Homestuck: Act 4

The fourth act of Homestuck. It began here, after the Midnight Crew Intermission.
 * The fourth act begins with John exploring the Land of Wind and Shade. He meets the amphibious inhabitants and runs into more than a few Shale Imps, which now possess feline/tentacled/princess mutations presumably due to Rose Lalonde's Kernelsprite. He also gets used to a pipe-based item delivery system. A voice, perhaps the Peregrine Mendicant because of its apparent fascination with mail, starts speaking to him. Nanna, who can't accompany John outside of the house, apparently talks to him telepathically. John reaches a lookout point and, with his telescope, he discovers that the gate has brought him below the rocky spire of his house to the planet below, and that he is the Heir. There is also The Slumbering One who must be woken up. Finally, John heads deeper into the land.
 * It is also possible for the player to lose John's Barbasol Bomb by dropping it.
 * A Sentry Worm shoots the Frog Temple before being killed by the Aimless Renegade.
 * The Aimless Renegade surrenders after noticing Bec's face carved on the Wayward Vagabond's Pumpkin.
 * The Peregrine Mendicant gets the jump on the Aimless Renegade and pins him down.
 * Jade retrieves Dave's copy of Sburb from the flower bud in the Frog Temple.
 * Jade becomes bored of her current modus, and changes it to Pictionary after trying and rejecting Jenga.
 * Becquerel finds Jade in the Frog Temple, and warps her back to her bedroom, without any items except the betas, her Lunchtop, and several Ghost Images.
 * Jade installs Dave's beta, and pesters John and Dave. She tells John that he's going to be her host, and tells Dave that she is connecting him to the game and that a meteor is going to crash on his house. Rose is currently MIA - neither John nor Dave can get a hold of her over Pesterchum. Jade has yet to try.
 * CarcinoGeneticist contacts John and informs him (rather rudely) that they will be friends in the future.
 * The Future Nomads become friends over some of the Wayward Vagabond's preserves and TAB.
 * Dave's House enters the early evening hours, and meteors have started a large fire in the city. Jade begins her Sburb session with Dave. She places the Alchemiter on the air conditioning unit on the roof, replaces his bed with the Cruxtruder, and replaces the television with the Totem Lathe.
 * Rose gets back to Dave; apparently she was talking to John and a Troll. Her precise location within the Medium is still unknown.
 * Jade accidentally tears the toilet and part of the floor off of the bathroom, like Rose did with John.
 * Rose is revealed to be in the Land of Light and Rain after cryptically remarking that she likes the area. It is a shining, icy place with cotton-candy-styled light reflecting all around, and Rose's House is perched on a piece of white land.
 * Aimless Renegade fetched Jade's Cookalizer and Refrigerator and starts cooking something.
 * The Wayward Vagabond shows the Peregrine Medicant his computer and introduces her to John. She is reminded of a girl she knows, probably Jade. It is revealed that she is the one who talked to John during the Land of Wind and Shade sequence. Also taking an assumed route where John gives up a SHOE and a HAT in the pipe system but retrieves an Uncarved mini-tablet, a CHISEL and a CHUNK OF AMBER......wait a minute, is that SERENITY?
 * Rose does a little exploration of her house, now that it's in the medium. She also recieves messages from the fourth nomad, who refers to Rose as "Seer", possibly meaning Rose is the Seer of Light.
 * John continues wandering about the Land of Wind and Shade, coming across a small Village that's under attack by several Imps as well as a pair of Tar Basilisks and a Copper Giclops.
 * Jade falls asleep, sending the Toilet she was holding through the roof into Dave's room, activating his Cruxtruder. Jade's Dreambot takes over while she's asleep.
 * All the Apple Juice Dave drank finally catches up with him. He briefly considers peeing into an empty bottle and sending the resulting code to John as a prank. However, he decides against it and goes in the shower.
 * While Dave is in the shower, Jade's Dreambot notices the dead crow outside, and taking pity on it, resurrects it by prototyping it with Dave's kernelsprite much to Dave's displeasure. He gets Jade to wake herself up by having her swing her arm causing Jade's Dreambot to swat Jade awake.
 * Aimless Renegade makes a fire with gunpowder and empty ammo crates, and tries to win over Peregrine Medicant with the Tangle Buddies - which reminds her of something. Wayward Vagabond seems confused by this and Serenity seems to want to communicate urgently.
 * PM has a flashback to John's time, where in the Land of Wind and Shade, an Authority Regulator finds Dad's car crushed and impaled on Parcel Pyxis and writes it a ticket, but notices Jade's package and John's beta inside. A Parcel Mistress sees him and decides to get the package from him.
 * John wields the Wrinklefucker and Sassacrusher against the Basilisks, but the Giclops grabs the Sassacrusher and John finds himself in a Basilisk's mouth.
 * The silhouette of who appears to be Grandpa Harley shoots the Basilisks and takes out the Giclops' eye, dropping lots of Grist and rescuing John. He appears to be carrying John's copy of Colonel Sassacre's.
 * PM is reminded of what her mission is, and in the flashback the Parcel Mistress receives John's badly carved mini-tablet. Her objective is now to get both parcels from the Authority Regulator.
 * The Parcel Mistress uses the mini-tablet to retrieve the Sburb disc from the Authority Regulator. He refuses to give back the green parcel so the Parcel Mistress follows him.
 * John wants to follow the person who saved him, but decides to save the village which is on fire from the attack. He unsuccesfully tries to put the fire out using the Betty Crocker Barbasol bomb but this makes matters worse until a gust of wind puts the fire out. The town people rejoice, giving John the credit.
 * John is reminded about his uncarved minitablet by PM and begins carving the image of his Sburb Server CD on it. Meanwhile, Rose begins looking for her Sprite.
 * Rose wanders outside, oblivious to Dave's attempts to Pester her cause her laptop is buried in three inches of fucking yarn. She soon spots footprints in the white(chalky) sand.
 * Following the footprints, Rose heads back to the Mausoleum, or at least where it stood. The secret passage remained intact. She heads down and follows the passage to a dock. Seems as though there was a boat there, but Mother had got there first. Mother had untied the boat from the dock and left, leaving behind her martini.
 * WV expands Can Town to outside, renaming it Exile Town after incorporating PM's mailboxes and AR's Munitions and stuff. AR creates armed forces because 'a town without a proper militia is as good as conquered'. Their creation is fondly regarded until an Eggy-Looking Base lands where they are. This foreshadows the appearance of the fourth Nomad.
 * Using Dave's pre-punched card, the Alchemiter and a Cruxite Dowel, he creates a Cruxite Egg. However, his Crow Kernelsprite snatches the egg before Dave has a chance to break it open. The Kernelsprite places it in a makeshift nest made of puppet pieces and shitty swords on top of the radio tower on Dave's roof.
 * Dave figues out that with each player added to the Sburb player chain, the base Cache limit is multiplied by a factor of 10. Also, new crap is available in the Phernalia Registry. Jade deploys an unknown CD for Dave to use.
 * Jade moves the Alchemiter so the newly deployed Jumper Block Extension can be added. She also deploys the Punch Card Shunt for Dave.
 * Dave figures out that he needs some punched cards to use the Shunt, but doesn't have access to the Designix. He takes the CD down to his computer and loads up a program called gristTorrent, showing all the Grist John, Rose and Dave have. Rose is seen battling Chalk Imps in the background as Dave loads the program.
 * Dave starts downloading Build Grist and Shale from John on gristTorrent. However, he can only download at a rate of 4 total grist / second, so he downloads each at 2 grist / second.
 * GallowsCalibrator begins trolling Rose, telling her in a nonsensical way that they'll be friends in the future and other things about the Exiles and Agents.
 * The focus shifts back into the past, more specifically Jade's 13th birthday. CarcinoGeneticist interrupts a Pesterchum conversation between John and Jade, but ends up leaving even more pissed off then when he started. John considers changing his Chumhandle when GallowsCalibrator chimes in as well, supposedly laughing at John then threatening to kill him when he joins the laughing.
 * The Parcel Mistress follows the Authority regulator back to the Dark Kingdom, and runs into two imps and an agent that looks like Diamonds Droog with cat ears and wearing Jaspers's suit.
 * The Parcel Mistress is sent by the Black Queen to one of the Dark kingdom's Archagents, specializing in tedious paperwork.
 * Rose's voice in her head leaves
 * Rose takes a sip of her mom's martini. She is unthrilled.
 * The fourth Exile, the Windswept Questant, appears in front of the Eggy-Looking Base.
 * Parcel Mistress sees the package on a table in Jack Noir's office, and tries to grab it and run, but is stopped by the sudden appearance of Jack Noir, who offers to give her the package in exchange for the assassination of...is that the king and queen?
 * Jack was only kidding about the assassinations, saying that he does that to everyone who enters his office. He's suprised that the Parcel Mistress actually seems to be going through with it, saying she's a dead woman. Curious about the green package, he opens it to see what's inside, and based on his surprised face, it is something that shocks the crap out of him.
 * Jade puts the Punch Designix in Dave's hallway, making difficult to move through. Dave punches several cards, including one for the blender and Gamebro magazine. He uses these with the punch card shunt to upgrade the alchemiter, giving it a blender in place of the Totem scanner, and a GameBro statue as the platform. Jade then draws the Punch Designix for its captcha code and gives it to Dave, who then upgrades the Alchemiter in a less frivolous fashion.
 * Jade and Dave use this method to upgrade the Alchemiter with Holopad and Totem Lathe upgrades. These two upgrades work together; a punched card inserted into the Totem Lathe upgrade causes a holograph of the corresponding totem to appear on the scanner, which is then scanned by the Alchemiter to create the item.
 * Jade and Dave continue to upgrade the Alchemiter by adding the Jumper Block Extension itself as an upgrade. This helps save on space; now one can simply insert a punched card into a slot on one side of the machine to continue to upgrade it (also eliminating the need for shunts).
 * Dave then captchalogues the enlarger from his photography lab and adds it to his alchemiter, too. Now, he can increase or decrease the size of the item to be produced. A larger-than-normal item costs extra Grist and a smaller one costs less.
 * John stumbles upon the wreckage of his dad's car, finding his Sburb Server CD and the Green package gone. GC chimes in over Pesterchum, sending John a poorly-drawn map and instructing him to find a large pipe and jump in.
 * Rose engages in Strife with a Chalk Imp and a Marble Imp, slaying them with relative ease. She then fights a Lime Ogre, gouging its eyes out with her needles. It falls down the waterfall and into the ocean.
 * Dave pesters Rose; he has built up Rose's house partway to the First Gate with some help from GristTorrent. However, adiosToreador pesters Rose and grimAuxiliatrix pesters Dave at the same time. They reveal that Rose is in fact the Seer of Light and that Dave is the Knight of Time.
 * John enters the pipe GC mentions and gets blasted down an oil river. Then out of nowhere he re-enacts the cheesiest scene from whatever movie the Bunny comes from with a pair of the Amphibious inhabitants, more than likely traumatizing them. John, you're such a moron at times.
 * CG begins pestering John again, slamming him for his re-enactment and asking about GC's plans with him, to which John doesn't know. Seems like the Trolls are starting to troll eachother through the kids. How exsistential. Also, Carcio seems to be rather frantic for some reason. Wonder what's up.
 * GC chimes in yet again, instructing him to follow a path which leads to the 'Denezin's Palace'. However, the bridge is out so he can't go any further. Fortunately, there is a Return Node that John uses to return to his house.
 * In the past, the Parcel Mistress/Peregrine Mendicant approched the White Queen/ Windswept Questant seeking her counsel. WQ handed over the crown and her ring willingly and gave PM intructions to find the White King. Back in the future, WQ gives PM the crown that AR and WV crafted.
 * Rose finally gets a chance to talk to Jaspersprite, however he initially talks in nothing more the purrs and meows. Eventually he does begin talking in english, speaking about the Denizen having eaten all the fish in the ocean, Rose being the Seer of Light and he 'waking up'. Presumably, the 'waking up' portion is in the same sense as John, and Rose may also have some kind of latent psychic ability.
 * Rose consults Jade about what Jaspersprite had said. Jade explains to Rose about her 'dream self' being unable to wake when her real self falls asleep. Rose tries to contact Dave, to no avail. She asks Jade to do something about it, but Jade already made a promise to Dave. Also, Rose seems to have been drawing/writing stuff on the walls of her room then repressing those memories, just like John had, but there's no proof of that yet.
 * Dave meanwhile climbs the radio tower on the roof in an attempt to get the Cruxite Egg back from his Kernelsprite. The meteor that's about to crush his home is visible in the background when we are given Dave's perspective.
 * John is instructed by GC to pick up the useless rocket pack and send her the code. She got the codes to the junk lodged in the rocket pack from the other kids at various points in time. She then gets a friends of hers to get the code for a functional rocket pack and sends it to John before flaming him and signing off.
 * John makes the functioning rocket pack then captchalogues Casey. Dave chimes in, saying that he too has now entered the Medium. John blasts off, flying straight past the Gates.
 * Dave accelerates to Gate 5 of the LAND OF HEAT AND CLOCKWORK dispatching Amber Imps, Rust Imps, Sulphur Ogres, some kind of Basilisk, and a Ruby Giclops (some of which having feathers on their heads, wings, and/or a sword through their chest) with ease and collecting boatloads of Build Grist and what is probably Amber, Rust, Sulphur, and Ruby. Dave also appears to have made himself a new tux, sword, and converted his turntables into timetables that allow him to scratch chronologies and functionally duplicate himself in battle. Dave has prototyped his bird sprite with Cal's head. He also appears to have found another bladekind strife specibus for his strife porfolio (in addition to his 1/2 bladekind), because he is able to change his new sword between half broken and fixed at will.
 * Dave attempts to converse with his Calsprite. It laughs at him, and this pisses him off.


 * Dave perches on some machinery and pesters Rose using his Stiller Shades, now combined with his iPhone. He and Rose converse, revealing that in this timeline, John has died after he was tricked by the trolls into battling the Denizen, and Jade likely has as well. He suggests that he may prototype his Kernelsprite differently, and resolves to journey backwards in time to warn John. Dave and Rose also discuss the dream world, elucidating that each of four has a dream self they must awaken. Dave believes the dream selves exist outside the normal continuum, and that some element of this Rose might be retained even if her timeline vanishes.


 * Dave reverses, with the aid of his timetables.
 * Right before John rockets off to his doom, Future Dave appears in front of Past Dave and tells him what will happen. Past Dave tells John not to go to the seventh gate, but John thinks it's a trick.
 * Both Future and Past Dave talk to a hesitant John, convincing him to stay on the ground.
 * Future Dave drops all of his stuff, and jumps into the Crowsprite, creating the Davesprite. The Davesprite is far cooler then the Calsprite, because it doesn't laugh continuously. Meanwhile, John blasts off nevertheless, which is really stupid.
 * Rose prepares for a nap, and her future (dream) self almost ceases to exist, before doing something that looks like meging with her present self, who gets conked out. (It's not really made clear what happened, but this is MS Paint Adventures, what were you expecting, a pamphlet?)
 * Davesprite trolls gallowsCalibrator and tells her not to troll John. Weird time shit is brought up throughout the pesterlog, along with orange creamsicles and Captain Planet. He then chats with Dave and informs him that Kernelsprites are not able to accompany their players until later in the game, and says he'll continue updating Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff for him.
 * John recalls the letter Dave included in the red box with the bunny, seen for the first time here. He finally reconsiders going through the seventh gate and flies back down to the Land of Wind and Shade.
 * carcinoGeneticist informs John about the Veil, which the Trolls are currently hiding in. He also tells him about the Reckoning (Sburb's endgame), in which the White King is captured or killed, and the Black Queen and King get the power to send the Veil towards Skaia. He also sets himself up for a prank John will play on him the next time they talk, since carcinoGeneticist works backwards in time.
 * Jack is defacing the parking citation when the Black Queen arrives (now prototyped with Seppucrow), demanding he put on the pink dress. Jack refuses outright, and after repeated threats by the Black Queen, she holds her sword to his throat. Jack pulls something out of the green box Jade gave to John; it contains a weapon of some sort that the Black Queen seems to recognize and fear. Jack slices her finger off with it, and slashes at her several more times, until the Black Queen seemingly explodes or vanishes. Jack then puts the queen's ring on his own finger and undergoes the same prototyping the Black Queen did.
 * John's, Rose's and Dave's Guardians seem to be fighting powerful enemies in the kid's respective lands; possibly Denizens. Dad fights a gray beast similar to one mounted in Jade's great hall; Mom has taken Maplehoof with her, and is fighting a beast with multiple eyes and arms; and Bro is fighting a yellow lava octopus creature.
 * Rose has awoken in Derse due to her past self merging with her future self. She appears to have defaced the walls with the letters M, E, O and W (Meow), which seem to be an encoded DNA sequence (M=G, E=C, O=A, W=T). This concludes the first year of Homestuck, but not the end of Act 4.
 * We find Jack's FOURTH WALL and it switches over to a view of AH. AH gives the readers a recap of the first year of Homestuck's first year. He does some other egotistical junk but no one really cares. The FOURTH WALL's view switches over to John, just as he's getting pestered by GC again.
 * CG appologizes to John for trying to kill him and sends him a map of the Land and instructs him to the next gate. We readers are treated to a fake loading screen before watching John enter the Land of Light and Rain, lose control of his rocketpack and crash into Rose's room. Rose is still dead asleep, and we readers can confirm that she has in fact be writing crap on her bedroom walls.