Troll

An internet troll is someone who purposefully harasses other people on the internet. In Homestuck, there is a group of TWELVE trolls who often bother the kids on Pesterchum. They are from the planet Alternia, which exists in a separate Universe, and are the protagonists of Hivebent, the first half of Homestuck: Act 5. They are humanoid and approximately the same age as the kids. They have gray skin, sunken orange eyes with gray irises (according to Vriska, these fill in with the troll's blood pigment as they age), pointed teeth, and black hair. Their most noticeable features are the horns sprouting from their heads, which resemble Candy Corn. All twelve trolls have first and last names with six letters each.

Each troll is connected to one of the signs of the zodiac. Each wears a shirt depicting his or her associated sign. Each troll's horns reflect their sign; for example, Terezi's (♎) horns are pointed to a tip and nearly horizontal, while Karkat's (♋) are curved and rounded, Tavros's (♉) are massive like a bull's, and Sollux (♊) has two pairs. Other qualities associated with zodiac signs have also emerged, such as Nepeta's (♌) cat-like tendencies and Kanaya's (♍) virgin Mother-Grub lusus.

The trolls have been pestering Jade Harley for years now and have even forced John to change his Pesterchum handle. Some of the trolls are very bad at trolling; Tavros becomes so freaked out with Dave's sick fantasies HS 2999 (ill beats) that he blocks Dave, rather than the other way around. Eventually, the trolls inadvertently form a sort of friendship with the kids.

The trolls have names tied to the Greek Zodiac and DNA nucleotides. Adding their abbreviated trolltags to GG, GT, TG, and TT makes the 16 possible two-letter names from the letters A, C, G, and T, the four nucleotides of DNA.

Hivebent
The trolls have completed their Sgrub session, originally starting as two teams of six players, which soon turned out to be both part of the same chain of 12 players. The trolls at first began to question the nature of their two-team structure when the Red Team's Prototyping began to affect the Blue Team's enemies and vice versa. Then, because of a Mobius Double Reacharound, the two chains turned out to be joined together all along; therefore, one Prospit and Derse, one Skaia, one pair of kings and queens, etc. exist in their Incipisphere. However, they have two Frog Temples for an unknown reason (however, Vriska mentions that the two teams may have been set up because Skaia was anticipating the trolls killing each other).

Through a combination of luck, strategy, and level grinding, the trolls are able to defeat their Black King and reach the end of the game, creating our universe in the process. However, before they can leave the Incipisphere and enter our universe, thus winning the game, they are interrupted by The Scratch. They are forced to abscond to The Veil when the version of Jack Noir from the The Kids' session attacks them. There, the trolls use their equipment to talk to the kids at any point in the timeline, even months before the story begins.

It is interesting to note that while the trolls are quick to draw attention to the kids' supposed mistakes in the game, they themselves needlessly powered up their enemies and thus their final boss, the Black King, by prototyping their Kernelsprites with exceptionally dangerous creatures - the worst of which being Gl'Bgolyb.

History
Originally, the trolls of Alternia were a peaceful race, with no need for constant violence and war. Just before the desctruction of their race twelve trolls, with their Ancestors legacies inspiring them, played the game of Sburb. However, their race was not one made to handle the difficulty of the game, and they failed their task. However, Echidna, the mother of all monsters, gave the trolls a choice: they could either do nothing, and doom their race to extinction, or they could have a second chance to complete the game. They chose the latter, and thus activated The Scratch, completely resetting the parameters of their universe. The twenty four trolls, plus, were sent back in time to live out their roles. Scratch is the one who shapes the troll race into the warlike race they are, in order to shape the twelve kids into a group who would be able to finish the game with ease. However, the twelve trolls who originally played the game would not be the ones to play it again, but rather their Ancestors would be the kids, and they themselves their Ancestors.

Troll biology and culture
The trolls of Alternia are an angry and war-like race. Trolls are keen on such things as galactic conquest, legislacerators, subjugglators, the arbitrary execution of children, and kangaroo courts. The Kids' only real contact with trolls is a group of twelve juveniles, but through them they begin to see that the trolls can also display friendship, kindness, and cooperation. They come to understand that despite their dire circumstances, trolls are just as understandable and capable of virtue as the humans are. The group is not altogether free from the fighting and murder that were commonplace on their home planet, however. Vriska believes that this was in the cards to begin with, and blames their leader for imposing an unnatural restraint over a group that should've been at each other's throats.

Adult trolls supply their genetic material to the filial pails carried by Imperial Drones which are offered to the monstrous Mother Grub deep underground in the brooding caverns. She then combines all the genetic material into one diabolical incestuous slurry and lays hundreds of thousands of eggs at once. It is still unknown how the trolls get their last name, because it is impossible to find who their genetic parents are, assuming they even have any and aren't just a mix of random genes. The 12 trolls featured in Hivebent, however, are actually all Paradox Clones of themselves, as Karkat Vantas performed the same sort of Ectobiology as John did in the Kids' session, albeit by a different name. Because of the troll mating and reproductive process, an ordinary human household cleaning bucket is seen as something obscene, the trolls reacting as though the kids had left pornographic material lying out in the open when one is spotted.



The eggs hatch into young larval trolls, known as wigglers, which wriggle about to locate a cozy stalactite from which to spin their cocoons. After they pupate, the young troll with his or her new-found limbs undergoes a series of dangerous trials. If they survive, they are chosen by a member of the diverse and terrifying subterranean monster population native to Alternia, frightening beasts known as a Lusus Naturae. This creature becomes the troll's custodian, behaving as a lifelong bodyguard, caretaker, and visceral sort of mentor, while the young troll must learn to function as a sort of zookeeper. Together, they surface and choose a location to build a Hive. The building process is facilitated by carpenter droids left on the planet to cater to the young for building. The vast majority of adult trolls are off-planet, serving some role in the forces of ongoing imperial conquest, besieging other star systems in the name of Alternian glory. The culture and civilization on the homeworld is maintained almost entirely by the young. Trolls are challenged from birth to prove their strength, having to conquer many trials before acquiring a lusus, and ensure the race stays at its peak. They are jaded towards violence and for the most part unsentimental about individual lives. They do not bury their dead. A number of the trolls exhibit similar behavior and characteristics to their lusus; Karkat is irritable and defensive, Tavros is sensitive and completely harmless, Nepeta is a deadly predator but happy and cute, and Vriska is a danger to everyone around her.

Trolls sleep within Recuperacoons filled with Sopor Slime. Sopor slime is a slime that is helpful during sleep but should not be eaten. The slime helps ease the terrible visions of blood and carnage that plague the dark subconscious of their species.

Troll Relationships are HS 4196 (really, really confusing), built around hate and pity. They're kind of like human relationships but with more official terminology. The simplest way to describe it is that, while humans only have one form of love (i.e. you can say to someone "I am in love with you"), Trolls have four distinct forms of love. And similarly to how the blanket term "love" does not describe differences in relationships, there is a wide range within the four troll romances. These four romances are signified based on the suits in cards - ie, clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts. The black-suited romances are implied to be built on hatred (or the "strongly negative"), and the red-suited romances are implied to be built on pity (or the "strongly positive"). The four quadrants of troll romance are: kismesis (♠), or "fated nemesis"; moirail ( ♦ ), or "fated friend"; matesprit ( ♥ ), the closest to human romance; and auspistice (♣), which involves three people - essentially, two rivals and their mediator. Trolls have the same word for "friend" and "enemy."

Portions of troll anatomy include the bone bulge, nook, cartilage nub, lobe stem, chitinous windhole, protein chute, auricular sponge clots, think pan, autoerogenous shame globe, and others. Their functions are largely unclear. Kanaya has HS 4228 (mentioned) Feferi's "collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system", which she uses in a cliche phrase where a human would normally say "heart". All trolls have naturally black lips, and their teeth grow back if broken. Usually. They are also nocturnal.

Presumably the aquatic trolls with high-caste blood have a different physiology than other trolls, which allows them to live underwater and accounts for the finned, gill-like structures seen on either side of Feferi's and Eridan's necks. It is worth noting that the troll aristocracy use terms we're familiar with for things that lower-class trolls identify with something more descriptive but less clear to us human freaks - for example, a red-blood troll's "ablution trap" is a "bathtub" to a blue-blood; this may be a reference to U and non-U English. As such, there's probably a similar parallel for troll anatomy - chitinous windhole and protein chute, in particular, may correspond to the windpipe and esophagus, respectively.

Blood and Caste
Each troll has a different color of blood. This is called the hemospectrum. Aside from Karkat, the color of their blood matches the color of the symbol on their shirt (and the color of their text on Trollian). Vriska has referred to Karkat's text as HS 4196 ("lame gray anonymity,") proving that all (or most) of the other trolls wear their blood colors on their shirts and on their text. The blood of a Lusus appears to be the same color as its associated troll, implying that it is a large factor in the selection of a lusus.

The blood colors are distributed at 30° angles on the HSV color system, varying by a few degrees here and there. The only color missing is pure green (120°), with Nepeta's blood (82°) lying eight degrees yellower than chartreuse (90°) and Kanaya's blood being spring green (150°). This is likely because the apparent difference between the three colors is smaller than between any other adjacent pairs. The colors are all fully saturated, but their values have a wide distribution.

There is a caste system on Alternia based on the color of an individual's blood. The hierarchy follows a rainbow, with red being the lowest and purple being the highest. Blue blood is shown to be a high caste color in HS 3961 (a conversation) between Karkat and Terezi. Equius describes Nepeta's green blood as "ok but not great". Sollux is quite low on the hierarchy and has a hard time thinking of a color of blood lower than his own yellow. Aradia referes to Tavros and herself (the two being the lowest on the hemospectrum) as "rust bloods".

The trolls with the highest blood color of violet (Feferi and Eridan) are sea dwellers who live underwater, sport fin-like protrusions on the sides of their faces, and rule over the rest of the troll species. Feferi is noted to have the highest blood color in existence, trumping even that of the trolls' Empress, Her Imperious Condescension, and making Feferi the obvious heir apparent. Gamzee, with indigo blood, lives on the coast and has a sea-dwelling Lusus.

Higher blood castes seem to have more lavish hives: both Equius's and Vriska's hives resemble castles as opposed to Aradia's humble hive. Both Eridan and Feferi wear jewelry, as well.

Kanaya's jade blood is quite rare and even warrants the protection of a Virgin Mother Grub.

When asked by Terezi what color his blood is, Karkat gets defensive; although the other troll's colors represent their blood colors, Karkat masks his in anonymity by using a gray tone. When Karkat arrives in the Land of Pulse and Haze, he appears to be surrounded by a river of red, which he believes to be comprised of his own red blood, a mutation that places him outside the "hemospectrum". It has yet to be revealed what significance this has, but it could have something to do with his Ancestor.

Troll tears are apparently the same color as their blood, though more diluted in color. Trolls lower on the hemospectrum are more likely to have psychic powers, but are more psychically susceptible as a result.

Initially some of the trolls believed human blood works on a similar system, although only Equius and Eridan seem to care much about the hemospectrum. Terezi is also very curious about human blood, specifically about how it tastes and smells.

Equius remarks that Gamzee has the highest blood possible for a landdweller and is as such more prone to violence and murder than the rest of them. He also states that he dreads to think what he would be without the pacifying influence of his morail, Nepeta. This implies that trolls gradually become more pychopathic/violent the higher they are on the hemospectrum. This would mostly be in line with the twelve trolls followed in Hivebent as the trolls below Terezi on the spectrum are fairly "harmless", while from there onwards the trolls display some unnerving behaviour peaking in Eridan's outright genocidal tendencies. The only true exception (since Equius dangerous side is largely pacified by Nepeta) seems to be Feferi, who despite being at the very top of the hemospectrum displays no negative effects. Relating to this thought it might be worth noting that Aradia starts displaying more violent behaviour after entering her blue blood fueled soulbot.

It is possible that the blood-color caste system may correspond with medieval class systems on Earth. Based on this supposition, purple blood would be high royalty, blue would be nobility of sorts, green would probably be lesser nobility, and red would be peasantry. The intermediary colors are harder to discern but may correspond to other roles in feudal society or may fall under the previously listed four groups.

A Libra sign was prominently featured during the trial of Marquise Spinneret Mindfang by Neophyte Redglare, which may imply that the troll's signs have something to do with their (dream) professions. However, the Libra sign was teal, Redglare's blood colour, so may have been a vanity item of her own. Mindfang later associates the Cancer symbol with a rebellion.

Mindfang's journal also implies that higher-blooded trolls may enjoy longer lifespans, she expecting to live for centuries.

Speculation
Early on, it was speculated that the trolls were connected to the kids as counterparts or 'evil twins,' as a few of them exhibit traits that are the reverse of traits the kids have. For example, Tavros, thought to be a possible counterpart to Dave, is very weak-willed and under-confident. Others have 'corrupted' versions of traits the kids have. Terezi, who looks a little like Jade, takes Jade's silliness to a manic level and has a beast-like sense of smell. Andrew himself has denied that any of the trolls are any full-on human counterparts - there are often similarities, but never anything exact.

Andrew has said it's possible that the empress could have survived the vast glub. HS 5965 (This) page reveals that she has, and is returning to Alternia.

Trivia

 * In a trailer for Etrian Odyssey III, the characters' names for Advanced Character Creation were named Terezi, Kanaya, Gamzee, Equius and Karkat, a blatant reference to the trolls of the same names. It's also worth noting that in the previous shot, the 'Zodiac' subclass had been chosen.