Remnant alt - The Grimm and hunters

Grimm...

In this subtle RWBY AU, the intention of the Grimm remains the same, or at least extremely similar in core principles.

They're a horde based enemy that's attracted to negative emotions that can easily be identified by their black, bone and red eye design. They evaporate after they're killed and they're seemingly created from a primordial ooze.

In this setting, almost all grimm have a horde buff, albeit, ones based on social animals are much stronger in their horde buff while ones based on solitary animals are much weaker in this regard. Higher ranked grimm start to resemble fantasy animals more and more so, with the highest ones being sometimes eldritch in design.

Grimm can be ranked as such:
Underneath, we have their 'strength scale' which is measured in "Beowolves" which is the minimum strength of each rank, the maximum is usually 1 less than the next rank, except for the last rank.

Grimm weaker than a beowolf are almost exclusively in groups that add up to 1 or greater, thus they're counted collectively rather than separately.

Basic - Tough - Special - Unique - Ancient - Catastrophe
1 ----- 10 ---- 100 ----- 10000 -- 1e8 ----- 1e16 to infinity

Intelligence-wise.
Basic are common animals, tough are witty animals like crows, special is the lower half of human intelligence, unique is the upper half of human intelligence, ancient and catastrophe have eldritch minds.

Hunters are ranked as well. Since hunters are not horde based, they're individuals, they start off much stronger than grimm, but taper off in strength before they come close to catastrophe, such that even five legendary hunters are fighting an uphill battle against a catastrophe and a catastrophe in a group will need tons of back up from the master rank, even if the catastrophe is only backed up by basics.

Outside of raw strength though, a hunter's survivability is much higher. A legendary hunter cannot kill a catastrophe solo, but can survive a catastrophe for a while, solo, unless the Catastrophe is significantly higher than 1e16... The scale of simply surviving for a hunter more closely matches a grimm's raw strength at higher levels, albeit hunters are still limited by human life spans.

Note: 1e16 = 10 quadrillion.

Hunter ranks.
In training - Huntsman - Experienced - Skilled - Master - Legendary

Here is what you can expect from each rank, ability-wise.

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Basic ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Grimm in this tier can be identified by generic physical abilities. Expect muscle, tooth and claw. Horde buffs are always physical attribute buffs and are often small.


▓ Name: Beowolf
(From canon) Note: Its horde buff is +0.25% to speed for its own kind, varying levels of weaker speed buffs to less and less related Grimm... Beowolves are the base for the scale, the average beowolf is exactly 1.

▓ Name: Ursa
(From canon) Note: Its horde buff is +0.1% to strength for its own kind, varying levels of weaker strength buffs to less and less related Grimm...

▓ Name: Mangler (Teal's)
Bears the appearance of a 7 foot tall mantis with bony structure reinforcing its claws, face and various parts of its body... Abilities are all melee, fights like a mantis. Horde buff is weak +0.1% to damage for its own kind and insect Grimm, varying levels of weaker for less and less related Grimm.

▓ Beetle Grimm (canon)

▓ Boarbatusk (canon)

▓ Creep (canon)

▓ Deathstalker (small) (canon)

▓ Lancer (canon)

▓ Nevermore baby (canon)

▓ Ravager (canon)

▓ Sabyr (canon)

▓ Seer (canon)

▓ Spider Grimm (non-canon-canon) !Exception: It has a hallucination poison


▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Tough ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Grimm in this tier extend what the previous tier offers, horde buff included. There may be instances of ranged projectiles such as launched stingers, mild poisons, irritants and so on. They should be limited in ammo.

▓ Centinel (canon)

▓ Griffon (canon)

▓ Horse Grimm (canon)

▓ King Taijitu (canon)

▓ Nevermore adult (canon)

▓ Teryx (canon)

▓ Ranae (Teal)
A frog-based grimm found in rain-forests. Its design should be easy to imagine, a black frog with a skull-like helmet, red eyes and mild bony armour. It should be relatively fragile and light, but extremely fast and quiet... Its main attack is a very long ranged, harpoon tongue... It may have a secondary ability in the form of poison touch... Its horde buff focuses on speed. +11%

▓ Stomatopoda (Teal)
A mantis shrimp based grimm. A durable, fast and powerful grimm, covered in overlapping layers of armour that conceal its numerous legs, allowing it to tank attacks to its blindspots... Its main attack is folding up its limbs and building up tension within its limbs before releasing it all at once like a spring-loaded battering ram in the "smasher type" and like a spring-loaded harpoon or hook in the "spearing type"... It takes a second to prepare, but its attack can speed-blitz itself, one-shot itself and do the same to a standard huntsman, even through their aura... Horde buff: +11% strength

▓ Thorny devil/dragon (Teal)
A thorny devil/thorny dragon based grimm. Its face is plated with the familiar grimm skull, shaped to fit around its lizardlike head. Emerging from the blackness are several sharp, thick spines, accompanied by many smaller, finer ones. It has a tendency to parry weapons, sometimes passively due to all of its edges catching blades... While it isn't too fast, its short bursts of movements can allow it to flick its spines at targets as well as impale targets. Horde buff: +11% sharper claws/blades/talons

▓ Monitor dragon (Teal)
Based on basically all of the monitor lizards. They're characterised by their long tail, long neck, power and large size. As a grimm, most of its body is black save for the skull and various lanes of scutes that run along its body... It is able to spit or outright geyser a powerful sludge from its maw... Beware! This sludge may have a dozen different properties. Horde buff: +11% strength


▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Special ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
A special grimm may have one thing that seems a bit unusual, such as some elementalism, a fire breath, temporary self enhancement in bursts. The rest of a grimm's abilities should be stronger versions of what can be expected in the tough tier.

▓ Apathy (canon)

▓ Beringel (canon)

▓ Deathstalker (massive) (canon)

▓ Geist (canon)

▓ Imp (canon)

▓ Manticore (canon)

▓ Megoliath (canon)



▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Unique ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Due to the exponential nature of the strength scale... Grimm suddenly gain more advanced abilities. These abilities can manipulate in both themselves and in some cases, targets; tangibility, the mind and all bodily functions... They can seemingly start to alter physics in very small ways, such as letting them teleport short distances.

As you can expect, unique can be defined by having the previous tier's abilities on a much higher scale.

▓ Blind worm (canon)

▓ Queen Lancer (canon)

▓ Sphinx (canon)

▓ Nuckelavee (canon)

▓ Sea Feilong (canon)

▓ Tentacle Grimm (canon)

▓ Wendigo (proposal) (May move.)

▓ Name: Grand Mangler (Teal's)
While only 25% larger than the original mangler, it is not to be underestimated. Its appearance is greatly altered, featuring four arms, flightless blade-like wings and more bony armour coverage... It bolsters incredible speed and cutting power, with two subtle abilities; it can read your mind via electromagnetic sense and your movements by sensing motor neurons by a single advanced sensor, it can tell if its attack is going to miss or be blocked. It has feint mastery, able to project quickly moving illusions, but only in conjunction with a feint; the illusion carries out the attack it would do if it didn't pull away from it... Its horde buff is upgraded to 10x all physical attributes on the strength scale.

▓ Name: Arch-Imp (older Imp) (Teal's)
An Imp, but far more advanced. Everything on it is stretchy, including limbs, neck, torso and even fingers. This demon-like humanoid can bound towards its targets with astounding speed by making its legs behave like super powered springs. It's hard to hit too since it can bend and warp its body in ways that lets it dodge like nothing else. When you do hit it, you might deal no damage to it because its stretchy body will just absorb the attack... Not only that, it can redirect the force inflicted onto it, back onto its attacker... The last thing to note is that its arms can make perfect, C-shaped bends around attempts to intercept them, like placing your weapon in the way of a stretchy punch.


▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Ancient ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Through absolutely arcane, unfathomable understanding, intelligence and mental state, the ancients can manipulate the soul to a limited degree. Otherwise, Ancients boast Unique and lower powers in a huge scale.

In practice, they should be varying levels of 1v1able, but only consistently by legendary hunters, even if 1v1 is not preferable.

▓ Goliath (original) (canon)

▓ Wyvern (canon)

▓ Dark Ophanim (Teal)
It resembles a wheel - a short wide cylinder. Bat-like wings extend from its body, with the wings oriented like blades on a shuriken, running clockwise or counterclockwise along the wheel with all wings being either left handed or right handed wings. The body and wings are black, bones make up bands that separate the wings, though there are eye holes in the middle of each bony band, while the wings are reinforced with bones running along the limbs and digits of the wings, not the membranes... Its main attack is being able to spin rapidly and fly towards a target, just like a shuriken. It carries a few mystical abilities however... It has two mental abilities: All aggression is redirected at it and it magnifies fear enormously in anyone that can see it, often to the point of causing: paralysis, passing out or heart attacks.


▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ Catastrophe ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Large AOE soul manipulation is unlocked here. Since this is the last tier and it extends to infinity, they can do lots of nasty, borderline unfair things to their target by altering the state of their soul. It seems the only limitations is that they still have a maximum range, albeit, a very large one and they can't just outright destroy the soul, only debuff it like crazy.

In practice, they should be outright impossible to 1v1, even for the most legendary of hunters.

- Examples -

▓ Name: Antithesis. (Teal)
- Appearance: It bears a striking resemblance to the Glaucus Atlanticus, only its 560 feet long, 560 feet across measuring along its fore limbs, half this for its hind limbs and half again for its trail appendages. It's body is widest at around the chest area at 200 feet but tapers towards its head and tail... Its colours are the usual, black, with two black streaks that run down its main body and along its tail, and partially running up each spine on all of its limbs and appendages. Its form is covered in bony plates; overlapping shard-like scutes protect its underside. Its appendages are partially covered by spaced out rings of bone and its face is covered by featureless mask of bone resembling the top half a skull, with jagged, inconsistent teeth lining the bottom of it where normal teeth would be present... The tips of all of its appendages glow especially, but these are its actual sensory organs.

| Abilities:
- It can regenerate.
= 10 kilometre RADIUS semblance null. Stand in range, semblance doesn't work. To remove the effect, get out of range... Its abilities seem to have ranges around this much.
- It can project guided energy attacks; they resemble fire flies that explode when they get near their target; however it can also control the shape of the explosion however it wants...
- Its horde buff is 3330x on the strength scale to all physical abilities and an unknown modification to intelligence. The horde buff is 50% stronger on sea grimm and grimm based on sea creatures...
- It can hover in the sky, seemingly preferring the ozone layer, however, it'll descend down to 2-6 kilometers off the ground to assist any grounded grimm it may be buffing.
- Statistically, it is slow, it's not that tanky but its regen makes it feel tankier than it really is, relative to other catastrophes. It is a very hard hitter due to its guided energy attack.
- When Critically wounded/killed: Regen turns off, it can still move and perform all of its abilities. Keep damaging it, for if left unchecked, it can get its regen back... After three days of being kept in a critical/dying state, it'll dissolve and its abilities weaken based on how much of it is left.

Most identifying feature / most extreme trait: "Semblance null." Accessed from the depths of its eldritch mind.

History: ???


▓ Name: Sandman. (Teal)
- Appearance: It resembles a giant 1000 feet tall humanoid. Its body is the usual black in colouration, however a lot of its body is armed in sharp rib-cage like structures, "spines" running along all of its limbs, down its back, with each pair of ribs resembling a sharp crescent shape. Thus a lot of its body is armoured like the 'armour' on the pokemon houndoom... Its face is surprisingly not covered, its sharp red eyes, glowing mouth and lack of other facial features bears a look that is often described as 'fiendish' or 'devilish'. The only other thing coloured glowing red are the openings on its hands and feet.

| Abilities:
= 10 kilometre RADIUS aura null. Stand in range and the aura is instantly depleted. It will restore by natural means once you leave its range.
- Its body is protected by a whirling black sandstorm. This ability doesn't do much damage, but can pretty much hurt as many targets as it wants simultaneously at arms reach. It has a surprisingly basic sleep inducing poison infused into it, but it can stack manipulatively with reapplication.
- Its horde buff is 1000x on the strength scale to all physical abilities and an unknown modification to intelligence. The horde buff is 50% stronger on desert grimm and grimm based on desert creatures...
- Grant beam attack - The second part to its horde buff is that it gives all grimm under its influence a beam attack and said grimm are automatically rewired to prefer this attack over physical attacks.
- Beam attack - It can project a larger scale version of the same attack from its eyes, maw, openings on its hands and openings on its feet.
- Statistically, it's strikingly fast for its size, while its other attributes compared to other catastrophes, fall behind to varying degrees.
- When critically wounded/killed: It evaporates within seconds but gets absorbed into everyone it is horde buffing "right now". Its horde buff and grant beam attack intensify, but can no longer be spread or distributed to any new grimm.

Most identifying feature / most extreme trait: "Aura null." Accessed from the depths of its eldritch mind.

History: ???


▓ Name: Shroob. (Teal)
- Appearance: It resembles a 1000 feet tall mushroom. The base of its body has ten tendril-like legs which it can use to move or attack. Most of its stem and the dorsal side of its cap are protected by a bony carapace with small spot-shaped holes being the only weaknesses or blindspots to it, each one being only an inch wide in diameter or so. Hanging from the ventral side of its cap are numerous splotchy vine-like tendrils which it can also manipulate, extending from the gills; the frilly underside of the cap... Its eyes are located in a tenth of the spots on its body, indicated by red glowing. Though, parts of the gills and random spots on the vine-like tendrils also glow red.

| Abilities:
= 10 kilometre RADIUS scramble. Stand in range and all of your physical inputs are completely and thoroughly shuffled. It is corrected once you leave its range... At least, your muscles are all mixed up where trying to move one of them consistently moves a different muscle instead. You have to basically map out your entire body, then relearn muscle memory in a matter of seconds.
- Spores of nothing - It emits spores, at a rate that should produce a density of one spore every three square meters... Upon touching a grimm, it turns it into a smaller version of Shroob. Upon being inhaled by a human, they're taken over and turned into a mushroom man which unfortunately still has access to its semblance if applicable, only stronger.
- Its horde buff is 1000x on the strength scale to all physical abilities and an unknown modification to intelligence. The horde buff is 25% stronger on forest-based grimm and 50% stronger on fungal and plant grimm.
- It has a powerful beam attack. Spores in the air can redirect it in any direction it wants.
- Statistically, it is a powerhouse, fast, durable and damaging. Despite its huge size, it's fast for it. This applies on a smaller scale to transformed grimm and mushroom men.
- When critically wounded/killed: It explodes via a blast of 10 times its size. The lethal part is the spores. This applies on a smaller scale to transformed grimm and mushroom men.

Most identifying feature / most extreme trait: "Scramble." Accessed from the depths of its eldritch mind.

History: ???


▓ Name: Suffocate. (Teal)
- Appearance: Its form is amorphous, made of black, 90% opaque sludge, except for a central red orb encased by a pattern of flattened skulls resembling that of a snake's. This is effectively its heart, which is surprisingly small at only 50 feet in diameter... However, its gelatinous body is absolutely massive but due to variance, can't be consistently measured. However, it should be at least be 1000 feet tall when standing normally... Skeletal structures can manifest on its body at will as well, always matching the underlying body.

| Abilities:
- Growth, its body can grow rapidly. It can grow its original mass, once per day.
- Self manipulation. It is a gelatinous creature, it can manipulate itself... V2. It can throw parts of itself as projectiles via pressure... V3 It can manipulate even detached versions of itself, thus it can reform severed and projected parts of itself.
- Spawning. It can make creatures from itself, often being slugs with a 3 inch core which individually on their own have a strength of 100 and a horde buff of 1.5x. They only have self manipulation V1, V2 and V3 as abilities.
- It can project guided energy attacks; they resemble fire flies that explode when they get near their target; however it can also control the shape of the explosion however it wants...
- Horde buff. It starts at 100x for physical characteristics, multiplied by its current mass divided by its original mass, multiplied by the number of live spawns it has nearby. Ex: If it triples its size and spawns 10 spawnlings, its horde buff becomes 3000x
- Horde-buff-horde-buff. It buffs the horde buffs of other Grimm by a small factor, which can also increase by the previous mean, albeit at a slower rate of increase.
- Statistically, it is simply a power house. Durable and painful. Parts of it are fast, though moving its entire body a distance can take a while.
- When killed: Can only be killed by mortally wounding its core, after which, it evaporates within seconds. Underlings are dependent on it, so they evaporate too.

Most identifying feature / most extreme trait: The very nature of it is self-synergistic.

History: ???


▓ Leviathan (canon)

▓ Whale Grimm (canon)