Wesen: They're So Unusual

[Actionmage]

There are so many types of wesen, and there is much we, the viewers, aren't sure about. Hopefully we can guess and make guesses here (at least until the show shoots our theories down, amirite?)

[Prevailing Wind]

http://blog.therainforestsite.com/happy-otter-meet-angry-beaver/

 

OK - I can see this.  Pissy "Ice-Beavers" and otter-like wesen in conflict. LOL.

[Actionmage]

One of many seemingly forgotten threads/items: what kind of wesen is Renard's "priest"? I actually would like to see him again. If Adalind survives this week's episode, maybe early next season Renard can put a hit on her with The Priest? She is further gone than Leo, the underground fight club dude.

 

I'd also like to see the blutbad girl from Let Down Your Hair.  How much more awesome could the story be with Hank and Monroe feeling dibs in helping her with whatever bump(s) she may have, now that Hank is in the loop?

 

Also, Goddaughter Coyotl.

 

As for new-to-us wesen: a nice snake group, a dog (maybe a komondor  or Chinese crested), and maybe an otter, not unlike the one seen in the video above.

 

But that's just today's list. ;)

[Syme]

This is the Pacific Nowrhwest.

I wonder if there is a Ursus arctos horribilis Wesen.

If so, Nick will need a bigger arms cabinet in the trailer.

[johntfs]

This is the Pacific Nowrhwest.

I wonder if there is a Ursus arctos horribilis Wesen.

If so, Nick will need a bigger arms cabinet in the trailer.

 

They actually had that already in the second episode of the first season.

[Prevailing Wind]

I keep thinking of Cyndi Lauper when I see this topic title.  Is that wrong?

[Actionmage]

Not wrong at all, but that may just be me. (I didn't have Ms. Lauper in mind, but I've like her and her music.)

[Actionmage]

The Gednachtnis Esser, or Octopus wesen, was surely one of the more disturbing wesen the show has given us.  I  wonder if their  minds are Rolodex-like, able to call whatever memory up, like the gent this episode did for his immediate boss or if it all blends, victims' memories with their personal memories. The guy we saw in the premiere was in his 30s/40s, so he's had time to handle his powers, however they work.

 

I did like that this individual, as criminal as he is, really preferred to leave innocents out of everything. His extreme reaction to Billie, the girlfriend returning was scary, but obviously  he was distraught at having to do more than he needed to do. If it involved such an intimate violation, I'd get upset too!

[Actionmage]

I want to find out more about how Grimms seem to have some insane, but useful, stamina/resilience/resistance to various attacks.

 

Nick gained his fancy hearing after the gross fly dude. Nick also gained amazing stamina and water-breathing/-esque abilities after being zombified.

 

How did T. manage to keep her head (*g*)  after such a gross and horrific attack?  While I don't want a drawn-out arc about it, I would like someone in the know, on the show, to make an on-screen guess or explanation. I know, I know- silly dreams.

[Syme]

How did T. manage to keep her head (*g*)  after such a gross and horrific attack? 

 

Sucky was interrupted {twice!} before he finished; first by Trubel when he was munching on the ?scientist? and she kicked him away; and then by Nick & Hank when he went after her.

[SnarkyTart]

Yeah, I don't think Trouble was spared due to her Grimm powers.  The scientist dude still had his mind and memories too, because Trouble interrupted the suck in progress.  It looks like neither the scientist or Trouble had four ginormous holes drilled through their skulls and into their hippocampi either.  Just a flesh wound with minimal bleeding. 

[Actionmage]

Thanks Syme & Snarky Tart!

[Latverian Diplomat]

I did like that this individual, as criminal as he is, really preferred to leave innocents out of everything. His extreme reaction to Billie, the girlfriend returning was scary, but obviously  he was distraught at having to do more than he needed to do. If it involved such an intimate violation, I'd get upset too!

I had the impression that he was disturbed at having to kill the girlfriend because he had absorbed the guy's fond memories of her.

[Actionmage]

So, since Monroe mentioned that there are different branches of the wesen wolf tree, will we be treated to more? I hope so. I enjoyed that the luison seemed like a cross between a wolf and a fox ( the coloring it had.)  Also, luison may be more inclined to multiple births and it's a known/rumored characteristic. Monroe seemed like he had heard about the possibility.

 

Was Hoffman ever real, or was he just part of Adalind's long, strange trip? 

[Prevailing Wind]

Luison reminded me of The World's Most Interesting Man.  I have no idea why, but I really expected him to break out the Dos Equis.

[Actionmage]

So, this is the second episode with coyotls! Did anyone notice if they were different from Hank's friend and goddaughter?

[johntfs]

They seemed at least similar.  I'd need to watch the other episode to make sure.  It occurs to me that this episode opens the possibility of Hank having a relationship with a Wesen girlfriend.  The Coyotl girl is single now (after Hank shot her husband).

[TVSpectator]

So, this is a question that I had since I first saw the pilot, but does anybody else think that the Grimms are some kind of very special Wesen?

[jhlipton]

They seemed at least similar.  I'd need to watch the other episode to make sure.  It occurs to me that this episode opens the possibility of Hank having a relationship with a Wesen girlfriend.  The Coyotl girl is single now (after Hank shot her husband).

"Soooooo...  I see that you're single now...  Would you like to see a movie?  Maybe "The Postman Always Rings Twice" or "Double Indemnity"?

[Syme]

The last girl I asked out had neck tendons still in her teeth, so this isn't too unusual for me. If only he'd seized the moment. 

 

 

So there was a Hexenbeist and what was the personal trainer and .......

[OtterMommy]

Speaking of hexenbeists...a conversation with my husband after the last episode brought up this question.  What, exactly, is so unique and special and dangerous about a hexenbeist?  All I can figure out is that they woge into a corpse and, if I remember from the blood-sucking fight between Nick and Adalind, they are at least stronger when woged (but that seems pretty common among Wesen)...and they cast spells.  However, Rosalee can cast the same spells--I think anyone who can read and has access to the world's best-stocked spice shop can do that.   So, what is it that makes hexenbeists such, well, beasts?

[johntfs]

Speaking of hexenbeists...a conversation with my husband after the last episode brought up this question.  What, exactly, is so unique and special and dangerous about a hexenbeist?  All I can figure out is that they woge into a corpse and, if I remember from the blood-sucking fight between Nick and Adalind, they are at least stronger when woged (but that seems pretty common among Wesen)...and they cast spells.  However, Rosalee can cast the same spells--I think anyone who can read and has access to the world's best-stocked spice shop can do that.   So, what is it that makes hexenbeists such, well, beasts?

 

Rosalee can create potions, but we've never seen her cast spells as such.  Hexenbeists can cast spells and appear to have innate mystical abilities like mind control and telekinesis.

[Syme]

Rosalee can create potions, but we've never seen her cast spells as such.  Hexenbeists can cast spells and appear to have innate mystical abilities like mind control and telekinesis.

 

You beat me to it. It's a knowledge vs innate ability divide. Even Wu or Bud [well, maybe....] could learn to be an apothecary, but that's a far cry from being a Hexenbiest.

 

[Hey, that's IT! Wu quits the cops but runs the shop so the newlyweds can move to Seattle....]

[Actionmage]

Until we saw Elizabeth save Renard, I was wondering if hexenbiests could actually heal. Faster than an apothecary or human doctor? Yes, but the costs can be steep, like Reanard's save cost he and his mother some life/life force.

 

Weren't we told that Lisa Vidal's DA, who was flirty with Hank, was coming back? I think she was a jaguar. No, that was Kate del Castro's Albequerque cop in "La Llorona". Zuri, Hank's PT person, was a yaguarate. 

 

I would like to meet more avian wesen and  smaller mammal-types like squirrel and hares.   Maybe an Asian version of a dragon to compare and contrast to the Daemonfuerer we saw in season 1 or 2.

[hincandenza]

So, this is a question that I had since I first saw the pilot, but does anybody else think that the Grimms are some kind of very special Wesen?

 

Speaking of hexenbeists...a conversation with my husband after the last episode brought up this question.  What, exactly, is so unique and special and dangerous about a hexenbeist?  All I can figure out is that they woge into a corpse and, if I remember from the blood-sucking fight between Nick and Adalind, they are at least stronger when woged (but that seems pretty common among Wesen)...and they cast spells.  However, Rosalee can cast the same spells--I think anyone who can read and has access to the world's best-stocked spice shop can do that.   So, what is it that makes hexenbeists such, well, beasts?

 

Rosalee can create potions, but we've never seen her cast spells as such.  Hexenbeists can cast spells and appear to have innate mystical abilities like mind control and telekinesis.

 

I have a fanwank theory as of a few episodes ago that I've kicked around.  Sorry for the verbosity, but thought I'd share.  Lemme know what you think!

 

My idea is that thousands of years ago, a single person or small family somehow gained incredible supernatural powers.  We could fanwank an Anne Rice-style "ancient demon infected the blood of a few people" as the source or something. :) I'm gonna call these original superpowered magicians "UberMages", or UM for short, to save typing later on.  We're talking full on occultism, Necronomicon stuff, summoning angels and demons, conjurings, metamorphosis- the whole freakin' bag of mystical powers.  These early UMs were capable not just of the minor feats we see hexenbiest do, but something more along the lines of... well, baby Diana at full adult strength (you can probably see where I'm going with this).  And they ruled completely and quite visibly, like Egyptian pharaohs.

 

 

Grimms and Wesen:

Along with those powers came the ability to cast truly powerful spells, and one of the things the UMs did with these powerful spells was to make animal-human hybrids- the very first Wesen!  We actually have it as in-show canon that all modern Wesen descend from a few that date back thousands of years, to Egypt.  Those could have been created by the UMs in making more powerful workers or "god-like" rulers that they controlled behind the scenes to interface with the people... or perhaps originally just out of alchemical curiosity.

 

It's probable they even could have made the Grimms as sort of "shepherds" of their new Wesen flock, with comparable powers to help them seek out and punish any renegade Wesen.  So in that sense, I'd say that Grimms are a kind of Wesen: built by the same UberMages tinkering with the basic forces of Nature.  And they have no idea they've been killing their own "kind", as similar products of the UMs awesome magic.

 

 

Royals and Hexenbiests:

However, those mighty UberMages- like the dragons in "Game of Thrones"- got weaker and weaker over the centuries as they became diluted through breeding and intermingling with humans and Wesen alike.  All that's left of them these past many centuries are a split faction of descendant families, each a pitiful shadow of their common ancestors: the Royals and Hexenbiests, capable of trifling spells and minor feats to be sure, but rarely anything too grand, and nothing on the scale of what those ancients could do. 

 

The hexenbiests may have been a line of these UberMages who split off when they experimented on making themselves like Wesen- hence the woge- where the Royals did not, and in fact largely abandoned the dwindling ability to perform UM magic for more practical- and violent- means to exert political power. 

 

 

Royals:

Since neither of these descending lines maintained the full sorcery of the UMs, their despotic rule slipped away from the larger world, resulting in the loss of their power over the human and Wesen worlds, and causing the Wesen to disperse among the world as a hidden race living as regular humans.  The two descendant UM families engaged in a desperate power struggle to hold on to what was left.  And while the hexenbiest still passed down enough knowledge to do their weaker UM spells, they didn't have collective enforcer strength of the original Royal "mafiosi" and were ultimately ousted from the halls of power. 

 

I suspect the Royals thus still have in their bloodline the ability to do hexenbiest magic if they chose to spend the time learning the craft... but they hardly need it, given their power is just as real and more impactful than love spells.  They would eventually (a few hundred years ago) convince the Grimms to become for a while their private elite enforcers, to help them maintain power among the Wesen only.

 

 

Hexenbiests:

After losing the power struggle with the Royals, the hexenbiest became somewhat disgraced while the Royals cemented their now limited power over parts of the hidden Wesen world.  This would explain why Renard, as half hexenbiest, would be specifically shunned as a bastard by much of the Royal family.  Still, the hexenbiests had that shadow of ancient sorcerer's power, and cultivated it carefully and obsessively with spells and books and tribal knowledge: the hallmark of the hexenbiests.  Their blood doesn't have the power of the ancients so they spells can't be anywhere near as strong and they don't know how the ancients did their most impressive feats... but they've kept what knowledge they could, enabling them to still do some effective magic.

 

 

Diana and the Keys:

The child of Adalind and Sean unites the bloodlines of those two families again, and since both of their bloodlines- Sean as half-royal, and Adalind as hexenbiest- ultimately descend from those sorcerers, the child for some (not fully explained) reason has something even more like the original UM powers- hence even as an infant being able to show telekinesis and pyrokinesis, or project illusions into the mind of someone far off in the woods. 

 

Sean is also a half-breed of royal and hexenbeist, but he clearly has nothing more than weak hexenbeist (er, Zauberbeist) powers, so some other element would have to explain the quirk that made Diana genetically regress into being more like a full-blooded UberMage- and it would have to be something no one would have ever thought to try before, at least not very often.  Such as maybe losing your powers to a Grimm, getting them back via hexenbiest spell, and then having a child by a royal, maybe?  Hexenbiests would have known and done the first two plenty of times over the generations- losing powers to a Grimm's blood was well known to them, and the spell that returned Adalind's powers was also apparently not unheard of- but all three seems exceedingly rare given how the Royals would not normally have any involvement- much less parenting- with hexenbiests.

 

The Royals already wanted Diana when she was just a royal child, even if a bastard like Sean... but when they realized she might have something akin to UM powers?  Well, that changes everything: she's now not just a child, but the first UberMage in thousands of years, and with THAT kind of power, molded and shaped under the tutelage of the Royals?  You'd be able to rule the world in full: the whole world, Wesen and human.  The Royals would be like the pharaohs of old, hence keeping them from the child.

 

Ah, but the child itself wouldn't be enough: after all, over the centuries we'd naturally expect the occasional half-hexenbiest, half-Royal baby, or even the genetic anomaly that was a throwback to the UM's power, with people like John Dee or Alestair Crowley.  So even though Diana will be unusually powerful, she'll not know how to use that to do much more than cool tricks like pyrokinesis or telekinesis, or the known hexenbiest spells.  You'd also need the knowledge of the ancient sorcerers themselves, their darkened tomes containing spells of unimaginable power- lost to the ages, and performable only by an unusually powerful descendant of that bloodline.

 

So where is that knowledge, those secret spells that even some hexenbeist could cast, far more powerful than anything known to Wesen or Royal or Grimm for centuries?  Where would they have hidden that?  Who knows- but maybe when those Knights of the Crusades split a map up into 7 keys because it led to unimaginable power, what they were actually hiding was a map to a secret location with the full hidden knowledge of those ancient masters.

 

Now, a hexenbeist or even Royal with that kind of full sorcery knowledge would be immensely powerful, if limited by their diluted blood- powerful enough the Royals could potentially exert more control than they do already, perhaps even a touch of what the UMs once possessed.  But combined with an unusually "pure" child in Diana, a child that has near-UM level blood and the 7 keys to uncover those long lost hidden secrets of the ancients? 

 

Well, then you would have access to the powers of the Gods themselves, and rule over the entire world.

 

 

Anyway, that's my extended, super-long (sorry!) fan-wank/retcon for Grimm.

[Syme]

Hmm

Found this in the NYT, and not finding an episode thread for S03E08, thought I'd put it here...

 

He Sees You When You’re Sleeping, and Gives You Nightmares

 

MUNICH — Long before parents relied on the powers of Santa Claus to monitor their children’s behavior, their counterparts in Alpine villages called on a shaggy-furred, horned creature with a fistful of bound twigs to send the message that they had better watch out.

Tom Bierbaumer recalls the trepidation he felt every Dec. 6, when the clanging of oversize cowbells signaled the arrival of the Krampus, a devilish mountain goblin who serves as an evil counterpart to the good St. Nick. He would think back over his misdeeds of past months — the days he had refused to clear the supper table, left his homework unfinished or pulled a girl’s hair

.

......

 

But other children grew bold as each Krampus or Perchta romped past, darting out to tug at their fur, reveling in the thrill of a roar or the threat of a tap from a switch.

 

Eight-year-old Marlene Michl insisted that she was not afraid — this year, anyway. “Last year was a lot more scary,” she said. “This year, I knew what was coming.”

 

 

 

[Syme]

But no, I reject the idea that Wu or Bud could just learn how to be a wesen apothecary, which seems like in their world, is a real doctor. You can't compare it to the human world. There is no comparison. 

 

Errr, I'm sorry if your leg came off....I didn't think I was pulling that hard....

 

[i'll include a <snark> tag next time.....]

[Syme]

Sorry, Syme, if I misunderstood. My apologies. 

No apology called for; I just didn't think anyone here could take my snark seriously....

[Syme]

You ate one of Hank's cookies????

 

[TVSpectator]

Okay, Rosalee's family have been Apothecaries for generations. I sincerely doubt that Wu, with no knowledge of wesen physiology, could just take a quick course and know how to treat wesen. That makes no sense to me. Rosalee has an encyclopedic knowledge. 

 

I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm a wesen dying of some wesen disease, and I have to choose between the human who took a course six months ago, and a woman who has generations of knowledge, I'm going with the second one.

 

For that matter, it seems Adalind isn't so special with all of her "innate" magic. It hasn't helped her defeat Victor, figure out where her baby is, or get her out of that dungeon. It didn't stop her from getting hallucinations. She couldn't even bring her own powers back. 

 

Even if you'e a hexenbiest, you have to LEARN how to make potions. You're not just born with it. To that end, any hexenbiest, given the right recipe book, could cook up a potion. So, that sounds an awful lot like an apothecary to me. The only difference is that, except for what we've seen from Renard's mom, it is used for bad a lot, whereas the apothecary is all about the healing.

 

But no, I reject the idea that Wu or Bud could just learn how to be a wesen apothecary, which seems like in their world, is a real doctor. You can't compare it to the human world. There is no comparison. 

 

As with Adaline, I always kind of felt that she was either out of touch with her Hexenbeist side (like she didn't really learn how to spell cast as a child, and instead was more interested in other, more human things, like learning to be a lawyer and smooching Renard), or just a stupid Hexenbeist (hence why I would sometimes call her, "not the brightest Hexenbeist around" or something similar. 

[TVSpectator]

As with all of the magical creatures, the writers are uneven/forget what everyone can do. At times they're awesome and kick ass and can use their powers. But when they want the person to be weak, whether it's Nick or Adalind, then suddenly they can't find their ass with both hands.

 

Adalind can be gray area, but she's not. She's inconsistent. And that drives me bonkers.

 

She did a spell so complicated, that Renard's mom had to really dig for it. But she's in the dungeon and she's crying and takes that stupid bread so she can trip out, without even considering, you know, how did this weird guy get the bread, and why was I allowed into his cell? Just things that should have come to mind that didn't, and it's because they needed her to be stupid and powerless.

 

If she's not running a game on Victor, I will be sorely disappointed.

 

Yeah, the character is inconsistent with spell casting but the one thing that always comes to mind is her trying to open up her mother's spell book and (it seemed) that she forgotten on how to open it. Now, I can buy into that her mother may, or may not have taught her some of the more powerful Hexenbeist spells for whatever reasons, but I just can't buy that she is a decent spell caster, just by nature. 

[TVSpectator]

But that's what I mean about inconsistency. If she's supposed to have this huge gap in her teaching, to where she can't even open a book, how can she know all of these complicated spells, etc? they can't have it both ways, but they do. 

 

For, me personally, I like to fanwork the idea that Adaline just got lucky that she was even able to cast a spell like that. I also like to think that she screwed up the spell, somewhere, and that was how Mama Renard and Rosalee were able to break it.

[TVSpectator]

But she wasn't just lucky. She had to know her stuff to do it. As a matter of fact, it came from a book. So she had to know how to open that book, because as we saw, it's difficult to open. Then she had to gather all of the ingredients and pull off the spell all by herself. That wasn't an easy spell. It's not one you stumble into. Even Rernard's mom was impressed with it and couldn't just say exactly what it was or how to cure it off the top of her head.  And Renard's mom seems like she's been at this a while. Adalind has been shown to be evil, conniving, and smart. She's cast a bunch of spells, and all have worked out perfectly, exactly as planned. I'm not fanwanking. I'm going by what I've actually seen of the character. What the show has shown me. And what they've shown me is a competent witch. 

 

Again, from what I see on the show, there is pretty much a way to reverse whatever magic is performed.. That is one thing they've consistently proven. But afterward, there are side-effects, which is also consistent. How many reverse spells have they performed?

 

Nick became de-zombified but has lasting (sometimes)effects

Hank was cured of the cookie spell

Wu was cured of the cookie spell

Adalind had her powers removed and had to go through an entire ritual to get them back

Nick lost his powers and had to go through an entire ritual to get them back.

 

So, I don't think it's just because a mistake was made that a spell can be reversed, since the show has shown us ALL spells can be reversed. You just need to know how. 

 

To make Adalind stupid and not a good witch, would mean the show has failed in EVERY way. You can't have good drama if the enemy is incompetent. Adalind was able to make herself someone else and trick even Nick into thinking she was the woman he's been with for years and years. He had no inkling at all. That tells me she's a witch of pretty great skills.

 

Then Victor is able to trick her into coming to the castle, where they throw her in the dungeon, and she doesn't question why she was able to get into the weird man's cell, and eats his food. That goes against everything they've shown us to this point. This is what I mean about the character being inconsistent. If they want Adalind to be an enemy we love to hate, they're going about it the wrong way. 

 

I will grant that Adaline does probably know some stuff but might not have mastered it yet. Also, as with the spell book Adaline didn't know how to open it till she cut herself on a piece of glass (and as my father would say, "in half ass backwards way" her way) was able to open it:

 

This is from someone's review of My Fare Wesen:

Meanwhile, Adalind gets access to her dead mother's storage container, looking for a specific book. When she finally finds it, she is unable to open it until she breaks some glass in frustration. She uses the glass to try to pry the book open, cutting herself. When the blood drips down and smokes like any healthy Hexen-blood should, the book finally opens. We don't yet know what's in it.

 

 

 

So, I would say that Adaline must be half assing her spell casting and/or she isn't just a master spell caster yet. 

Edited December 24, 2014 by TVSpectator

[johntfs]

Adalind seems to be a competent spell caster.  Her main problems boil down to the impatience and poor judgement which infect every aspect of her life.

 

When she went to attract Hank, she cast that spell of obsession instead of relying on physical charm and personality (which would have been more than sufficient) which attracted Nick to move against her as a Grimm, costing her her powers.  Taking revenge on Juliette ensured that she and Nick would be her enemies from that point forward.  Her actions to regain her powers probably alienated her from the rest of the hexenbeists (nobody likes a cannibal).  Her actions in stripping Nick of his powers have resulted in Juliette being empowered as a hexenbeist, which bodes ill for her.  Finally, her actions in going to Victor resulted in her being in the power of someone who will discard her once his goals are achieved.

 

Adalind isn't bad at being a hexenbeist, she's just bad at living a life.

[Syme]

Adalind seems to be a competent spell caster.  Her main problems boil down to the impatience and poor judgement which infect every aspect of her life.

...

Adalind isn't bad at being a hexenbeist, she's just bad at living a life.

Nod...

Hubris....

[Actionmage]

After catching the rerun of "Highway of Tears",  have we ever met nice/not evil snake  wessen?   There are beneficial snakes around, I'm sure, so seeing one running a nursery or organic co-op would be cool. I know, it's winter, so they'd be keeping to themselves.... ;D

[applecrisp]

I have a fanwank theory as of a few episodes ago that I've kicked around.  Sorry for the verbosity, but thought I'd share.  Lemme know what you think!

 

My idea is that thousands of years ago, a single person or small family somehow gained incredible supernatural powers.  We could fanwank an Anne Rice-style "ancient demon infected the blood of a few people" as the source or something. :) I'm gonna call these original superpowered magicians "UberMages", or UM for short, to save typing later on.  We're talking full on occultism, Necronomicon stuff, summoning angels and demons, conjurings, metamorphosis- the whole freakin' bag of mystical powers.  These early UMs were capable not just of the minor feats we see hexenbiest do, but something more along the lines of... well, baby Diana at full adult strength (you can probably see where I'm going with this).  And they ruled completely and quite visibly, like Egyptian pharaohs.

 

 

Grimms and Wesen:

Along with those powers came the ability to cast truly powerful spells, and one of the things the UMs did with these powerful spells was to make animal-human hybrids- the very first Wesen!  We actually have it as in-show canon that all modern Wesen descend from a few that date back thousands of years, to Egypt.  Those could have been created by the UMs in making more powerful workers or "god-like" rulers that they controlled behind the scenes to interface with the people... or perhaps originally just out of alchemical curiosity.

 

It's probable they even could have made the Grimms as sort of "shepherds" of their new Wesen flock, with comparable powers to help them seek out and punish any renegade Wesen.  So in that sense, I'd say that Grimms are a kind of Wesen: built by the same UberMages tinkering with the basic forces of Nature.  And they have no idea they've been killing their own "kind", as similar products of the UMs awesome magic.

 

 

Royals and Hexenbiests:

However, those mighty UberMages- like the dragons in "Game of Thrones"- got weaker and weaker over the centuries as they became diluted through breeding and intermingling with humans and Wesen alike.  All that's left of them these past many centuries are a split faction of descendant families, each a pitiful shadow of their common ancestors: the Royals and Hexenbiests, capable of trifling spells and minor feats to be sure, but rarely anything too grand, and nothing on the scale of what those ancients could do. 

 

The hexenbiests may have been a line of these UberMages who split off when they experimented on making themselves like Wesen- hence the woge- where the Royals did not, and in fact largely abandoned the dwindling ability to perform UM magic for more practical- and violent- means to exert political power. 

 

 

Royals:

Since neither of these descending lines maintained the full sorcery of the UMs, their despotic rule slipped away from the larger world, resulting in the loss of their power over the human and Wesen worlds, and causing the Wesen to disperse among the world as a hidden race living as regular humans.  The two descendant UM families engaged in a desperate power struggle to hold on to what was left.  And while the hexenbiest still passed down enough knowledge to do their weaker UM spells, they didn't have collective enforcer strength of the original Royal "mafiosi" and were ultimately ousted from the halls of power. 

 

I suspect the Royals thus still have in their bloodline the ability to do hexenbiest magic if they chose to spend the time learning the craft... but they hardly need it, given their power is just as real and more impactful than love spells.  They would eventually (a few hundred years ago) convince the Grimms to become for a while their private elite enforcers, to help them maintain power among the Wesen only.

 

 

Hexenbiests:

After losing the power struggle with the Royals, the hexenbiest became somewhat disgraced while the Royals cemented their now limited power over parts of the hidden Wesen world.  This would explain why Renard, as half hexenbiest, would be specifically shunned as a bastard by much of the Royal family.  Still, the hexenbiests had that shadow of ancient sorcerer's power, and cultivated it carefully and obsessively with spells and books and tribal knowledge: the hallmark of the hexenbiests.  Their blood doesn't have the power of the ancients so they spells can't be anywhere near as strong and they don't know how the ancients did their most impressive feats... but they've kept what knowledge they could, enabling them to still do some effective magic.

 

 

Diana and the Keys:

The child of Adalind and Sean unites the bloodlines of those two families again, and since both of their bloodlines- Sean as half-royal, and Adalind as hexenbiest- ultimately descend from those sorcerers, the child for some (not fully explained) reason has something even more like the original UM powers- hence even as an infant being able to show telekinesis and pyrokinesis, or project illusions into the mind of someone far off in the woods. 

 

Sean is also a half-breed of royal and hexenbeist, but he clearly has nothing more than weak hexenbeist (er, Zauberbeist) powers, so some other element would have to explain the quirk that made Diana genetically regress into being more like a full-blooded UberMage- and it would have to be something no one would have ever thought to try before, at least not very often.  Such as maybe losing your powers to a Grimm, getting them back via hexenbiest spell, and then having a child by a royal, maybe?  Hexenbiests would have known and done the first two plenty of times over the generations- losing powers to a Grimm's blood was well known to them, and the spell that returned Adalind's powers was also apparently not unheard of- but all three seems exceedingly rare given how the Royals would not normally have any involvement- much less parenting- with hexenbiests.

 

The Royals already wanted Diana when she was just a royal child, even if a bastard like Sean... but when they realized she might have something akin to UM powers?  Well, that changes everything: she's now not just a child, but the first UberMage in thousands of years, and with THAT kind of power, molded and shaped under the tutelage of the Royals?  You'd be able to rule the world in full: the whole world, Wesen and human.  The Royals would be like the pharaohs of old, hence keeping them from the child.

 

Ah, but the child itself wouldn't be enough: after all, over the centuries we'd naturally expect the occasional half-hexenbiest, half-Royal baby, or even the genetic anomaly that was a throwback to the UM's power, with people like John Dee or Alestair Crowley.  So even though Diana will be unusually powerful, she'll not know how to use that to do much more than cool tricks like pyrokinesis or telekinesis, or the known hexenbiest spells.  You'd also need the knowledge of the ancient sorcerers themselves, their darkened tomes containing spells of unimaginable power- lost to the ages, and performable only by an unusually powerful descendant of that bloodline.

 

So where is that knowledge, those secret spells that even some hexenbeist could cast, far more powerful than anything known to Wesen or Royal or Grimm for centuries?  Where would they have hidden that?  Who knows- but maybe when those Knights of the Crusades split a map up into 7 keys because it led to unimaginable power, what they were actually hiding was a map to a secret location with the full hidden knowledge of those ancient masters.

 

Now, a hexenbeist or even Royal with that kind of full sorcery knowledge would be immensely powerful, if limited by their diluted blood- powerful enough the Royals could potentially exert more control than they do already, perhaps even a touch of what the UMs once possessed.  But combined with an unusually "pure" child in Diana, a child that has near-UM level blood and the 7 keys to uncover those long lost hidden secrets of the ancients? 

 

Well, then you would have access to the powers of the Gods themselves, and rule over the entire world.

 

 

Anyway, that's my extended, super-long (sorry!) fan-wank/retcon for Grimm.

I like the idea of their powers being diluted.

[TVSpectator]

I have a fanwank theory as of a few episodes ago that I've kicked around.  Sorry for the verbosity, but thought I'd share.  Lemme know what you think!

 

My idea is that thousands of years ago, a single person or small family somehow gained incredible supernatural powers.  We could fanwank an Anne Rice-style "ancient demon infected the blood of a few people" as the source or something. :) I'm gonna call these original superpowered magicians "UberMages", or UM for short, to save typing later on.  We're talking full on occultism, Necronomicon stuff, summoning angels and demons, conjurings, metamorphosis- the whole freakin' bag of mystical powers.  These early UMs were capable not just of the minor feats we see hexenbiest do, but something more along the lines of... well, baby Diana at full adult strength (you can probably see where I'm going with this).  And they ruled completely and quite visibly, like Egyptian pharaohs.

 

 

Grimms and Wesen:

Along with those powers came the ability to cast truly powerful spells, and one of the things the UMs did with these powerful spells was to make animal-human hybrids- the very first Wesen!  We actually have it as in-show canon that all modern Wesen descend from a few that date back thousands of years, to Egypt.  Those could have been created by the UMs in making more powerful workers or "god-like" rulers that they controlled behind the scenes to interface with the people... or perhaps originally just out of alchemical curiosity.

 

It's probable they even could have made the Grimms as sort of "shepherds" of their new Wesen flock, with comparable powers to help them seek out and punish any renegade Wesen.  So in that sense, I'd say that Grimms are a kind of Wesen: built by the same UberMages tinkering with the basic forces of Nature.  And they have no idea they've been killing their own "kind", as similar products of the UMs awesome magic.

 

 

Royals and Hexenbiests:

However, those mighty UberMages- like the dragons in "Game of Thrones"- got weaker and weaker over the centuries as they became diluted through breeding and intermingling with humans and Wesen alike.  All that's left of them these past many centuries are a split faction of descendant families, each a pitiful shadow of their common ancestors: the Royals and Hexenbiests, capable of trifling spells and minor feats to be sure, but rarely anything too grand, and nothing on the scale of what those ancients could do. 

 

The hexenbiests may have been a line of these UberMages who split off when they experimented on making themselves like Wesen- hence the woge- where the Royals did not, and in fact largely abandoned the dwindling ability to perform UM magic for more practical- and violent- means to exert political power. 

 

 

Royals:

Since neither of these descending lines maintained the full sorcery of the UMs, their despotic rule slipped away from the larger world, resulting in the loss of their power over the human and Wesen worlds, and causing the Wesen to disperse among the world as a hidden race living as regular humans.  The two descendant UM families engaged in a desperate power struggle to hold on to what was left.  And while the hexenbiest still passed down enough knowledge to do their weaker UM spells, they didn't have collective enforcer strength of the original Royal "mafiosi" and were ultimately ousted from the halls of power. 

 

I suspect the Royals thus still have in their bloodline the ability to do hexenbiest magic if they chose to spend the time learning the craft... but they hardly need it, given their power is just as real and more impactful than love spells.  They would eventually (a few hundred years ago) convince the Grimms to become for a while their private elite enforcers, to help them maintain power among the Wesen only.

 

 

Hexenbiests:

After losing the power struggle with the Royals, the hexenbiest became somewhat disgraced while the Royals cemented their now limited power over parts of the hidden Wesen world.  This would explain why Renard, as half hexenbiest, would be specifically shunned as a bastard by much of the Royal family.  Still, the hexenbiests had that shadow of ancient sorcerer's power, and cultivated it carefully and obsessively with spells and books and tribal knowledge: the hallmark of the hexenbiests.  Their blood doesn't have the power of the ancients so they spells can't be anywhere near as strong and they don't know how the ancients did their most impressive feats... but they've kept what knowledge they could, enabling them to still do some effective magic.

 

 

Diana and the Keys:

The child of Adalind and Sean unites the bloodlines of those two families again, and since both of their bloodlines- Sean as half-royal, and Adalind as hexenbiest- ultimately descend from those sorcerers, the child for some (not fully explained) reason has something even more like the original UM powers- hence even as an infant being able to show telekinesis and pyrokinesis, or project illusions into the mind of someone far off in the woods. 

 

Sean is also a half-breed of royal and hexenbeist, but he clearly has nothing more than weak hexenbeist (er, Zauberbeist) powers, so some other element would have to explain the quirk that made Diana genetically regress into being more like a full-blooded UberMage- and it would have to be something no one would have ever thought to try before, at least not very often.  Such as maybe losing your powers to a Grimm, getting them back via hexenbiest spell, and then having a child by a royal, maybe?  Hexenbiests would have known and done the first two plenty of times over the generations- losing powers to a Grimm's blood was well known to them, and the spell that returned Adalind's powers was also apparently not unheard of- but all three seems exceedingly rare given how the Royals would not normally have any involvement- much less parenting- with hexenbiests.

 

The Royals already wanted Diana when she was just a royal child, even if a bastard like Sean... but when they realized she might have something akin to UM powers?  Well, that changes everything: she's now not just a child, but the first UberMage in thousands of years, and with THAT kind of power, molded and shaped under the tutelage of the Royals?  You'd be able to rule the world in full: the whole world, Wesen and human.  The Royals would be like the pharaohs of old, hence keeping them from the child.

 

Ah, but the child itself wouldn't be enough: after all, over the centuries we'd naturally expect the occasional half-hexenbiest, half-Royal baby, or even the genetic anomaly that was a throwback to the UM's power, with people like John Dee or Alestair Crowley.  So even though Diana will be unusually powerful, she'll not know how to use that to do much more than cool tricks like pyrokinesis or telekinesis, or the known hexenbiest spells.  You'd also need the knowledge of the ancient sorcerers themselves, their darkened tomes containing spells of unimaginable power- lost to the ages, and performable only by an unusually powerful descendant of that bloodline.

 

So where is that knowledge, those secret spells that even some hexenbeist could cast, far more powerful than anything known to Wesen or Royal or Grimm for centuries?  Where would they have hidden that?  Who knows- but maybe when those Knights of the Crusades split a map up into 7 keys because it led to unimaginable power, what they were actually hiding was a map to a secret location with the full hidden knowledge of those ancient masters.

 

Now, a hexenbeist or even Royal with that kind of full sorcery knowledge would be immensely powerful, if limited by their diluted blood- powerful enough the Royals could potentially exert more control than they do already, perhaps even a touch of what the UMs once possessed.  But combined with an unusually "pure" child in Diana, a child that has near-UM level blood and the 7 keys to uncover those long lost hidden secrets of the ancients? 

 

Well, then you would have access to the powers of the Gods themselves, and rule over the entire world.

 

 

Anyway, that's my extended, super-long (sorry!) fan-wank/retcon for Grimm.

+1 and sorry for not seeing this earlier.

[hincandenza]

No worries, glad someone enjoyed reading that.  It's a total spitball fanwank, but I like that it "explains" Wesen and Grimms, as well as hexenbiest, along with proposing why the keys and Royals and baby Diana are so important... something the writers haven't really bothered to do yet. :)

[applecrisp]

Hincandenza, I agree about the show not giving us well thought-out explantions. 

 

I would not be happy being a hexenieast, but if you could have your pick, what kind of wesen would you want to be?  

 

I think I would want to be the eagle one.  Because flying would be great-even though I am afraid of heights. 

 

What about everyone else??

[hincandenza]

Pretty sure the Eagles can't actually fly; in fact, most are just stronger/faster, excepting things like the dragon, the memory eater, or the zombie maker among others.

 

Least desirable: the spider people, Spinnetods.  I felt so bad for that teenage girl who suddenly realized she was turning into a spider.  Worst.  Puberty.  EVER.

 

Most desirable: Well, all the really big, strong, powerful Wesen also seem to tends towards evil/brutish/villainous.  So I think... Fuchsbau, as surprising as that is.  Rosalee looks gorgeous when she woges, and I figure if I have to be Wesen, might as well be one that won't particularly repulse people in my woge state. :)

[Actionmage]

As to the least desirable-- naturally occurring: (tie) spinnetods and lebensauger, the leech wesen.

 

As to most desirable-- IA about fuchsbau, but I also enjoyed the cats ( except for klausriechs) and the seltenvogel, the bird wesen that makes the golden egg. The iridescent plumage was lovely.

 

eta: I worry for Bud.  I don't think his involvement is going to be kept hidden, especially if he finds out how far things have gone/ how badly Monrosalee have been terrorized and injured. Bud will be willing to own his part of the trouble, but there will be worse feelings from Monrosalee  towards Bud and the other eisbeibers, I think. It will be an earned enmity, but it will be painful, at least to me, because it's Bud.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Actionmage

[applecrisp]

Well if I can't fly, I would like the speed of the cat so a leopard or cheetah. Can't remember off- hand if they have had both.  The eisbeibers are good with their hands  so that would be OK, too.

 

Just would not want to be a vegan like Monroe.

[ottilie]

hey Hincandenza, I think you're totally right. The rules of their situation seem to be that all wesen inherit a behavioral disposition from their parents, and all trace back to a group generations back. (Perhaps the reason eisbieber and reinigen mice are so common while more scary creatures are rare is that the scarier ones have a harder time raising large families). Sometimes wesen have special skills such as strong sense of smell, like blutbads (which directly translates to "bloodbath" in german?). Or Rosalie can mix antidotes, but she can't cast spells with potions.

 Grimms are more like a special type of wesen because they have skills or gifts (can see other wesen, and they almost always win in a fight), but they don't really use magic.

  It is the hexenbiests or witches that do have magical powers, hence it was probably something like them that started the whole thing off. I always wonder why captain Renard never uses magic though - he just knows about it and asks hexenbiest and wesen friends to do things for him, and they do so in exchange for political favors or money. If he could use magic more skillfully, he could solve all the crime in the city.

[TVSpectator]

hey Hincandenza, I think you're totally right. The rules of their situation seem to be that all wesen inherit a behavioral disposition from their parents, and all trace back to a group generations back. (Perhaps the reason eisbieber and reinigen mice are so common while more scary creatures are rare is that the scarier ones have a harder time raising large families). Sometimes wesen have special skills such as strong sense of smell, like blutbads (which directly translates to "bloodbath" in german?). Or Rosalie can mix antidotes, but she can't cast spells with potions.

 Grimms are more like a special type of wesen because they have skills or gifts (can see other wesen, and they almost always win in a fight), but they don't really use magic.

  It is the hexenbiests or witches that do have magical powers, hence it was probably something like them that started the whole thing off. I always wonder why captain Renard never uses magic though - he just knows about it and asks hexenbiest and wesen friends to do things for him, and they do so in exchange for political favors or money. If he could use magic more skillfully, he could solve all the crime in the city.

 

Renard did  try to have Nick drink that concoction that he made up, back in Adalind's Self-storage space, before he got shot. The whole bottle got smashed all over Nick and Juliette's floor and they couldn't make more and that was why Mama Renard was looking for another way to fix Nick (or at least this is what I think happened).

Edited January 18, 2015 by TVSpectator

[Actionmage]

The whole bottle got smashed all over Nick and Juliette's floor and they couldn't make more and that was why Mama Renard was looking for another way to fix Nick (or at least this is what I think happened).

 

Close. The potion Renard made was smashed in the crush of wesen freaking over Teresa's entrance at the Monrosalee wedding. ( Nick had wisely donned shades to hide his Grimmness, not knowing exactly what Adalind did to him. Magic-wise, folks! *g*)

Edited January 19, 2015 by Actionmage

[TVSpectator]

Close. The potion Renard made was smashed in the crush of wesen freaking over Teresa's entrance at the Monrosalee wedding. ( Nick had wisely donned shades to hide his Grimmness, not knowing exactly what Adalind did to him. Magic-wise, folks! *g*)

 

Ah, thanks

[Actionmage]

there needs to be more involvement of families and friends, not just the closed Nick gang, to have the best chance of getting Monroe back alive.

 

What I was meaning, in this case with Monroe, was that while Nick, Hank, Renard and Wu are working it from the (mostly) human police side, Monroe's folks and friends--that we've met before Show!-- would be able to get other, crucial bits of information due to not being a Grimm or a royal. This is very time sensitive, as no one knows exactly how nefarious these assholes are going to go.

 

For cripe's sake, Renard knew there was a cell of these asses but seemingly had no hard intel on them! Way to go, Not-Prince-of-the-City! Way to inspire trust and loyalty.

 

For these neo-Purists, I can see trying to keep civilian casualties at a minimum, wesen and human. I just wonder if there is a situation where involving the wesen community would be a good change from the supposed balkanization of all the species. Like Krampus or La Llorona. 

 

Being the wesen version of a cop-soldier is great, but getting allies in the wesen world, besides Bud and Monroe and Rosalee, might be helpful in other situations. Not saying Nick shouldn't be his Grim self, but to have trustworthy folks he can get intel from. It would lessen the absolute need for Monroe and Rosalee to be the be all-end all of wesen knowledge ( not replace them) and world-build by letting us know how other wesen think about things from Grimms to royals to the blutbaden/bauerschwein feuds. ( They could be recurring, just like Bud.)

 

[brought over from the Monroe thread.]

Edited January 20, 2015 by Actionmage

[icewolf]

So what happens if Grimm Nick and Hexenbiest Juliette have a baby?

Would the powers of both parents cancel each other out, and the baby ends up being an ordinary human?

Or would the baby end up having Grimm with zombie powers, along with the face and telekinetic powers of a Hexenbiest? Some sort of SUPER hybrid Wesen?

Also what were the actual chances of this happening? I'm sure this would be a first time in history kind of thing, since even a Grimm and Hexenbiest being in the same room without killing each other has to be a extremely rare.

Edited January 26, 2015 by icewolf

[johntfs]

So what happens if Grimm Nick and Hexenbiest Juliette have a baby?

Would the powers of both parents cancel each other out, and the baby ends up being an ordinary human?

Or would the baby end up having Grimm with zombie powers, along with the face and telekinetic powers of a Hexenbiest? Some sort of SUPER hybrid Wesen?

Also what were the actual chances of this happening? I'm sure this would be a first time in history kind of thing, since even a Grimm and Hexenbiest being in the same room without killing each other has to be a extremely rare.

 

I'm kind of hoping that we never find out because if we do then the writers have hit "scraping the barrel bottom" territory, but I'll take a crack at it.

 

The baby will be a Grimm with TK and spellcasting powers.  He (it's a boy!) will also age at a superfast rate into a teenage hottle so he can date Adalind's baby, who will also be a teenage hottie.  There'll be some flirty stuff with Trubel (who will date Monroe and Rosalee's super-aged offspring)  and Adalind's kid, a rivalry with Adalind's kid by Viktor but eventually everyone will go to California or Vancouver for the spinoff called "Generation Grimm."