WMG / Forged Destiny

WMG for Forged Destiny. Potential unmarked spoilers ahead.

Ruby is secretly a member of the Labour Caste.

There is a ton of evidence backing this up:

• No one has ever heard of the Reaper Class and Ren can't find a single mention of it anywhere in the book of Hero Classes that he was perusing.
• Ruby can only fight with a scythe, a tool that seems to be universally reserved for farmers.
• She's perhaps the second most passionate person in the main cast when it comes to defending the Labour Caste, the most passionate being Jaune who is secretly a Blacksmith.
• There are no other battle scythes in setting; Grimm don't drop them as they do so for every other commonly used weapon and no one makes them.
• Ruby's constitution is so low that it's said even a single hit could be lethal. How could a combat class be designed with such low health?
• Partially Jossed. Ruby is the first and only Reaper in the history of the kingdoms. As such, no one knows what Caste a Reaper belongs to, not even Ruby herself. Ruby is in Beacon as a sort of trial run to determine which Caste any and all future Reapers should be sorted into.

Ruby is secretly a Labour Caste Prestige Class.

• In addition to the above examples, she has been repeatedly depicted as unusually fast for her level, and has been able to deal incredible amounts of damage under certain circumstances.
• It would also explain why she isn't immediately recognized as a member of the Labour Caste, given the rarity of Prestige Classes.
• Partially Jossed. See the top entry for details.

Ruby is a member of the Hero Caste after all.

• Ozpin let her into the academy, from what we know from the show about Oz's age he probably met a reaper or two and he would know if Reapers belong to an NPC class.
• Tai, Yang and Qrow would have never let her into the academy if there was a chance to keep her from it. Especially after What happened to Summer and given their protectiveness of Ruby.
• A farmer class was already introduced in the story, since reaping is part of a farmer's job it would make no sense to have a sub-class for that.
• Ruby never actually showed the ability of having a high RES, whenever Salem showed up she was just as affected as everybody else apart from Jaune.
• Finally, if reapers were an NPC class then they would be a tad more common across Remnant (someone still has to reap the crops), or at least their existence wouldn't be shrouded in such mystery to the point where no books even mention them.
• Partially Jossed. See the top entry for details.

Jaune's father was the previous user of the amulet.

• His father is said to be one of the best Blacksmiths, so good that heroes come from separate towns to acquire his work. A higher level would mean better skills for forging.
• He said he was level 24, a very high but still believable level for a member of the Labor Caste, but he always found amusement in the Blacksmiths that claimed they were of an even higher level. Why? Because he is of a higher level and, assuming he doesn't know about Paths(a fairly secretive topic), believes he knows what Skills those Blacksmiths would have and sees that their blades were not made with said abilities.
• Jaune said that he found the amulet in the woods outside of his house, close enough for his father to have cast it aside before making a new life for himself.
• Salem knew the last owner of the amulet and said that they were male and treasured it greatly.
• In her more recent summons, Salem met Summer and the wielder of the amulet, perhaps at the same time. In all of Coeur's other works, Jaune's father is characterized as someone who prioritizes his family, himself, and then his charges in that order, as opposed to Summer who valued those she could save above everything else. Salem said she offered Summer the chance to survive if she would abandon her charges. She refused but perhaps her partner, Jaune's father, did not. Then, having refused to fight against an undefeatable foe, he threw off the facade of a Knight he had carried for years, and resumed his life as the Blacksmith he truly was.
• Jossed. Salem states that all the previous owners of the amulet are already dead, and that Jaune found it near his house because she put it there. She goes on to say that Jaune was so desperate to become a hero that he accidentally summoned her in his sleep and wished for it while sleep talking.
  • Potentially not. In Book 4, Salem only states that the last owner died after she sees the amulet on Jaune, seeing as they had valued it so much. She is also initially surprised that Jaune has the amulet at all, and did not seem to know it was in his possession until that moment. The death of the amulet's last owner is therefore only speculation on Salem's part and just because she says that a contract exists between them doesn't make it so.
    • Seemingly Jossed, since Nicholas Arc doesn't seem to make any mention of having seen or used the amulet himself. Yet.

The God King of Mistral intends to use a large chunk of Vale's population as human sacrifices for his own summoning of Salem, to wish to become the God Emperor of the World

• We know for a fact that it takes a large number of sacrifices to summon Salem, but there's not a whole lot of info in regards to the ritual...or how big it can potentially be. We also know for a fact that the King of Mistral intends to sabotage the Festival by killing the Heroes and leaders of Vale when they're at their most vulnerable so as to annex it into Mistral, but he may go even further than that. What if he intends to sacrifice a huge chunk of Vale's population in a summoning ritual many magnitudes larger and more powerful than any of the previous attempts combined ala Father from Fullmetal Alchemist's Nationwide Transmutation Circle, and in the process make Salem's ability to grant his wish more potent. Not just simply God Emperor of the expanded Mistral, but perhaps of the entire world?

Cinder is being coerced into attacking Vale.

• As seen with Torchwick and Roux, those that have a high Charisma score and a high enough Level are fully capable of forcing others to do things either against their will or think that what they are doing aligns with their own will when it is actually that of another's. As the Noble Caste gain Exp based on the projects they oversee, it stands to reason that the King of Mistral would easily meet both criteria, so much so that not even Cinder could feasibly resist him.
• Peace was already being established between the two kingdoms. While Cinder does have a desire for power, something she has already attained as the future queen, she has also shown an intense desire to see the war ended and her people safe. Her assassinating the King of Vale during the Festival of Peace works directly against this goal.
• Cinder was sympathetic to Jaune and offered him a place at her side after The Reveal. She must know that Jaune would never choose to accompany her if she deliberately destroyed any possibility of peace between the warring nations, so why would she offer such a thing at all? Unless, of course, she had no idea what the King of Mistral's true plans were and was only informed on them later.
• Cinder has fought both beside and against Jaune on multiple occasions and should have an idea of how strong he truly is and that a contingent of soldiers would almost certainly fail in killing him and destroying his village to ensure no word on Mistral's army reaches Vale. If she had wanted Jaune dead and no news to reach Vale, she would have sent either a group of Heroes or high-level soldiers to accomplish the task.
  • Almost certainly confirmed. Cinder shows shock when Jaune yells at her about the razed towns, and outright states that she didn't want any of the fighting at the festival to occur and strove wholeheartedly for peace between the two kingdoms but still has no choice but to follow the orders of her king. When she mortally wounds Jaune, she seems to show genuine remorse and expresses well-wishes for him in the afterlife.

Phoenix is some sort of Anti-Salem.

• Exactly two entities are described as Summons in the story: Salem and Pheonix.
• Phoenix is capable of being accessed as a natural part of a Hero Class's Skills, suggesting inherent opposition to Salem and the Grimm.
• In Phoenix's presence, Cinder wished for Jaune to be reborn as he laid dying. Moments later he arises with renewed life as a new class, seemingly breaking the rules of RPG Remnant in much the same manner as Salem has done in the past.

Jaune is an incredibly high level for his year.

• While Jaune was initially four levels behind the average Beacon applicant at the time of the trial quest, that difference is relatively easy to make up seeing as it is harder to gain Levels the higher one's Level is.
• The Hunters, and Jaune in particular, are continuously pitted against opponents that should be far beyond their Levels and they tend to gain a good amount of Exp each time they best said foes, far more than any of their classmates could reasonably get from simply farming lesser Grimm.
• During the raid on TRE headquarters, Tsune asks Roman, a fourth year student who has repeated the year several times, whether he's level thirty or, at a push, forty. This implies that a standard level for a regular Beacon senior is at or below thirty.
• Jaune is able to farm even the farthest reaches of the Emerald forest with ease by the beginning of Book 6 while Coco implied in Book 1 that there is suitably challenging Grimm in the forest for seniors to use to gain Exp. By this point, he is Level thirty-two.
• Seemingly Jossed as Raven states that the average Beacon graduate has a level of fifty.

Jaune is one of the highest leveled members of the Hunters.

• Jaune has been able to gain experience and levels from forging as well as fighting, something the rest of the guild can't do.
• It's revealed in Book 6, Chapter 4 that Jaune's level is higher than Ruby's whose level was likely higher than the average Beacon applicant at the start of the year considering how overprotective her family is.
• Jaune's had to fight several opponents the rest of the guild has not, and gained a large amount of levels from them e.g. the Berserker pirate, the teleporting Greycloak, Lord Roux, and Cinder.
• When Jaune reports his Level to the king and his council, several members of the Guild gasp at how high it is, implying that his level may be significantly higher than their own.
• Jossed. Yang, who started Beacon at around Level 15, is now Level 40. This is despite the fact that: she wasn't involved in Tyrian's death, she only fought Grimm at Magnis, she was one of eight people involved in killing Watts, she didn't contribute to the deaths of Winter or Cinder, it has been repeatedly said that farming in the Emerald forest is a wasted effort past level thirty, and she can't gain exp through other methods like Jaune.

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