Salem

**Salem** is an extremely mysterious figure from Remnant's forgotten past and the primary antagonist of RWBY.

She is the leader of a cabal of people with malicious plans and she operates out of Evernight Castle in the Land of Darkness. Her goals are to find the Maidens, take their powers, take the Relics from the Huntsman Academies and weaken Humanity by snuffing out their hope.

She was a part of the original Humanity, before being cursed with immortality and falling into a Grimm pool. She was married to Ozma before their ideologies tore them apart making them mortal enemies.

She has power over magic and Grimm and is highly knowledgeable, cunning and manipulative.

## Statistics

* **Name**: Salem
* **Origin**: RWBY
* **Gender**: Female
* **Age**: 4000+
* **Birthday**: Unknown
* **Classification**: Human-Grimm hybrid, Grimm Queen
* **Blood Type**: Unknown
* **Height**: 183 cm (6'0")
* **Weight**: 75 kg (165 lbs)
* **Skin Color**: Pale White
* **Eye Color**: Red Irises with Black Scleras
* **Hair Color**: White
* **Relatives**: Ozma (Ex-husband)
* **Alignment**: Bad
* **Status**: Active
* **Class**: **SS-Class**
* **Powers and Abilities**: Magic
* **Standard Equipment**:
* **Weaknesses**: While she can't be killed in the conventional sense, she can be corrupted and altered by things such as the Pools of Grimm.
* **Notable Attacks/Techniques**:
* **Voice Actor**: Kikuko Inoue

### Power Stats

* **Attack Potency**:
* **Speed**:
* **Lifting Strength**:
* **Striking Strength**:
* **Durability**:
* **Stamina**:
* **Range**:
* **Intelligence**:
* **Key**:

## Appearance

### Past

Eons ago, Salem was a human woman with fair skin, pale platinum blonde hair and light blue eyes. She wore most her hair in a half up-done bun style, with a small, simple bun on the top, and the remainder of her long, straight hair hanging at the bottom. Most of her bangs were tied back, barring several large locks that framed her face to her left.

She wore a white, two piece dress consisting of a sleeveless, diagonally overlapping white backless pleated top with a raised, pale blue halter-top square collar adorned with an aquamarine colored rhombus-shaped crystal on the clavicle, surrounded by two smaller white rhombuses. Her long, high-waisted skirt was white with a faint purple tint - adorned with white diamond emblems and white wavy lines near the bottom hem, ruffled around the waist and completed with a purple sash. For accessories, she wore gray, circular earrings and a pair of dull brown bracers, and her long fingernails were painted pale lilac.

### Current

As a hybrid of human and Grimm, Salem's skin is currently a deathly pallor, with jet black sclerae in her eyes, and glowing crimson irises that shine brighter when she is agitated. While she initially retained her half-bun hairdo for her now bleached, pale white hair, she has since re-styled it into a larger bun with six offshoots wrapped together that also suspends several obsidian-colored ornaments. Over the passage of time, she has since grown dark purple veins that line her face and arms, and now has a black diamond-shaped marking in the center of her forehead.

She currently wears a very long, short-sleeved black robe that obscures her feet and partially drags across the ground, with its distinctive feature being a curved high collar with dark red trim bordering the outer edge of a narrow window exposing her bust in a vertical ellipsis resembling an eye, and completed with a long shawl emblazoned with three interconnected, maroon-colored vertical elliptic sigils resembling a trio of overseeing eyes above a series of maroon-colored diamond emblems. She also wears a ring resembling an insect on her right index finger, which now have longer fingernails with jet-black nail polish.

## Personality

Salem is insidious, patiently moving to undermine and destroy her enemies with cold, deliberate resolve. She is also highly intellectual, with a healthy respect for her enemy, mankind, who she recognizes as possessing both resourcefulness and ingenuity, acknowledging Humanity's capacity to draw strength from hope, but she uses this knowledge to subvert and destroy them. She is humble enough to recognize that there are limits to her abilities and that she can only do so much for her subordinates.

The World of RWBY: The Official Companion states that Salem's goal is to absorb the powers of the Relics and rule Remnant as its dark queen. She is very confident and self-assured, secure in her knowledge that she can best whatever Ozpin sends to stop her and her goals. She also appears to be cruel or sadistic, for she seems to relish the prospect of watching Ozpin burn.

In contrast, Salem is also fair and collegial towards her allies, giving credit where credit is due and showing genuine appreciation to those who are loyal. In enforcing this atmosphere of fairness, she also discourages unnecessary malignant and cruelty among her associates. She is also seen tolerating her allies unruly behavior to some extent, such as Tyrian's maniacal tendencies and Watts' snide and condescending attitude. In "So That's How It Is", Salem shows her fairness when she only blames Cinder, who was in charge of the mission, for their failure in acquiring the Relic during the Battle of Haven and forbids Hazel Rainart from taking the blame, even threatening him when he continues to attempt to do so.

Salem knows how to manipulate people and has different methods for motivations for each of her lieutenants. She is one who would make use of anybody to help further her goals, something Salem herself suggests when explaining her decisions to Cinder, later discard the people she uses if they become obsolete to her, which is later violently demonstrated when she uses a Seer to kill Leonardo Lionheart for trying to run from the Battle of Haven.

However, Salem is not above losing her temper, as she is particularly demanding when inquiring whether Cinder has truly killed Ozpin or not. This display of sheer dominance shows Salem's rather imperious and demanding personality. Her biggest displays of anger are shown in "So That's How it Is", when she first binds Hazel to the floor after he tries covering for Cinder, and then when she destroys all the windows in her council chamber upon learning that Ozpin has already reincarnated and has acquired the Relic.

In the distant past, Salem was shown to be a kind yet lonely woman, but appeared to be slightly manipulative. This was shown when her lover Ozma died of an illness, she tried tricking the Brother Gods to bring him back and then when she tricked Humanity to turn against them, only for both to fail. After she jumped into the pool of darkness in another suicide attempt, she gained a destructive nature, though she managed to curb said nature for a while.

When she and Ozma reunited, she was shown to be truly happy and Salem was shown to be a genuinely kind and loving mother to her and Ozma's daughters. However, this did not stop her from murdering Ozma and, accidentally, her daughters in a rage when she learned they were trying to flee their home once Ozma realized the monster she had become.

## Main Skills and Equipment

**Magic**: Salem, alongside the Maidens and Ozpin, are among the few living characters who can perform True Magic, which was mostly lost after the Younger Brother erased the previous iteration of humanity from the face of the planet.

**Immortality**: Due to her transgressions against the Brother Gods, Salem was cursed with immortality so that she may never be reunited with her lover, Ozma. This curse prevents her from aging and falling to injury, letting her recover even from being reduced to a puddle of liquid. It also protected her from the Younger Brother's attack which erased humanity from the surface of the planet.

**Grimm Control**: Due to her dip into the pools that create the soulless Grimm, she has been corrupted into a being that wields the power to control them and the ruthless bloodlust to kill all those that stand in her way. She possesses the ability to alter the physiology of Grimm and graft Grimm body parts to a Human's body, and is capable of summoning multiple Shadow Hands on command to pin down an opponent.

## Relationships

* Ozma/Ozpin
* Ruby Rose