by having Aurora be her mother, and I changed the spelling of her last name to Gayl.
As for the origins of Aurora's name, that comes from the story of Sleeping Beauty, the princess in it being named Aurora, which also indirectly connects to Giorno's name as well. The Aurora in the original version of the story of Sleeping Beauty gave birth to twins, one named Aurore (meaning dawn) and the other named Jour (meaning day). Aurora also means dawn, and is a reference to the green aurora borealis found the arctic, and Giorno is the Italian word for day. I really wanted their names to be a reference to the twins, but I also really wanted make their team name spell out GALE, and lucky that I was able to find a good name for Giorno that fit with the motif. Also, in one of the original versions of the story of Sleeping Beauty, the twins that Aurora gave birth to were from someone she was not married to at the time, (how that happened I'll leave up to you to find out), technically making them her illegitimate children, which also sort of connects to Dew Gayl being Aurora's illegitimate daughter.
Aurora's weapon Nightshade is a reference to the family of poisonous plants known as the Nightshade family, hence the poison dagger, but it is also from this family of plants that many of fruits and vegetables we have today originate from, which is referenced by Aurora's hobby of gardening and harvesting vegetables. The reason I did not give Aurora one of the Legendary Weapons of Remnant was because I thought it would make her way too overpowered since she already has the powers of a Maiden, so I made it thing that the Legendary Weapons of Remnant cannot be wielded by someone with the powers of Maiden because of the incompatible nature of the Grimm power within. Moving on to Giorno's weapon, Gungnir was the name of the spear wielded by Odin, chief of the gods in Norse mythology. I searched and searched, but could not find a spear from any mythology that also had the ability to control the winds, so I settled for Gungnir. Gungnir could still fit with the wind theme, since Odin was also a sky god in, and he was also said to be accompanied by two ravens, his sacred animal, which also connects to how the spear was created from the talon of a Nevermore Grimm. I was originally going to name the spear Zephyrus, after the Greek god of the west wind, but to me it felt kind of felt weird having the weapon be named after a person rather than an object.
Moving on to the next member of Team GALE is Leon Roland, a pretty interesting character and probably my next favorite member of the team. Leon has several connections to the element of earth, from his name to his weapon. His first name Leon is based on the color lion, which is a shade of brown, and his last name Roland is based on the hero from the epic poem The Song of Roland, and it means "famous land". Just like in the epic poem, Leon's sword is also named Durendal, and legend has it that the real Durendal eventually became stuck in the side of a cliff, where it remains to this day, which connects to Durendal's ability to control the earth, as well as having it come from the tusk of a Goliath since elephants were often considered behemoths of the earth in many cultures.
Finally, there is Eclair Mauveine, the final member of Team GALE. Her first name Eclair means lighting in French, which goes well with her elemental abilities of lightning, and it also somewhat connects to her last name Mauveine, which is an artificial shade of purple. This fits well because in fiction the element of lightning is often symbolized by the color purple. Her weapon, the bow Vijaya, is the name of the bow wielded by Indra, the god of storms in Hindu mythology, and the Kirin-like Grimm that it was created from is a reference to the Kirin (or Qilin), a mythological horned creature that was often associated with lighting and the heavens.
Wow, that was a pretty long analysis, but it was necessary in order to fully grasp the nature of these characters and where they originated from. To give you a better feel for what these characters are like and what their roles are, if I were to try equating each of the members of Team GALE to existing characters within RWBY who share similar personalities and character traits, Aurora would be like Ozpin, Summer and Ruby, Giorno would be like Qrow, Oobleck, and Blake, Leon would be like Port, Taiyang, and Yang, and Eclair would be like Glynda, Raven, and Weiss.
Now that I'm done with this, all that remains now is for me to write that bonus chapter about the past of Ren and Nora. It should be pretty interesting, considering that the recent development in the latest episode of RWBY actually seems to fit very well with what I had in mind for their backstory.