2016-09-30: Scouting Report

[Bob Schroeck]

Scouting Report
A "KanriKyara" Story
by Robert M. Schroeck

Evernight Castle
The Grimmlands
Somewhere in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia
September 30, 2016

Emerald Sustrai stood at one of the tall, stone-framed windows which ringed the conference hall at the very pinnacle of the crystalline castle, staring out at the landscape below. Star-speckled red skies and sharp upthrust blades of bare black rock punctuated by faintly glowing purple crystal outcroppings surrounded the castle in every direction, only to give way green jungle and blue skies just a few short miles away.

A few short miles that might have well been hundreds.

She suppressed a sigh at the sight. She had no idea how that worked, and frankly didn't care. She just wanted to get the hell out of this place, but trying to travel even just the three miles overland through the Grimms' native terrain — no. She wasn't suicidal.

Staying was tantamount to suicide as well, though. How Cinder and Salem had failed to remember that at the fall of Atlas she had thrown in with Team RWBY and the others fighting against them, Emerald had no idea. But surely, sooner or later those memories would return. In the first few days after their arrival in this world it had quickly become clear to Emerald that Salem and the rest had come from years after the last events she remembered. By the sound of it, Salem had triumphed over Ozpin and his allies, in the process collecting the four relics. She had united them to call the Brother Gods who had cursed her, only to have her victory snatched from her. It was only the assurances of the being who had called herself Hagall that had kept Salem from lashing out at everything and everyone around her.

Emerald shifted her focus from the distant jungle to the reflection of the room behind her in the glass, and in it studied Hazel Rainart. The huge man sitting at the obsidian slab of a table, scowling and his arms crossed, was another traitor to Salem's cause whose betrayal was seemingly unknown or forgotten. In the few weeks they had been in this new world, this "Earth", they had carefully felt each other out. Unlike herself, he had been unaware of her recent history, and had initially been suspicious of her — but in the last few days they had finally and very tentatively forged an alliance of sorts.

Now if only she could stop being freaked out by the fact that the last she had heard before awakening in this world was that he had been quite thoroughly and definitively dead.

Still keeping her focus on the reflection, she studied the others seated at the table. On the far side Arthur Watts sat next to Hazel. Watts was another she had thought dead, killed in the fall of Atlas. But here he sat, just as snide and arrogant as ever. Unlike Hazel, he was one she sincerely wished had stayed dead.

The two across from them, closer to her, were blocked from view by the high, irregular backs of their chairs, but she didn't need to see them, not really. To her left, that psycho Tyrian, no doubt squatting in his chair as usual. To her right...

Cinder.

There had been a time when Emerald had given her all to Cinder — her loyalty, her devotion, her love. But that time was past. It had taken her far too long, but she'd finally seen what Cinder was: just as much a psychopath as Tyrian, and on top of that a nihilist, delighted to follow a monster and join in the destruction of the world.

It had broken her heart, but the decision was... well, not easy. But nowhere near as hard as it could have been. Emerald couldn't follow, couldn't love, someone like that.

Someone who would happily burn the world to ashes in the service of Salem.

And then there was the new fifth member of the group, seated at the far end of the table from Salem's massive seat. He was no one she knew from Remnant and indeed professed no knowledge of their world. But he had much to offer Salem, and claimed a certain sympathy with her goals. Emerald studied his reflection: not yet in his thirties as far as she could tell, tall and slender with shaggy, violently purple hair and golden eyes, wearing a white lab coat over a dark suit of an unfamiliar cut.

Who are you, Jail Scaglietti? You and your army of girls?

Behind and to the side of his seat stood one of those girls, the one called "Uno" — "One" in this new language they had discovered they all spoke. Uno bore a strong resemblance to her master; given that she seemed no older than herself, Emerald wondered if she were Scaglietti's daughter, and if so, what kind of parent he was to her. She certainly seemed as devoted to him as Emerald had been to Cinder. In contrast to her ... father? employer? ... Uno's hair was a much more subdued lavender-grey. In it were a pair of odd, bulbous clips resting above her temples, but they didn't seem to constrain its locks in any way. She was dressed much like an office worker, which seemed appropriate given her role as his secretary and general factotum.

The room's doors crashed open and Emerald spun around at the sound, just in time to see Salem glide in, followed by one of her tentacled horrors. As everyone rose from their seats, she soundlessly made her way to the far end of the table and settled herself into the throne-like seat of glowing violet crystal there. The floating horror drifted into position near her right hand. The bone white of her skin made a stark contrast against the table and her equally black gown.

Reluctantly, Emerald made her way to her usual position behind and to the left of Cinder's seat, where she was joined by Mercury. She suppressed a grimace at his proximity; he was just as much a nihilist as Cinder, and irritatingly arrogant, to boot.

"Cinder, Doctor Watts. I see that you have returned from your mission."

"Yes, master." Cinder inclined her head respectfully, which sent her raven hair swinging briefly across her face.

"What do you have to report?"

Cinder and Watts glanced at each other. Watts smirked and made a "go on" gesture. Cinder narrowed her eyes at him, then drew a breath.

"First off, master, the... Hagall did not lie. This is a very different world from Remnant — large, vibrant and heavily populated." She reached into the bag which sat upon the floor to her right, and withdrew a number of books. "We took the liberty of... acquiring a number of reference works, and they all agree — at last count there are nearly seven and a half billion humans living on this world, occupying almost every bit of habitable land from one pole to the other."

Tyrian made a disbelieving sound. Cinder smirked at him. "Seven and a half billion humans and no faunus," she amended.

Salem raised an eyebrow. "Indeed?" she said quietly.

Cinder inclined her head slightly. "Yes, master. The only beings even vaguely like faunus exist solely in their myths and fiction. I will admit that the only settlements we could reach were small backwater villages and towns, but if anything like faunus existed in this world they would at least be known, if not actually present. Spoken of at least, mentioned in the references and texts we found." She shook her head. "No, there are no other intelligent races. At most some speculation that certain sea creatures may be sapient but too alien for meaningful communication."

Salem nodded thoughtfully. "Intriguing. And what of the humans' level of development?" she asked.

"Confusing," Watts said. "In many ways they are much more advanced than Atlas ever was. If the sources we acquired are to be trusted, we have found ourselves in one of the poorest and most isolated parts of this planet, but the richest nations take remarkable levels of luxury and technology for granted. They have multiple communications networks far superior to the CCTS, for instance — among other things they are not dependent upon a few monolithic transmission stations." He scowled at the thought. "Much of it is not even found on the planet's surface."

"Oh?" Salem looked intrigued.

"They have possessed the capability to leave the planet for over sixty years," Cinder explained. "They routinely use this to place communications relays into orbit around the planet."

"There are thousands of them, with more going up every day," Watts growled. "Even if we wanted to cripple their communications the way we did Remnant's, we couldn't reach them. Nor could we do it fast enough to keep the redundancies in their systems from simply ignoring our efforts until the rest were repaired." He grimaced. "I don't even want to get into their corresponding data network, also decentralized and designed to route itself around damage. It reaches everywhere, even the villages just outside our borders. And yet they have only the most primitive robotics." He shook his head.

"No military robots like Atlas?" Salem smiled. "This is good news."

"Not necessarily, my lady," Watts cautioned. "They do not use military robots because they do not need them. There are nations in this world that field standing armies numbering in the millions of men. And while they do not have Dust to power their weapons, their alternatives are... disturbingly effective. Possibly superior to Dust weapons. Again, if our sources are accurate."

"We found mentions of something called 'nuclear' and 'thermonuclear' weaponry," Cinder picked up seamlessly. "And pursuing details we discovered that many of the greater powers ruling this world have weapons powerful enough to wipe entire cities off the map with a single blow — weapons whose destructive power is measured in square miles of devastation and millions of deaths. And they can use the same means they employ to emplace their communications relays to deliver these weapons anywhere on the planet in a matter of minutes."

Watts snorted. "The smallest of these nations could steamroll Atlas and never notice them."

Salem's eyebrows rose. "Well. Isn't that interesting."

Emerald strove to keep her expression neutral. "Interesting" wasn't anything close to what she'd call it. "Terrifying" was more like it — but it looked like Salem didn't consider the prospect of a military force larger than the entire combined human and faunus population of Remnant armed with kingdom-killer weapons at all intimidating. Instead she looked... intrigued. And perhaps a bit covetous.

Not for the first time, Emerald considered that there was something seriously wrong with Salem.

"Doctor Watts," the Grimm Queen continued, "How hard would it be for us to get our hands on some of these weapons?"

"That... is hard to say, my lady," Watts replied carefully. "Given just what little we have learned so far about this world's resources and conflicts, I would expect access to and control of these weapons to be far more carefully guarded than that buffoon Ironwood guarded his."

Cinder nodded. "There appears to be an entire criminal class whose sole reason for existence is to defeat the security measures implemented on their communication and computing networks, and both sides have been engaged in a running battle of wits for decades." She turned a smug little smile on Watts. "I suspect that they have evolved defenses that dear Arthur here would be hard-pressed to understand, let alone bypass."

Watts snarled at her for a moment before Salem cleared her throat meaningfully. "Children," she chided gently, and Watts reluctantly schooled his features into a more neutral expression. "Arthur, I expect you to dedicate yourself to mastering this world's technology."

"If I may, my lady?" Scaglietti spoke for the first time.

Salem lifted a single eyebrow. "Yes, Dr. Scaglietti?"

He inclined his head, his ridiculously purple hair almost glowing with the magenta light reflecting from the table. "While I cannot be sure from such a brief description, it would seem this world's technology may share some similarity with that of my own. Perhaps I might be able to aid Dr. Watts in his investigations?"

Salem considered this for a moment, then nodded. "Indeed. Please do so."

Scaglietti inclined his head again. "As you command, my lady."

She smiled approvingly at him, and Emerald suppressed a shudder. It had been bad enough with just the original members of Salem's inner circle. Scaglietti seemed to be an entirely new flavor of crazy that was blending entirely too well with the others.

"Very well." Salem's gaze swept over the table, including Emerald and Mercury in its darkly malevolent path. "Our two doctors will work together on this world's technology. Cinder, take a day to rest, and then I want you to go back out to learn more about this Earth. I have several specific tasks for you to perform, but we will go over them later."

"Yes, master," Cinder replied, lowering her head.

Salem continued. "Hazel and Tyrian, I want you to patrol the borders of our land, such as it is. There have been several incursions over the past week by the local humans. The Grimm have handled them so far, but I would like to see how you fare against them. And perhaps you can capture a few to interrogate."

"Yes, ma'am," Hazel rumbled, while Tyrian squealed with glee, clapping in delight.

Psycho.

Salem rose as if to leave, but paused. "I want to emphasize," Salem said, gazing down at them, "that just because we have found ourselves in a new world, our long-term plan has not changed. It has merely... expanded in scope. It is also now about more than the betrayal of Remnant by the two Brother Gods, but the betrayal of all of humanity in every world by dozens of gods and demons alike. Our goals have expanded in proportion to the scale of the betrayal. It is no longer enough to simply end Remnant by summoning the Brothers. It is time to take all the gods' and demons' toys away from them." She smiled grimly, her lips a thin, feral line. "My ultimate goal has always been the end of existence. We have simply learned there is much more existence to end than we thought." She bared her teeth in a snarl. "We will rise to the challenge."

A ripple of assent, ranging from Hazel's affirmative grunt to Tyrian's delighted laughter, ran around the table, and Salem's snarl transformed into a benevolent smile. The only exception was Scaglietti, who bore an expression of genial agreement. But something behind his eyes... Emerald wondered just how much he actually supported Salem's cause, or if his presence was simply an alliance of convenience. She glanced at Mercury, who wore a self-satisfied smirk as he stood on the other side of Cinder's seat.

Cinder and the other members of the inner circle stood, and Salem swept back out of the room, followed by the Seer. As the door shut behind Salem, Emerald caught Hazel's eye. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Emerald returned it.

---

Unlike meetings, meals in Evernight Castle were not "all hands" affairs. Its residents normally ate on their own schedules, and even Cinder and her coterie rarely dined together unless it served another purpose to do so. Emerald had never been so glad of this as she had been since their arrival on Earth, and this day in particular.

She had retreated with her dinner to a spot she had long thought of as her private retreat in Salem's tower — not so much a room as simply a space, a void in the castle's crystalline structure so close to breaking through the outer wall that the crystal there was practically a purple-tinted picture window. It was only reachable through a twisting path that took her through both proper hallways and near-unnavigable fissures in the tower's structure. And out of long habit she used her Semblance to ensure that anyone who might have seen her making her way there, didn't.

When she had first found it, it had simply been a literal hole in the wall. But the regular formations of Evernight's crystal structure had given it a reasonably level floor, and even a couple upthrust blocks that could serve as tables. Over the subsequent months she'd brought in a Dust-powered lamp, a few small rugs and a folding chair (all "liberated" during visits to one kingdom or another) to make it a bit more comfortable; she was surprised and pleased to find that they were all still there after the transition to Earth.

She laid her dinner down on the larger "table" and dragged the chair closer. She unwrapped the meal and settled down to eat. The eternally-dark sky of the Grimmlands rarely shed enough light to let her see through the crystal "window" but today she was "lucky" enough to dine to the sight of the spires of rock and black pools below instead of her own reflection, lit as they were by the light leaking in over the border three miles away.

Three impassible miles. Even with the Grimm concentrating on locations of the natives' incursions, she could never cross them undetected and unmolested.

Not for the first time she wished Salem had let Cinder take her and Mercury on the expedition to explore the lands beyond the boundary. An "unfortunate accident" faked with her Semblance — Emerald had already decided on being swept off by a raging river, which would conveniently eliminate the need to leave a body behind — and she would have been free.

But no, Salem had wanted the "scouting party" to be smaller, more innocuous. And now she was sending Cinder back out alone for further information.

Still, Emerald mused, sooner or later, Cinder would want her team with her. She needed to be ready.

---

The first step, as in any plan, was information.

For the past few weeks, as the two of them had felt each other out, Emerald and Hazel had disguised their meetings as lessons she was taking from him on improving the efficiency with which Thief's Respite used Dust. It wasn't difficult to believe — Hazel possessed perhaps the greatest mastery of Dust use that she'd ever seen or heard of, and even if he didn't wield a weapon of his own he still had a level of knowledge and insight which had actually allowed her to make significant improvements to her guns. Of course, the price of that was having to make and load her own Dust shells rather than buying off the shelf, but the results were definitely worth it.

Of course, that it allowed the two of them to sit together with their heads next to each other muttering softly as they built and rebuilt each improved generation of her ammunition, effectively disguising their conspiratorial conversations as technical discussions, was the real reason. The improvement in her weapons was an unexpected and wholly welcome bonus.

"Can you get me a copy of everything Cinder and Watts found out?" she murmured a bare foot from his ear as she packed a custom shell with the improved version of her preferred blend of Dust.

"That's a lot of material, quite a bit more than than their summary covered," he replied just as softly.

"I've got plenty of time," she chuckled. "What else is there for me to do?"

---

A week later, an archive holding the entirety of the scouting report appeared "mysteriously" on her scroll, thanks to Hazel. At least she hoped it was thanks to Hazel...

It took Emerald nearly a month to get through its contents. That didn't include reading any of the larger reference works which someone — she wasn't sure who — had painstakingly scanned in page by page. She could only assume that Cinder and Dr. Watts had given Salem a private in-depth briefing on their findings, because just as Hazel had said, their scouting report held so much more than the simple, brief statements they'd given upon their return.

Like maps, she realized early on. Local maps, regional maps, world maps. All of which she copied from the archive and stashed in her scroll's main storage. They were confusing, though. If she read them right, and the unit conversions were correct, Earth was much larger than Remnant, with at least twice as much landmass and even more ocean. Which went a long way to explaining just how huge the population was. But the gravity was the same? She may not have had much of a formal education, but Emerald had had enough to know that the bigger a planet was, the more gravity it had.¹

She shook her head. There had to be an error somewhere, as unlikely as it seemed. There was no way this "Earth" could be 25,000 miles around.

Still, best to be safe and plan as though the numbers were accurate.

---

November 9, 2016

Hazel caught her in the corridor just outside her quarters. "I just heard."

Emerald nodded. "She detected the arrival of a Grimm on the west coast of the North America continent. She's sending us to recover it so she can investigate how it got there." She shuddered. "Cinder says she's hoping to learn how to call more from Remnant."

"And you've made your decision," he said plainly.

She nodded. "First chance I get."

"You have your new ammunition?"

Emerald smiled and held up the bag she'd slung over her shoulder. "After all our work? Of course."

One corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Good. And good luck."

"Thank you."

Hazel reached into one of the pockets of his jacket, and Emerald found him pressing a handful of Dust crystals into her considerably smaller palm. "Here. Just in case."

Emerald bit her lip, and then gave into the urge. She threw her arms around Hazel's neck and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you," she repeated in a whisper. "I promise, I'll find a way to get you out of here, too."

Hazel chuckled tectonically. "Don't worry about me, girl. Just take care of yourself."

She nodded. "I will."

And without another word she turned and ran for the Bullhead platform.

---

To be continued in Channeling Mana.

---

1. RMS: I won't go into all the specifics here, but based on maps and globes seen in Volume 1 and 2 of RWBY, either Remnant is noticeably smaller than Earth or the city of Vale is the size of Texas or bigger. And there's plenty of evidence that Vale is no bigger than a mid-sized "real world" city. Another way of approaching the issue, worked out by my collaborator Brent based on actual physics, suggests a planet a bit larger than Mars... so yeah. As for gravity, Remnant's humans are proportioned the same as Earth's humans, and things seem to fall at the same speed as they do on Earth. Both point to a similar or identical gravity to Earth's.
   

---

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[Norgarth]

hmm, seems that much like how Usagi and Naru are from differing if similar worlds, not all the people in Evernight Castle are from the same timeline.

[Isodecan]

I tend to assume that the maps of Remnant we see cover at most a quarter and more likely closer to an eighth of the actual world of Remnant given that Atlas is unquestionably in a polar location whereas Menagerie seems to be closer to the equator.

[Labster]

I tend to assume that the maps of Remnant we see cover at most a quarter and more likely closer to an eighth of the actual world of Remnant given that Atlas is unquestionably in a polar location whereas Menagerie seems to be closer to the equator.

Actually I decided to work out the math, rather than think about The Thing tonight:

Looking at this map, there's really one easy thing that we can do here, which is to place the deserts at something like the correct geography.  If you have a rotating planet, you are going to get excess heat in the tropics and cooling at the poles, and thus physics will want to transport that heat.  This is called the Hadley circulation, which on Earth forms three cells per hemisphere.  The part where air sinks is results in dry weather, which is why deserts on Earth generally form around ±30° latitude.

   

This picture looks like it has the same kind of circulation pattern, so let's draw an equator that puts the deserts at the right spot. That is not quite balanced, but it looks correct (except for those random white spots in the bottom left; let's assume they like random clouds in the Google Earth imagery).  It actually implies there is a lot more water on Remnant.  If the image is 512 pixels high from equator to North Pole, it implies 1024 pixels from pole to pole, or a circumference of 2048 pixels. (I swear I did not pick these round numbers.)

The problem we have next is trying to scale the map.  Other attempts to do this have assumed similarity to Earth, but I want to avoid assuming anything about gravity or planetary density.  Instead, let's take what canon tells us about the humans on Remnant.  They are basically the same shape and same height as humans on earth, which means that they should walk at the same rate.  I think this is somewhat invariant to things like local gravity -- g values of 7 to 12 should be similar enough.  There are some anime physics going on, but for the most part, fall rates appear normal.

Using human walking as a yardstick, we need a journey big enough to actually be viewable on the map.  Canon provides this as well: it tells you it took a six month journey to walk overland from Vale to Vacuo.  This is sketched on the map above -- it's impossible to know their exact route, but it's certainly not the shortest.

Taking the Oregon Trail was a trip that took about six months and covered 2170 miles of wilderness, with 10 miles a day being a typical travel speed.  But immigrants on the trail were traveling with all of their property!  Things happened, and people got dysentery.  If you're traveling light, with trained huntresses moving fast while foraging, I think 20 miles is reasonable.  Spanish missions in California were placed about 25 miles apart to be about one day's walk away over roads.  So lets go with 20 miles/day as a speed, or 32km/day.  This would make the entire trip ~5800km.

This map is also very likely a Mercator projection, so let's scale our vectors.  I'm going to be a little lazy here and approximate the sphere as flat pieces, assuming 30 north latitude for the whole journey, but let's go with it.  We don't know the terrain anyway so it's in our margin of error.

segment = √( Δlatitude² + ( Δlongitude cos 30° )² )

segment 1 = √( 150² + (180 cos 30°)² ) = 216.33 px
segment 2 = √( 80² + ( 150 cos 30°)² ) = 152.56 px

Or 369px = 5800km, or one pixel of latitude = 15.72 km.  Finally, a scale!

Taking this, we get a global circumference of 15.72 km/px * 2048px = 32200km.  This produces a radius of Remnant of 5120km.  This is good!  This is in a region that we expect.  Earth has a radius of 6370km, Mars has a radius of 3390km.  If we adjust the travel time up or down, we still have something that is in the neighborhood of an actual Earth-like body.  The land area would be significantly smaller at around ~45% of Earth's: Remnant would have 6.6e7 km² (assuming 80% ocean) compared to Earth's 14.8e7 km².

Even if we accept this smaller value, we can look at planets like Mercury in the solar system which have a higher density, and thus a higher surface gravity.  There's no reason that Remnant couldn't have Earth's gravitational field of around 10 m/s².  I think there's a good argument for there being a little less gravity, but not much less.

We could get some different results if we change travel time, travel speed, or routes, but nothing will change by an order of magnitude.  We're still in the range for a rocky planet, or possibly a iron-rich rocky planet.  (I almost said metal-rich here, but then I remembered that in astronomy silicon and oxygen are metals.) 

In summary: the fandom isn't good at physics and geoscience, the animators aren't good at cartography.  Somehow we ended up with something physical anyway.

Assumption 1: Hadley circulation is 3-celled like Earth, based on appearance.
Assumption 2: Humans on Remnant and Earth walk at a similar rate, based on character heights
Assumption 3: Months and days on Remnant are basically the same as months and days on Earth, based on translation convention
Assumption 4: Hunters can move roughly 20 miles a day, based on physical fitness and light travel
Assumption 5: Assume Remnant is a spherical object, rather than an oblate spheroid.

[Bob Schroeck]

Thank you, Brent. You gave me an abbreviated version of this, and I hope I didn't mangle it too badly; this expanded version certainly explains a couple things I was a little fuzzy on. And as for any mistakes that got into the story... well, as I said in an email to the writers last night, <waves hand> Emerald's education is an Unreliable Narrator.

Things happened, and people got dysentery.

Insert your own Oregon Trail joke here.

[Bob Schroeck]

hmm, seems that much like how Usagi and Naru are from differing if similar worlds, not all the people in Evernight Castle are from the same timeline.

Well, why would they be the only ones? <grin>

[Cobalt Greywalker]

One thing they seemed to not have noticed or learned is observation satellites.  Even at the common definition of FEW, that still means at least a 3 mile radius.

That's a large amount of Celestial manipulation to not be spotted by...well...everybody.

That's a LOT of potential to go BOOM.

Ans Jail?  Why do I think he's playing his own games here?

[Norgarth]

Cobalt: Because he's Jail Scaglietti?

Labster: I know 'gravity dust' is a thing, not sure if it occurs naturally or is artificial, but if it does occur naturally in Remnant's depths, that might help as well.

[robkelk]

We aren't hiding what Jail's doing in Refuge, really. We just haven't made a firm decision yet. But we have decided two things... Quoting from his wiki page:

In Refuge, Salem provides Jail with a base of operations, a lab, and his pick of test subjects, so he's happy to work with her for as long as she doesn't do anything that would interfere with his own research. Destroying the universe would count as interfering with his research, so he's quietly investigating whether she has the power to actually do that.

Jail and Arthur Watts appear to think of each other as kindred spirits, but that will only last until one of them gets in the way of the other's research.

[Bob Schroeck]

I know 'gravity dust' is a thing, not sure if it occurs naturally or is artificial, but if it does occur naturally in Remnant's depths, that might help as well.

It's natural. The flying battle between Weiss on a Schnee freighter and the giant wasp-Grimm called Lancers (early V5, IIRC) took place in a region of hovering islands that were kept aloft by the massive gravity dust crystals on their undersides.

[Bob Schroeck]

One thing they seemed to not have noticed or learned is observation satellites.

They were somewhat limited by what they could find in a few towns and villages deep in the Panamanian jungle. They were lucky to get as much as they did.

Even at the common definition of FEW, that still means at least a 3 mile radius.

Whatever effect cloaked the Grimmlands back in Remnant -- it's obvious that no one on the good guys' side, other than maybe Ozpin, knows where they are, or even that they exist -- is still cloaking the tiny bit of it which came to Earth. It's not anything the Celestials are doing, or aware of -- something Hagall is exploiting for her own purposes.

EDIT: In an earlier draft, we actually had a scene where someone stepped over the border, and the Grimmlands effectively disappeared -- one moment rock and red sky, the next a wall of jungle. The border is easily crossed -- it's just not easily seen.