Incipisphere

A model of the Incipisphere showing Skaia at the center and the orbit of six other planets, including Prospit within the Medium and Derse just outside the Veil.

The Incipisphere is a bubble of space in the Furthest Ring, surrounding Skaia and bounded at its edges by the Veil, including but not strictly synonymous with the Medium between these two bodies. The action of a session of Sburb takes place within this Incipisphere, and after the completion of the game the Incipisphere also becomes home to a universe in the form of the Genesis Frog.

Alongside the dream bubbles, the Incipispheres represent the "bubble-based reality structures" that make up paradox space; in answer to the question of whether the Furthest Ring-dwelling Horrorterrors blow all of these bubbles, Andrew Hussie remarks that "IT IS UNCLEAR."

Concept and creation

Incipisphere is seemingly a portmanteau of incipient, meaning 'beginning' or 'coming into existence' - alluding to the generative nature of Sburb or Skaia itself - and words like atmosphere, the sphere of air separating the Earth from outer space, or heliosphere, the magnetic sphere separating the Solar System from interstellar space.

Skaia and the Battlefield

Skaia is the “dormant crucible of unlimited creative potential” at the heart of the Incipisphere, which the realm's Armies of Light and Darkness are charged with fighting over. Inside Skaia itself is the Battlefield where their Black and White Kings engage in combat, which grows and changes as more prototypings are added to the session's data, and which crucially is to be where the Genesis Frog is incubated at the game's completion.^{[citation needed]}

The Medium

A Medium featuring eight player planets, as would eventually come to pass.

The Medium is the thick of the Incipisphere between the Furthest Ring and Skaia, or more specifically between Skaia and The Veil, to which a player's house is transported to upon entry. Although utilities (such as electricity and Internet connections) appear to be disconnected, the Medium seems to facilitate a working Internet connection (and a power supply, at least to the players' computers) wherever the player is.

Most Sburb sessions provide planets for their players, one for each player to be transported to upon entry; for example, in the B1 kids' session, there are four planets in their Medium. Each planet is separated from Skaia by seven gates, each of which is found somewhere on its surface. Each planet has its own unique environment and (usually) has some form of civilization (long deceased or otherwise) maintained by different species of consorts.

The Incipisphere as seen in Homestuck 1st year recap

The trolls' planets and client-server connections.

There are a few quirks to the naming and theme of the planet; for example, as far as we can tell all Space players will have Frogs as their planet's latter trait (Jade's Land of Frost and Frogs and Kanaya's Land of Rays and Frogs). This is linked to the Space player's planet being the one that facilitates frog breeding. Similarly, every Time player's planet features a construct used to facilitate the scratch.

It would seem every planet facilitates a quest for its player, whether or not the player becomes aware of this. John's planet tasked him to free the fireflies trapped by the thick clouds of his planet (put there by his slumbering Denizen) by utilizing his Breath powers, while Dave Strider of the Land of Heat and Clockwork was provided with a stock exchange he could manipulate with his Time powers. It's also implied that Rose's quest (which she deemed irrelevant and didn't bother with) was to find a way to "play the rain" in a way that would somehow bring life to her fishless, barren planet (as riddled by Jaspersprite). It's suggested by Dave that a planet provides the quest and inheritance that omnipotence deems each player needs to grow into their roles.

The Dark and Light Kingdoms

Main articles: Prospit and Derse

There are two kingdoms that occupy the Incipisphere whose ongoing war provides the context for the session. Both kingdoms are comprised of a planet with a moon physically connected by a thick chain. The Light Kingdom, called Prospit, orbits near Skaia, with its moon skirting through Skaia as it orbits around Prospit. The Dark Kingdom, called Derse, has its own distant orbit past a Veil of meteors, flirting with the Furthest Ring, a spatially and temporally indeterminate void inhabited by the Horrorterrors that divides each session from each other.

Prospit and Derse each have a number of spires corresponding to the number of players to receive the kernel from the divided kernelsprite upon a player's entry. Each kingdom is a palette swap of the other, with both exhibiting a complex network of Gothic architecture. Similarly, the inhabitants of Prospit bear a white carapace, while the inhabitants of Derse have a black one.

The Veil

Main article: The Veil

The Veil is a belt of meteors that separates the Medium from the Furthest Ring, with Derse orbiting just beyond it. It comprises many asteroids, many of which are "seeds" that will eventually be sent to destroy (and 'repopulate') the players' home planet. The Veil is treated as neutral ground for the kingdoms and contains laboratories as well as other facilities designed primarily for building the kingdoms' armies. Up until the end of Act 5, the trolls were hidden from Bec Noir in what was remaining in the Veil after the Reckoning had depleted it of most of its asteroids.

Trivia

• It seems to be the case, as shown by the Incipisphere in [S] DD: Ascend, that the planets actually don't exist until the players enter.
  • However, the mythology of Jane's planet states that the B2 session planets have been dead for quite some time, and that the consorts waited very long for the players to arrive. This is easily explained by the fact the Medium and everything in it exists on a separate timeline from the players' home Universe. This same fact also explains why even players who have not yet installed Sburb/Sgrub can have dream selves waking on Prospit or Derse long before playing.
  • This may be a reference to how videogames have backstories, when in reality the world of the game doesn't exist until you start playing.
  • Nanna says that the B1 Incipisphere is independent of the Genesis Frog, and also, that its past was paradoxically brought into existence when John put in the game disc, hence why Grandpa knew about it and could travel into it in his past.
• In the combined B2 Incipisphere, Rose and Roxy are the only dancestors whose planets aren't adjacent to each other.