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 live on the planet Alternia at an unknown point in the past. They are humanoid, and are the same age as the protagonists. They have gray skin, yellow sunken eyes, pointed teeth and black hair. Each one wears a shirt depicting his or her associated zodiac sign, and, due to lovely sprite flipping, sometimes the mirror of their associated zodiac sign. Their most noticeable features are the horns sprouting from their heads, which resemble Candy Corn. Each troll's horns appear to reflect that troll's zodiac sign; for example, Terezi's (♎) horns are pointed to a tip and nearly horizontal, while Karkat's (♋) are curved and rounded, Tavros' (♉) are massive like a bull's, and Sollux has two pairs.

Apparently of the trolls are girls; presumably that also means six are dudes.

They've been pestering Jade Harley for years now, and have even forced John to change his Pesterchum handle. One of them seems to have befriended Rose, who may even be giving them trolling tips. Two of the five trolls we have seen troll are very bad at trolling, with adiosToreador becoming so freaked out with Dave's sick fantasies ill beats that he blocks Dave, rather than the other way around. Karkat tells John that the trolls will, in the kids' future, inadvertently form a sort of friendship with the kids.

They have completed their Sburb session as two chains of 6 players each, and now reside in The Veil, where they use their equipment to talk to the kids at any point in the timeline, even months before the story began. They appear to be trolling the kids out of anger. According to, in Karkat's timeline the Homestuck kids have already lost, and they have 'screwed up' the game so badly that apparently all the trolls are going to die (at least, ). There is speculation that this 'screw up' begins with ending up on the desk of one Jack Noir, who consequently uses it to slay the Black Queen. It was given to the Parcel Mistress when she gave Jack Noir the white king and queen's crowns after "deposing" both. (He uses the sword from his chest when he murders the Black King in-between).

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
According to Act 5, Karkat will "play a game" with five friends, not the full eleven one would expect given their count in the current day. This turns out to be because Sollux decided they should play in two teams of six (titled Red and Blue) to give the trolls a greater chance of saving their world.

Although the trolls seem to have started two distinct sessions of Sburb, they do not seem to have created more than one instance of the Medium/Incipisphere/Skaia/etc. All twelve trolls are together in their session's Veil, and both their Prospit and Derse have six dream towers each, instead of two.

The teams can be seen HERE.

Troll biology and culture
Adult trolls supply their genetic material to the filial pails carried by imperial drones and 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 is it nearly impossible to find who the genetic parents are.

The eggs hatch into young larval trolls 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. 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 (though she really has little choice in the matter).

Trolls sleep within Recuperacoons filled with Sopor Slime. Sopor Slime is a slime that is nourishing 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. The majority of Trolls have developed some mental instability because of this problem. Trolls have many of the same outfit as they (are supposed to) care nothing for fashion.

Blood and Caste
It is quite possible that all of the known trolls have different color blood. This is initially implied when Terezi Pyrope asks Karkat Vantas what color his blood is. It seems, furthermore, that the color of their blood matches the color of the symbol on their shirt (and the color of their text on Trollian). This is shown when grimAuxiliatrix takes a HS 004020 (chainsaw) to Tavros Nitram's legs—Tavros bleeds brown, the color of his symbol. It is further evidenced HS 004046 (here) when Sollux Captor mentions to Aradia Megido that he has come groveling to her as "Some low class guy with... whatever color blood is lower on the hierarchy than mine", followed by "What's worse than yellow?", Sollux's chosen color of text. Karkat's own blood is fairly low in the scale, as he despises Terezi's 'BLUE BLOODED VERNACULAR' and refers to his trolling victory over Vriska Serket (or Terezi Pyrope's skill at manipulating people being greater than Vriska's) as 'ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY.'

This same conversation also suggests that there is a caste system in place on Alternia that is based on the color of an individual's blood. It appears then that Sollux is quite low on the hierarchy, as he has a hard time thinking of a color of blood lower than his own yellow. Blue blood, on the other hand, seems to suggest a much higher caste, as evidenced by HS 003961 (this conversation) between Karkat and Terezi, while centaursTesticle describes Nepeta's green blood as "ok but not great". Given the correlation between text color and blood, this could mean Vriska is a very high-ranking troll. Purple blood appears to be highest of all - Equius Zahhak looks on Gamzee Makara as his superior.

It appears the the blood color heiarchy is a reverse rainbow, with red being the lowest and purple being the highest. this would put Gamzee at the top of the heiarchy and Aradia at the bottom; both seem to stand true in this conversation.

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. This presumably extends to CA and CC, as they are both seen wearing jewelery.

Terezi is very curious about human blood, specifically about how it tastes and smells, possibly trying to find where they stand in the hierarchy - if the reverse rainbow theory is correct, this would be "very low". 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. It should also be noted in relation to troll blood that when Karkat arrives in the Land of Pulse and Haze, he appears to be surrounded by a river of red, which we may assume to be blood. It is yet to be revealed what significance this has.

There appears to be a connection between purple blood and living in the ocean; CuttlefishCuller and CaligulasAquarium both live underwater, while Gamzee lives on the coast and has a seadwelling lusus. This may be related to the 'Nautical Aristocracy' mentioned by Vriska.

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 knightly nobility (based on Equius' supreme strength, and Vriska and Terezi's mutual tendency towards violence), 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.

As all the colors and ranking follow the order of the zodiac (Aradia as Aries is red, followed by Tavros as Tauros who is orange) it is possible that Karkats blood is a pure shade of green, above Nepeta (which is a yellowish shade of green) and grimAuxiliatrix (which is a blueish shade of green)

Troll/kid counterparts
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 (i.e. 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. For example, Terezi, who looks a lot like Jade, takes Jade's silliness to a manic level and has a beast-like sense of smell. Andrew himself has denied it to be the case that there are full-on counterparts. There are often similarities, but never anything exact.

Unencountered trolls
Several of the trolls not yet seen on screen have been described by the active trolls. GC refers to these other trolls as "not that enthusiastic about trolling" the cast. It is possible that these characters will remain off screen and off Pesterchum for as long as possible so that Andrew can save himself the trouble of drawing them and coming up with individual new ways to abuse the English language. The traits of these semi-known trolls are listed below.
 * There is some speculation about another troll, using the little-known Zodiac sign Ophiuchus, also known as Serpentarius. This could be the stranger who spoke to AG with white text. However, due to the DNA naming system, there are no more available trolltags. This theory is further solidified by the fact that he is introduced talking to AG who is aligned with the Scorpio sign and Ophiuchus falls in between the sign of the Scorpio.
 * Some say that the possible Ophiuchus troll may use the initials of UU, corresponding to Uracil.
 * It's also possible that a 13th troll could use GT for a trolltag, since GT was John's former tag and is no longer in use.
 * Two yet-unassigned troll titles have been revealed, which may or may not correspond to trolls we have actually encountered: Seer of Mind and Page of Breath.
 * These trolls are presumably on the Red team, as Terezi spoke of them. However, the Maid of Time, also mentioned in this conversation, was later revealed to be Aradia, a member of the Blue Team, but there may be duplicate roles in each team depending on the details of the Troll's game. It also could be that the four troll titles correspond to the two teams' leader and shadow leader, as Aradia is the Blue team's shadow leader and Karkat is the Red team's leader, giving the possibility of Sollux and Terezi for the last two troll titles.
 * Some speculate that Terezi was referring to herself as the Seer of Mind, since then she and Rose would both be Seers, and both heard the Exile's commands.