The Battlefield is a giant chessboard-like planet located in the center of Skaia. It is the location where the war between the forces of light and darkness takes place, a war which the forces of darkness are always supposed to win, and ultimately where the heroes must battle the Black King at the end of an average Sburb session.
After the Black King's defeat, the core of the Battlefield is where the Genesis Frog should be placed, and where it grows to occupy the center of Skaia and become a new universe.
Description[]
The chess-like battlefield.
Each time a Sburb player initially prototypes a Kernelsprite, the size of the board seems to grow exponentially: Where The Battlefield is initially a three by three chessboard (a situation which leaves the only two combatants, the White King and Black King, in an eternal stalemate), the board grows into a full game of chess after a first player's prototyping, albeit with a twelve by twelve square board and some pieces taking up multiple squares.
A Dersite castle.
A Prospitian castle
When a second player prototypes their Kernelsprite, the board expands to a massive cube with forty-eight squares to an edge and landmarks like trees and lakes. The Battlefield becomes a fully spherical planet upon a third protoyping. After the fourth prototyping, The Battlefield appears to have gained a large outer shell made of checkered tendrils.
A 12x-prototyped Battlefield is shown near the end of Homestuck: Act 5 Act 1, but the full planet is never shown.
The final form of the Battlefield is required to create and grow the new universe, fulfilling the objective of the game. This is why a pre-entry prototyping is necessary for each player. According to Rose Lalonde, the prototypings enable Skaia to transform and heal itself, thus letting it "handle" the aforementioned new universe.
When the Black Kingdom inevitably wins the battle, the Black King uses the White King's scepter to initiate The Reckoning, sending all the meteors in The Veil towards the Battlefield to destroy it. Skaia defends the Battlefield by opening defense portals to stop the meteors, instead sacrificing the session's planet of origin to protect itself. The players' goal is to stop the Reckoning before this happens by defeating the Black King, thereby winning the game. The players then disperse their planets' grist hoards into the Battlefield, preparing it for the Ultimate Alchemy, while one of the players lights the forge.
Dream selves who reach god tier are transported to a copy of their Quest Bed on the battlefield. It is implied that ascending to god tier is the standard route for players of a Sburb session to arrive at the Battlefield.
History[]
A2 session[]
The trolls' Sgrub session was fairly regular, although they faced a 12x prototyped Black King able to release the Vast Glub, making it an unusually difficult final boss.
Despite being prototyped 12 times, the trolls' Battlefield does not seem to differ from the kids', save for the lily-pad like structures. It should be noted that only the first 3 prototypings seemed to affect the battlefield itself in the kid's session, while the 4th added an additional structure surrounding it. However, it is likely that the troll's battlefield is more complex than an initial view suggests - a book in a Prospit library in the Beta Kids' session talks about further non-euclidean modifications based on the addition of additional orbs to the Queen's ring - a notion that the book's author finds ridiculous because it only has 4 orbs.
It is shown that upon winning the game, the trolls' Battlefield underwent a transformation. From the outside
, it seems brighter than usual. It possesses a shimmering surface that resembles a spherical pond more than a sky, and multi colored glowing Lilypads are found on its surface.
B1 session[]
This section may be bloated with long paragraphs or subsections, and is in need of reorganization or rewriting to be more digestible to the average wiki user.
Jack arrives on the Battlefield.
After the battle begins on The Battlefield, the Warweary Villein, a Dersite farmer who resides on the Battlefield, grows tired of the war after his farm was destroyed, and unites soldiers from both kingdoms to rise up against the Black King. However, as they aproach the king, Jack Noir (possessing the Black Queen's ring) suddenly swoops in and kills the tyrant himself. At the same time, the Parcel Mistress reaches out to the White King, who hands her his scepter, though a Hegemonic Brute emerges from the bushes and attacks her, knocking the scepter down a waterfall.
Jack uses the powers gained by the Queen's Ring to ravage the Battlefield and murder all of the black and white soldiers (excluding the Villein), obtains the White King's scepter retrieved by the Courtyard Droll, and starts The Reckoning way before it's intended to begin. He then severs the massive chain connecting Prospit to its moon, sending it crashing down to the Battlefield and killing Jade Harley's dream self in the resulting explosion. The Battlefield is left in ruins and with a massive crater.
John Egbert's dream self wakes up on The Battlefield, retrieves the White Queen's ring from Dream Jade's body, and sees his immediate future in the clouds. The Mistress, having slain the Brute, trades the the King and Queen's crowns with Jack for a box, which she promptly delivers to John, after all... nothing stops the mail. The box contained the Uber Bunny and a note by Jade, to which he sheds a tear upon reading. However, the moment of grief abruptly ends when he is confronted by Jack, who seeks the ring, though the same bunny Jack used to retrieve the Black Queen's ring comes to his protection, and the Sovereign Slayer flees.
While Dream John and the Uber Bunny roamed aimlessly through the Battlefield, the Villein donned a Rag of Souls and became a Vassal, lamenting his failure in leading an army. Dream John later encounters his Dad and Rose's mom over a chasm, and he excitedly leaps over to reunite with his father. But before he is able to jump into his arms, Vriska Serket uses her powers to wake the real John up, making his dream self vanish and lose the ring, which is later found by the Wizardly Vassal. Dad laments being unable to reunite with his son, but Rose's mom helps cheering him up by offering a swig from her flask.
The real John is then killed on his Quest Bed by the newly Bec prototyped Jack Noir, and Dream John gets transported to his quest bed on the Battlefield, where he ascends to God Tier as the Vassal watches in awe. The newly ascended Heir of Breath then sees a vision of his dead real self in the clouds, and explores the Battlefield along with his new cloaked carapacian ally.
After staring at the visions in the clouds of Skaia for hours, he finds his Dad's wallet modus on the ground, containing one of his fatherly notes intended for when John would inherit it. John then dumps it's contents onto the field, such as one ton of shaving cream, a pile of pipes, a spare car, a laptop, and many, many more fatherly objects. John then puts everything back in the wallet, but before he can put the car back, the Vassal enters it and invites the Heir to go for a ride, so he buckles up and uses his wind powers to fly around the Battlefield, as the carapacian dosen't know how to drive.
While they drove around the Battlefield's tendrils, John catched up with real Jade, who informed him that his Dad was currently having a tea party with Rose's Mom in a castle, then he recieves a very worrying memo from a terrified Karkat Vantas, currently running away from a psychotic juggalo, John attempts to talk to him again, but just ends up contacting Karkat from some time in the past, who gives him one of his usual rants.
John and the Vassal then crash into a tree and enter a nearby castle to see if it's the one Dad is in. While they ascend to the top, the Heir has a conversation with Vriska, where she instructs him "8e creative" and retrieve a giant bomb called The Tumor located in the core of the planet. And so he does the windy thing for the second time to drill a hole into the Battlefield and retrieve it, causing the entire planet to quake.
While that happens, Dad and Mom have a lovely tea party on an unseen castle in the Battlefield. Dad attempts to pour some wine on Mom's glass, but he ends up spilling some on her due to the tremors caused by the windy thing, she dosen't mind though, and the two lovingly hold hands... the Sovereign Slayer then spots two new victims.
As Jack ponders over his slaughter of a lovely couple, he decides to collect his trophies. First wearing Dad's hat, as it'll add to his intimidating image, then Mom's scarf, as it'll make him look quite dramatic as he soars through the air, then his pipe, then her shoes, and so he proceeds to have a trophy binge, switching between multiple of the slain Guardians' clothing and accessories before deciding that it's all stupid and ditching them, swearing off trophies forever. He does stay with Lil Cal though, he can't stay mad at Cal, and stores him in some sort of pocket dimension within him.
Rose mentions that the "treasure" known as the Tumor, located in the center of the Battlefield, is critical to her plans; it is later revealed that she plans to destroy the Green Sun with it, taking the power from Bec Noir and all of the first guardians.
Davesprite and Jadesprite watching the Reckoning.
In Cascade, Jadesprite merged with Jade and rescued the Battlefield from a large meteor using her space powers. Jade then shrunk the inner portion of the Battlefield and took it with her to escape the scratch, leaving behind the "shell".
Jade eventually places this Battlefield into the post-scratch Skaia, allowing the Ultimate Alchemy to take place.
The chessboard that the Wayward Vagabond creates in Can Town in the Skyship Base is a symbolic representation of the Battlefield. In his game of chess, the Black side wins, much as Derse defeats Prospit on the Battlefield.
B2 session[]
Skaia's interior during a null session.
Without any pre-entry prototypings, the B2 session's Battlefield never evolved from its initial stage, and was easily blown up by the session's Courtyard Droll.
Gallery[]
