Troll

An internet troll is someone who purposely 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 HS 5805), 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, Tavros' (♉) 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, Karkat's (♋) crabbiness and Kanaya's (♍) helpful, motherly nature.

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 the Kids' 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 years 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 destruction of their race twelve trolls, with their Ancestors' legacies inspiring them, played the game of Sburb. However, in addition to their race being unable to handle the difficulty of the game, had tampered with their game using a glitch which prevented them from being born in their session, 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 people 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 players, and they themselves would be the Ancestors.

Troll biology and culture
The trolls of Alternia are a nocturnal, aggressive 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. Due to their confusing procreation system it is unclear whether or not Trolls have have a specific sex, if they all share the same sex, or are hermaphroditic. In the two later cases their gender would be more defined by the outer appearance and personality. The differences in body built between adult female and male trolls suggest sexual dimorphism, but ultimately the matter remains inconclusive.

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, though one of Andrew Hussie's Tumblr posts appears to clarify this issue. 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 newfound 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.

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, ganderbulbs, and others. Their functions are largely unclear although some have quite obvious equivalents in human anatomy. 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". When Aradia's Ancestor receives an electric shock we can also see that trolls have a very human looking skeleton. All trolls have naturally black lips, and their teeth grow back if broken. Usually. It has also been HS 3910 (implied) that a troll's horns could be somewhat of an erogenous zone, but this has not been confirmed.

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.

Troll Relationships
Relationships amongst trolls are built around hate and pity and are HS 4196 (really, really confusing). There are four quadrants of troll romance: 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."

Blood and Caste
Troll's can have many different blood colors, ranging from dark red to tyrian purple, covering nearly all of the rainbow's colors. This is refered to as hemospectrum and serves as the basis of a complex caste system.

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 have 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.

In the beginning of Act 6, there is a possibility that another troll will be introduced for the 13th zodiac sign, Ophiuchus. Proof of this can be seen on the symbol on his/her computer, at the end of HS 6013 (this flash).

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.
 * With the exception of Karkat and, correspondingly, Cancer, the order of the trolls on the hemospectrum is the same as the order in which the zodiac signs cycle, i.e. Aries, Taurus, Gemini, (Cancer), Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. In addition, this is the exact same order of the trolls' trolltags on the ChumpRoll from top to bottom, as well as the transportalizers to each troll's section of the lab, shown in Alterniabound, with Aradia's sign beginning the cycle near the 11 o'clock position.
 * After being asked if he was going to introduce another 12 trolls, Andrew jokingly declared all of the fantrolls canon. All of them. Yes, even the shitty ones.
 * Andrew also mentioned that there is another blood color unaccounted for by the surviving trolls, a lime green color that would usually fit between Sollux's and Nepeta's colors on the hemospectrum. Besides the answer, the only other proof that this exists in the comic is the fact that lime green blood can be seen on the walls of the Grand Highblood and possibly from the Pesterchum symbol of uranianUmbra.