How Tyrian Callows Can Work as a Personal Enemy for Team RWBY
Tyrian is actually one of the easiest Salem agents to turn into a genuine, burning arch-enemy for every single member of the team. He’s already halfway there in canon.
Ruby This one is already canon and extremely personal. Tyrian was sent specifically to capture or kill her on Salem’s direct orders. They fought one-on-one in Volume 4, he poisoned Qrow (her uncle and father figure) right in front of her, and she’s the one who cut off his scorpion tail. From Ruby’s side: he almost murdered the person who raised her. From Tyrian’s side: she humiliated him, permanently maimed him, and caused him to fail Salem (who then brutalized him as punishment). Tyrian is completely unhinged and obsessive; Ruby is 100% his white whale. He wants her screaming, broken, or dead, in that order.
Weiss Weiss herself never met him in canon, but Winter clearly has, and she was visibly terrified at the mere prospect of fighting Tyrian again. That alone tells us he’s left trauma on the Schnee family. Possibilities that require almost zero retcon:
Tyrian was the one who carried out several high-profile political assassinations in Atlas that got quietly blamed on the Schnee family (or that he deliberately made look like Jacques ordered them).
He stalked or fought Winter off-screen during the Atlas years, leaving her with scars (physical or mental) she never talks about.
During the fall of Atlas he targets the remaining Schnees on purpose, maybe even corners Whitley or Klein just to send Weiss a message. Tyrian has zero morals about killing entire families for fun; the Schnees are just another prestigious bloodline to paint the walls with.
Blake Extremely easy and already heavily implied. Tyrian is a Faunus who became one of the most sadistic, genocidal monsters on Remnant, the exact kind of traitor the White Fang radical wing claimed all Faunus would become if they didn’t follow them. He’s Adam Taurus cranked to eleven: a Faunus who revels in violence and serves a human witch who wants to exterminate humanity (including Faunus). His “plastic soldiers and pawns” line is almost certainly a direct dig at the White Fang. Blake hears a Faunus call her people disposable cannon fodder while laughing about murder, and it’s not hard to see why she’d take that personally. Bonus: Tyrian would find Blake’s idealism hilarious and love breaking her spirit before he kills her.
Yang Also very straightforward. Tyrian nearly murdered Qrow (the closest thing she and Ruby have to a dad), poisoned him in front of her, laughed about it, and has been actively trying to kill or capture her little sister for years. On the flip side, Tyrian sees Yang as the loud, angry obstacle that keeps getting in the way of Ruby. He’d take great pleasure in taunting her about her lost arm, her abandonment issues, or how easy it would be to finish what Adam started. Their fighting styles are also perfect mirrors: raw power vs unhinged agility. Yang would love nothing more than to punch that grin off his face permanently.
Conclusion Tyrian doesn’t need any major retcons to be the single most personal Salem lieutenant to all four members of RWBY at once. He’s already maimed or traumatized their family, mocked their causes, and has a canonical obsession with Ruby that can easily spread to obsessive hatred of anyone protecting her.
How Hazel Rainart Can Work as a Deeply Personal Enemy for Team RWBY
Hazel never directly fought RWBY for most of the series — his hatred was laser-focused on Ozpin. But with just a few logical extensions and revelations, he can easily become an enemy who hits every single girl where it hurts the most: emotionally, ideologically, and personally.
Ruby Ruby is the only actual child soldier in the room, so Hazel’s accusation that Ozpin “uses children and throws them away” lands hardest on her. She can’t fully deny it — she’s living proof. At the same time, she would sympathize with Gretchen’s death (it mirrors Summer’s disappearance), but she’d push back hard: “She died fighting Grimm, the same thing we all signed up to do. Ozpin didn’t force her — Salem did, by making the Grimm in the first place.” If Hazel ever learned that Summer Rose went on a solo mission for Ozpin and never came back… he would 100% blame Ozpin, and by extension blame Ruby for still following “the man who killed both our mothers.” That turns sympathy into something twisted and personal.
Weiss Hazel almost killed her in Haven. One punch would have ended the Schnee heiress forever, and Whitley would have grown up never seeing his sister again. That near-death experience could be the final wake-up call that makes Weiss realize how fragile her family ties actually are. Hazel becomes the living embodiment of “anyone can die at any moment because of this war Ozpin started.” Bonus points if Hazel later mocks her with “Your father sold dust that got my sister killed, little Schnee. I should thank him — he gave me the perfect reason to erase his legacy, starting with you.”
Blake This one is the most fascinating because Blake is the only person who could actually understand Hazel’s rage. She watched Adam spiral into vengeance exactly the same way: a good person, consumed by grief and justified anger, until he became the very monster he hated. Hazel is Adam if he’d been bigger, stronger, and given magic steroids by Salem. Blake would feel sick seeing the parallel. She might even try to talk him down at first… only for Hazel to throw Sienna Khan’s death and the White Fang’s destruction in her face: “You ran. I stayed and avenged them. Don’t lecture me about peace, coward.” That makes him the dark mirror of what Blake could have become.
Yang Perfect foil duo. Both are the big, protective older siblings who fight with raw physical power and Dust infused in their own bodies. Both lost (or believe they lost) a family member because of Ozpin’s war. Yang would genuinely feel for the guy who lost his little sister… right up until he tries to murder Oscar (a literal child) in front of her. Then it flips: “You think you’re the only one who lost someone? I watched my mom disappear, my dad fall apart, and my sister almost die because of this war. But I didn’t start helping the woman who wants to end the world!” Hazel becomes the embodiment of rage allowed to fester too long — the warning of what Yang could still turn into if she ever lets vengeance win again.
Conclusion Hazel doesn’t need to hate RWBY from the start. He just needs to see them as Ozpin’s latest batch of child soldiers willingly marching to their deaths. To him, killing them is mercy — putting down the next generation of victims before they end up like Gretchen. That ideology clashes directly with everything the girls believe, and forces each of them to confront the ugliest truths about the world they’re fighting for.
(Also seeing Yang don this to Hazel would be funny)
Well, not literally literally, but you get the metaphor. I'm busy.
Anyways, I said I'd rewrite RWBY, and that's with zero insult to Monty Oum. I'll admit I've been insanely jealous that I didn't get there first. But oh well, he's a animator, I'm a struggling solo writer in the Deep South. I'm lucky if I can get my copy of Fuse Basic to work properly.
Enough jabbering. Have a short of preview of RWBY's pilot, called RWBY.
Cold.
It’s damn cold as I’m scaling this damn mountain on what should account to a rather normal fifteenth birthday.
As a gust of wind cuts across my back, the red hood over face threatening to cover my eyes and lead me directly to my downfall and imminent death, I’m forced to remember that with this challenge, gift, and test, my life will be anything but normal.
Then again, as my hand grabs hold of another cranny in the jutting rocks, normalicy, a safe lifespan, and an education bored me.
A life of Huntress is what I’ve always wanted, no, dreamed, thirsted, sweat, toiled, and nearly tried to kill myself with a happenstance gun accident over, then I wanted it worse than anyone else. Expect for the gun part. Those actually hurt when you shoot yourself in the foot. Yes, literally.
Sure, Grimm kill people….People kill Grimm, jada jada jada, and there’s a entire dumb cycle of negativity until the Huntresses arrive and figure out who was dumb enough to hold some petty grudge over two cents, and voila, problem solved. Someone probably gets stabbed in the process. It’s a beautiful way of getting medals and promotions. I’m sure the other 95% is guard duty or something like that.
Hopefully, my own personal career as a Huntress won’t be so dull, unlike this cliff face on this mountain, which I have now finally struggled against climbing, and as my hand decides to slip, I grab hold with the other hand and pull myself up onto a snow covered ridge. In the distance looms the Rose family mausoleum, and my ticket to what I hope is saving the world. And a half decent Huntress career with some perks. Good perks. Like a brand or something.
My name, future cute reporter, who will take my statement after I save the world?
Why it’s-
A bone-chilling howl breaks my concentration as I turn to look behind me.
Aw, hell…...nononononononononono, THEY are not here, not now, now of all the Remnant blessed times.
Beowolves.
Big, black, monstrous, beasts, every inch muscle, with razor sharp claws and fangs long enough to pierce quarter inch iron armor not unlike a fragile walnut shell broken by a child.
And they can smell my blood, I notice as what looks to be the pack leader begin to charge towards me from about 3 marks out.
I’d better be moving, unless I want to look just like my hood, but splattered all over the snow bank before being torn to shreds like tissue paper.
It didn’t help that I cut my hand scaling the mountainside, no, on my birthday no less, and I that I don’t have weapon. That’s just the candles on the proverbial birthday cake, I think to myself as I race past the open wrought iron gates, the clattering of the metal as it bangs against the hard stone of course alerting the Grimm to just come and chomp down on me like Tai Long’s specialty sunday buffet.
Man I hope whatever is in here is gonna slaughter some Grimm. That'd be uh...wonderful right about now.
Hurriedly zooming past the large oak doors, I push back against the oaken barriers that groan and creak as they slam shut, my hands shaking as I throw the wood bolt across the doors, sealing me inside.
I sigh for a moment.
Then a Beowolf claw rips through the door, inches from my head.
Aside from possibly needing a fresh pair of undergarments, because sweet hades in a handbasket, those flipping talons were the biggest I've ever seen, and I've only ran into those things once before. It wasn't so pretty then, and they weren't so pretty now.
As I peer into the dark room, I whip out the lighter I...commandeered from Yang's room. No, she doesn't smoke, and no, she won't be needing it. I think. I really hope she doesn't need it. The orange flame flares to life, illuminating my surroundings.
The Beowolves howl and claw at the door, which reminds me I'm on a time limit of sorts or oops, Ruby died while searching for her family birthday present in the Rose mausoleum when she went there alone on her fifteenth birthday. Like that wouldn't make headlines.
Wait, did I just glorify my own imminent death?
Ignoring that train of thought and moving past some creepy dead skeleton erm, guys, I presume who are of the male gender based on their decaying weaponry, my eyes come to rest on a dark pine coffin.
Summer-my mom-Rose's grave. Granted, my name's now officially Ruby Rose Long, according to the passport in my back pocket. RRL. Sounds like a kind a fish you reel in.
Ugh, if I keep this up, my humor will be bad as Yang's, and or I might be dead.
I know it's formality and all within Huntress and Huntsmen families for the children to forge their own weapons, and you're generally also not supposed to disturb the graves of the dead, especially family, lest you want some kind of evil hallucinatory curse trapping the family member to you for your life, but I have two pieces of logic that trump that:
1 I'm the only surviving Rose left, as everyone else, including my mother was murdered by a horde of Grimm on my second birthday. My mom defended our home until she could get me to safety, then with her last breath, she carried me to the doorsteps of the Longs. After that, the Grimm caught up with her, and well...
...they found her body in pieces on the next dawn.
2 I've missed my mom since then, and while Yang is good company and a sister, she isn't blood. And I know the Longs do good, and mean well, but...they never asked for a problem child on their doorstep. So I'll gladly take the company.
I attempt to open the lid, but it's sealed shut.
Dammit.
Grabbing a metal rod, I heave down with everything I have, and as the lid opens a storm of black powder clouds my face and my glasses.
Coughing, I wave the stuff away, but it clings to me like filth. My hands reach inside and I feel two things, wood, and paper. The paper comes out easily, but in the form of stationary and envelopes. But the wood is heavy and weighty.
Crescent Rose.
Mom?
It's called Crescent Rose. And it's a rule that no Rose's version of Crescent Rose be the like another's, handed from mother to daughter on their fifteenth birthday.
Wait, what?
Ruby, assemble Crescent Rose, and fight!
There's a loud click as the wood suddenly grows lighter, and out of the grave comes a long, worn, and sharp scythe. But no additional components remain. I'm left with merely a scythe.
Stuffing the papers into my jacket, somewhat in a cross between neatly and hastily folded, my eyes catch the glimpse of metal. I pull the guts of an old war rifle from a skeleton, the bolt and action smoothly interlocking with the scythe's head.
I pull the bolt back and there's a solid klak as I put a cartridge in, I had found a few near the dead guys as I was assembling the weapon.
