What was once a peaceful coexistence of Faunus and humans is now the nefarious Reaper gang.
Long ago (345 years from the beginning of RWBY) there was a island that lived in isolation, despite this isolation adventurers say that the people there were very kind and upbeat... although not many had the pleasure of knowing, despite the odd adventurer here and there almost no one knew the people existed...
This brings us to atlas. At the time they had a super solider project up... although it was failing. They didn't have any test subjects, at first they tried using lab rats but the biological serum know in the Atlas science wing as "Tar" was to symbiotic and strong for a animal host to support, they needed human test subjects... but the bonding process was very painful and there was no telling if the host would survive... that's when they turned to the people of skull island (not like the movie) Atlas knew that they lived in isolation so if they disappeared no one would notice. This made them prime candidates for the experiment.
The orders were to round up all the people and take them to the experimentation labs so they could all be afflicted at once, when some of the younger soldiers questioned the ethics of the higher-ups their commander made this argument-"listen, what we're doing isn't pretty, it's not, but think of how many lives these super soldiers are going to save! The sacrifice of thousands for the lives of billions"
And so it was. Three days later, Atlesian forces rounded up all 12,000 people of skull island and put them on carrier ships headed for the atlas science wing.
There everyone, men, women, and children were put through painful and gruelling tests such as heat resistance (they burned them to see how heat resistant their skin was) lung capacity (they basically drowned them) and shear strength (they stretched/compressed their limbs to see how much shear/pressure strength they could take). and many more torturous tests.
Through what Atlas called the "comparison tests" nearly 3,000 people died
After that they had them all line up in gas chambers and sprayed them down with the Tar. Aside from being scalding hot, having the Tar mould to your skin is very painful, soon all of the people were on the ground writhing in pain.
But some tar when through one of the vents in one of the rooms. The drop of Tar made its way to vale and started a plague. The plague was a weak and was easy to deal with but atlas was horrified at the thought of what would happen if some of the other kingdoms found out about what they had been doing.
In an effort to save their own skin, Atlas rounded up all the surviving "weepers" (as they called them) and took them to an abandoned island (abandoned due to its active volcano) and dumped all the weepers onto it with nothing, no food, water or basic living needs (the weepers later learn that because of the Tar they do not need to eat or drink)
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At the (R) (top left)
They then built a giant barbed wire fence around the island completely blocking them in with guards posted 24/7
