Welcome to Beacon: Ultimate Server is a TV Tropes RP based on Monty Oum and Rooster Teeth's RWBY. Created by Grim Helm on the 16th of September 2014, it is one of the faster moving Roleplays on the site. Grim Helm is Game Master of the roleplay.
Set in an Alternate Universe two years before the events of canon RWBY, the RP tells the story of a group of first year students in the eponymous Academy as they train, fight and study on their way to becoming Huntsmen and Huntresses. And with the sheer amount of antisocial loners, inflated egos, bad pasts, and plain insanity that most of the characters within the cast seem to have, it will not be an easy story to tell. And that's before the various bad guys and psychos that they will have to face as heroes of their own stories.
On September 2014, various problems on both servers of the original roleplay caused the GM to implement a universal Cosmic Retcon, shutting down both servers and opening up a new, combined setting known as Welcome to Beacon: Ultimate Server. or Beacon-U. Beacon-U hopes to streamline the game and make it hassle-free, and also to ensure the survival of the plot of Beacon-2, as that server was dangerously close to dying.
The Beacon-Ultimate discussion can be found here.
The original Welcome to Beacon page is here, and it contains links to all the old material. There's also a Gaiden Server here, where the players can play non-canon scenes with their characters whenever a Schedule Slip occurs among the Game Masters.
On January 11 2015, a sister project in the form of Welcome to Beacon: Next was created, featuring a cast of both original characters and direct descendants of the cast of Beacon Ultimate. It is an expansion of a dubiously canonical Gaiden thread plot, and its trope page can be found here, with the RP itself being here.
Don't forget to check out the recap page for approved worldbuilding and plot summaries.
This roleplay provides examples of the following:
- Alternate Universe: All versions of this roleplay are set in an alternate universe to canon RWBY. A major example of this is the three other kingdoms of Remnant being different from their counterparts in the show, as well as a royal family and noble families as opposed to the council seen in RWBY.
- All There in the Manual: Most of the worldbuilding surrounding the RP (such as the major noble families of Vale, the surrounding nations of Atlas, Vacuo and Mistral, the history of the Snickersnax and Maddox clans etc.) essentially exists just to provide extra context and is virtually all provided through posts in the discussion thread, rather than in-character. Justified in that all world building needs to be given GM permission before being used.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The Grimm, just like how they're portrayed in canon RWBY, and which are basically just rampaging, human hating monsters.
- Antagonist Abilities: The Arcana have some very overpowered Semblances as compared to the students.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Dust, just like in canon RWBY, is used for everything from transportation to weaponry to complex electronics.
- Composite Character: Some players opted to combine elements from both their B1 and B2 characters. Notably Alexia, who was composited with an Alternate Universe version of herself.
- Cosmic Retcon: The excuse for why the two servers merged. Some characters (refered to in-universe as Anomalies), like Jack and Lucas seem to have very vague memories of the old universes.
- Dysfunction Junction: It would probably be easier to count characters without some sort of mental disfigurement or traumatic past event. Or present in case of 13rd of Umbra.
- Four-Man Band: Since this is RWBY the groups are often this, though each one has a slight different set up amongst them.
- Handicapped Badass: Lucas (a blind Huntsman who uses a bow and arrows), Ayers (a Huntsman whose weapons are his prosthetic arms) and Hope (a one-legged Huntress who uses a machine that borders the line of Power Armor and Mini-Mecha). After Umbra 13, Jack, Sophie and Yun (Who lost an arm, leg and eye, respectively) also count as this.
- Heroic BSoD: Two different characters suffer from this after the events of Umbra 13 — Alexia, who quickly begins to work to become stronger, and Lucas, who, out of grief over the abduction of Carol and the guilt over the fact that he was one of the Arcana in another verse, begins to isolate himself from the other students and goes on an obsessive search to find and destroy Arcana
- Impossibly Cool Weapon: Well, of course. From chakram yo-yos to Powered Armor, the characters possess a plethora of cool weapons.
- Killer Game Master: Grim himself can be this sometimes, especially during the Weapon Girls arc, where he pit the players against Alice's completely broken telekinesis ability, and a Gravity Master described as "Nuhvok-Kal on steroids".
- The Leader: Just like in canon RWBY, Ozpin appoints a leader for each team when they survive Initiation. In the game they are:
- Ayers Wulfen of Team ARBI, now Team GRAY
- Remus Cerulean of Team SLCR, later of Team FLRR and then PRRL.
- Lei Yun of Team SIGL
- Glen Whorple of Team AWDC, later of Team MAGC, which became MAGI.
- Alfred Tarantula of Team TANC, later of Team TANG
- Pius Ashen-Nobel of Team JUMP, later of Team NAMI when Urujauni leaves and Alexia takes her place on the team.
- Number Two: A unique part of the roleplay, compared to canon RWBY, is that Ozpin also assigns one of these for each team after Initiation. In the game they are:
- Belle Babineaux of Team ARBI. She is replaced by Hope Remington when she drops out of Beacon.
- Lucas Krigsvart of Team SLCR, later of Team FLRR and then PRRL.
- Sechs Ochre of Team SIGL
- Ai Huang of Team AWDC, later of Team MAGC, which became MAGI.
- Ghatz Mienne of Team STNG, who is then replaced by Noa as second-in-command of Team TANC, which is later renamed as Team TANG.
- Urujauni Ukungu of Team JUMP, who is then replaced by Alexia as second-in-command of Team NAMI.
- Remember the New Guy?: Happened whenever a team member was replaced thanks to The Entity's powers. History is altered to make it seem like the replacement student was always there.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Ozpin. He catapults the students off a cliff at the start of the Initiation, and the GM implies he arranged for the flock of Nevermore to appear on the day before initiation.
- Wham Episode: Boy, did 13th of Umbra shake things up... Carol gets kidnapped, Magician and Star completely demolish Beacon's students' spirit with their sadistic torture montage, several students suffer permanent injuries and The World himself is, at first, revealed to be Ieria's long-gone grandfather.
- World of Badass: Much like in RWBY, everyone of note is either a highly experienced monster slayer, or training to become one. And if neither, they are at least likely to be a skilled warrior against human/Faunus opponents.
