Characters / RWBY: Salem

RWBY Main Character Index
The Heroes: Team RWBY | Team JNPR | Ozpin and Oscar
Remnant: Sanus (Eastern) | Sanus (Western) | Anima | Solitas
Antagonists: Salem's Faction (Salem | Cinder Fall) | White Fang | Grimm Bestiary
Beyond Remnant: The Ever After

Other Media: RWBY: Ice Queendom - RWBY: The Official Manga - RWBY/Justice League - Justice League × RWBY: Super Heroes & Huntsmen - RWBY Chibi

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Spoilers for all works set prior to the end of Volume 8 are unmarked.

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Salem

"This is the beginning of the end, Ozpin.
And I can't wait to watch you burn."

^{Click here to see her original appearance} And this is the beginning of the start...

Voiced by: Jen Taylor^{Foreign VAs} Kikuko Inoue (Japanese)

Debut: Ruby Rose^*Volume 1 Episode 1 (voice), End of the Beginning^*Volume 3 Episode 12 (appearance)

"A smaller, more honest soul... It's true that a simple spark can ignite hope, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary. The ability to derive strength from hope is undoubtedly mankind's greatest attribute, which is why I will focus all my power to snuff it out. How does it feel knowing that all of your time and effort has been for nothing, that your guardians have failed you, that everything you've built will be torn down before your very eyes?"

The narrator of the first episode and the first four "World of Remnant" videos, providing the initial exposition on the fantasy setting of RWBY. She's credited as "Mysterious Narrator" at the end of Volume 1, and finally appears in the Volume 3 finale as the main antagonist of the show. Salem leads a campaign to bring about the Huntsman Academies' downfall from the shadows, commanding the Grimm, Faunus, and humans to enact her will.

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A — M

• Agony Beam: Salem has the ability to create streams of magic that strike her target, causing excruciating agony. She captures Oscar to learn how to use the Relic of Knowledge from him. After Oscar refuses to co-operate, she strikes him with the energy streams, causing him to scream in agony and leaving him with a scorched chest.
• Alien Blood: Her inhumanity is more than skin deep as injuries dealt to her yield the same reddish-black ooze Grimm are spawned from rather than blood.
• And I Must Scream: After being forced to live a lonely, isolated life by her cruel father, Salem escaped him only to end up being cursed with immortality, which isolated her forever from humanity. After leading a failed rebellion against the gods, the God of Darkness destroyed humanity, leaving her completely alone in the world with only animals and the Grimm for company. Although the God of Light eventually brought humanity back, she is too different to live among them.
• Ancient Evil: Salem has worked her evil from the shadows for thousands of years, tirelessly working to obtain the Relics and stop Ozpin from getting in her way. Ozpin's original incarnation was made to constantly reincarnate by having his soul, Aura and memories jump to a new person every time he died, forcing him to walk the earth for thousands of years trying to end her when it turned out the woman he loved was long gone.
• Arch-Enemy: She regards Ozpin as her most personal enemy. She implies his hope and optimism for humanity is an act of cruelty and therefore seeks to crush his hope completely. To achieve this end, she acknowledges that Ozpin is correct to believe a united humanity is extremely powerful and therefore seeks to divide and destroy humanity to undo everything he has worked for. She is also aware he has placed his faith in a "smaller, more honest soul", and she implies that she sees the destruction of that soul's optimism as the key to destroying Ozpin. The "soul" concerned is strongly implied to be the ever-optimistic Ruby. The two finally confront each other in Volume 8, when Ozma is inhabiting Oscar Pine. Oscar stands no chance against Salem, but eventually manages to temporarily defeat her when her minion Hazel betrays her and holds her down long enough for him to use the Long Memory on her, leaving her incapacitated for several hours.
• Art Evolution: Her Tainted Veins grow less and less pronounced throughout the series, looking at the end of V7 like simple lines on her face while in V4 they were a hideous deformity.
• Awful Truth: While Salem herself, a magic-wielding human who can control Grimm, is upsetting in her own right, what makes her this trope is the fact she is completely immortal; even if you do vaporize her, she will simply just come back after a certain amount of time. It's this piece of knowledge that tends to be what leads to a Despair Event Horizon in people and what ultimately makes the heroes (temporarily) turn on Ozpin.
• Bad Boss: Downplayed. As part of her Faux Affably Evil nature and while she mostly treats her minions with respect, she expects their total obedience and to always put her plans above their own desires. When Hazel tries taking responsibility for the failure at Haven, Salem flips a table over and summons multiple Grimm hands to choke and manhandle him before intimidating Emerald into admitting that Cinder is responsible for their loss. Salem proceeds to use Cinder as a lesson to the others: she will not be able to return until she has redeemed herself in Salem's eyes because no subordinate should ever put their desires before Salem's own.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Salem has been cursed with immortality to stop her from dying until she learns the importance of life and death. She manipulated the brother Gods in an attempt to restore her beloved back to life, so they cursed her to prevent her from reuniting with Ozma in the afterlife.
• The Beastmaster: Salem is able to command the Grimm. She communicates with a Seer Grimm in her fortress, using it to relay her orders to the Grimm that are gathering at the fallen Beacon Academy.
• Big Bad: As the main antagonist of the series, Salem is responsible for all of the danger in the plot. She dispatches Cinder Fall to Vale to instigate Beacon Academy's destruction and the theft of the Fall Maiden's powers. Cinder has Roman Torchwick steal the Kingdom of Vale's Dust and work with the White Fang so the plan can succeed. Beacon is eventually destroyed thanks to Cinder's activities, Watts's hacking of the Beacon and CCT networks, Roman's local knowledge and Adam's control of the White Fang's Vale chapter. Once Beacon has fallen, Salem instigates the destruction of Haven. Her goal is to steal four ancient Relics that are being protected by the four Huntsman Academies and destroy her Arch-Enemy Professor Ozpin's attempts to unite humanity. She manipulates from the shadows, while her subordinates do the leg-work; she controls the Creatures of Grimm that prevent humanity dominating Remnant, and she's been fighting Ozpin for thousands of years.
• Blow You Away: One of Salem's magical abilities allows her to conjure powerful tornadoes and gusts of wind. During her battle with Hazel, Salem conjures a tornado beneath her feet to regain her balance after being sucker-punched, and uses it as a perch to stay out of reach of his attacks. Hazel counters this by using Wind Dust to create a tornado to launch himself at her and bring her to the ground.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Salem has no interest in the people she's killed or the pain of their surviving relatives, and has committed so many atrocities over the centuries that it's become everyday business for her. When Yang angrily calls her for failing to handle one bad thing happening in her life as a comparison to how much Salem has taken away from her, Salem simply asks her who she took from Yang in a bored tone, only showing any reaction once Yang elaborates it was Summer Rose.
• The Chessmaster: Salem's entire methodology revolves around careful manipulation, using pawns to covertly act and cause destruction and chaos, while leaving her motives and even existence nearly impossible to determine. As a result, humans tend to blame each other for her manipulations, and Salem herself outright says that she divides and breaks apart humanity to weaken them. As Qrow puts it:
  Qrow: She works from the shadows, using others for her dirty work. That way, when it comes time to place the blame, we can only point at each other.
• Chess Motifs: Salem's Calling Card is a black chess queen. In Volume 1, Qrow sends Ozpin a warning message saying "Queen has pawns", referring to the fact that she has sent Cinder to Vale. While there, Cinder installs a virus designed by Watts on the Beacon security network that manifests a black chess queen. When Ironwood interfaces his scroll with Ozpin's desk, his scroll briefly displays the black chess queen to show it's been hacked by the virus. When Cinder takes control of the Vytal Festival Tournament to declare her manifesto to a global audience, the TV feed displays a black chess queen. The motif reappears several times during the Battle of Beacon to show what technology is under the control of the villains, including the scroll Neo gives to Roman that lets him hack the Atlesian robot soldiers and control Ironwood's flagship. In Volume 7, Ironwood recalls to Oscar how helpless Salem made him feel in Vale because of how she chose to manifest her presence through the black chess queen. When Cinder decides to smoke out the hidden location of the Winter Maiden, she leaves a chess queen made from black glass on Ironwood's desk; this panics Ironwood into thinking that Salem has been one step ahead of him the whole time, causing him to send Winter to the Winter Maiden thereby revealing the Maiden's location to the watching Cinder. When chastising Cinder, Salem describes her war with Ozpin as a "game" and describes Cinder as neither a "pawn" nor a "player".
• Civilization Destroyer: Subverted trope. Salem has been trying to divide humanity for thousands of years, co-opting the monstrous Grimm for her own ends, and pitting civilisations or Humans and Faunus against each other. Every time humanity gets too peaceful or settled, she arrives to destroy it from within. However, her goal isn't to destroy civilisations, it's to destroy the entire planet. The Big Good has spent millennia encouraging people to oppose her, thwarting her enough for "only" individual civilisations to fall, but ensuring the planet and humanity survives to rebuild. In Volume 8, Salem takes a giant step towards that goal by destroying the Kingdom of Atlas to obtain two of the four Relics she needs to destroy the planet.
• Cleavage Window: Salem's first outfit has a unique symbol that looks almost like three eyes that are linked together, which dominates the back of the black robe she wears. The robe covers her body from neck to toe, except for a gap between her breasts that forms the same vertical elliptic shape as the central part of her personal symbol.
• Complete Immortality: The Gods of Light and Darkness have cursed Salem with immortality to prevent her from dying so that she will learn the importance of life and death. When she tried to manipulate them into restoring her beloved back to life, Salem was cursed to prevent her from reuniting with Ozma in the afterlife. She cannot be killed by mortal weapons, and the strongest supernatural method she knew of also failed to destroy her. When she and Ozma battle to death, he manages to reduce her to a pile of ash. However, she reforms quickly and kills him. When a different incarnation of Ozma asks Jinn how he can destroy Salem, she tells him 'you can't'. This also bleeds into her fighting style; she will not attempt to dodge mortal blows, because she knows she'll reform almost immediately, even if she's vaporized. Even Oscar unleashing the equivalent of a nuke on her through the stored power of his cane does little more than delay her reappearance.
• Conducting the Carnage: During the assault on Atlas, Salem treats the invasion as if it was an orchestra. Inside the whale, Salem stands above the mouth, rocking back and forth while waving her arms as if she is an orchestra conductor. In sync with her movements, the whale rocks back and forth, more ooze gushing out of its mouth with every forward motion, allowing the Grimm army to keep regenerating.
• Curse Escape Clause: When Salem is cursed with immortality, the gods tell her that she must learn the importance of life and death. They specify that "for as long as the world keeps turning, [she] will walk its face". Salem therefore believes that, if she can destroy the world, she can escape her curse and finally die.
• Death Seeker: When Hazel and Ozpin discuss why Hazel works for Salem, Ozpin explains that the reason Salem's so destructive is because she has a death-wish. While Salem's subordinates believe she's seeking to create a new world order, Ozpin reveals that she's actually trying to destroy the world itself. By dividing humanity beyond repair and bringing together the Relics to summon the Gods of Light and Darkness, she believes that they will judge humanity to be irredeemable and destroy Remnant; she hopes this will end the curse they placed upon her and she will finally be able to die.
• Delayed Narrator Introduction: In the pilot episode, a woman narrates the history of humanity that begins as a fairy tale and ends with her grimly declaring that someone she appears to be talking to will fail to achieve the strength they're seeking. This narration is immediately countered by a male narrator who is introduced later in the same episode as Professor Ozpin. The female narrator, however, is revealed to be Salem at the end of Volume 3, where she concludes the conversation she and Ozpin were having at the beginning of the pilot episode.
• Despair Gambit: Salem's Volume 3 finale speech suggest that her plan is to destroy Ozpin by turning the humans he watches over against each other and sinking them into despair. She strongly implies that the only way to truly undo Opzin is to destroy his faith in humanity and their future, but that Ozpin's faith will not be shattered until she has managed to destroy the hope and optimism his "simple soul" represents. The "simple soul" is implied to be the resolutely optimistic Ruby. Ozpin's mission from the Gods is to unite humanity and redeem them in the eyes of the Gods. Salem is doing her very best to make sure Ozpin doesn't succeed.
• Disappointed in You: Tyrian worships Salem as a goddess. When he returns to her, sobbing and in total fear, he hesitantly reveals to her that he failed his task. Salem's response is to softly and coldly tell him that he has disappointed her and walks off, which is enough to reduce Tyrian to sobs of despair.
• Dissonant Serenity: Salem is usually calm, preferring to present herself with an air of grace and elegance and dismissing unexpected developments with indifference. As a result, when Leonardo tells Salem that the attack on Haven has failed, Salem's Seer Grimm brutally murders him while Salem looks on with a nonchalant, dispassionate expression.
• Divide and Conquer: The general theme of her plans. She knows that if humanity is united and works together, they are a powerful force. As a result, she works from the shadows to divide humanity and keep them fighting each other. Ozpin has been tasked by the God of Light to guide humanity towards unity. It is the sole chance humanity has to redeem themselves in the eyes of the gods after an ancient slight that humanity does not remember. If the brother Gods return to Remnant and find humanity divided and fighting themselves, they will conclude that humanity is irredeemable and destroy the whole world. Salem is therefore trying to make humanity irredeemable by spreading doubt, mistrust, fear and hatred so that they turn on each other and tear themselves apart. Her Villain Song, "Divide", is based on two speeches she makes where she describes her goal to destroy Ozpin by turning his allies against him.
  Salem: Your faith in mankind was not misplaced; when banded together, unified by a common enemy, they are a noticeable threat. But divide them, place doubt into their minds, and any semblance of power they once had will wash away.
• The Dreaded: Salem is a dark and dangerous being who controls the world-dominating Grimm. Her existence is not public knowledge because her arch-enemy Ozpin has created a global conspiracy network to prevent global panic by fighting her in secret. Among her subordinates, Emerald and Mercury are terrified of her presence while Watts, Hazel and even the enthralled Tyrian fear her wrath. Among the heroes, Qrow descrbes her creations as fear itself, Raven abandoned Ozpin's cause when she concluded Salem's unstoppable, Leo is so terrified that Salem turns him into a mole against his oldest friend, and Ironwood obsessively builds up his army to oppose her. Even Ozpin secretly believes she cannot be destroyed, a revelation that demoralises the heroes, breaks Ozpin, and transforms Ironwood into a villain who lashes out at everyone in his desperation to protect Atlas from her.
• Driven to Suicide: Being cursed with immortality has left Salem alone and isolated for much of her existence. In the beginning, she tried to take her own life by stabbing herself with a sword. However, her immortality is complete, meaning that she cannot die by mortal means. When she tried to throw herself into the Pools of Grimm, hoping that the waters of annihilation would undo her curse and kill her, she instead became a being of pure destruction and infinite life. Ozpin believes her end-goal is to ensure that humanity is divided so that, when she brings the Relics together and summon the Gods, they will destroy Remnant thereby ending her curse and enabling her to die.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Remnant has a history of violence and inequality between humans and Faunus, and both species fight the Creatures of Grimm to survive, which have an unnatural attraction towards destroying them. Salem controls the Grimm and uses them as shock troops, while also recruiting both humans and Faunus to carry out the tasks she needs to achieve her endgame. Her plans led to an assault on Beacon Academy that combined human infiltrators with two armies that consisted of Faunus terrorists and Creatures of Grimm.
• Eternal Villain: Humanity hasn't known about the Forever War between Salem and Ozma until Ironwood reveals Salem's existence to the Kingdom of Atlas in Volume 7 and then Ruby reveals her existence to the rest of the world in Volume 8. Ironwood describes her as a force of evil that can be opposed by standing united against division and negativity while Ruby describes her as an evil that humanity has been successfully fighting for centuries. By portraying her as a recurring force of evil that humanity can defeat by uniting as one against her, they convey the impression to the masses that she is a manageable threat who can be overcome in the hopes of avoiding what usually happens when select individuals have learned the unvarnished truth in the past — which is to succumb to the fear that she is an Invincible Villain, thereby either giving up fighting her or turning on their own allies.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Salem's love for Ozma triggers her descent into evil after she dies. However, even after she has been corrupted by the Pools of Annihilation, she still loves him and builds a family with his reincarnation. Thousands of years after their relationship fell apart, Volume 8 hints that she still grieves for her lost daughters; after capturing Oscar, she is seen briefly watching magical smoke-silhouettes of her children playing happily while she waits for Ozma's latest host to regain consciousness.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She dislikes cowardice from her henchmen. When Cinder struggles to see the point of keeping weak and worthless people alive, Salem uses Leo as an example of how anyone can be useful for something. Upon failing to obtain the Relic of Knowledge at the conclusion of the Battle of Haven, Leo promises to get back in Salem's good graces, but is subsequently killed by her Seer Grimm.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: While Salem acknowledges that hope can drive humanity even in the darkest times, she's unable to comprehend why humans would continue to fight against seemingly impossible odds. In Volume 8, she angrily asks Ozpin why he continues to fight against her, even diminishing himself to help this "ruined world".
• Evil Is Not a Toy: A long time ago, Salem was put into a position where she felt she had to manipulate the brother Gods who lived on Remnant with the humans. She almost succeeded in fooling the God of Darkness until the God of Light reveals what she's up to. Her punishment is never-ending life until she learns the value of life and death. When Ozma falls sick and dies, she attempts to convince the God of Light to bring him back to life. He refuses, so she visits the God of Darkness. Knowing the god only wishes for someone to worship him the way humans worship the God of Light, she claims she came to him first because she knows only he has the power to grant what she's requesting. Thrilled, the God of Darkness immediately restores her lover to life. The God of Light instantly notices and arrives to explain the situation; upon realising the truth, the God of Darkness returns Ozma to the afterlife and the two gods punish Salem for her manipulations. It's only much later that Salem realises that the fact she almost succeeded means the they are not infallible and it must therefore be possible to either defeat them or make them suffer, and thus begins her long slide into evil.
• Evil Mentor: Salem acts towards Cinder almost like an "evil fairy godmother". She defends Cinder's accomplishments at Beacon to the rest of her subordinates and keeps Cinder close to her to help her recover from the injuries inflicted upon her by Ruby's silver eyes. She gives Cinder a replacement Grimm arm which also makes it easier for Cinder to steal Maiden power. She trains Cinder to master the Fall Maiden's power, and tries to teach Cinder the value of making use of people instead of simply killing them.
• Face-Revealing Turn: At the end of Volume 3, we see the Female Narrator from the pilot episode, her back to the audience, completing the conversation she and Ozpin are having at the beginning of the show. It's obvious she's a white-haired woman in flowing black robes until she turns around... revealing a face as white as a Grimm mask, the black sclera and glowing red eyes of the Grimm, a mark in the center of her forehead like a partially-open third eye, and skin covered in what looks like reddish-black veins.
• Fairy Devilmother: Following Cinder's fairy tale allusion to Cinderella, Salem plays the role of her Fairy Godmother; being a magical woman who comes in and turns her from an abused slave-girl to a force to be reckoned with. Though while Cinder denies it, her life-situation hasn't actually changed much under Salem; she's nothing but a game-piece to Salem, who is perfectly willing to discard her just like anyone else should she prove herself useless. The only real difference is that Cinder swapped a Shock Collar for an Evil Hand and she gives Cinder free-reign to ruin as many lives as she wants as long as she isn't in the way.
• Fanservice Pack: A downplayed example is retroactively applied. Her original outfit didn't have the Cleavage Window. After becoming the witch, this is when she switched to the current dress that had it. It goes slightly further in the Volume 7 finale when she appears with a dress that bares her shoulders and shows more of her chest.
• Fantastic Racism: Although she shows no obvious signs of discriminating between humans and Faunus like many of Remnant's population do, she is derisive of the mortals which succeeded her and Ozma's own iteration of humanity on account of their lack of magic. Salem's Origins Episode reveals that she initially persuaded Ozma to help her subjugate the second human race by framing it as "guiding" humanity to unity in the absence of the Brother Gods; after Salem discovered she and Ozma could breed more magically-capable humans similar to the original humanity, she wrote off the second form of humanity as not worth redeeming anymore and planned to replace them completely with her descendants. Thousands of years later, Salem remains dismissive of the mortal inhabitants of Remnant, describing them as "children" that are living in a "ruined world".
• Faux Affably Evil: Salem is calm, friendly and polite, tailoring her behaviour to a person's personality, such as when she expresses gentle disappointment with Tyrian's failed mission, knowing his worship of her will leave him devastated over displeasing her. She chastises needless malice and patiently schools her subordinates whenever they turn on each other, such as when she patiently reprimands Watts for mocking Cinder's injuries. With the casual ease of a dinner conversationalist, she tasks her subordinates with duties that will enable terrorism, murder and mayhem, and teaches that flaunting the power to destroy lives is unnecessary when anyone can be exploited. She only drops her affable nature whenever someone challenges her authority. When Leo accidentally tells her she "must" act quickly to obtain the Spring Maiden before Qrow, Salem instantly has him partially strangled while she conversationally reminds him of how terrifying she is. In Volume 7, she attempts to convince Ironwood to give her both the Relics of Creation and Knowledge in exchange for her sparing Mantle and Atlas, speaking to him in a reassuring, almost motherly tone. However, it is painfully clear to both Ironwood and the audience that her promises are hollow lies. In Volume 8, when interrogating a captive Oscar, she is initially polite and cordial to create a "working relationship" with the boy, but quickly resorts to intimidation and aggression when she interprets his sarcastic attitude as an attempt to pretend to be Ozma. When Oscar refuses to give her the password for the lamp, Salem tortures him with a blast of magic before letting Hazel try beating the information out of him.
• Feel No Pain: Subverted: at first it appears Salem doesn't feel pain, as she shrugs off things such as having her entire torso blown up or her head beat to a pulp with only minor annoyance. However, when Hazel lights her on fire, she still screams in agony, showing while she has a very high threshold, she still experiences pain.
• Girl in the Tower: In her youth, Salem's cruel father imprisons her in a tower where she spends her days desiring only freedom. Although many heroes attempt to rescue her in the hope of winning her hand in marriage, they all fail. She is eventually rescued by a legendary hero who, instead of seeking her hand in marriage, only wants to correct injustice. Salem and Ozma fall in love despite themselves, thereby setting off a chain of events that leads the world into its present situation — a Secret War that has unfolded for thousands of years between Salem and the reincarnating Ozma, who has to transition from Professor Ozpin to Oscar.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her red irises glow bright when she finishes her monologue and sneers at the screen. By this point, her plan is well underway and the people of Remnant are divided for most of the part. They also flare up when she's agitated and raising her voice. They also flare up and start glowing when she's using her magic to transform the Grimm into new creations with new abilities.
• God-Emperor: When Ozma first reincarnates and reunites with Salem, she convinces him that the best way to unite humanity is to do it as gods. Because they are both immortal and magic makes them much more powerful than other humans, many people believe it and become their followers. They are able to establish and rule an entire kingdom until Salem's increasingly extreme methods of "uniting" humanity finally opens Ozma's eyes to the truth of her corruption; their masquerade ends in violence and tragedy, and they have been fighting over the fate of the world ever since.
• God Guise: When reunited with Ozma, Salem considers uniting humanity since it seems to matter so much to him. As the only two magic-users remaining on Remnant, they use their powers to mimic gods and build a kingdom in which their worshipers live. Although they live happily for many years and have a family together, Ozma eventually realizes that Salem's goal is to take over the entire world and kill anyone who defies them; upon discovering their children possess magic troubles Ozma, given then reasons the God of Light gave him for why humanity no longer possesses that ability, but Salem sees it as sign they should wipe out this version of humanity and replace them with their descendants. Horrified by this discovery, Ozma tries to sneak away in the middle of night with their children. Salem catches him in the act and their ensuing battle destroys everything — including their children.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Salem takes a lot of grevious damage because she can regenerate from anything and rarely actually tries to defend herself.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In the novels RWBY: After the Fall and RWBY: Before the Dawn, the primary villain of the story is the Crown. The story taking place from the perspectives of Teams CFVY and SSSN, who — like most of Beacon and Haven's students — enrol at Shade after Salem's actions in Vale (Volume 3) and Mistral (Volume 5). The Crown is a local threat, driven by local issues; while neither they nor the students know anything about Salem, it is strongly hinted that Headmaster Theodore and Professor Rumpole are simultaneously dealing with the local threat and monitoring Salem's activities elsewhere in the world because they know she'll be coming for them eventually.
• Hand Blast: Salem can fire powerful streams of agonizing energy from her hands. She uses this as her go-to attack in combat.
• Hates Being Alone: Salem was trapped in a tower, isolated and alone, by a cruel father until rescued by a hero with whom she fell in love. Unable to cope with his premature death from sickness, she attempts to trick the gods into resurrecting him; punished for her crime, she turns humanity against the gods, who increase her punishment by leaving alone, unable to die, on an empty planet. When the God of Light reincarnates her lover to guide humanity to redemption, they reunite and raise a family until Ozma realises how evil she's become and attempts to take away their children for their own safety. This triggers a battle so brutal that their children die in the crossfire; both immortal, she and Oz have been trapped in a cycle of pain and violence ever since, with the fate of humanity at stake.
• Healing Factor: Salem's Complete Immortality manifests primarily through an absurd regeneration that can restore her even from being completely obliterated.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Most of Salem's followers believe her Evil Plan is to create a new world order and they'll benefit in different and personal ways if they support that endeavour. While both Tyrian and Ozpin believe, for differing reasons, her true goal is to destroy Remnant, Salem hasn't confirmed what she really needs the Relics for. Tyrian believes she represents his ideation of ultimate destruction while Ozpin thinks immortality has become such a traumatic burden for her that she's seeking an out via using a loophole she thinks she's found in the curse the gods placed upon her.
• Hope Crusher: One of her major goals is to completely destroy all sense of hope for the people of Remnant in general and Ozpin in particular. By dividing humanity, she hopes to crush and destroy them. Ozpin has been tasked by the God of Light to unite humanity and redeem them in the eyes of the brother Gods. If they return to Remnant and find humanity divided and fighting against each other, they will declare humanity irredeemable and destroy the entire world. As long as Salem exists, Ozpin's task is impossible and humanity is doomed.
• Humans Are Flawed: She concedes that humanity has an amazing ability to find hope in even the darkest times, a trait that makes them great, and when united they are truly a force to be reckoned with...but she also adds that once that hope is crushed and they fall to their petty differences, they are beyond powerless. She's been taking steps to ensure the latter part comes true.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Salem is flexible and takes different approaches to coerce or guide those working under her, as the Volume 4 DVD Commentary confirms:
  • Tyrian is fanatically loyal to her and desperately seeks her approval. Simply telling him he disappointed her is enough to shatter his spirits for having failed her.
  • Cinder desires power above all else, so Salem serves as a mentor to Cinder, granting her power and teaching her how to properly use it.
  • Professor Lionheart is cowed into service through fear; when he shows a spark of authority in advising her, Salem reminds him of his terror by having a Seer Grimm strangle him despite the fact she's not in the same location as he.
  • Hazel wants justice for his sister's death; when they first met, Hazel killed Salem several times before he was too tired to fight anymore. It was then that Salem convinced Hazel to redirect his desire for vengeance onto Ozpin, promising to create a new world order with no more huntsman academies to send children to fight in a hopeless war.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Imprisoned from birth by a cruel father until rescued by a hero with whom she fell in love, Salem longed only for freedom; when Ozma died young from sickness, she tried to rescurrect him by manipulating the gods; instead she was punished with immortality and spends countless years seeking freedom from both them and the curse. Her attempt to find freedom with Ozma's first reincarnation fails when they turn on each other, destroying everything they'd built together. Now she seeks freedom in death, dividing humanity to make them irredeemable in the eyes of the gods so that they will destroy the planet and, consequently, her curse.
• Implacable Woman: Discussed Trope. When Hazel first went after Salem, it didn't matter how hard or for how long he fought her, her Complete Immortality meant that she kept coming back. The longest he could stop her was just a few hours. Only when he finally broke from exhaustion and hopelessness did she stop and offer him the chance to take revenge against Ozpin instead of her. When Yang's team rescues Oscar from Salem's clutches, it takes a combination of Hazel burning himself and Salem alive while Oscar detonates almost all the power Ozpin had spent multiple lifetimes storing in his cane just to buy the heroes a few hours to evacuate the kingdom before her inevitable return.
• Invincible Villain: Discussed In-Universe. Raven tells Yang that she once trusted Ozpin until she learned that Salem can't be defeated; she later discusses with Leo his guilt over betraying Ozpin to Salem due to his terror of her invincibility. Hazel also admits to Ozpin that he only follows Salem because her constant regeneration wore him down and made him conclude she's an unstoppable force of nature. The Relic of Knowledge reveals to the heroes that Ozpin has been fighting Salem for thousands of years because the gods punished her with Complete Immortality; even when Oz obliterated her, she swiftly regenerated back. When Oz asks the Relic "How can I destroy Salem?", she tells him "You can't". In Volume 7, Nora speculates that perhaps Jinn means Salem can be destroyed by someone who isn't Ozpin. Ruby tells Salem that she can still be beaten even if she can't be killed, and Ironwood discusses with the heroes how Ozpin has kept beating her back for centuries. However, her unkillability tends to destroy people's hope and therefore will to keep fighting because it seems like they're just "delaying the inevitable" instead of saving the world.
• Ironic Name: In addition to her name being a reference to the eponymous witch trials, her name can also mean peace or completion in Hebrew terminology. Her final monologue in Volume 3 is literally her talking about how she'll divide mankind before stomping on whatever resistance humanity has to offer. Ozpin, in particular, is the subject of her wrath.
• It's All About Me: It's perfectly clear that Salem only cares about herself. Her hatred of the gods isn't because of their capricious, egotistical nature, or the damage they've done to humanity. It's because of what they did to her. Even her hatred for Ozpin is solely because he won't take her side. Hell, she's willing to destroy the whole world and condemn millions of innocent people to unsavoury fates just so she can end her personal curse.
  Salem: The moment you put your desires before my own they will be lost to you. This isn't a threat, this is simply the truth. The path to your desires is only found through me.
• I Want Them Alive!: Salem initially instructs Tyrian to hunt down the Spring Maiden, until Cinder makes it clear she wants Ruby dealt with. Salem responds by instantly ordering Tyrian to prioritize the hunt for Ruby instead of searching for the Spring Maiden. Tyrian is thrilled but, when he begins maniacally giggling, Salem sternly reminds him that she wants Ruby brought to her alive. That instruction leaves Tyrian momentarily depressed. Cinder also later objects to Salem about the decision to keep Ruby alive because she wants Ruby dead. Salem doesn't explain why she wants Ruby alive, but intimates she does have a purpose in mind.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Isolated and imprisoned from birth, Salem was rescued by a legendary hero, with whom she found love until he died from sickness. For trying to manipulate the gods into resurrecting Ozma, she is punished with immortality. After getting humanity destroyed by turning them against the gods, she tries to end her life by diving into the Pools of Annihilation; instead, she energes as a being of infinite life and pure destruction. Once she learns the God of Light has given humanity one chance to be redeemed, she makes it her mission to make humanity as irredeemable as possible, pitting her against the person the god chose to carry out his will — Ozma.
• Kill All Humans: Raven tells Yang and Weiss that Salem's goal is to kill all of humanity, and that she cannot be stopped. She also states to Vernal that Salem will kill anyone who works for her once she no longer needs them. Originally, Salem was angry with the gods and tried to incite humanity into overthrowing them. Once the world had been abandoned by gods, she decided to become a god to the people of Remnant. However, her then husband put a stop to that in a terrible battle that caused the deaths of himself and their children. Now Salem fights to destroy humanity because Ozpin has been tasked by the God of Light to unite humanity so that they can be found worthy in the eyes of the gods and redeemed. If Ozpin fails and Salem succeeds, the gods will find humanity irredeemable and destroy the world, which she hopes will end the curse on her allowing her to die.
• Lack of Empathy: Salem clearly feels none of the pain she causes others. When Yang angrily calls her out for failing to handle one bad thing happening in her life as a comparison to how much Salem has taken away from her, Salem's response is to ask in a bored tone who she took from her. The minute Yang clarifies it was Summer Rose, Salem's demeanor changes to sadistic amusement.
• Lady of Black Magic: Salem is an ancient evil sorceress who carries herself with an eerily serene and elegant demeanor, and wears a long black and red robe with eye designs. Although humanity now has no access to magic, the first humans who lived on Remnant were all magic users. As the last of the original human race, Salem retains that ability to use magic. When forced into battle, she fights with magic, using energy blasts, fire and telekinesis, among other powers. During a battle with Ozma, they both destroyed each other and their entire castle with the power of their magical duel. While Ozma's body died, forcing him to reincarnate anew, Salem simply reformed in the same spot due to her Complete Immortality.
• Leitmotif: Whenever Salem is on screen, instrumental refrains from the slower parts of the song "Divide" play, especially when she's scheming with her subordinates. It tends to play more slowly and softly than the original song to lend a creepy air to her presence in the scene.
• Lightning Bruiser: Despite her delicate frame and the fact she rarely engages in fighting, Salem is more dangerous than she appears. She can use both Grimm and magical abilities to give herself inhuman speed, make herself physically stronger than expected and her immortality allows her to keep fighting or come back from any attack.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Oddly functions as one for Tyrian of all characters, while admittedly he is still completely insane while still in her good graces. He's still so mentally/emotionally dependent on her that when she said he had disappointed her, it sent him into a severe emotional breakdown that even disturbed Cinder.
• Living Relic: Salem is the last survivor of the ancient world, the last human born with the Gods' blessing of magic. For untold eons, she was the only sentient being on the planet, living alone with the animals and the creatures of Grimm. In time, sapient life returned in the form of a second incarnation of humanity and the beast-like Faunus. Salem remained in the shadows as civilization returned to the world, briefly reuniting with Ozma and attempting to rule mankind as a goddess. When this failed, she settled into her current role as an ancient evil that continues to threaten the existence of Remnant's younger civilizations.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Salem is able to use Grimm-like abilities to augment her magical abilities. She can stretch her arms, summon Grimm hands from portals to restrain others, and fire webs of black liquid to drag Yang towards her. When she moves at inhuman speeds, it's not by moving her body, she leans at a strange angle before zooming across the ground on a pillow of black smoke. Her regeneration also seems to have become linked to this as injuries reveal her body contains a mass of black ooze that reforms her body when regenerating.
• Love Makes You Evil: Salem was once a lonely girl who longed for freedom. She found that freedom in the eyes of the dashing hero who rescued her and fell deeply in love. It did not end well. The man she loved, Ozma, died from a fatal sickness. For trying to manipulate the gods into restoring his life, she was cursed with immortality to prevent her from being with Ozma in the afterlife until she learned the importance of life and death. Instead, she incited humanity to rebel against the gods which led to the destruction of humanity and the moon. When the God of Light restored humanity, he gave humanity a single chance to earn redemption and gave Ozma the responsibility of making it happen. By then, however, Salem had dived into the God of Darkness's Pools of Annihilation; instead of ending her curse as she hoped, it corrupted her into a being of pure destruction. Now Salem and Ozma are bitterly opposed to each other, one trying to unite humanity to save it while the other tries to divide humanity to destroy it.
• Made of Evil: In her backstory, Salem is cursed with Complete Immortality for upsetting the gods. After leaping into the black Pools of Annihilation so she can end her curse, she instead transforms into a Grimm-like being of pure destruction. Over time, she develops reddish-black Tainted Veins, implying that her blood runs black with Grimm ooze. Volume 8 confirms this when Hazel fights her; every time he pulverises her, she "bleeds" Grimm ooze instead of blood.
• Maker of Monsters: Creates several new Grimm species such as winged Beringels and the Hound.
• Manipulative Bitch: She is very skilled at manipulating others, including the gods, whom she realized were fallible; she also manipulates the rulers of the ancient kingdoms into believing that she stole immortality from the gods. In the present day, she deceived most of her followers into believing she was creating new world order through capturing and using the divine Relics; in reality, however, she wants to use them to summon the gods, so they can destroy Remnant, hoping it'll end her immortality curse in the process.
• Master Race: Salem once argued to Ozma that the second incarnation of humanity were inferior, arguing that their guidance was required for creatures that were literally "godless". After their daughter demonstrated the ability to use magic, Salem suggested that they wipe out the "inferior" humanity, and replace them. This was the final nail in their marriage, and the beginning of their ancient war.
• Mind over Matter: Salem has extremely powerful telekinesis. She was able to casually crush a massive Nevermore with no visible effort.
• Ms. Exposition: She tells some of the history of Remnant, including humanity's experiences with the Creatures of Grimm and the Dust. She also uses the narration to hint at a deeper, darker, history of humanity that has been forgotten by all but a few such as her and Ozpin.

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• Never My Fault: The gods cursed Salem with immortality hoping that she would learn why her demands of them were selfish and arrogant. They want her to learn the importance of life and death. Unfortunately for the world of Remnant, that first requires her to admit she did something wrong in the first place. When her beloved Ozma died from a fatal sickness, she manipulated the gods into restoring him to life. When the gods realized, they took Ozma's life to correct the mistake and punished Salem with immortality to prevent her from reuniting with Ozma in the afterlife. They instructed her to learn the importance of life and death, but she only learned how to manipulate both gods and men. She raised an army to fight the gods; in retaliation, the gods destroyed humanity and abandoned the world, leaving Salem to walk the world alone, unable to die. The God of Light later restored a weakened version of humanity and reincarnated Ozma to guide humanity towards their only chance for redemption. As a result, Salem's anger with the gods extended to encompass Ozma; she now seeks to destroy everything Oz is trying to achieve and is even further away from taking responsibility for her actions than ever.
  Jinn: Once again, Salem was alone. She cursed the gods. She cursed the universe. She cursed everything... everything but herself.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Salem will invade an individual's personal space as a method of intimidating them. When interrogating her subordinates about their failure to retrieve the Relic of Knowledge, she issues her commands while assaulting Hazel with summoned Grimm arms and standing right next to Emerald with a hand on her shoulder. When interrogating a captured Oscar, she is willing to stand right in front of his face; sometimes she will cradle his face with false affection and sometimes grabs his face roughly in anger depending on whether she's mocking his plight or enraged by his defiance.
• Not So Similar: Volume 8, Episode 6 reveals that Salem and Madame have very similar abusive maternal roles in Cinder's life, but differ in one key respect. The similarities cause Cinder to appease Salem's wrath by using demeaning submission phrases drilled into her by Madame, and suffer flashbacks to Madame torturing her with a Shock Collar when Salem tortures her with the Grimm arm. While both women torture and demean to enforce obedience, Salem combines it with emotional manipulation. She stops torturing Cinder for disobediently attacking the Winter Maiden, claiming she's erred in holding Cinder back, and gives her permission to hunt the Winter Maiden. Madame, by contrast, didn't know when to stop, eventually torturing Cinder into snapping and killing her.
• Not So Invincible After All: A recurring assertion is the fact Salem is immortal doesn't mean she's invincible. Volume 8 reveals that she can be affected by the Semblances of others, and that she can actually lose fights; Emerald's illusions successfully trick her, and Hazel and Oscar are able to obliterate her body enough to put her out commission for a short while. The fight also revealed that she does feel pain, even if she has an insanely high threshold for tolerating it.
• Obviously Evil: Salem's appearance alone makes it clear she isn't a good person. She dresses in a black robe decorated with red eyes, and has a Grimm-like appearance with white hair, white skin, highly visible purple veins and black sclera with red irises. She used to be a normal human woman until she was cursed by the gods with immortality. After failing to either kill the gods or incite them into destroying her to end her curse, she finally ends up at the Pools of Grimm. In a desperate attempt to end her curse, she dives into them. It doesn't destroy her curse, instead it spits her back out as a being of both infinite life and infinite destruction. As the pools create the Grimm, it changed her appearance, giving her white skin and hair, red eyes and black sclera. It did not give her tainted veins or the mark on her forehead. Those appear to have occurred at a later date. The God of Light believes the woman Salem once was is forever gone. Tyrian even lampshades it in Volume 8; when Emerald, Hazel, and Mercury discover that Salem plans to destroy Remnant outright rather than simply take it over, Tyrian remarks that it should have been obvious from the moment they met her.
• Odd Name Out: Nearly every single character in the show has a name that references a colour in some way, even if it's just by association. Eighty years ago, a war ended that had tried to destroy artistic merit and individuality, so Remnant's naming scheme is a deliberate attempt to ensure that kind of war never happens again. Salem joins Ozpin as being the only two significant characters on Remnant whose names do not follow this color rule. In both cases, it's a hint that they are ancient beings who were born long before the war was ever fought.
• Offing the Offspring: When Ozma realized that Salem's methods of uniting humanity weren't compatible with his own, he decided to abandon her. He gathered up their four children and attempted to steal away in the night. Salem caught him red-handed. Their fight was so brutal that it destroyed their castle, killed all four of their children, and each other. Being immortal, Salem reformed immediately while Ozma reincarnated into a new host. The children, however, were mortals whose lives were lost forever.
• Orcus On Her Throne: Though a very powerful fighter, Salem prefers to work from the shadows and let subordinates act in her stead, as it enables her to turn humanity against itself and leave them pointing fingers at each other instead of her. She directs her forces remotely from the remnants of the Domain of Darkness. After she learns in Volume 6 that her subordinates failed to obtain the Relic of Knowledge, which is being carried to Atlas by a newly reincarnated Ozpin, Salem decides to personally take action.
• Oxymoronic Being: After being submerged in the Pool of Life and Creation by the God of Light, she is cursed with immortality. Assuming that the God of Darkness's Pools of Annihilation that bring forth the Creatures of Grimm can undo life of any kind, she throws herself in them. However, she discovers that the pools of destruction cannot undo infinite life, and so she is transformed into a being with infinite life and a desire for unending destruction.
• Parental Substitute: She's presented as a maternal figure to Cinder, but nowhere near a healthy one. Salem speaks to her in the same quasi-motherly treatment she gives others, but her and Cinder's dynamic is much more intimate because of it. Volume 8 makes it clear that Salem is an abusive mother figure to her, with Cinder repeating the lines her abusive adoptive mother would teach her, and Salem harshly scolds or reprimands Cinder on at least two occasions in a manner similar to how a parent would ground a teenager, while taking condescending jabs at Cinder's 'wants and thoughts'. By the time the show directly compares Salem torturing Cinder with the Grimm arm to how The Madame would shock her, subtlety is out the window.
• Playing with Fire: Among Salem's many abilities is power over fire. She can shoot blasts of it from her hands, most notably using it to kill Ozma's first reincarnation.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Salem wants Ruby brought to her alive and she also wants to negotiate for the peaceful surrender of the Spring Maiden instead of planning to take her by force. While Hazel actively honors her will by chastising the White Fang leaders for their violence and insisting on minimizing unnecessary killing, Cinder directly questions her attitude. Salem simply states that Cinder must never underestimate the usefulness of others, citing the recruitment of Haven Academy headmaster Leonardo Lionheart and turning him against Ozpin and his allies as an example. However, once the heist of the Relic of Knowledge from the vault below the academy fails, she sees no other reason to keep him alive even when he begs her for one, and kills him via Seer Grimm.
• Princess Classic: Salem serves as the inspiration for the heroine in a classic fairy tale, recalled as an innocent, golden-haired maiden rescued from her father's castle. But unlike the story, the real Salem was a far more complex person and ultimately Subverted the trope. While it's true that she started out as a sheltered maiden, her magic was strong enough to allow her to fight alongside Ozma. And while she was innocent, she was emotionally immature rather than pure of heart. She refused to accept Ozma's death, demanding that the Gods return her lover to her, and too proud to back down even after being cursed. With time, she has developed into a cunning manipulator and a terrible Queen, but retains her stubborn pride and unwillingness to let Oz go.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Although she initially deals with Oscar patiently and Ozpin with calm superiority, when they finally push her too far, she grabs Oscar's head with both hands and airs what truly frustrates her about her former lover with emphatic, staccato words: his determination to reincarnate and keep fighting her no matter what.
• The Punishment: Salem is punished with immortality for attempting to manipulate the gods into restoring the life of her beloved because it prevents her from being reunited with him in the afterlife. The gods hoped she'd learn about the importance of life and death. Instead, she realized that by having tricked them in the first place, they had proven themselves to be fallible. She spent years manipulating humanity into rising up against their creators only to witness the gods destroy humanity for her audacity. They abandoned the world to leave Salem wandering the earth alone, unable to die. The God of Light later restored a weakened version of humanity and reincarnated Ozma to guide humanity to redemption. Since then, the fate of humanity lies in Salem and Ozpin's hands: one trying to divide humanity to destroy it, the other trying to unite humanity to save it.
• Rage Against the Heavens: When Salem was young, she lost her beloved Ozma to illness. Salem manipulated the gods into restoring his life, but the gods realised what she did, took Ozma's life again, and cursed Salem to be immortal until she learned the importance of life and death. Instead it made her bitter and angry; she manipulated humanity into attempting to overthrow the gods, but the gods instead destroyed humanity for their hubris and abandoned the world. The God of Light later restored a weakened version of humanity and reincarnated Ozma to guide humanity back to redemption. However, Ozma and Salem were never able to find a happy-ever-after due to the Pools of Grimm corrupting her soul, and the God of Light tasking him with the unification of humanity. Salem's hatred for the gods is now as eternal as her life.
• Really 700 Years Old: Salem is an ancient evil who has lived on Remnant for thousands of years, attempting to obtain the Relics and divide humanity. Several of Ozpin's former followers, such as Leo and Raven, abandoned Ozpin in the belief that she cannot be stopped. Ozpin has been cursed by the gods to walk the earth for as long as it takes to stop Salem; he refers to the curse as "reincarnation" as it doesn't stop his physical body from dying, but transfers his soul, Aura and memories to a new physical body every time it happens. He confirms that he's been trying to stop Salem for thousands of years. The gods cursed Salem with immortality for trying to bring her beloved, Ozma, back from the dead. She incited humanity to betray the gods, resulting in them destroying the human race and leaving her alone. The God of Light restored a weakened form of humanity and reincarnated Ozma among them to try and guide humanity back to redemption. Humanity's redemption won't be possible, however, until Salem can be stopped.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes are black pits with glowing red irises and elliptical pupils. This is similar to the glowing red eyes of the Grimm, and combines with her bone-white skin, red vein-like markings and black clothing to give her the appearance of a humanoid Grimm and make it ambiguous as to what kind of being she really is. As the main villain, controlling various individuals and organizations across the globe, including the Grimm themselves, her glowing red eyes reflect her malevolence.
• Rubber Woman: One of Salem's Grimm-like abilities gives her the power to stretch her arms to grab distant targets. In Volume 8, she stretches her arms from her shoulders to grab a fleeing Emerald and drag her body close to her.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: In Volume 7, Ruby stands up to Salem, declaring they know everything about her thanks to the Relic of Knowledge and she may be immortal, but she's still fallible and can be stopped. Salem's response is to tell her that her mother said exactly the same thing to her and was wrong, leaving Ruby sobbing on the ground in front of her.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Salem carries herself like a queen, rarely raising her voice and infallibly polite regardless of who she is addressing at the time. She can speak with a warm, motherly tone whether she's praising someone, issuing an ultimatum, or torturing someone as punishment. This simply adds to her menace as a villain, as she rarely loses her composure and the things she says with a gentle voice are rarely reassuring. When she does raise her voice or otherwise lose her composure, it's enough to send her servants fleeing in terror.
• Sole Survivor: Salem was part of a race of humans who was wiped out a long time ago, except for her. Her attempt to incite humanity to defeat the gods results in the God of Darkness destroying humanity and leaving her to walk the earth alone as punishment. The God of Light later brings back humanity in a much weakened form and reincarnates Ozma from the old race to try and guide humanity to redemption. Angry with the gods and Ozma, Salem is determined to keep humanity divided.
• Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Salem was cursed by the gods with Complete Immortality, deliberately Barred from the Afterlife until she learns the value of life and death. However, the terms of the curse include the phrase "So long as this world turns, you shall walk its face". Ozpin and the heroes have separately come to the same conclusion that Salem's plan to divide humanity with hate and collect the Relics is so that the gods can be summoned to see humanity at its worst; if they decide humanity is irredeemable, they will carry out the God of Light's warning to Ozma and destroy the planet, hypothetically ending Salem's unwanted immortality.
• Summon Magic: Salem can create glyphs from which she summons multiple Grimm arms that can be used to bind people to the ground or walls. She uses it on Hazel after he tries to take responsibility for the failure at Haven, restraining him while she forces the team to reveal the truth of Cinder's failure. Her summoning glyphs have been previously seen associated with the summoning of the parasite Grimm from Cinder's arm to steal Amber's Maiden power and by a Petra Gigas that summoned its natural arm after Team RNJR destroyed its rock arm. She uses them repeatedly when fighting Hazel in Volume 8 to toss him about, restrain him, and and try to strangle him.
• Super-Speed: Through the use of magic, Salem can move at speeds much faster than normal humans. When she moves at inhuman speeds, it's not by moving her body, she leans at a strange angle before zooming across the ground on a pillow of black smoke.
• Super-Strength: Despite her lithe physique, Salem is far stronger than her delicate frame suggests, easily tossing a table aside. During her battle with the heroes in Volume 8, Salem causally tosses Yang at Oscar when he blasts her with magic and during her battle with Hazel, she grabs him by the back of his head and repeatedly slams his face into the ground.
• Tainted Veins: Black veins are highly visible against the ghost white of Salem's arms and face. Although she obtains her white skin and hair and red eyes with black sclera when she falls into the Pools of Grimm, she emerges without either the tainted veins or the mark in the center of her forehead. Those appear at a later date.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Salem doesn't appear to have any combat skills. She's relies on her Grimm abilities and magic to fight while relying on her regeneration to compensate for the attacks she can't stop from striking her. However, she has so many abilities, along with inhuman speed, strength and immortality, she can do a great deal of damage to opponents; at her worst, she can simply outlast any strong and skilled fighter due to her immortality.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: At one point, Salem decided to try and unite humanity to create a world where people live together in harmony. She attempted this by setting herself and Ozma up as gods to be worshiped by the whole world. Anyone who refused to convert or believe, she intended to kill.
• Villain No Longer Idle: Salem prefers to work from the shadows, through subordinates that turn humanity against itself, leaving people pointing their fingers at each other instead of her. After learning in Volume 6 that Ozpin has already reincarnated and is taking the Relic of Knowledge to Atlas, she decides to intervene personally. Watts and Tyrian turn Atlas and Mantle against each other, exhausting Ironwood and his military in preparation for her arrival with an army of Grimm. From Volume 7, she is actively involved in her subordinates' tasks and allows her existence to become public knowledge.
  Hazel: There's an old saying. If you want something done right... do it yourself.
• Villain Song: During the show's pilot episode and the final episode of Volume 3, Salem gives a long speech about the origin of legends and humanity, and how Ozpin's right to consider humanity stronger when it unites. She boasts of her plan to divide humanity and destroy everything that Ozpin has worked for, concluding that she can't wait to watch him burn. The song "Divide" is one of the Volume 3 ending songs and takes its lyrics from Salem's two speeches, also ending with the desire to watch him burn. From Volume 4, certain refrains from the song play in the background whenever she is on screen and scheming.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Just like the Grimm, Salem has been around for thousands of years. When she lost beloved Ozma to a fatal sickness, she manipulated the gods into restoring his life. When the gods found out, they took back his life and cursed her with immortality; for as long as the world turns, she will never die until she learns the importance of life and death. The isolation from humanity and her beloved caused by the immortality made her bitter and angry with the gods, starting her down a road to evil that hit the point of no return when she attempted to kill herself by drowning in the Pools of Grimm; instead of dying, she was corrupted into a being of pure destruction.
• Woman Behind the Woman: For the first three volumes, Cinder is the threat everyone is working to identify and stop. By the time of Volume 4, it turns out that Cinder is actually working for Salem, who trusts her subordinates with enough freedom to adapt plans as necessary.
• Woman Scorned: While the bulk of her hatred is directed towards the gods, her former lover is a very close second. When she discovered Ozma's first reincarnation attempting to leave with their children in the middle of the night, she flew into a rage that resulted in the death of both him and all four of their daughters. This triggered a cycle of pain and suffering that would last for thousands of years as she works to destroy everything Ozma has ever tried to help humanity achieve just for the chance to watch him burn.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Salem yearned for freedom, locked in isolation by her father until rescued by the legendary hero, Ozma, with whom she fell in love. Devastated when he dies from sickness, she begs the God of Light to resurrect him and then, when he refuses, the God of Darkness. Restoring Ozma provokes a confrontation with the God of Light, where Ozma is repeatedly killed and resurrected in front of Salem's eyes until she turns on the two gods in rage. They punish her with immortality to prevent her reuniting with Ozma in the afterlife until she learns the value of life and death. Driven to Suicide, but unable to die, Salem raises an army against the gods; in retaliation, the God of Darkness destroys humanity before both gods depart the world, leaving Salem to exist alone for years until she tries to end her curse by throwing herself into the God of Darkness's Pools of Annihilation. She's instead transformed into a being of pure destruction. When humanity returns to the world, the God of Light reincarnates Ozma to guide them to redemption. Salem finds freedom by raising a kingdom and family with Ozma until he becomes so worried by her destructive urges that he absconds with their children. Confronting him, their ensuing battle destroys her freedom, home, kingdom, and children. Now Salem is determined to ruin Ozma's mission by dividing humanity, ensuring that when she brings the Relics together and summons the gods, they will destroy Remnant and in turn, the curse on her allowing her to die.
• Wrong Context Magic: Salem's control over Grimm is completely unheard of in Remnant, since Grimm are anathema to humans. She gained the ability after taking a dip in Dark's Pools of Annihilation, where she was infused with its powers instead of killed thanks to her immortality.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Salem is a being who combines the powers of Creation and Destruction to achieve the threat level she now poses to the entire world. Cursed by the Pool of Life to have infinite life, Salem tried to kill herself by drowning in the Pools of Grimm, waters of infinite destruction. However, waters of infinite destruction cannot destroy a being of infinite life. Instead of dying, she emerged as an unkillable force of pure destruction. With the magic she still possesses from her mortal life and the control over the Grimm she now possesses, she is unstoppable by both mortal and magical means.
• You Have Failed Me: Salem isn't very happy with failure to obtain the Relic of Knowledge from Haven Academy, and demands to know who is to blame. Hazel attempts to take full responsibility for the failure, which makes Salem even angrier. She slams her table out of the way with a magical blast and pins Hazel to the ground with Grimm arms that have been summoned out of the ground. She lectures him on the fairness of his words then insists Emerald tell her who is to blame. When Emerald acknowledges it was Cinder, Salem states that Emerald must understand Cinder's failure and why Salem will not permit Cinder to return to them until she has redeemed herself.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: She willingly kills her own henchmen or leaves them to die if they're deemed a liability. At the conclusion of the Battle of Haven, Salem thwarts Leo's escape attempt with her Seer Grimm. As he's no longer able to pass information from Ozpin's inner circle and provide access to the Relic of Knowledge, Salem has no further use for Leo and has her Seer Grimm kill him offscreen. After Cinder hands her the two Relics during Atlas' destruction, Salem doesn't bother asking where Watts is.

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"In pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great."

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