Troll

For a list of troll characters, see Troll/Individuals.

Trolls are a prominent race in Homestuck, Hiveswap and their spinoffs, inhabiting the planet Alternia in Universe A.

Concept and creation

Homestuck's trolls are named for internet trolls, reflecting their initial role harassing the human kids over their respective chat clients. Some aspects of the trolls' world and biology also reflects the trolls of European folklore, such as their connection to fairies and their aversion to the sun, a classic trait of literary trolls which are often described as turning to stone on contact with sunlight.

Biology

“Even though a troll's lips are naturally black [...] they can always be blacker”

All trolls have grey skin and horns colored in bands of red-orange to yellow-orange (vaguely resembling candy corn). The sclera of most trolls' eyes are the same yellow-orange color as their horn tips; however some trolls with mutations can have eyes in different colors, and which can flash and change color altogether under certain circumstances. A troll's orange eyes can become more reddened when "bloodshot" or turn completely red when damaged, for example by the sun. Many other parts of troll anatomy are black, including their hair and lips.

Trolls' bodies are saturated with an ingredient that colors much of their internal biology, including their blood and their tears, and the position of their blood on a spectrum of colors affects various other aspects of their biology (see the hemospectrum). While troll irises are grey in youth, they also become this color in adulthood; outside of this, however, a troll's blood color is rarely visible externally, and even some inner organs such as their tongues appear as a bloodless gray.

Anatomy

Trolls often refer to parts of their anatomy in vague terms. The word 'stem' is used to allude to a part of the torso (“LOBE STEM”) as well as to a sort of appendage (“stick your busy stem betwwixt (a grudge)”), 'nub' to a troll's shoulder (“take t)(e c)(ip off your nub”), chest (“something [...] that ivve been meaning to get off my nub”), knee (“NUB SLAPPERS”) or particularly short and blunt pair of horns, and 'frond' to mean any kind of limb or appendage (“PULL1NG MY FROND”, “A LIMP FRONDED STOOGE”). The phrase 'frond nub' has even been used to refer to what is presumably a tree.

The term 'nook' seems to refer to any crevice or hollow in the troll body, such as a throat or stomach (“really gets stuck in your nook”), anus (“up to your nook”, “his head up his nook”) or heart (“FROM THE 8OTTOM OF MY NOOK”). The phrase “BON3 NOOK” is also used, possibly to refer to a skull. The terms 'bulge' and 'bone bulge' are used similarly, sometimes seemingly meaning someone's head or skull (“IT DIDN'T GET THROUGH YOUR THICK BULGE???”), an appendage (“bulge bumpiing pupa pal2”) or some kind of phallic sex organ (“get you all off my bulge about iit”).

Damara's humanoid skeleton.

Despite referring to it with their own terminology, much of troll anatomy seems to be similar to that of humans. Most mature trolls have four limbs and a head attached to a vertical torso (presumably supported by a spine-like structure called the “TORSO PILLAR”). Trolls have four fingers and a thumb on each hand and two eyes (“GANDERBULBS”), a mouth (a “chitinous windhole” attached to a “PROTEIN CHUTE” and/or a “SQUAWK BLISTER”) and some form of hearing organs called “auricular sponge clots” or “HEAR DUCTS”. Female trolls also have “swollen pectoral masses” (“rumble spheres”), though they do not serve a mammary purpose like human breasts do (likely due to their reproductive method: see #Reproduction and life cycle).

Troll brains (sometimes called the 'think pan', which can also generally mean 'head' or 'mind') supposedly appear similar to human brains, and certain psychic powers are seemingly caused by mutations of the brain.

Reproduction and life cycle

Trolls are reproductively “8isexual”, capable of forming reproductive relationships — matesprit and kismesis pairs — between any combination of sexes. Trolls provide “a combinative genetic mix” from these concupiscent pairings to the imperial drone, who takes it to the mother grub in the brooding caverns to be combined “into one incestuous slurry”. According to commentary in the Homestuck books, Andrew Hussie "believe[s] it's been implied" that this genetic material is the result of "prodigious vomiting", but references to the particulars of the troll mating ritual in the comic itself are sparse.

With this genetic material the mother grub “lays hundreds of thousands of eggs at once”. These eggs hatch into six-limbed larval trolls, called 'wigglers', which attach themselves to the cavern's stalactites to spin cocoons. Wigglers emerge from their cocoons as young trolls with two arms and two legs. After this pupation a troll is expected to go through “a series of dangerous trials”, failure at which means to death. Surviving trolls are selected by a lusus naturae that is sympathetic to their scent, which serves as a companion throughout their life and provides young trolls with their names. After emerging from the caverns young trolls design their own hives, which are built for them by “CARPENTER DROIDS”.

In the Hiveswap Friendship Simulator (Dubiously Canon)

Mallek Adalov and Lanque Bombyx both possess a pair of blood-colored markings on each side of their torsos, likely reflecting the long-held fandom headcanon regarding "grub scars", remnants of the pairs of insectoid legs a wiggler loses or absorbs during pupation.^{[citation needed]} In reality, in holometabolous insects - insects with distinct larval, pupal and adult stages - most larval structures break down in the pupa and new adult structures are grown from microscopic imaginal cells, leaving little trace of the larval body plan whatsoever.

Diet

The troll diet seems to mostly consist of insect matter, though they can subsist on other forms of meat, and some trolls have even been known to drink milk with no apparent setbacks. Troll teeth vary greatly in shape, ranging between flat human-like incisors, vampiric fangs, consistently sharp shark-like teeth and blunted uneven fangs from individual to individual.

In The Homestuck Epilogues (Dubiously Canon)

Trolls “have to get their stomach pumped” if they eat onions; plants in the Allium family such as onions contain sulfoxides and aliphatic sulfides which are toxic to many non-human animals on Earth.

Society and culture

Main article: Alternia

Trolls initially lived on a peaceful planet called Beforus. A glitch in a game of Sgrub played by its inhabitants, however, necessitated a scratch in order to give their race a second attempt at playing. The glitch was in actuality the calling card of Lord English, and served to allow him and his servants to appear on the planet post-scratch and manipulate the trolls for his own purposes.

Her Imperious Condescension, the monarch of the Alternian empire

Troll society on Alternia has been influenced by Doc Scratch since the dawn of their sentience, at which point he introduced Gl'bgolyb to the planet, allowing the fuchsia caste and Her Imperious Condescension to rule over the rest of the race. Alternian trolls “have placed great cultural importance on teaching children to become architecturally adept while very young”, indicating that their society has been influenced in order to produce better players of Sgrub.

Like their real-world namesakes, trolls are a generally crude and antisocial race; however in their vernacular “TROLL 1S 4 V3RB TH4T H4S 4 LOT OF NU4NC3” and “C4N M34N 4 LOT OF TH1NGS”. This stems from their warlike nature; many young trolls aspire to take on military roles such as “THRESHECUTIONERS”, “CAVALREAPERS”, “LaUgHsSaSsIn”(s) and “RUFFIANNIHILATORS”, all of whom aid the Condesce in the invasion of other planets across the galaxy. Their violent society is enforced by a rigid caste system whereby trolls with purple blood oppress trolls with blue blood and so on downward to the red blooded, and also by their culturally negligent upbringings, during which they are “on their own” save for their lusii, and are susceptible to drone attack if they fail to uphold the strict Alternian regime.

Every troll in Alternian society is given a sign; how exactly these are assigned to the individual troll is not known, though blood color is a factor, with each caste having “a huge alpha8et” specific to that class. Many trolls also believe that a troll from the past who shared their sign is likely to be their ancestor, and that the two are likely to have similar fates.

Rather than the single form of romance or love practiced by humans, trolls have four quadrants, two of which serve a reproductive purpose (see reproduction and life cycle above) and two of which serve to balance the incredibly complex and, as described above, often bellicose social relationships among trolls.