Afterword

Well friends, this has certainly been a journey.

I knew that this fic would be long, but I had no idea it would become this long. Six hundred and sixty-eight thousand words over the course of four hundred and sixty one days, which averages out to about fifteen hundred words a day (though the time it took to write the epilogue brought my average down from about sixteen hundred words a day). For context, that's about thirteen thousand words longer than entry number twenty on Wikipedia's list of longest novels, Les Misérables, which clocks in at about six hundred and fifty-five thousand words. This fic has been both a challenge and a labor of love. I had the idea for the basic premise floating around in my head ever since we learned about the Maidens and Pyrrha's involvement with them. I had an image in my head of Pyrrha leaving the main cast to go on some secret mission as the new Fall Maiden that she was convinced that she had to accomplish on her own, and our heroes leaving Beacon to go and find her. Then when she died in the series, I realized I could still write a variant of this idea, only instead of Jaune and his friends searching for a reclusive and enigmatic Pyrrha, they'd be searching for a reclusive and enigmatic Pyrrha...who had somehow come back from the dead. Either way, I knew I had to start writing something, or I would go insane.

I published chapter one the day after I finished season three of RWBY, and basically have not stopped writing since. There was a time I would put out two or even three chapters a week, though that eventually slowed to maybe once a week as time passed. In the beginning, I tried to keep chapters around two thousand words apiece, and it was easier to keep producing them in such numbers, but over time, the chapters began growing in size until I could have probably justified publishing some of them as their own standalone fics. Ultimately, I was shooting for about eight thousand words a week, but there were obviously many times where that number slipped.

That said, I fully recognize that this fic is not without its flaws. I spent very little time revising each chapter, giving each one a quick read-through before publishing, instead focusing on proceeding to the next chapter as quickly possible. I would occasionally revise and republish chapters if I found anything I needed to change later, or if one of my readers pointed out a glaring error in reviews, but largely, the focus was on rapid and continuous publication. I initially wanted to get this done before season 4 began, and then when that milestone passed me by, I hoped to finish before season 4 ended. Obviously I failed on both those counts, but overall, I'm satisfied with what this fic became.

I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could stick to a rigorous schedule, but mostly, I just needed to write more. For four hundred and sixty one days, not a day went by that I did not think about this fic. I would frequently stay up late to finish chapters and plan future story arcs on the bus and in the shower and as I nodded off to sleep. I was so excited to get to the next big moment in this fic that often I would begin writing the next chapter within seconds of publishing the last. I define creativity as more than just a love for a particular craft. What I feel isn't the longing to create for the sake of creating. For me, the result is what counts. When I feel creative, what I feel is that there is something lacking in the world. I get this image in my head of something very specific that absolutely needs to exist. And it doesn't exist yet. So I need to create it. And my love for a particular story or setting or cast of characters will set the bar for how rigorously I attack this process.

Which should provide some idea of just how hard Pyrrha's death hit me.

"Everything was gone," the opening line in chapter one, was a direct reflection of my emotional state after it happened. To this day, I still can't bring myself to sit through the season three finale again in its entirety. Writing this fic was a means of coping with Pyrrha's death, which like many other writers, resulted in bringing her back to life for the duration. It was just such a gut punch to see her killed off like that. So believe me when I say how difficult a decision it was to ultimately kill off her character at the end of my fic as well. This fic represented an escapist fantasy to me and many fellow fans who were so impacted by her death in the actual series. After such a long fic, I can certainly understand people's confusion and displeasure with the decision to kill her off anyway. So I wanted to take this opportunity to explain my decision.

As much as I adore the Arkos ship, the long and the short of it is that this fic was never specifically meant to be a romance. It was never meant specifically to be a comedy or an action/adventure or even just a generic fan spinoff. From its onset, this fic's genres were always intended to be and always have been "Angst/Hurt/Comfort." And while this would include elements of romance, comedy and action sprinkled around where appropriate, focusing on the characters and their emotional toil was always going to feature prominently at the forefront of this fic. Almost every narrative decision that was made, for good or ill, was delivered with the intention of stirring as much turmoil as possible amongst the story's cast. And getting to explore all of the characters and the unique emotional burdens they might carry as a result of this turmoil was a chance for me to grapple with my own unresolved issues over Pyrrha's death. This may be an rather selfish reason to keep a single fic going for so long, but as I'm sure many of you are aware, one of the main purposes of fic writing is to achieve some kind of catharsis.

I knew as soon as we learned her name in season one that Pyrrha would not be getting through the series unscathed. For all that, I wasn't anticipating just how early nor how severely her character arc would come to an end. I'm also pretty sure that Rooster Teeth will likely not be bringing her character back at any point, so like it or not, this would be it for her character. I often write fan fiction as a means of coping with unsavory character deaths or otherwise unsatisfactory conclusions to character arcs. You need only a brief perusal of my fic library to see just how poorly I've coped with the way Evangelion ended or how Cortana's character was handled towards the end of the Halo franchise. Knowing this about myself, I didn't want this fic to become just another escapist fantasy. No matter what I write, it wouldn't change the fact that Pyrrha wouldn't be coming back in the series, so when the fic ultimately came to an end, I had to consider just where it would leave me when it did. The RWBY series would continue onward, regardless of what I did. So I had a choice to make about what my emotional state would be after this fic was concluded. Would I continue to be in denial after it was done, or would I be able to accept things as they were and move on?

And so I decided that this fic would be my farewell letter to Pyrrha. I had to accept that, ultimately, she was always supposed to die. It was right there in her name. That was her purpose in the RWBY universe. I could either reject this outright, and live forever in the world that I had written for myself, or I could use this fic as a means of coming to terms with that death. This didn't mean, however, that I had to accept her death at face value. Pyrrha may have been fated to die. But that didn't mean that she didn't deserve a better death.

Those of you who have seen Red vs Blue, another Rooster Teeth series, may be familiar with a line from that show that describes Pyrrha's sacrifice rather aptly:

"There's so many stories where some brave hero decides to give their life to save the day. And because of their sacrifice, the good guys win, the survivors all cheer, and everybody lives happily ever after. But the hero never gets to see that ending. They'll never know if their sacrifice actually made a difference. They'll never know if the day was really saved. In the end, they just have to have faith. Ain't that a bitch?"

This is the part that I chose to focus on with Pyrrha. Hers was a character that was so full of promise, despite the grim destiny that awaited her. In spite of the intentions of Rooster Teeth, Miles, Kerry, and even Monty himself, I firmly believed that Pyrrha deserved a better death than the one she had been given. So I pushed back against the inevitable. I dragged it out for as long as I could. My rendition of Pyrrha refused to accept her fate. She toiled. And toiled. And toiled some more. She shouldered burdens that would have broken a normal person. She endured hardships and suffered inhumane punishment, and when the time came, she ultimately rescued herself, breaking out of her enemy's grasp and limping home to the people she cared for. She got the chance to fight on, lending her allies the power they needed to defeat their enemy. She got the chance to reconnect with her friends, consummate her relationship with Jaune, and so many more things she had been denied in life, having come all the way back from the brink and knowing just how precious it all was because of it. But most importantly, she got the chance to be the hero. She got the chance to give her life, knowing that sacrifice would truly save the world. Her death got to mean something more than just a cold splash to the faces of our heroes to awaken them to the harsh reality of the world beyond.

This was the death that Pyrrha deserved. This was the RWBY that could have been, had she still be a part of it. And I wrote down these six hundred and sixty-eight thousand words because she deserved it.

So, after everything was said and done, this fic ultimately became a Jaune x Ruby fic, which may seem like a cop out. Well, a while ago, I read a comic series (that will remain nameless for the sake of preventing any possible spoilers) in which the main character spends the majority of the series trying to track down a loved one from whom they were separated at the beginning of the story. On the way, however, they are helped by another character with whom they slowly learn to trust and grow a connection with. And by the end, when the main character finds and reconnects with their loved one (in every sense of the word), it becomes clear that the circumstances have changed, and they go back to find the character they've grown attached to over the course of the series, realizing that they had slowly been falling in love with them from the beginning. It was a moment that caught me completely of guard when I read it because it wasn't obvious that it was happening on the surface, but at the same time, it was one that made perfect sense given what the series had been doing up until that point. It would have made no sense for the main character to end up with the one they had been searching for all that time, because that's not the relationship that had been developing over the course of the story.

It was looking back on this comic that made me realize something important about the relationship between Jaune and Pyrrha in my fic. Love isn't some nebulous goal that you spend your life searching for, seeing only brief glimpses until you ultimately find it. Love is building something together with someone special in your life, who is always there for you through all of life's struggles. In the series, Jaune and Pyrrha are almost always together, but in this fic, they spend the majority of the fic apart from one another. They may have been been in love. They may have meant the world to each other. They may have been made for one another. But in terms of time spent together in this fic, fighting side by side and supporting one another, there's another character that Jaune spends a great deal more time with.

And that's Ruby.

As much as Jaune talks about Pyrrha in this fic, as much as he thinks about Pyrrha in this fic, and as much as his actions are motivated by Pyrrha in this fic, it's Ruby who is the one constantly giving him support. It's Ruby that Jaune is always working through his problems with. And it's Ruby that he slowly develops a trusting partnership with. No matter how strong Jaune and Pyrrha's connection, as far as this fic goes, Jaune and Ruby was the relationship that was largely being developed over the course of those six hundred and sixty-eight thousand words. I know that this may have disappointed quite a few readers. I know I lost some readers when this ultimately played out. But I try my hardest to foreshadow any major decisions I make, and the hints of Jaune and Ruby's budding relationship were dropped all the way at the very start of this fic. And no matter what people say, it's a relationship that makes the most sense, both in this fic and in the original series as well.

Jaune was Ruby's first friend in the series. She may have had a familial attachment to Yang, but she had only just met Weiss and Blake in episode two, and they both wanted nothing to do with her in the beginning. But Jaune was the first character who ever reached out to her. Ruby had to fight and claw her way into her friendship with her other two teammates, but Jaune has always been there for her. And it's not long afterward that we see that she is there for him when he is forced to confront his own inadequacies as a leader. And lastly and probably most importantly, Jaune is there for Ruby even when her entire team has been scattered to the four winds in season four. Given all this and the direction the series is going, I would not be surprised if Jaune and Ruby become a canon pairing later on in the series. Of course, Rooster Teeth could decide to throw us for a loop anyway just for the sake of being contrary. And of course, as her voice actress aptly put it, at the point where she is in the current series, Ruby is simply not interested in getting into a relationship. Which is why, in the fic, Ruby and Jaune didn't start to truly explore anything that might exist between them until well after the adventure was over and they had both aged a bit more. After all, these characters are still very much children, and have a lot of learning left to do, both about themselves and about the world.

The rest of the relationships more or less wrote themselves. Ren and Nora were an obvious pair, as were Weiss and Neptune. Velvet and Yatsuhashi struck me as a cute couple as well, and given that they're both at least a year older than our main cast, it makes sense for them to be ready for the next step of their life by the time the fic was done. Don't ask me what's going on between Fox and Coco though. I don't think those two will ever figure things out. And of course, Qrow and Winter and James and Glynda were equally fun to write in their own ways.

The only other contentious pairing was probably Yang and Blake, and this was mostly because of how that impacted Sun Wukong. I debated with myself over and over how to handle this particular love triangle, whether to have Sun and Blake end up together, or to have Sun bow out so that Blake and Yang could be together. Neither option seemed quite right to me. Both options ended with somebody being left behind. But what ultimately motivated the decision to kill off Sun's character had nothing to do with pairing Blake with Yang. It was about pushing Blake past the breaking point and causing her to go after Adam with a ferocity that we've never seen from her before, and ultimately, hopefully, to make her to grow as a character.

Sun will always be a side character to me. He exists as a foil for Blake to grow and develop, though his importance may grow given how things are proceeding in season four. But for the sake of this fic, I needed something to push Blake over the edge. She'd already seen Yang injured - once in the series, and once again over the course of the fic. It seemed silly for the impetus to Blake's growth to be Yang getting hurt once again, and having Yang be the one killed off would have impacted Ruby, her team and her family more than it would have impacted Blake, to say nothing of Yang's role in the rest of the story.

But Sun was the perfect sacrificial pawn. Not only was his death something that could push Blake past the breaking point, but it would impact Neptune as well, and force him to lean on Weiss for support. In order for Blake to mature in a way that felt satisfying, I needed her to strike out on her own with no fear in her heart. She has never before faced Adam on her own before and won. Every victory she's had over Adam in this fic, she's always had help. Despite the fic's overall message of the many being more powerful than the individual, in this particular instance, I needed Blake to finally face off against her arch rival, with no hesitation, and emerge victorious - and to do so on her own. And losing Sun was the catalyst that allowed her to do this.

I realized that this would disappoint some of my readers, and I'm sorry that this is the decision I came to. I don't dislike Sun Wukong as a character, and I'd be happy if Blake ends up together with him or Yang in the series. But for the purposes of this fic, he served a greater role as a sacrifice. I only hope that Blake's attempts to honor his name in the epilogue managed to soften the blow somewhat.

Another contentious issue was Qrow being Ruby's father, and that was also a decision that I went back and forth on. It all started when I launched into the series of flashbacks to Qrow's past as a student at Beacon. At the time, I wasn't sure where I was doing with that arc, I just thought that his character deserved more exploration, and it felt like an appropriate time to shift gears in the fic. I liked the idea of him getting a crush on Summer, however, and I thought it would keep things interesting if I teased the possibility of a relationship between them, particularly knowing how things turn out in the present. So, ultimately, I got into it without knowing how it was going to end, which is always a gamble when writing.

By the time I started writing that part, several of my friends had planted the idea of him being Ruby's father in my head by pointing out how similar Qrow and Ruby are. I had already decided on making Summer a Faunus, thus completing Ruby's Little Red Riding Hood/Big Bad Wolf motif, and also having silver eyed warriors be the product of a human/Faunus hybrid play off of silver bullets being anathema to werewolves. My initial plan was for several of the characters to begin to suspect that Qrow might secretly be Ruby's father, only for the final flashback to reveal that, while he did harbor feelings for Summer, he never actually consummated that love with her, revealing that everyone's suspicions were all for naught. The progeny of Summer and Taiyang would still produce the human/Faunus hybrid that I needed for the silver eyed warrior bloodline theory to hold true. And there are a few lines that I left scattered throughout the fic that suggested this plan. There are a few points where Qrow refers to Ruby as Taiyang's daughter, even in his own head, and I think at some point Raven suggests that she left Taiyang so that Summer could bear him a child, who would just so happen to be born a silver eyed warrior.

This plan ultimately felt like too much of a stretch, and I never had the right chance to draw out the other characters' suspicions of Ruby's parentage, so the plan fell through. I had already been building up to this big reveal with Raven's pool, however, so either way, I would just be throwing in another twist for the sake of a twist in a series of chapters already laden with big reveals. It was poorly handled, and may be one of my biggest regrets about this fic, and one of the only major plot points I might change if I ever go back for a major re-edit.

The completionist in me also kept looking for a way to squeeze in a guy-on-guy pairing somewhere to balance out the girl-on-girl romance between Yang and Blake - perhaps between Scarlet and Sage. But in the end, I decided against it, as it felt like pandering. Their two characters had not really been explored enough in this fic, and I didn't want to assign them with such an arbitrary label just to tick something off a checklist. That too would have felt like a cop out, not to mention the fact that, as one reviewer pointed out, most of the main cast was in some sort of relationship by the end, which just isn't very realistic either.

I ended up taking this fic in a much more sci-fi direction than I expected, given just how fantasy-oriented everything is in the series. Every mystical happenstance has some sort of explanation, albeit far-fetched. In the end, however, my priority was giving these characters a bit more depth by using them to explore real world issues. RWBY as a series does a fantastic job at exploring racism and other social issues, but I wanted to take it a step further. I wanted to explore poverty and classism with Weiss and her dealings with her father's company and the White Fang. I wanted to explore mental health issues with Blake's social anxiety and Neptune's PTSD. I wanted to explore issues of abusive relationships with Cinder and her interactions with Pyrrha, Salem and her henchmen, as well as with Emerald and her interactions with Cinder and Mercury. I wanted to explore issues with international conflict and how they can affect people, such as Dora and the Lost Children of Vacuo. I wanted to explore issues with homosexuality with Blake's conflict over how she felt about Yang. I wanted to explore biracial issues with Summer and Ruby's mixed heritage. I wanted to explore family issues by having Ruby and Yang confront the possibility of an even more broken household. I wanted to explore environmental issues with dust being analogous to this world's fossil fuels, and the negative impact its continued use could have on the environment. And I wanted to explore the implications of one's own ancestry owing its success to the brutal employment of manifest destiny by introducing the idea that humanity in the world of RWBY came from a race of interplanetary conquerors. I won't make the claim that my treatment of any of these issues were particularly subtle, well handled, well thought-out, or even that they successfully drove a particular point home, but I maintain that they were worthwhile endeavors all the same.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not extend my gratitude towards you, my readers. Your constant reading and reviewing kept me going, even as I began to lose steam. At the time of writing this, this is the 11th most reviewed RWBY fic on this entire site. That's not my accomplishment, that's yours. In particular, I would like to thank Runty Grunty for the idea of the hot spring episode, as well as the name for Team RSJC (I honestly hadn't even thought of that until they mentioned it). I would also like to thank Patleon909 for their helpful feedback and constant, unsolicited error checking. You have a future in editing, my friend. Thank you both!

Special thanks also go to the following readers for their thoughtful and prolific reviews, in no particular order: Draconic, dracohalo117, Drake187, Spartan Ninja, Kyrogue23, RelentlessCrusader, silverhawk88, Kingdom Rider92, Cipher96, UGX7, Ace of Spies, Legolas Dragon Ranger, Smithrooks, Evilkitten3, dawnslight33, legendofzeldafan100, Qrow's Talon, Ballsdeep69 (classy SAO Abridged reference there), mediocrity4, Crescent Sunrise, FourNails1341, Unstoppable Cyborg, pedrocamora102, TidePoolDevil, knight7572, The Knight Hunter, KnightSpark, MEleeSmasher, MetaCrisisDR, soldier01073, lightningstrxu, WyattMoore, JimBob86, The Antisocial Bookworm, Materia-Blade, dragoon109, XxadvengerxX25, WatcherCCG, Mgsfan94, Fireballin117, Zone-Meister, Cyrocene, XxBrownEyedGrlxX, NightLocker, sorarocks531, WizTheWhiteWolf, Kung-fu Blaziken, stephenadezio, DigitalSoul247, goddy80119, AXL999, Matt1016, allie300093, TheDemonicSaint, SparktheDog, RetardPen, Pandolfi15, LittleAqua, Emperor of Time, Solvdrage, The Night Hunter, Writen, Darth Artemis, xXLeviathan01Xx, ksagan, Megaguy444, AG1193, anand891996, Silver Wolf 211, Harbinger the Reaper, TheShadeOps, Lavits Dragoon, Infinite Paper, Studio Gible, Dark rayquaza x, SuperSaiyajin4Vegeta, InvincibleDonut, and many, many others.

If I missed anyone or mispelled any names, I deeply apologize, but as far as I know, this site does not offer statistics tracking for reviews, so I had to compound all these names by hand, not to mention all the anonymous reviews. Just know that none of your reviews have gone unnoticed, and have done much to keep me motivated. Thank you all so very much! You've been an enormous source of encouragement for the past year and a half, and I couldn't have finished this fic without your kind words.

Also, an extra special shout out to everyone who put in the time and effort to create a TVTropes page of this fic. I am utterly blown away when people take the time to compile pages like these, not just for their favorite show or movie, but for a fan work in its own right. And the fact that this has been done for not one but two of my fics is utterly humbling. A special thank you to darkdill, Aurora313, Arctimon, Transparent Existence, N8han11, HK87, peripheraldevotee, stewbacca94, Nintendoman01, crackersthesparrow, Blastgamer, jormis29, hubakon1368, AJSthe2nd, LadWatcher and DinoCam1795 for your work in maintaining this page. None of you had to put so much energy into keeping this page so thoroughly and consistently up to date, and it really means a lot to me that you all took the time to do so. Thank you all!

So what's next for me? Well, after a decently sized break, I might take the time to review and revise this fic a little bit more. Maybe straighten out a few inconsistencies, make sure everything's spelled, punctuated and capitalized correctly. For the longest time, I was spelling Myrtenaster as "Myrtlenaster." That one's on me. I might also add some details that weren't known until season four, such as the names for continents Sanus, Solitas and Anima (in lieu of this, I was referring to them as "The Atlesian continent," etc, which may have become a little confusing). I won't be adding any of the new characters from season four, like Whitley, Klein, Salem's minions or Oscar, just because there's no room for them in this story (though I was able to make some allusions to Ghira and Kali). Oh, and I was also planning on writing a lemon side story for Jaune and Pyrrha, going into their fun-filled night at the hot spring in a bit more detail. Look for that on my DeviantArt page in the next few months or so. Just do a Google search for "Kraven Ergeist Deviantart" and you should find it. As for other fan fiction? Well, I got into Overwatch shortly after I started writing this fic, and that's a fandom ripe for the picking. Might do another series of drabbles for that setting in the next year or so, similar to my FFVII and Bleach fics. Will I ever write anything as long as this fic? Doubtful, but anything's possible. This fic was an obsession, so really, it'll depend on how hard my next obsession hits me. And of course, there's always season five to consider.

Lastly, some footnotes. Inspiration for this fic came from a variety of sources, many of which some of you have already guessed. First, the inspirations that were flat out stolen from other fans: the idea for Persephone and the Titan came from an unrelated piece of fanart from the amazingly talented dishwasher1910 titled "RWBY-Future: Penny - Model 4.1 Persephone." As mentioned above, the acronym for Team RSJC as well as the hot spring episode came from Runty Grunty, one of my readers. The idea for Ren's semblance of Nightshade came from a number of different fan theories found while trolling Reddit. Also, while not so much "stolen" as "imagined in parallel," the design for Grimm Pyrrha was beautifully realized by Paperbark Scrolls in another unrelated piece of fanart bearing the subtext "Tell me, do you regret? That you failed her?" Even the title of "Resurgence" isn't original amongst RWBY fanworks, as a separate and unrelated fan comic by Atrox used the title before this fic ever did. This site doesn't let me link to these works directly, but hopefully the author names and titles will be enough to help readers locate the original works through Google. Of course, the idea of bringing back Pyrrha as some kind of Grimm hybrid at all was stolen from many a fan theory, as was reviving Penny, and having Qrow be Ruby's father. None of these were original ideas, and I take no credit for them. Aura linking, which played a heavy role in the fic, was also just the generic "by your powers combined" trope given form, specifically inspired by Soul Synchronization from the Soul Eater manga. Also, Yang getting a robot arm was such an obvious plot development, it even happened in the show, so I take no credit for that idea either. I will take credit, however, for calling out the headmaster of Haven Academy being named Lionheart. A lot of fans were predicting a Cowardly Lion motif, but I was rather pleased to find that I nailed his name.

The scene where Weiss gets dolled up and strolls through the Vacuan slums as bait for robbers is a reference to a similar scene in a web comic called "Darken" by Kate Ashwin. In addition to their rough and tumble attitude described in the wiki, I also envisioned Vacuo being much more spiritual than the majority of Remnant to contrast with Atlas' vast industrial prowess. This is also why the Lost Children of Vacuo (a vague reference to the Lost Boys from Peter Pan) made their home in a giant banyan tree. The Ancient Vacuan language borrows a lot from Arabic, of which I know absolutely nothing and relied entirely on Google translate. Dora was also a product of this Arabian Nights theme, a sort of mish-mash of roguish and impish traits from the likes of Aladdin, Shantae and Kaolla Su. Project GEMINI was a play on the motif of twins (Penny and Persephone) as well as the Disney character Jiminy Cricket, who was Pinocchio's conscience. The Pool of Life was inspired, ironically, by the Pool of Knowledge from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The Witch and the Wizard were intended to be representative of Mother Earth and Father Time. A few Red vs Blue references even made it into the fic, including Jaune borrowing Tucker's line about using his sword. Ren's line at to Pyrrha at the end about hating goodbyes is also a reference to Church's line at the end of the Freelancer arc. And the car chase scene at the end of the epilogue was also meant to be an homage to the highway chase scene during the Freelancer arc, right down to Ruby summoning a two-wheeled vehicle from an airdrop mirroring Tex. As many of you noticed, the scene where Cinder starts falling into madness before her reflection in the mirror was inspired by a similar scene with Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Pyrrha of course quote's Cortana's famous "Don't make a girl a promise" line from Halo. And Ruby's final fight with Salem and the ensuing speech she delivers was heavily inspired by Gurren Lagann.

The Shadowglass was an allusion to the Magic Mirror from Snow White, while the hand-sized Shadowglasses were a reference to the mirror from Beauty and the Beast. The idea of Qrow taking over the mantle of the Wizard from Ozpin comes from the Wizard of Oz, when the Scarecrow becomes the new ruler of Emerald City after Professor Marvel returns to Kansas. I regret not being able to predict the Oriental theme for Mistral that the show was clearly going for (that's another thing I might try to add if I ever do a major revision). Not to be outdone though, I envisioned Vacuo reflecting a Levantine "Arabian Nights" archetype, complete with Professor Jasmine being, of course, a reference to Princess Jasmine (though her specific character traits were drawn more from Pharah and Symmetra from Overwatch). We'll have to see if Vacuo in the series embraces this archetype as well. Also, as much as I like Klein in season four, I still stand behind my decision to give Winter a robot butler named Prometheus, who is of course named for the Greek god of forethought.

Not sure where the idea for Pyrrha's great red nevermore came from, but it just seemed fitting for her to have a flying mount to make her seem like even more of a harbinger of death. Also, as many of you have noted, the green mutated Grimm were a nod to the enemies you fight in the Grimm Eclipse video game. In addition to that, I invented a few new Grimm for this fic as well, including plague bearers, the rats that Weiss' uses in a lab setting to experiment with Ruby's semblance; widowmakers, the giant spider that attacks Glynda's team in her flashback and makes a return during the final push towards Beacon; and of course the gargoyles, which I thought were an adequately fearsome permutation of human beings, suited to being decent end-game monsters. Was planning on introducing a swarm of giant Grimm bats during the battle of Atlas, but couldn't think of a meaningful way to work them into the battle.

Each of the Maiden's names was meant to draw inspiration from their season, as coined by Amber. Dora's name was a reference to the color gold, while Vera was a reference to greenery and Crystal a reference to ice. Crystal's character was of course inspired by Nora Fries, with Weiss' father freezing her in stasis until her disease could be cured. The "Eisenhardt" in William Eisenhardt Schnee translates to "Iron Heart" in German. And Lady Grimhilde Narcissa is named after the evil queen from Snow White, hence her connection to Weiss. Jaune's sisters - Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope and Merope - were named after the Pleiades, the seven sisters of Greek mythology. Maia's husband Dias and Pyrrha's parents, Athena and Perseus, are also named after figures from Greek mythology. The names of Jaune's forebears - Jonas, Gaius, Julius and Jacques - are a culmination of fan theories as to what his ancestor's name could be, including Gaius Julius Caesar, the real-life owner of Crocea Mors. His even more distant ancestor, King Uruk, is a reference to the ancient Sumerian kingdom said to be ruled by the legendary King Gilgamesh. And his most distant ancestor of all, Erst Jaeger, is of course German for "First Hunter," and a nod to Eren Jaeger from Attack on Titan. And of course Neptune's family, Poseidon and Triton, as well as their company, Ionian Heavy Industries, are all allusions to Greek water gods.

Silver-Eyed Warriors get a number of names in this fic. While "Argentine Warrior" and "Gintama" are Latin and Japanese derivations of the word silver, I ultimately went with "Grimmslayer" to indicate how naturally suited they were to fighting Grimm, and just because I thought it sounded cooler. If I ever had to change the name of the fic to anything other than Resurgence, I'd also probably go with "Grimmslayer." Raven's moniker of Krymsen is based on another character I created, and named after the color of blood. The Gargoyle that acts as Raven's assistant in the epilogue is named Pericles, after the ancient Greek statesman. Glynda's sister Addaperle is a reference to the Broadway musical "The Wiz," wherein Addaperle is the Good Witch of the North, with Glinda as the Good Witch of the South. The Battle of Gillikin, which Glynda references in code to Ironwood, is named after the northern country of the land of Oz. Cinder's many monikers - Asha when she infiltrates Havensfall, Ella when she was still a Huntress, and the name of her forebear, Asha'Ella, which simply combines the two names - are all allusions to the character's original inspiration of Cinderella. Ash and cinder go hand in hand, and both were originally named Ella at birth. Mercury's moniker of "Gray" should be self explanatory, and Neo's moniker of "Poly" is a reference to her poly-chromatic eyes. Other color names are scattered throughout the story, with varying degrees of importance - William Schnee's secretary is named Opal, Weiss' secretary is named Lily, the team's Vacuan guide is named Clay, the girl Cinder kills in front of Glynda is named River Sail, and the few named members of the Lost Children of Vacuo are Lime, Coral, Sandy, Chip, Tan, Olive, Scotch, Cherry and Brass.

Because the Maidens' powers were so unclearly defined in the show, I had to do some guesswork as to which Maiden could do what (unless it turns out that they all share the same general pool of powers). I decided that the Fall Maiden's powers were all different types of storms. From there, I made the Spring Maiden all about controlling plant life, the Summer Maiden all about the desert, and the Winter Maiden all about the arctic. Not very original, but it's the best I could come up with having so little to reference in the show. The manner in which the Maidens commune with Pyrrha in chapter forty-two was inspired by the Vortigaunts from Half Life 2. I also expanded a bit on Faunus abilities as well. Blake and Sun both enter what I called "starvation mode," which is a real world phenomenon that occurs in wild cats, allowing them to make use of minimal resources. I also give both Blake and Adam a kind of "berserker rage," which allows Faunus to enter a savage state of mind in a desperate situation when their aura is in the red zone and their bodies are pushed to the limit. I wanted to spend more time fleshing out the Faunus and their abilities in this fic, but since they really weren't the focus, I didn't have a lot of chances to do so.

Jaune's semblance seemed fitting for his character, and could explain the one instance of it coming out in his season one encounter with Cardin. Neptune's power was both fitting and plot-relevant, given his namesake and fear of water in the show. Yatsuhashi's semblance is a power I liked from Mutants and Masterminds, which seemed to line up with the few abilities we've seen from him. Scarlet's semblance is as close to flight as I could get without giving him actual flight, since he's supposed to be referencing Peter Pan, and I couldn't have him actually fly for plot reasons. I was considering giving Fox some kind of empathic ability to maybe help with Emerald, but didn't really have a good opportunity to do so, so that ended up being dropped. And I know Velvet's semblance technically only covers the ability to mimic other people's techniques and not the weapons themselves, but I fudged it a little so that I could give Weiss' giant white knight the ability to use other weapons as well when Velvet was aura linked. I thought Cardin's semblance seemed fitting for his character and weapon. And most everyone else's semblances were left more or less ambiguous, particularly Taiyang, who thus far I think is the only bare-handed fighter we've seen in the series.

The name for Qrow's sword, Grímnir, comes from one of Odin's names in the old Norse poem "Grímnismál." Qrow and Raven's parents, Hugin and Munin, were the two ravens that accompany Odin, on which Qrow and Raven are likely based. The name for Raven's sword, Midnight Dreary, of course comes from Edgar Allen Poe's poem "The Raven." For Blake's weapons, Cassius and Jin, were named after the two characters from "Dust: An Elysian Tail," which is said to have been the real-life inspiration for "The Man With Two Souls" in the series. The weapons themselves were actually inspired by the red character in dillongoo's "Project MONTY" video on Youtube (look it up if you have time, it's pretty cool, if kinda short). Any similarity to the 3D maneuver gear from Attack on Titan is coincidental. Inspirations for Yang's built-in weapons range from Barret Wallace's gun arm to Edward Elric's automail, and eventually Big O's megadeus arms when she attaches the proton cannon. William Schnee's sword was loosely based on Soul Calibur, with a bit of Cloud Strife's Ultima Weapon thrown in. And it only just occurred to me that I never gave William's sword a name. Oh well, let's just call it Snowpiercer for now. The Maidens mostly wielded staves, with the exception of Summer Rose, who never truly embraced her Maiden heritage and bore a dagger-sword-lance, which is a weapon I designed for a separate work called "Absolution," which you can find on my DeviantArt page. Coco's nanomachine turrets came from an effort to figure out what could possibly be considered an upgrade from a minigun, giving up on the idea, and finally going for something that felt equal parts classy, chique and technologically superior to any other handheld weapon in the fic. I also apparently failed to give either of Coco's golden guns a name either. Sheesh, getting sloppy. Oh well, Cream and Sugar it is. Lastly, Ruby's dagger in the epilogue was meant to be an ode to Crescent Rose as well as the name Rose Thorn being an homage to her mother. But really, it was the only gift I could think of having any meaning for Ruby, given how much she adores weapons. Also cookies.

Winter's ship, the Aeneid, is based on the Latin epic poem by Virgil and appears in another RWBY fic of mine. Ironwood's flagship Ptolemaios was inspired by the ship from Gundam 00 named for the Greek philosopher. Other ships include the Vacuan hydrogen vessels, such as Jasmine's Zephyr, which were based on WWII-era German Zeppelin bombers. Of course, Coco's airships, the Macchiato and Frappuccino, are named after some of her favorite drinks. Some new Atlesian mechs that I've added to the fic include the Titan, aptly named for the gods from Greek mythology and inspired in equal parts by Evangelion and the giant Omnic from Torbjorn's comic in Overwatch. There is also Ironwood's custom mech, the Juggernaut, in reference to the Hindu temple cars of Jagannath. And the starship Elysium is a reference to the Elysian Fields in Greek mythology. Ruby's red moped was inspired by a piece of fanart by Shinonome. Also, Coco has a car called the Espresso Machine because of course she does. And Yang's bike, Bumblebee, received a slew of weapon upgrades because why would it not?

Musical inspiration for Yang's berserker mode at the end of the Vacuo arc came from Rammstein's "Feuer Frei." Inspiration for Weiss summoning the giant white knight to battle the dragon during the battle of Atlas came from Two Steps From Hell's "Freefall." Inspiration for Blake sacking the White Fortress and dueling with Adam came from the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance soundtrack, "A Stranger I Remain." Team RWBY airdropping on Vale, summoning the white dragon, Jaune's duel with Pyrrha, Ruby entering the netherworld and her final battle with Summer Rose were all inspired by Nightwish' "Ghost Love Score." Jaune unleashing the Grand Arc and finally coming to Ruby's aid as she links with her entire party and unleashes her full Grimmslayer powers upon Salem were inspired by My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade," which also inspired the original idea for this fic. Pyrrha's farewell to her friends in the final chapter was inspired by "Tsubasa wo Kudasai" from the Evangelion 2.0 soundtrack. And the car chase during the epilogue was inspired by Mark Holman's "Nothing Can Stop Me Now."

The two cops at the end of the epilogue were meant to be the same two cops from episode fifteen, who were themselves a reference to another Rooster Teeth work. I also borrowed a few lines from the original series as needed. Cinder's villainous monologue to the resistance in Vale refers to them as "weapons pointed at the enemy so someone else can claim their victory," which is a direct line from the season 2 opening theme song. At the end, after Pyrrha's ultimate sacrifice, Raven even quotes the title of theme: "Now it's time to say goodbye." In the epilogue, when Ruby is tempted to reveal the truth to the Huntsmen, she makes a point about legends being "stories scattered through time," and how "mankind has grown quite fond of recounting the exploits of heroes and villains, forgetting so easily that they were remnants, byproducts of a forgotten past," which is a repetition of Salem's intro line from the very first episode.

Finally, as many of you no doubt have noticed, Monty Oum's mantra of "Keep Moving Forward" comes up repeatedly throughout this fic. Almost every major character utters it at least once, and it functions as a source of motivation for each of them in their own way. It's a line that has motivated me throughout the creation of this fic, and it is in his memory that I leave you now. Thank you, Monty, for taking us all on such a wonderful journey. This may be the longest story I'll ever write, and it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous amount of written works on this site that are dedicated to your legacy. May you continue to inspire us all for years to come. Your work will never be forgotten.

Keep moving forward, everyone.