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 future. They are humanoid, and are the same age as the protagonists. They have gray skin, yellow sunken eyes, pointed teeth and black hair. Their most noticeable features are the horns sprouting from their heads, which resemble Candy Corn.

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' (♉) are massive like a bull's, and Sollux has two pairs.

The Trolls have 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. Some of the trolls are very bad at trolling; adiosToreador becomes 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 Sgrub session as two chains of 6 players each which eventually were joined into one 12-player session, 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. 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).

However due to new information about Aradia's wise prototyping choice affecting the trolls success in their session, the "screw up" may not (exclusively) have been initiated by Jade's present being sent, but by what the kids chose to prototype their kernels with. Jack's extreme distaste for the queen was initially exacerbated by being forced to wear the humiliating harlequin costume, and was driven to murder the queen after being pressed to wear the updated princess-harlequin uniform. His power as an ace was further increased by the ability to fly as well as his access to the sword impaled in him, allowing him to wreak havoc on Prospit and the Skaian battlefield, resulting in an earlier reckoning for the four earth 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
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 Sgrub, 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.

There's a greater story behind the "two distinct sessions" thing. The trolls at first, playing Sgrub, encountered a weird thing where the Red Team's prototypings would affect the Blue Team's enemies and vice versa. Then, before the last two chains could be made, Skaia created a plan "Mobius Double Reacharound" (Sollux wrote a virus of the same name) which joined the two sessions into one; therefore, one Prospit and Derse, one Skaia, one pair of kings and queens, etc. But since the trolls were revealed as a 12 before Hivebent, this was not a stunning revelation at all.

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.

Troll relationships are 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, ie, 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, and the Red-suited romances are implied to be built on pity. There is known to be Kismesis which is a relationship built on extreme loathing, Moirail, which seems to be a relationship built on friendship, and potentially Auspitice, which seems to be a relationship built on suspicion.

Portions of troll anatomy include the bone bulge, nook, protein chute, and others. Their functions are largely unclear.

Blood and Caste
Each troll has a different color of blood. 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). This is shown when Kanaya Maryam 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. Even more recently, Vriska has referred to Karkat's text as "lame gray anonimity," proving that all (or most) of the other trolls wear their blood colors on their shirts and on their text.

There is a caste system in place on Alternia that is based on the color of an individual's blood. It appears that the hierarchy follows a reverse rainbow, with red being the lowest and purple being the highest. Blue blood is shown to be a high caste color in HS 003961 (this 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. It has yet to be revealed what significance this has.

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.

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 (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 little 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.

There is some speculation about another troll, using the little-known Zodiac sign Ophiuchus, also known as Serpentarius. However, due to the DNA naming system, there are no more available trolltags. One yet-unassigned troll title have been revealed, which may or may not correspond to trolls we have actually encountered: Seer of Mind.
 * The possible Ophiuchus troll may use the initials of UU, corresponding to Uracil. This is supported by the song The Thirteenth Hour, from Toby "Radiation" Fox's Alternia album. In the PDF booklet that comes with the album download, the song is described as being UU's Theme.
 * 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.
 * >Ophiuchus/UU 13th Troll speculated >Ophiuchus associated with snakes and healing >U replaces T in RNA, so TT = UU >Tentacles = Snakes >Therapy = Healing >Rose really is the 13th Troll. http://www.mspaintadventures.com/storyfiles/hs2/02347.gif
 * 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.