Exile

The kids' exiles gathered on the post-apocalyptic Earth.

Exiles are carapacians who have either left or been banished from their home kingdoms of Prospit or Derse in the Medium to the surface of the Heroes' Reckoning-ravaged home planet; while they may take new names in their new lives, these almost always have the same initials as their old titles. Once there, they perform various background tasks essential to the operation of a game of Sburb using the command stations scattered across the planet's surface.

To survive the harsh conditions of a post-apocalyptic desert, exiles are known to wrap themselves in whatever they can find, which inevitably fades to the appearance of a dull grey or brown robe after hundreds of years of wandering.

Concept and creation

By sitting at computers and sending commands to the Heroes of Sburb, the exiles act as surrogates for Homestuck's audience itself; their existence is the in-universe justification for the commands associated with each page of the comic. Their mysterious, sometimes helpful and sometimes abrasive nature makes them similar to the trolls, who serve a similar purpose later on in Homestuck's story, and even later Caliborn, who combines both of these roles together (see B2 below).

Purpose

As guides

An exile observing the beginning of a Hero's quest.

The exiles “4R3NT M34NT TO B3 4N OBV1OUS 4SP3CT OF TH3 G4M3”; using the terminals at their command stations, they nudge the Heroes in the right direction with commands which are usually only perceived subconsciously by the Hero in question.^{[citation needed]} Some Heroes, however, such as Rose Lalondeand Terezi Pyrope, are able to "hear" or understand these commands clearly, even to the extent of having fluent conversations with their exile, possibly owing to the extrasensory abilities of Seers.

While each Hero seems to have one particular station associated with them, and in the case of the B1 session each Hero had one exile associated with them, it is possible for there to be additional exiles who do not communicate directly with any Hero - such as the Writ Keeper - and, as switching between screens on the command terminal is possible, some exiles - such as Snowman - have been observed communicating with more than one Hero. As such, it is not clear that there is any strict relationship between the number of Heroes and the number of exiles in any given session.

As terraformers

More broadly, the exiles' role is to “R3BU1LD L1F3 4ND C1V1L1Z4T1ON” on the dead world to which they have been exiled, presumably using the appearifiers, sendificators and other advanced technology provided to them in their command stations to restore the planet. “1F TH3YR3 SUCC3SSFUL 1N THOUS4NDS OR M1LL1ONS OF Y34RS TH3 T3CHNOLOGY 1S UN34RTH3D 4ND TH3 PL4N3T 1S R1P3 FOR S33D1NG 4LL OV3R 4G41N”, likely explaining the similarly advanced technology distributed by Skaianet prior to the release of the Sburb beta on Earth. In Andrew Hussie's words, "This is the essence of the universal creation cycle. Sacrifice the old to make way for the new. Life rises again from the ashes of the old. Rinse and repeat", his commentary in the Homestuck books also suggesting that Earth has undergone this process many times before. While possibly an atypical session end result, the carapacians overseeing the ectobiological repopulation of Earth C as depicted in the Credits may offer a glimpse into how this re-seeding happens.

Exiles settling a dispute in a rational, diplomatic manner.

Handily, in many cases exiles express keen interest in civil service and other roles that could be useful for the resurrection of a civilization: the Wayward Vagabond is an avid believer in democracy; the Peregrine Mendicant sees mail as “the one final hope for resurrecting a dead planet from its ashes” and letter carriers as “defenders of the light of knowledge, free communication, and the exchange of ideas”; the Aimless Renegade is a staunch defender of the rule of law; and the Windswept Questant, an institution in her own right, saw fit to bring a ship full of her subjects with her to repopulate the dead land. While such roles are not immediately obvious among Spades Slick and his Midnight Crew, he is evidently a highly capable town planner.

Other roles

Terezi hypothesizes that some of the exiles' most important contributions “4R3 TH3S3 L1TTL3 TH1NGS TH3Y DO PROB4BLY W1THOUT 3V3N R34L1Z1NG 1T [...] 4CT1ONS TH4T COMPL3T3 LOOPS 1N TH3 T1M3L1NE”, likening them to “COGS 1N P4R4DOX SP4C3”, or what might be called non-player characters in more traditional game development parlance. Befitting this time loop theory, many exiles interact with their associated Heroes in small or significant ways prior to being exiled, with Clubs Deuce interacting with Sollux Captor in two ways at once, and Spades Slick adventuring with Karkat Vantas long before he discovered his command terminal.

Known exiles

A2

Spades Slick / Scurrilous Straggler
(Spoke to Karkat Vantas)

Clubs Deuce
(Spoke to Sollux Captor)

Diamonds Droog
(Spoke to Aradia Megido and Tavros Nitram)

Hearts Boxcars
(Spoke to Tavros Nitram)

Snowman/Banished Quasiroyal
(Spoke to Vriska Serket and Terezi Pyrope)

A2's exiles play a role in the continuation of Vriska Serket's drama with Tavros Nitram and Aradia Megido, with Hearts Boxcars pushing Tavros into initiating a romance with Vriska while Diamonds Droog meanwhile insists that Aradia make her pay for what she has done; their enemy Snowman, meanwhile, communicates with both members of Vriska and Terezi's Team Scourge.

Snowman, of course also the 8th member of the Felt, is called the 8th exile. While this may indicate at least 3 other exiles on post-Reckoning Alternia never named or pictured, it may also serve as a continuation of her Prospitian counterpart being called the Fourth Exile, with Slick's late arrival to his command station making him the ninth.

B1

Wayward Vagabond
(Spoke to John Egbert)

Peregrine Mendicant
(Spoke to Jade Harley)

Aimless Renegade
(Spoke to Dave Strider)

Windswept Questant
(Spoke to Rose Lalonde)

Writ Keeper

Ms. Paint

B1's exiles begin to meet in the year 2422, four-hundred and thirteen years after the Reckoning began, eventually converging around what was once a Pacific island.

B2

One of the Condesce's carapacian subjects.

Because a void session has no Reckoning, there was little opportunity for carapacians to be exiled from the B2 session. After the Condesce's hostile takeover of Derse, however, she made use of the gateways between the session and Earth to bring carapacian settlers to her flooded planet in the hopes that their loyalty to their queen would make them better subjects than the dwindling human population. They were settled on floating colonies seemingly grown from the same Skaianet technology as the Lalonde home.

Just as the Frog Temple and Heroes' meteors all made their way to the post-scratch Earth, however, it seems that at least one command station may have landed there: many hundreds of years after even the Condesce left Earth, and after the completion of his quest, Caliborn continues to manipulate the story and bother its inhabitants from a single-monitor station somewhere on the dead Earth's surface. Similarly, while not an exiled carapacian himself, the author Andrew Hussie bothers Caliborn through a computer terminal which Caliborn experiences as a voice in his head.

Trivia

• Seven beta trolls are never associated with an exile; if one assumes every Hero does in fact necessarily have their own exile, this would be just enough space for the Midnight Crew's adversaries Problem Sleuth, Ace Dick, Pickle Inspector, their arch-nemesis Mobster Kingpin, and their female counterparts Hysterical Dame, Nervous Broad and Madame Murel.