AL-X

> “...There are few timelines the Coalescence has been worse for than mine. In the minds of the people of my world, everything and everyone that we were supposed to believe in turned against us the moment it became convenient for them. And if that's your experience, well... kind of hard to trust anyone again who tells you that they can save you, isn't it?
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> "I don't know if that trust will ever come back in our lifetimes. Plenty of people will hold onto that until the day they die. But I think we ended up building some pretty cool things out of the wreckage, in the end.
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> "It's still my home, I guess. And even with its flaws? It's hard not to be fond of it."
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> Irving Pine

The **Anchorless Timeline (AL-X)** is a notable timeline that is the home of Irving Pine, Radcliffe Ellison, and Wren Branwen. It is defined by the collapse of the Huntsmen Academies and the eventual victory of Salem over the Gods, and widespread civil conflict across multiple continents.

## AL-X

### Appears in

* Union of Souls
* Misaligned Fates
* Spirits Unbound
* Union of Souls (Original)

### Notable Residents

* Irving Pine
* Wren Branwen
* Radcliffe Ellison

## History

### The White Fang International

A number of different factors went into making Salem's victory within AL-X possible, and a large one was the White Fang. With the death of Cinder Fall, Salem's plans to ally with the White Fang were accelerated, resulting in an alliance being forged between her and Sienna Khan, which prevented Adam Taurus from being able to stage his coup against her. Following his death, Taurus was framed as an Atlesian government collaborator, whose actions at Beacon and calls for repeated violent escalation were part of a plot to undermine the credibility of the movement. This led to the White Fang maintaining a stronger position within this timeline, a factor that would play a crucial role in many of the timeline's later divergences.

This also led to an official envoy being sent from the White Fang to deal with Salem, one Kasima Viridios, who would in the future come to play a key part in the events that led to Salem's ultimate victory.

While the destruction of the CCT system led to much of the world's communications being cut off, the White Fang, having established its own networks, were able to spread the news of Adam's betrayal, though at a significantly slower rate. This news sparked a great deal of outrage, most notably in Mantle, where it would be one of many factors in the eventual downfall of Atlas. But on a broader scale, the reveal, Sienna's public denouncement of Adam and his faction, and the White Fang's major role in the uprisings in Mistral, would allow the organization a far greater degree of longevity, working with numerous movements across Remnant to advance the cause of the Faunus.

### End of the Huntsmen

In the aftermath of the Great War, with the Auric population at a higher level than ever, concerns began to arise surrounding this change. Worries about private corporations hiring people on the basis of their semblances, attempts at harnessing Aura by private corporations or trying to cause specific favorable semblances to manifest in employees, or driving ordinary humans out of work. So laws were put in place in order to avoid these sorts of scenario across all of the Kingdoms. The problem with this, however, would come with the actual phrasing of these laws, resulting in a situation where private corporations who hired Aurics would become open to a number of legal issues, resulting in reluctance to hire them inside of the private sector.

Thus, a situation developed wherein Aurics ended up either attending one of the Huntsmen Academies, or becoming a part of Remnant's criminal underground. So, after the Fall of Beacon, with faith in the Academies shaken, Haven being seized by the government, and the civil conflicts in Atlas and Vacuo, trust in the Huntsmen was already declining, and that is before Salem came into the picture.

Hijacking the newly launched Amity Communications Tower, Salem and her agents were able to send out a message to the world, revealing the truth of the existence of the Maidens, the Relics, and of the real hidden history of Remnant. Salem would claim that the Academies had been built for the purpose of protecting the Relics by Ozpin, and that the post-war era was all part of a plan to bring the world together so he could summon back the Gods and usher in an era of divine rule, a plan doomed to fail. With the evidence Salem presented and the existing distrust, whatever remaining trust in the system existed collapsed.

Haven and Atlas would be repurposed by their respective governments as high end military training facilities, while Shade would be shut down. Only Beacon would remain, heavily altered to fit into the new social order, and the Huntsmen as an institution would be end up becoming defunct, with the public perception of them being extremely negative.

### Mistral

#### The Theft of Knowledge

In the aftermath of the Fall, Team JNPR would end up going to Mistral. Pyrrha, overcome with self-doubt after the deaths she caused, told her teammates the full truth of everything that happened to her at Beacon, with them becoming outraged about the way she had seemingly been used as a pawn. When they arrived at Haven Academy, they would get more information about the Maidens, the Relic, and the conflict against Salem from Lionheart, but this would only further their growing doubts, and in the aftermath of the attack on Haven, they would abandon Oz's cause entirely.

During this time, Salem made use of the White Fang's network in order to search for the Spring Maiden's location, with Kasima narrowing down the search considerably thanks to her semblance. Salem had Lionheart keep tabs on Pyrrha on her behalf once she arrived at Haven, planning to deal with her once the vault at Beacon had been located. Qrow Branwen would also investigate the Spring Maiden in this period, and come to learn about the formalized alliance between Salem and the White Fang. However, he was unable to stop Kasima from successfully managing to track down and kill Raven Branwen, thus obtaining the powers of the Spring Maiden, massacring the rest of the tribe in the process.

Salem's crew ended up converging in Mistral City, and together, they broke into the school, killed Lionheart, orchestrating a plan to frame him as having conspired with "outside agitators" to kill off Huntsmen loyal to the Council in order to strengthen his own position. Kasima would take the Relic from beneath Haven, where she would be confronted alone by Pyrrha, who would try and fail to stop her from obtaining it, where she would tell her the truth about Lionheart.

#### The Twelve Years War

After the death of Lionheart, Mistralian government seizing control of Haven Academy, and with the increased paranoia setting in, start down the road that would transform Mistral into a brutal dictatorship. With suspicion falling onto the White Fang, the government initiated brutal crackdowns against the Faunus in Mistral, which would culminate in mass uprisings that would be suppressed violently by the now government-controlled Huntsmen forces and local police.

The situation in Mistral would continue to deteriorate over the following year, and eventually break down into a period known as the Twelve Year War, wherein dozens of different groups, under the command of various warlords, would fight for control of the continent. The war would only turn after the Tragedy of Argus, a cataclysmic event in which a carefully planned attack ignited a hidden Burn Dust seam beneath the city, causing the city to collapse into itself and become a ruin that still burned up until the start of the Coalescence. The perpetrators of this attack were never identified.

The attack provoked the international community to take firmer action in Anima, most especially Atlas, resulting in a peace conference being called. Pyrrha Nikos and her allies would be crucial to organizing this conference, and in the end, the Mistralian government would be forced to accept a number of terms, such as the creation of the Corporate Sector, though it would avoid the complete dissolution suffered by Vacuo. Haven Academy, however, still remained under national control, and Mistral maintained its standing military rather than undergoing a forced demilitarization process as was initially proposed.

### Atlas

#### The Creation of the Vessel

As part of the major Deviations of this timeline, rather than dying during the Fall, Ozpin ended up in critical condition, his life barely being saved by General Ironwood, who immediately set every single resource at his disposal towards attempting to save him. In the process, he withdrew from his other duties, delegating more heavily to his own lieutenants as he laser-focused on trying to save his friend and mentor.

He would enlist Pietro Polendina for the task, along with numerous other of the best engineers, doctors, and scientists in Atlas, to try and recover him. His efforts in this area would eventually lead to the creation of the vessel that would come to be known as Irving Pine, created after years of attempts to revive him, when he deemed that the only solution left was to transfer Ozpin's consciousness to a new host entirely.

The vessel awoke in a half-conscious state, and upon setting eyes on Ironwood, lashed out at him immediately, impaling him before proceeding to wreak havoc on its way out of the military facility it was being held in, before it lost consciousness entirely. It awakened in a totally amnesiac state, lacking even the basic ability to care for itself. It would take years for Irving to fully remember who he used to be, and by then, he had already individuated himself to a significant extent. In the end, Irving would manage to overtake his progenitor's consciousness entirely, a first in history.

#### Downfall of the Schnee Family

While the Schnee Dust Company had reformed in the aftermath of the Mantlian Insurgency, and still held a considerable place among Remnant's major corporations, Weiss Schnee would end up experiencing severe depression due to the events she went through, and would withdraw emotionally and from public life. With Wren following her Father to Mistral after his divorce, and Whitley living with his husband in Mantle, Weiss relied mostly on her sister and her few close friends for emotional support, along with doing her best to try and care for her daughter, Diamond Schnee.

However, on a visit to her cousin in Mistral, supervised by Irving Pine, Diamond would go missing entirely, and after a weeks-long search, her fate would become known when every single member of the Schnee family was sent a video depicting the girl's brutal dismemberment and death. Both perpetrators depicted in the video, both Atlesian expats with high levels of cybernetic augmentation, would be found, one killed during the mission and one later killing himself in custody. The videographer remains unknown.

Watching her daughter die, however, would be the event that would drive Weiss over the edge. She would be found dead in the Schnee manor only a few weeks after. In the aftermath, the Schnee Dust Company would end up falling into the control of its Board of Investors, each of the surviving members of the family would receive a portion of Weiss' estate, and Winter Schnee would ultimately come to inhabit the Schnee Manor. With Whitley's death a few years later at the hands of his son, Winter Schnee would be the last remaining member of the family.

### Vacuo

#### The Vacuan Civil War

Vacuo would, in AL-X, end up splintering into multiple states, with the remnants of The Crown and their sympathizers managing to hold out, while in the chaos, the eastern region of Vacuo, one of the most Dust-rich parts of the country, would end up breaking away from regime control, becoming the Autonomous Federation. Aided in this by the White Fang International, the Vacuan government would almost immediately decry them as a rogue terrorist state, but the movement had a strong native constituency, due to being neglected by Vacuo as they extracted from them their most valuable natural resource without getting anything in return besides empty promises.

During this conflict, with forces being committed elsewhere, the Summer Maiden would be eliminated, and the Relic of Destruction would be stolen from the vault beneath Shade.

The three would remain in a constant state of intermittent conflict with one another. Vale would stick by Vacuo, while Atlas would aid the AutFed, and the Crown going through continual periods of conquest, being beaten back and then re-emerging from hiding again and again. Borders would be drawn and redrawn, and up until the start of the Coalescence, the Vacuan Civil War was still considered to be ongoing.

## Inhabitants

* Hiroki Ren
* Irving Pine
* Wren Branwen
* Isaline Callows
* Radcliffe Ellison
* Sylvia Lawrence
* Helen Lawrence
* Itzal Colmenero