To all those who loved and miss Monty. This is a story of how a team was created thanks to the brilliance of a man who understood what it meant to be a fan.

A STAR THAT SHINES

Perry:

Hello.

My name is Perrywinkel Penstemon. I do not exist. My friends call me Perry. I'm 19 years old, with soft blue hair that matches my name and compliments my overall color scheme. I make a living as a guide and a scout, helping people travel dangerous lands full of Grimm, or working alongside expanding communities searching for safe places in which to build a future. And I have just been invited to attend Beacon Academy to become a Huntsman if I wish.

But today I am speaking on behalf of my designer, who was greatly inspired by the creativity and style of RWBY, which resulted in my coming into existence as well as my future teammates of PERL.

When the first RWBY trailer came out, with a young girl in red killing hordes of evil, red mouthed werewolves, my designer was more than a little intrigued. His interest continued to grow as the other trailers came out, bringing with them many, many questions. A few were these: What was the premise of this new project? What was the lore? How would it be presented?

When the show finally did come out it was...entertaining. To be honest, my designer wasn't blown away, but he loved RWBY's potential, deciding to explore the world of Remnant with his own original team.

That's when me and my friends came along.

Originally the team was supposed to be named PERJ (pronounced Purge), as the name seemed appropriate as Huntsmen and Huntresses are charged with eradicating and 'purging' evil from the world of Remnant. My name was supposed to have been Petor Bell from the fairytale story character I am inspired from, Peter Pan.

But then one day, while doing research and looking at other RWBY OC teams, my designer stumbled upon an intriguing article. It was a brief list of instructions from the mastermind behind the entire creative force of RWBY, the gifted Monty Oum, with the purpose of guiding fans to fit their OC's properly into the lore of Remnant.

I, as a fictional character, was almost wiped out of existence right after that discovery. Weeks had gone into my design and back story, not to mention the adventures of team PERJ. My designer was deflated, and understandably so. No one likes to learn that they had worked many hours and mediated many days for nothing. Me and my friends were dropped. My designer moved on during the wait between RWBY's first and second volume.

Then Volume 2 of RWBY came out.

As shows tend to do, the followup season was better than the first, having deeper character motivation and conflict, considerable expanded lore, intriguing scenarios and situations, along with the usual perfect Monty Oum designs and battle choreography. My designer was re-inspired.

But what about all those rules that Monty had established? Those regulation looked like a barbed wire fence, trapping my designer inside a confined space. What to do? Ignore Monty's advice?

I'll let my friend Ebony take it from here.

Ebony:

Greetings.

My name is Ebony Koffin. My friend Rosidae calls me Ebbie. I'm not much of a fan of that pet name, but I can't bring myself to tell her. I, like Perrywinkel, don't exist.

I am a Fauna. I have two white antlers that circle my head like a crown, and my long hair is a deep shade of black. I usually dress in a cozy dark wool uniform with knee high boots. It's great for the cold while hunting Grimm up north with my family.

My designer wanted to originally call me Rose Briar, a twist on the character Sleeping Beauty. But I was soon revised so many times I lost track of my identity. But I am happy with who I am today.

As Perry mentioned, our designer didn't care for Monty's guidelines at first, but decided to give it more thought. For those of you who don't know the rules, here are a quick few:

Each individual character's first name must be a color or make us think of a color.

The Team name must be a color or make us think of a color when properly pronounced.

The Team name spelling must be comprised of the first letter of the names of each team member.

Simple enough, but with a team already laid out, this meant our designer had to throw out nearly everything he had already done. But then our designer read how Monty himself struggled with his own rules, forcing himself to be even more creative.

Soon, our designer saw the rules, not as a restrictive prison, but as the laws of physics of RWBY.

I know that sounds corny, and a little dramatic, but that is how our the designer saw it. The real life universe has laws, and we live within those laws and find safety in them. No one ever worries of walking down the street and then getting randomly launched into outer space because physics does not allow that to take place. RWBY has those same laws, and knowing them allows us to play safely within it's protection.

And so our designer changed us, and in my opinion, for the better. He searched all over the web to find colours that would fit the new team name PERL which had been changed from the old one, PERJ.

Petor Bell became Perrywinkel Penstemon (both of which are blue flowers).

I went from Rose Briar to Ebony Koffin (a type of black/ a box that tends to be represented in black)

Ella Dust became Rosidae Dust (A subspecies of plant/the source of elemental power within RWBY)

And Jak Stalker changed to Lime Fern (a green citrus fruit/type of leafy plant)

This change took weeks, which caused no small amount of frustration for our designer. But it was extremely rewarding when he did managed to find a word which satisfied him.

I'll let Rosidae continue.

Rosidae:

Hi!

I'm Rosidae Dust, but you can call me Rosi! I have pink hair with orange roots and reddish tips, a mostly rosy colored battle attire similar to a Chinese gymnast and I enjoy playing the flute on special occasions. But enough about me!

As Ebony explained, our designer was a little depressed, but managed to understand why Monty had released rules and agreed to respect them. Changes were made, but they were slow.

Then our designer did something unexpected, at least for me. He had spent so much time looking up colors and things that made him think of colors he decided to create another team. That's right...ANOTHER team!

I was crushed! Was he abandoning us because we were too frustrating? What about the story lines and backgrounds he had given us? But no, we were shoved aside.

But not for the reasons I thought.

You see, the designer was experimenting, testing to see if he could come up with a back up team like JNPR. What came out of it was team RAVN, and surprise, surprise, I was the team's leader!

The name stood for:

Rosidae Dust

Arsen Loid

Verda Dryad

and Nero Cosmik.

But how was I supposed to be a member of team PERL while being the leader of team RAVN? I had no idea. At one point I actually lost my spot on team PERL, but it was only an idea the designer dropped after some thought.

But our designer noticed how easily he had come up with team RAVN, name rules and all. He did in a day what it had taken with PERL weeks to accomplish! He was understandably surprised at first, but then realized that knowing the rules ahead of time made them easier to follow. There was no changes or corrections needed, so out RAVN came!

We at PERL (well, excluding me, kind of) were a little jealous, but had faith that we would still endure.

But then, with RWBY volume 2 ending so abruptly (our designer felt that too much had been set up with too little pay off), our designer put us back on the shelf. What would become of us?

Lime? Care to finish?

Lime:

Yo.

The name's Lime Fern. Street performer/homeless guy, I guess. I'm sure you can figure out the color of my hair and clothes. I suppose I'm a punk, but who cares?

So me and the others were stranded on the sidelines again. Ticked me off, but what can you do when you only exist on virtual paper?

But this time the designer wasn't putting us away. He was letting us stew, to sit in the back of his mind to flesh out his ideas. It was around this time Ebony was changed from human to fauna and got her antler crown. Perry the boyscout got a more interesting back story, I was nailed down with a design that The Artist (the designer's brother) could finally realize and Rosidae got her extremely cool looking weapon, a chain-whip flute! Things were looking good.

Ebony was the first one us to be drawn and colored. She was the most important since she had the closest connection to RWBY in the designer's opinion. She had to look caring, mysterious, vulnerable, strong, distant and beautiful all at the same time.

Well, it worked. La-di-flipping-dah. I hadn't even gotten my intro story written yet, but she was completely realized!

But the designer had been writing for months, making corrections, alterations, expansions and then throwing away entire stories right before finishing them. It wasn't frustrating as much as it was simply time consuming. But that's the creative process when working alone.

Then, just days after Ebony Koffin was fully drawn and given the seal of approval, there came a trip to the south of Mexico in the jungle during winter break. There was no job, no videogames or internet to distract the designer, and suddenly he started to get things done. Intros became full fledged adventures. The history of each one of us became crystal clear. Ebony's visual image firmly in his mind, the designer finally became to see what team PERL could become.

Around 80 pages of material was written, mostly rough and overlong, but it was time well spent.

The trip to Mexico ended and the designer returned home.

Now back, he was looking up his emails late that same night and replying to a comment he had left on the RWBY Vol 1 episode 4: The First Step, when he saw this.

"Rest in peace Monty, we will always remember you :("

I really need you to understand what was happening in my designer's head at that exact moment.

The designer had just spent an entire trip inside the world of Monty Oum's creation. He studied Monty's tendencies, his characters, the world of Remnant for months with enough focus that he sometimes forgot to eat and stayed up late at night looking at the hard work of others that had managed to create teams of their own, seeing what had worked and what didn't.

He wasn't obsessed. He had just wanted to do the best he could out of respect for the creator of RWBY.

And then he suddenly found out that Monty Oum has passed away after a friggin' allergic reaction during a hospital procedure.

The best way to describe how the designer felt is that he was, in a word, heartbroken.

Well...that's it for me. We'll let the designer take it from here.

The Designer:

Hey, everyone.

I am the designer of team PERL, inspired from the amazingly creative RWBY. At this time PERL has not seen any action online, but I hope they will soon.

I didn't know Monty Oum personally. I didn't watch all of RoosterTeeth's podcast videos and I rarely saw any of his interviews. I simply knew his work, respecting and admiring him ever since I stumbled across Dead Fantasy and Haloid going back almost 4 years ago. But I had hoped to contact him directly one day.

His friends and family have my deepest condolences.

Like pretty much everyone, I secretly wished that my characters, and the team in it's entirety, would be liked and accepted by Monty, and that I might get the chance to see my team in action on the show. A long-shot dream, for sure. But those are the best ones.

The news of Monty's death shocked me. There was so much I'm sure he wanted to do. He was hitting his stride with RWBY. He had Dead Fantasy he wanted to complete. And he certainly had many hours of dancing on and off the screen to enjoy. And I am absolutely positive he had many more visions of beauty he would've shared with the rest of us. It's very sad, and that's how I feel.

I needed to share these feelings of loss with you, and it felt right to explain my story with the help of team PERL, since I feel that they are Monty's just as much as mine. Without him I would've never created such colorful characters that have voices of their own.

So, on behalf of Perry, Ebony, Rosidae, Lime and myself,

Thank you, Monty Oum, with all our hearts.

Goodbye...

I realized after writing this it might seem like I'm trying to promote my upcoming fanfiction. That wasn't my intent and I hope I didn't offend anyone.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to share you feelings in the comment section. It's been over a month now, but that doesn't mean the pain has left us.