Relics

Relics are used as part of the Beacon Academy initiation.

Description
Despite the name, relics are simply items used as a goal for students participating in Beacon's initiation test. They are placed at the abandoned temple in the Emerald Forest. Teams of students are required to recover these relics and return them to the Beacon Cliffs in order to complete their Initiation. Along the way, they must guard these relics in order to be graded. Relics are chosen by the current headmaster every year, and therefore are not always the same things.

The Emerald Forest, Pt.2
Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long found the temple and discovered that the relics were ivory and ebony chess pieces on twenty pedestals. However, two of the pieces, the black bishops, were missing; signifying that other teams had made it before them.

Yang whimsically decided on a "pretty pony"; choosing the white knight as their relic.

Players and Pieces
After Nora Valkyrie arrives with Lie Ren at the temple she quickly snatches up the white rook. Jaune Arc, Pyrrha Nikos, Weiss Schnee, and Ruby Rose also arrive, with a Nevermore and Deathstalker pursuing both pairs. Since completing the mission only required each pair to return to the cliff with one relic, they decide to grab the relics and run. Prior to leaving, Ruby chooses the second white knight and Jaune picks the second white rook.

This choice of pieces later turns out to be the key to sorting pairs into teams of four with the pairs being combined into teams based on who chose matching relics.

Teams and Pieces:
 * RWBY - recovered the White Knight, chosen by Yang and Ruby
 * JNPR - recovered the White Rook, chosen by Nora and Jaune
 * CRDL - recovered the Black Bishop

Trivia

 * Based on the number of relics, there were places for ten teams in the freshman class. However it is unknown how many teams completed the initiation.