#bc raven and qrow are his additional security keys?

[strqyr]

...wait—

Still, who knows what [Ozpin] may have hidden from us over the years.

in v7, qrow raises the possibility that ozpin may still be hiding something from them ( and that it likely has nothing to do with summer's last mission ).

then, in v8, we get this exchange between salem and oscar:

If I know my Ozma, he has used some means of deception to hide [the Beacon Relic's] location differently than the others. I need to know where it is.

I... That's not something I know about.

Of course. He would keep that one guarded as long as possible.

so, besides knowing ozpin made the relic at beacon "a bit more challenging" to find than at the other schools—and we have some level of comparison to be made here, as the haven vault had extra security in the elevator being only accessible with lionheart's pocket watch, so whatever ozpin did with the beacon vault, it needs to be more challenging than that—he's definitely keeping secrets so important related to it that not even his closest allies know about it.

...whatcha hiding oz? 👀

[strqyr]

Here are some dots for you to connect: 1) Raven guards the Relic of Knowledge, but her Amity Arena bio puts emphasis on Choice 2) Ozpin says he took extra precautions when hiding the Relic of Choice (there is a fan theory that it is not at Beacon) 3) the Relics attract Grimm 4) when Yang went looking for Raven with Ruby, she found an abandoned house full of Grimm 5) in the Fairy Tale of the Indecisive King, the Relic of Choice drives the King insane with knowledge of the future

okay, so. i have many thoughts on this so apologizes beforehand if i start rambling a lot and this all goes all over the place.

anyway, starting with the vaults: i'm assuming the vaults were made by the god of light to keep the relics safe until ozma found them, and thus originally ozma was the key to all of them via the four blessings he has, and by giving one blessing to one maiden each (the wizard summoned as much of his magic as he could, and bestowed it upon four maidens), the maidens became the key to their respective blessing (winter for creation, summer for destruction, etc.)

if this is the case, then i doubt that ozpin managed to do anything to the beacon vault that would necessarily alter the vault itself, bc it's not in the realm of his magical abilities; that is to say, if it's currently not at beacon, i'm doubtful it has ever been there in the first place—unless this can be filed under "who knows what else ozpin has hid from us over the eyes" in which case, well. what i just said goes out the window lol. anyway, thanks to the haven vault, we also have some level of understanding of what "more challenging" might mean: the haven vault had a secret elevator revealed by a pocket watch inserted into a slot meant for it in a statue. so whatever ozpins means by "more challenging", it needs to go beyond additional object as a key to reveal the entrance to the area were the vault resides.

so, let's talk about choice for a moment. every chance they get, choice is, to an extent, categorized as change. humanity was given choice, the ability to use the knowledge they had gathered and to choose between the paths of light and darkness. the shallow sea is a story about humans having the choice to join the god of animals on their island, to jump into the waters below and turn into what would become faunus. ascension is about change, but the tree doesn't force anyone to ascend; afterans can ignore the call, or in some other cases they can be stopped from ascending by someone else, and whatever they become afterwards is their choice to make, by using information they gathered in their previous life.

(perhaps it's interesting then, that no matter how much knowledge the cat has, no matter how much they learn, they don't have the choice to ascend.)

ozpin gave the branwen twins a choice to accept the gift he offered in form of shapeshifting. they accepted, just like the maidens did before them. the maidens became keys to the vaults... if an object as an additional security to a vault is out of question, what's the step above that? is it another person? perhaps.... two?

it doesn't surprise me that choice pops up so much with raven; she is the maiden of knowledge, and choice is to knowledge as creation is to destruction: they're two sides of the same coin. you really can't have one without the other. but it's the weight behind it—and how the crown in the story gives a glimpse of future and how sure raven was the ozpin would fail and beacon would fall—that gives it the air of "maybe there's something more to this", and based on what we do know, the safest bet currently is that the shapeshifting came with something extra that raven and qrow probably didn't agree to (and that maybe, raven found out.)

(it would also be funny if by "more challenging" ozpin really meant "good luck getting raven to cooperate lol")

as for the location of the beacon vault... i've discussed this to much detail and i've gone between "ozpin said the tower couldn't fall and all those (now destroyed) gears could probably do something fancy if the long memory with its gears can store kinetic energy" and "tai is sus for being so vague about his reasons for not going after ruby—"i've got to... look after some things."—and staying solidly on patch no matter what" and at this... in universe it's been over a year since the fall of beacon and whoever coughsummercough is looking for the vault at beacon is not succeeding at it even after all this time, so that does maaaaaybe give more credence to the possibility that is has never been there in the first place? but if it's on patch, then it probably wasn't a secret all of team strq was aware of—and i think it's interesting how qrow says "summer secret" so... casually? like, the summer rose who never lies? which makes it sound like keeping oz-related secrets from each other was the norm for team strq and this was understood across the board and trying to fish for more information was a no-go from the start—so it being a secret tai had to keep would make sense. and if that's the case, then the old abandoned building that was probably tai and raven's old home since yang thought she could find raven there would be the prime suspect.

but really, i have no idea where the vault actually could be located at. i'm more certain that raven and qrow are extra keys to its exact location, but the vault itself could be anywhere: could be at beacon, could be on patch, or forever fall, or somewhere in the ruins of emerald forest where new students choose a relic that puts them onto teams... could be mountain glenn.

honestly, if change is central to choice, then who knows, maybe it moves around between few select locations. could be all of the above. let the vault be free to choose lmao