Homestuck

We got a sneak peek of a weird character cleaning a discarded faygo bottle off of the beach. And we also know that caligulasAquarium [CA] is one of the 2 trolls we’ve yet to meet. We know they are kind of an asshole. So now it’s time to meet them.

Eridan Ampora. We meet him riding a seahorse while armed with a neat blue harpoon gun. He is above a vast ocean while a storm ages on around him (yet there’s no waves?”). A huge white whale breaches the ocean and charges at him. He doges and shoots the whale with a huge blast of the rifle. The whale falls back into the sea, probably dead.

As this is a double introduction we cut to cuttlefishCuller [CC], the last troll to meet. Her name is Feferi Peixes. She is under the sea and a dead whale has landed on the surface above her. She captures the whale in a net and drags it to the dark depth of the ocean. Tentacles rise from the darkness and the whale is consumed by a creature about 1000 times bigger than it. A tentacle monster the size of a small town. These had been Lusus, though we don't know who the whale belonged to, the tentacle creature belongs to Feferi. Eridan’s Seahorse is his lusus. They return to their hives.

Feferi lives on the ocean floor. Eridan’s hive is a pirate ship crashed onto an island. His hive is covered in piles of gold and gems. He's got some viking wizard statues, harpoon guns, maps, and some books. He says he is nearly of the highest blood color, simular purple to Gamzee. He is from a line of sea dwellers, genetically distinct from other trolls. This likely refers to the fins coming out of his cheeks.

Eridan’s openly genocidal, wanting to kill all land dwellers. This being anyone who isn't Feferi and himself. We learned he had commissioned a doomsday device from Vriska to accomplish this, though that plan failed. He has an interest in Military History and Legendary Conquerors. He’s based his personality off of this.

Feferi’s hive is full of sea creatures, cuttlefish and sea ponies. There's a bunch of bird cages (for cuttlefish). Her blood color is fuchsia. This is apparently the highest one. I had assumed it was Gamzee for some reason, but it's apparently Feferi. She is the Heir apparent to be the empress. This would normally make her the target of assassination attempts from the current empress, but her gigantic lusus is protecting her, for now. Her lusus is called The Rift's Carbuncle, Emissary To The Horrorterrors, or Speaker of The Vast Glub.

However, as she's aware the game will soon doom everyone, any royal aspirations are doomed with it. But she’d want to make a point of caring for all of the unfit and infirm, and wildlife. Though her idea of caring seems to be more like imprisonment as it's what she is trying to do with the cuttlefish. Fortunately her bird cages dont secure them. Unlike Eridan, she wants to reunite with the land dwellers.

Last time we learned that after entering the medium Kanaya had to deal with something and leave her team. It seems we won't get to know what that was yet as we now meet Kanaya shortly after the crisis she had was resolved. She is in her room, her lusus sprite next to her.

As she is hosting Vriska she can see everything she is doing, including the things she just did with Travos. Possibly only the kiss as she was very shocked and pissed off by seeing that. She apparently even helped Vriska make the dress that she had been wearing. She repeats the same odd line caligulasAquarium [CA] said before. “Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands.”

We are then given the explanation of how Troll relationships work and what all the weird words mean. I'll try to sum it up. Humans only have one kind of romantic relationship represented with the heart ♥(red). I think this is a horribly simplified view of human romance but let’s just roll with it.

Trolls experience 4 different kinds of relationships, presented as quadrants.

♥ ♦

♠ ♣

• Top left is the flushed quadrant, relationships in here are Matesprits ♥. This is what humans typically experience. With both humans and trolls is “playing a role in the reproductive cycle”. It's described as being “Concupiscent”, possessing more sexual desire. As it's red it is a positive relationship. The example given is John's Dad and Rose’s Mom, it's been implied though I guess this confirms it.

• Bottom left is the caliginous (dark or dim) quadrant. These relationships in here are Kismesis ♠. As it is a black it's a negative relationship, a dark Romance based on hate. If the hate between two people is strong enough it leads to a strong romantic connection. It is also concupiscent and plays a role in reproduction. The example given is Jack and the Queen.

As an aside we are given an explanation on troll reproduction. At least the parts that are different then the human reproduction. For an explanation on human reproduction I recommend you ask your parents, guardians, or google it. For trolls an Imperial Drone is sent to them and they need to provide “genetic material” for a bucket. Failure to provide results in death. I’ll let you use your imagination on what material is required. The buckets contain the “incestuous slurry” of all trolls and is given to the mother grub, Kanaya’s lusus. This is likely related to the weird orb Kanaya pulled from its dead corpse.

• Bottom right is the ashen quadrant, relationships in here are Auspistice ♣. This does not play a role in reproduction as it can be like being the “third wheel” in an existing relationship. Conciliatory relationships act as mediators to help to resolve conflicts . The example given is Kanaya being an auspistice for Vriska and Travos. It is further explained that these auspistice are needed. As all these relationships are volatile. A Matesprit can switch into a Kismesis leading to mass infidelity and conflict. It's not mentioned, but since this is a black relationship it is a negative one. IT seems the role takes a toll on those in it.

• Lastly top right is the pale quadrant, relationships in here are Moirallegience ♦. This one also does not play a role in reproduction. It is also a Conciliatory relationship. This is more like a platonic relationship. The example given is Nepeta and Equius, Nepeta is the Moirail. The moirail needs to pacify another troll. This is for trolls who may be particularly dangerous or violent. A Moirallegience can work both ways personalities can complement each other. These can also be confused for Matesprits. Much like human relationships this situation causes issues. A second example is provided with the 2 trolls we’ve yet to meet. caligulasAquarium [CA] and cuttlefishCuller [CC] are another example of a Moirallegience. We’re shown CA clearly wants a Matesprits relationship with CC. this is unrequited, thus the relationship is in constant flux.

We are given more hints on the current status of trolls. This unrequited situation was the situation with Kanaya’s feelings towards Vriska. As that failed she became the Auspistice for Vriska’s relationship with Travos. It hints she will also become Auspistice for a relationship between Vriska and CA. That may be a future thing.

We had been told of this before. Just very poorly by Karkat to John. This was a conversion between him and John way back on page 1603 I think?. The point he was trying to make is that Troll romance is way more complicated than human romance. Also John is an idiot for not understanding this apparently very complicated subject. But trolls are apparently all diehard romantics. They believe that someone is out there waiting for them in each of these quadrants. I’ll remind you failure to find love is literally a death sentence. so this belief is a little more understandable.

Later we see Travos entering a ruin. His ability to commune with animals works on the underlings as a band of them are travelling with him. He is solving some puzzles though Vriska finds this boring.

Vriska has been scheming a way to “help” Travos get an advantage and skip ahead in the game. She provides him with a map to a great treasure horde. This seems familiar to Terezi “helping” John skip ahead in the game and nearly getting him killed. Travos is skeptical. But, Vriska claims to have used her mind-reading ability on his underling friends to find this secret. Travos wants to ask the others but Kanaya and Karkat are both busy. So Travos agrees to Vriska’s plan. She also makes him dress like Pupa Pan.

This led him into the second gate, and Vriska’s hive in the Land of Maps and Treasure and The Thief of Light. Much like John and Roses meeting, Travos smashes through her wall with his rocket chair. Vriska is asleep though she has fairy wings and some kind of white dress. Vriska wakes up, apparently only pretending to be asleep. She is in roleplay mode, as the hero pupa pan has come to take her on an adventure. With his rocket chair crashed Travos is just laying on the floor unable to really do much. So the torment begins. She tosses some “magic glitter power” at his face which only seems to make him dizzy. She comments on how useless he is. She then grabs and kisses him to make him think happy thoughts. This only confuses the hell out of him. She uses mind control to make him more.. wanting. This seems to make him madly desire her. But, she doesn't really seem to want that either and tosses him back onto the floor.

It’s clear she had other intentions here. Vriska is a character that instantly needs to be loved. She sees Travos not only does not seem to like or trust her, but the others hate her for what she did to him. Perhaps she saw romancing him as a way to get back into everyone's good graces. Though when seduction failed she opted for mind control. This was frustrating as it supports her perceptions that she isn't loved.

We’ve been following Kanaya. She's been “meddling” with the last 2 trolls we’ve yet to meet cuttlefishCuller [CC] and caligulasAquarium [CA]. Also her lusus had died, and she removed the Matriorb from its corpse.

Kanaya returns to her hive. She doesn't want to be a Meddler. With this game she wishes to use her knowledge to become a real helper. She has the clouds providing her with some visions. But she has another source, the game FAQ micro server that Rose sent to the realm beyond the medium. It seems time there is not linear. She believes that the server is written by an ancient alien race. But, we know this would not be put into the realm of the old gods until much later. Kanaya is confident the writer and their co-players will have succeeded. She Imagines their leader is Rose, but as a troll, doing awesome magic.

Travos entered the game with Vriska as his host. One role of the host is to build their player base up so that they can reach the gates. Vriska has done this with stairs. Obviously this is useless to Travos for obvious reasons. Vriska had apparently “saved” Travos by logging in and getting him into the medium. She now feels justified in demanding Travos get over his disability (that she created). She seems to believe that Travos’s spine can just be fixed if he somehow muscles through it. She then demands he apologize to her for being disabled.

He refuses. His spine is broken but he still has one. Though Vriska doesn't understand what ‘no’ means and proceeds to try and force him out of his chair. Fortunately, Vriska’s own host is Kanaya. Upon hearing of the bullying threatens Vriska with her own toilet. She strongly suggest Travos will need ramps. Also she may accidentally dump the contents of the toilet onto Vriska’s head. Vriska decides to comply.

As Kanaya cleans Vriska's room (I’d have done the same) Vriska retrieves a pair of rocket boots she happened to keep in her vault of plundered goods. Using some alchemy she gives the code to Travos, who combines the boots with his chair. This gives Travos a sick rocket chair he uses to easily get to the first gate.

We start today with grimAuxiliatrix [GA]. She is one of 3 trolls we’ve yet to meet. We have seen her in a few scenes though. She was talking primarily with Rose and even managed to best her in a battle of social wits. GA was also seen removing Travos’s paralyzed legs with a chainsaw. She isn't great with technology, as she has leaned on Sollux to help her with using computers.

We learn her real name is Kanaya Maryam. Unlike other trolls, Kanaya can go outside during the day. It seems the sun above Alternia is too bright for most trolls. Daytime is also when hordes of undead rise from the sands. Kanaya’s chainsaw helps with this but she tries to avoid them. She spends the day tending to her landscaping and topiary hobby. She mentions she dreams of “puffy oracles”. She also likes to read about “rainbow drinkers”, “shadow droppers” and forbidden passion. Her blood is jade green in color. Though this isn't high in the hemospectrum based hierarchy, it's a special position. Her lusus is the “Virgin Mother Grub”. We learned in an earlier conversation that the other trolls hold this lusus in high regard. Also different from Kanaya, she loves aesthetics and colors. The trolls we’ve met so far only care about blood color and have otherwise been pretty drab. Kanaya loves fashion and plants. Her room is decorated with fabrics and flowers. She also seems to have access to advanced technology like the Wardrobifyer. Her room somewhat resembles Jade's tower though we haven't seen much of it yet. We did see the outside of it briefly in a false intro. It looks like the section of Jade's room that her dreambot self-destructed. She mentions the hive was a ruin dug out of the sand by her lusus. The ruins are not from Alternia but from another world she has seen only in her dreams.

Firstly she equips her chainsaw lipstick. This, being a reference to Problem Sleuth where weapons were often stored as random items. So “The thing you saw is not the thing you think you saw”. In this case the chainsaw is just lipstick, until it needs to be a chainsaw, and her Strifespec is Makeup Kind. As her outfit is randomly changing, she is being pestered by cuttlefishCuller [CC]. Notice her laptop is the same Squiddles lunchbox laptop Jade was using. CC is not a troll we have met yet, we haven't even seen their pester handle until this time.

CC is friendly to Kanaya. So far it seems everyone is. CC is the sign of pisces, the one with 2 fish. This may be why she “glubs” when excited. CC is very excited about getting into the game. She will be entering late after her “moirail”. Again, this word hasn't been defined yet. But I know it will be later. we can assume it is a relationship of some level, and based on context it's somewhat of a solemate or romantic thing. Kanaya also has one. They mention they will lose contact with their moirails shortly for a time. But see them again later. Though they are pretty vague on the details, it mentioned that Kanaya see’s hers from the clouds.

After this Kanaya goes to see her lusus in its final moments. But, she is too late as it seems to have died peacefully in front of her hive. She had made a bargain with it. She proceeds to cut into here lusus’s corpse with her chainsaw and removes an orb. The orb is covered in small troll forms from the creature. She stores this in her Chastity Modus. The item, a “matriorb”, is locked until Kanaya can find a key to unlock it. She is nearly overcome with a strong urge to drink the blood of her lusus, but seems to resist it. She then decides to meddle with her moirail. This is apparently Vriska. This was the conversation from page 2204. This was the one where she tells Vriska her lusus will die soon. Also that she wants to keep an eye on Vriska to keep everyone safe.

Before she can move on she is pestered by someone. The last of the trolls we have yet to meet caligulasAquarium [CA]. Surprise, it's another asshole. They are the zodiac of aquarius and have salty mouth. CA is demanding Kanaya have Vriska unblock him so he can talk to her. He was the one who had commissioned her to build the massive doomsday. The device that had eventually killed her lusus. He wants to use it to kill all land dwellers. Kanaya points out she hasn't really been motivated to help him. She certainly isn't interested in helping him get a device that would kill her and everyone else. She also points out that the planet will be destroyed by the game anyway. CA seems to have been mostly out of the loop about all this, and is grouchy about it. Kanaya decides to meddle and suggests that CC was talking about how she feels about CA. This really seems to get his attention but she refuses to give him any details of the conversation. He says something about how it's hard to be a kid and grow up before ending the convo. I don't really know what he means by this, or how it's related to the conversation.

Jack presents Operation Regisurp, a plan that will need Karkat’s whole team to put in place. This includes mind control powers. Unlike the queen of the kids' world, the queens for the trolls have rings of 12 fold power. All the lusus they’ve prototypes are now part of the dark queen's powers. She can take on all these weird freaky augments. but one thing addition she cant handle, frogs, she despises them. This is why frogs are contraband across the kingdom. The frogs hail a god of a few different names. We'll stick with "Bilious Slick". Since Aradia has prototyped the frog ruins, the queen now refuses to wear the ring of power. She's sealed it in the royal vault.

We're told this operation will succeed. The black queen will become the Banished Quasiroyal living in the wastelands. This is very much like the Windswept Questant. Yet, once in the wastelands she’ll encounter Doc Scratch and get a new purpose. The assumption the trolls had is that the red and blue teams would have a queen to defeat. Each team would be able to help each other to jointly achieve victory in these separate tasks. But this wasn't the case. The prototypes of the red team affected the underlings that the blue team would fight as vice versa. Each team also appeared to have its own set of mystical frog ruins. But in reality there was only one session. All 12 trolls were on the same team from the beginning. They just didn't know it. In this case the players were allowed to create 2 separate chains. 2 players entered the game separately and formed chains of 6 players, the red and blue teams. But the 2 chains would be connected in something called the “Mobius Double Reach Around”. This would link Sollux to Karkat and Equis to grimAuxiliatrix [GA], one of 3 trolls we’ve yet to meet.

This log is a little short. A lot of this was explained with diagrams that are tricky to explain. The very TLDR version of this is. Jack has presented himself to Karkat. Much like in the session with the kids Jack wants to murder the monarchy. But in this session he is a little less ambitious and power hungry. He presents Karkat with a lengthy plan to kill the black queen. Both teams need to work together to accomplish this goal, they are both on the same side in the same game. This means, as Aradia had been telling everyone, the teams do not matter. There's no “leaders”. All the bickering, betrayals, and fighting had been pointless.

Vriska has just had to put her lusus down. Her luck has been terrible and her plan to gain Aradia’s favour with a gift has completely gone. With all this she’s also been kicked off the blue team. She’s now going to have to join the red team with a lot of people who she dislikes.

Karkat messages Vriska to recruit her. Though she doesn't have much choice in the matter. Karkat is a little less sympathetic to her situation. He suggests she just “dump” her dead lusus into the sprite, clean the blood off and get into the game. She retorts with an accusation about him hiding his blood color. All the other trolls have their blood color as their font color, his font is grey. He mentions that it's no one's business and he doesn't need to wear his color “on his sleeve”. That is a bit on the nose.

Karkat tells Vriska she needs to get Travos into the game. She protests this, because she hates Travos. There was never any reason given for why Vriska hates Travos and Karkat questions this. He suspects they have a “dark romance” or “Kismesis”. This is denied, Karkat gives a lecture about how trolls only experience pity or hate for each other that determines their relationships. He says Vriska only has a mild hate towards everyone so she cant real relationships like a “Moirail” or “Matesprite”. We are not told what these words mean yet but it will be explained later. Karkat gets called out for watching too many romance movies and is told to get to his damn point.

Karkat needs Virska to get Travos in then herself. He needs her mind powers to help him with some kind of double agent. A game character named Jack. Jack as we know from previous acts is not as terrible in this world. Here he is performing the same role as the Wayward vagabond was for John. Though in most other ways he is the same, and eventually becomes Spades Slick.

It’s shown to us now that Karkat had been having this whole conversation with Jack awkwardly standing behind him. Also Karkat is nursing a stab wound. We learn Karkat blood seems to be all the colors?. This is to hide his blood color to the reader.

It seems Jack wants to work with Karkat to overthrow the black queen. Apparently their meeting was violent, as Jack's stabbing is like a “hello”. But Karakt is cool with him despite having been stabbed. He’s been given intel about the queen's weakness. Vriska is wondering what his blood color is but with Terezi being his host no one can actually see him. She mentions there should be a way to see past and future events in the game, and Karakt mentions Sollux may be working on that.

We are given a flashback of Jack and Karkats meeting. Jack only stabbed Karakt because he was talking too damn much. Apparently the sight of his own blood freaked Karakt out, he was trying to hide it and mostly concerned about hiding it from Jack. We’re now shown the real blood color on Jack's knife. Karkat's blood is red. Jack has no idea why this would concern anyone.

Karkat explains he is the only one with this candy red blood. It makes him a complete outcast in the hemospectrum based hierarchy. We can assume this is the lowest level on the spectrum. Jack doesn’t care about any of that and just wants him to shut up. So Jack slices his hand and reveals his blood is also red. Karkat shuts up and shakes Jack's hand. They are allies now.

The last few pages had been a flashback. Well technically this entire act is a flashback. Prior to it a doomsday device was triggered when Equius got angry and smashed one of his bots into it. The result was that both his and Virsika’s Lusus had been killed. Well nearly...

Equius’s Lusus Aurthor the milk providing centaur is very dead. We see Equius crouched over it with a sprite nearby waiting to be prototyped.

Virsika’s giant spider Lusus survived, but was fatally injured. She had to use her dice to put it down. Fortunately it was a good roll of her dice. This summoned a giant guillotine to finish the job. Though it also caused the canyon to cave in further causing Equius’s hive to fall. However, it is taken to the medium before it can crash into the canyon floor and into Vriska.

It seems this was the work of Aradia. She was the player hosting for Equius. This last minute save made Vriska.. Angry? She rushes back to her PC to complain to Aradia. This early entry into the game messed up her plan. Equius will no longer be able to deliver the AradiaBot to her. Though he was planning to not do that anyway.

Vriska freaks out that her plan was to give Aradia so they could be friends again, but Aradia probably knew all this was going to happen and didn't care. Aradia emotionlessly states this is true, she is dead and it doesn't matter. If they had been friends, she can't actually remember.

Aradia tells Vriska that she isn’t a co-leader and isn't even on the blue team, she needs to be on the red team, after she “wakes up”. Vriska believes this is revenge for the whole murder thing, but Aradia doesn't actually care about that. She just knows that Vriska needs to be on the red team and that the teams don't even matter. Vriska is of course in full rage mode over these developments.

Equius had just arrived in the Land of Caves And Silence. Author is back in sprite form, no utter or hooves, just a jacked chest and manly mustache. Good for him!. Equius confidently tells Aradia that he is now the leader of the blue team. He has no idea how this game works, so Aradia tells him, sure, he’s “leader” now, why not. He is flustered by this obedience from her. She tells him that she is his “server” which flusters him even further. Though once she explains what “server” means in the context of the game he realizes she is the one in control. This puts him at peak flustered.

Aradia helps him calm down by smashing a bathtub through his wall. He loves this and demands she do it again. With this feeling of subordination filling him, Equius pledges to get to the second gate as fast as possible to give Aradia her new robot body. He also asks that she be the leader of the Blue team. He really likes being her subordinate. His feelings for her are pretty obvious, but she doesn't really give a damn as she is dead and also now half frog.

With now building necessary Equius just jumps like 100 feet into the air over his hive and into the first gate. He then finds the second gate without any issues punching massive underlings to death as he goes. Within what seemed like probably a few minutes he delivers Aradiabot.

Entering the bot Aradia freaks out. Equius had implanted a chip in the bot's heart to give her romantic feelings for him. She promptly rips the heart out of the bot, destroys it then savagely beats the living crap out of Equius… then they make out?? Well that’s fucked up.

Hosting Aradia is Nepeta, meaning she is seeing all of this go down in utter confusion. It seems Nepeta has a whole wall of her cave dedicated to tracking relationships between the trolls. She calls this the Shipping Wall.

We learned that Vriska had not only broken Travos spine, but murdered Aradia. She wasn't alone in this. This girl with the power to manipulate others had herself been manipulated. An omniscient third party with no name and white text had been messaging her. We’ve been calling them the blank one, but his name is Doc Scratch.

Scratch is in a green tinted room with a sort of old fashioned Victorian mansion vibe to it. He is wearing a pure white tux, with a green undershirt and bowtie. He’s phasing into a familiar green lightlining. His head is just a pure white sphere. Around him are 2 miniature versions of the battleground of Skaia, one the cube and the spherical version nearby. He also has a typewriter and holstered pistol on a nearby chair.

He’s described as an officer for Lord English. His job is to destroy the universe so that Lord English can come into it. This will bring about something called The Great Undoing.

If you've been paying attention you might notice guys Lord English is mentioned in the intromission sequence with the Midnight Crew. This was Spades Slick's key target but he failed to even see him. I’ll also note that Lord English’s name is spelt differently by Doc Scratch. The o in Lord, is now a gif of various pool balls.

Scratch is apparently the “First Guardian” of Alternia. This is what grants him omniscience and the ability to facilitate the planet's purpose. It mentions every planet has a first guardian and they come in various forms. He also has a specific genetic sequence in common with all other first guardians of all other planets supporting intelligent life.

I’ll point out a theory here. I probably didn't piece this together in my first read. Doc Scratch, is related to Jade's Dog Becquerel (Bec). Bec must therefore be the first guardian of earth. As Doc is guiding Vriska, Bec is guiding Jade. Though since Bec cannot speak, we dont know its motivations.

That audience isn't able to control Doc, though at this point I'm not sure the audience was even playing any character or if Hussie had taken full control. I honestly never cared. For this scene Doc's actions are only speculated on by the writer.

It seems he’s concerned Vriska is getting harder to control. He plays games with her but lately she is nearly winning, he doesn't know how. At this point he receives a message on his typewriter. This is even more concerning as his account shouldn’t even be listed, and the others shouldn't even know about him. It’s from Terezi. Before she can really say anything he deducts that she had Sollux trace his account and open the line of communication. This must still be in the context of the flashback as it seems to be shortly after the death of Aradia.

He hints that Aradia is not as dead as they think. Terezi isn't sure what to make of that but tells Doc that he will help her with revenge once she provides a tip to him. That tip is that Vriska has been cheating in the games she has been playing with him. She will tell him why in exchange for his help.

Before doing this, Terezi has one last chat with Vriska before she has doc kill her. Though not surprisingly Vriska thinks Terezi is bluffing and has no way to kill her. Terezi suggests Vriska consult her artifact. It seems before she switched to crappy magic 8 balls she had acquired an actual magic cue ball. With her 8 fold vision ability she could use it to tell the future. This Cueball of course belonged to Doc Scratch. By using it she was able to predict even his moves.

Terezi tells doc scratch about the CueBall which makes him pretty pissed off. Vriska was gazing into the cue ball for answers on how Terezi plans to kill her, the cue ball only states “I will explode in your face”. It then does so, presumably by Docs command. This destroys Virsika’s arm and her eye. Obviously as this is a flashback we know this doesn't actually kill her.

We are moments before a doomsday had exploded outside of her hive. Vriska is on a tirade of “meddling” with the other trolls. So Vriska is now chatting with Terezi. Terezi is now on the roof of her treehive, she is battling imps with a more battle ready version of her cane. She now has glasses that project a holographic screen so she can chat hands free. I’m not sure how she is seeing that screen.

Vriska tells Terezi that she is terminating their truce for the duration of the game. The truce was an agreement between them to not back stab each other. For Vriska this included not using her powers on anyone who didn't deserve it. This is apparently related to whatever happened to Aradia. Terezi mentions that whatever Vriska did to her broke Aradia’s brain. This implies that Vriska potentially murdered Aradia somehow. Vriska feels the gift she is going to give Aradia, a robot made by Equius, will absolve her of whatever it is she did. Terezi was the other half of “Team scourge”. Terezi believed they were taking “bad guys” to Vriska’s spider lusus to eat. But Vriska was just feeding anyone to it. Terezi was very good at breaking people down and using headgames. Manipulation without powers is something Vriska finds powerful. Vriska then just lambasts Terezi for not offering any kind of forgiveness or trust. The convo ends with Vriska hearing an explosion and avalanche outside. This was the doomsday device going off.

We flashback to just shortly after Vriska breaks Travos’s spine. We see Terezi, she isn't wearing the red glasses so this is from before she had been blinded. Her room looks more like Vriska’s with a FLARP poster, character sheets on the wall and some dice on her desk. Terezi is chatting with Aradia about Travos. Aradia is mad about the incident. She suspects Equius will never give Travos prosthetics out of hate for his blood color. She wants vengeance and to make Vriska pay. Apparently Aradia is immune to Vriska’s powers. But, Terezi warns her against taking action, powers or not Vriska is still dangerous. They also mentioned that they failed to help Travos because they were distracted. Someone associated with Vriska prevented them from coming to his aid. Someone who has “playing her” and is potentially even more dangerous. They agree to not take action for now.

Aradia isn't satisfied though and the voices of the dead are calling out to her loudly. She has powers of her own. She summons the ghost of all those she has fed to her spider to haunt her. Vriska is feeling all this, and it's freaking her out. The blank person reaches out to her. They tell Vriska she needs to kill Aradia. We also learn they’d played a role in hurting Travos, but the goal was to kill him as well. They tell her that all they are doing is giving Vriska the opportunities. These are things that she actually wants to do anyway. They claim they haven't convinced her to actually do anything at all.

Blank's motives are to bring about the events which will allow their employer to enter into the universe. They’re acting as a linchpin, and subtly altering things to get the desired results. Blank claims they are omniscient (knowing everything). But, they also have gaps in their knowledge. This doesn't make much sense. But he seems to know a lot of things Vriska doesn't so she has to believe him.

Vriska, plans to use someone who she only has limited control over to do what she needs to do. She messages Aradia to tell her that her boyfriend is waiting outside for her. Aradia suspects it's a trick, but falls for it anyway. It seems she was with Sollux at this time. Aradia sees Sollux floating over to her hive. He holds his glasses in one hand, and a bunch of mind honey in the other. We’ve seen that when Sollux consumes mind honey his eyes blast out a powerful laser with massively destructive potential. We can only assume that this completely atomized Aradia. This left her hive as nothing more than the foundation that she presently sits in.

Vriska had used mind control on Sollux to kill Aradia.

So far of all the trolls we’ve met it seems like these 2 may be the worst. So far at least. Vriska is an utter psychopath who only seems to take joy in the misery of others. Also, Equius is a creepy muscle head . He's obsessed with “pure bloodlines”, very demanding towards others. They live close to each other and have very similar blue blood colors.

It seems they are pretty cordial with each other. Vriska has commissioned Equius to make a gift for Aradia. Equius considers Aradia a lower blood, and doesn't approve of working with her. But Vriska tells him to mind his own damn business, she had made a promise of some sort with Aradia. This present will help in the plan to take leadership from Sollux. This will in turn help Vriska to take leadership from her.

Vriska and Equius want all the trolls to be led by those of the “highest” bloods. They are exempting Gamzee who is apparently of the highest blood among them. They are also exempting the “underwater freaks”. It seems they have an agreement but don't actually trust each other.

Vriska attempts to read Equius’s mind and he in turns slaps her with her own robotic arm. He made this arm for her and seems to have control of it in order to keep her in line.

Equius is planning to double cross Vriska . He reveals the gift for Aradia is a robotic version of her. This could be handy for a ghost. He plans to deliver it himself to gain her favor and bypass Vriska in a run for leadership. Neither of them know that Aradia isn't actually leading anything. They are just wasting time.

He gushes a bit about the AradiaBot and how he’s built it to perfection. He’s creepy and Pygmalion about it. He feels that if she inhabits a robotic body then her blood will no longer be impure. In a moment of creepy passion with the not yet active AradiaBot he freaks out at one of his battle bots. He smashes it through a wall and into the giant doomsday device outside.

This was a device that Vriska had built and had hanging in the canyon between her hive and Equius’s. It's called the Catenative Doomsday Dice Cascader. It looks a bit like an old board game called Trouble. This has more pop dice, and is like 60 meters in diameter. This device appears in Problem sleuth as well and is explained there. It can cause up to 50 trillion points of damage, but also only deal 1 point. It's up to luck. In this case it activates and after a lot of crazy effects, the machine just dies. But, all the jostling caused the machine to fall into the canyon. It then explodes killing Vriska’s giant spider, Lusus. Also Equius’s Lusus Author, then fell into the canyon for some reason, and also probably died.

Vriska has been trying to meddle in everyone's business. But it seems she's been the one getting meddled with. A “friend” grimAuxiliatrix [GA] has just informed her that her lusus is doomed to die soon. She is now going to check on her lusus.

It seems Vriska's hive is some sort of tall structure. She needs to descend down “millions” of stairs to reach her lusus nest. She passes a huge contraption hanging outside. She explains it was a doomsday device she had built for a member of the nautical aristocracy. We’ve seen some nautical trolls briefly, perhaps one of them?

Reaching the near bottom of her hive, Vriska finds her lusus. A gigantic spider, it looks to be about 70m tall, and healthy. We see her hive is a building on top of a canyon. It's about as big as Karkats. The spider's nest is at the bottom of the canyon under the hive. On the other side of the canyon is another hive.

Vriska's neighbour it seems is centaursTesticle [CT]. Who we now have to be introduced to. As we saw before his room is covered in robots, broken bows, and naked pictures of muscle bound centors. His name is Equius Zahhak he’s obsessed with strength.

He talks about wanting to join some noble group of Ruffiannihilators and Archeradicators. But he’s unable to actually use a bow properly as he destroys every bow he tries to use. He describes it as “fetishistic” as Vriska did with her 8-balls.

He says the priceless masterpieces around his room are of Nude Musclebeast. These are apparently local creatures Equius finds their strength to be stunning. And tosses a comment about how those of “lesser bloodlines” are unable to appreciate art.

When he is angry, which is often he goes into violent rages. His robots are designed to fight him and give him a target to focus his violence on. His lusus is also his butler, one who milks himself to give Equius to give something to drink… damn that's just wrong. His lusus apparently bruises at the slightest touch. But Equius believes his lusus is the strongest.

He has 3 weapon specs. Fist, bow, and 1/2 bows. This is only the second time we see the Strife Portfolio that allows for multiple specs. The writer hints that he may have forgotten it existed.

After spilling his milk Equius flies into a rage breaking a bow. He chats with Neopeta to calm down in the conversation we saw earlier. This is where Nepeta had asked him if she could join the red team, but he forbade it. He wasn't sure if he had actually convinced her to join him on the blue team. He’s still angry, Nepeta is associating with lower bloods.

He decides to chat with Gamzee. He says Gamzee is a friend. But friend and enemy are the same word in trollian, and he hates Gamzee. This seems to be because Gamzee is of the highest bloodline. However, Gamzee does not act in a way that Equius thinks someone of his class should.

Gamzee is more concerned about running out of Faygo while in the medium.

Equius commands Gamzee to stop drinking Faygo. Gamzee agrees. Equius then back pedals. He doesnt feel like he has the right to make demands of someone of a higher blood class then his own. He suggests Gamzee need to be more commanding. Gamzee agrees but has no idea what the hec Equius is talking about, and doesn't desire to be better than anyone.

Gamzee mentions he is on the red team and in the game already. He was defeating imps but now just eats pie with them. Equius suggests they roleplay a scenario of Gamzee being authoritative towards him. Totally not for some kind of homoerotic kink thing. Though this likely became the source of a lot of fan material. Anyway, Gamzee strongly suggests Equius stay out of the sea. This being pretty low impact as Equius doesnt live near the sea. He pressures Gamzee to be even more bossy, he humours the request. It was another very creepy interaction.

Gamzee, again mentions he has no idea what Equius is going on about with all this bloodline stuff. Equius finds it terrible that someone with Gamzee's blood behaves in such an undignified manner. This while “she” of low blood can have such dignity. He doesn't say who “she” is and ends the convo.

We’d seen a lot of a character who’s under the sign of scorpio. arachnidsGrip [AG]. She’s the one who broke Travos’s spine. She has an ability to control or place strong suggestions in the minds of others. This ability seems to have no limited range as she had controlled Karkat while he was in the medium. With this seemingly overpowered ability she’s completely psychotic.

So we start with “Being the huge bitch”. This phase being a reference to Sn0wball back in the intermission. Her name is Vriska Serket, somehow a fan favorite. Also an artist favorite as we’ll see later. I truly do not understand this.

As we’ve seen she is into extreme roleplay, the game that got Travos injured. It seems to also have caused her own injuries. As we’d seen in previous pages her arm is robotic. This was not the case during her encounter with Travos.

Vriska mentions her lusus needs to feed on the flesh of young trolls. She uses the “Flarping” to take advantage of the impressionable and get spider food. As a hobby Vriska thinks heavily about the Apocalypse and builds potential doomsday devices. She also likes to develop prophecies. It seems she used to have the ability “Vision eightfold” that gave her the ability to see the future. She now uses “Black Oracles” (magic 8-balls) which she often destroys in frustration. Her room is littered with broken 8-ball and the d-20 dies that they contained. She is apparently addicted to destroying them, despite the bad luck it brings her.

Her room also has spider webs, “devices”, game manuals, and character sheets on the wall. She also has a drawing of her Flarping character Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. Which given this is larping, is just a picture she drew of herself in a costume.

She steps on a d4 dice (the pointy one). She blames this on bad luck that she’s been having since her accident. She seems like the sort to blame her misfortunes on anything but herself, her floor is covered with these damn dice so luck had nothing to do with it. She’s just a brat who needs to clean her damn room. Her weapon is also dice. 8 enchanted d8’s called the Fluorite Octet. The weapon has a wide range of effects that can help or hinder the wielder. With her bad luck she is afraid to use them.

She starts off a long night of bugging, fussing and meddling. But she receives a message from a meddler she hasn't heard from in awhile. Against the rules of pester clients this user is unnamed, just blank. The also chat with all #FFFFFF white text which is annoying as hell to read. They are well spoken and don't seem to have quirks either.

The blank one mentions this is their last communication with Vriska. They seem to know what events will soon take place in Vriska’s future. They blatantly tell her that they’ve been exploiting her. Vriska doesn't believe she's being exploited in any way. Given she usually is the one exploiting others this is not acceptable. The blank one states they will no longer hold Vriska accountable for her actions. This is because of the “incident”. Also they feel she was a complete waste of their talents. He suspects she won’t survive to see the destructive results of her own actions. They then end the conversation.

This conversion seems to get to her a bit. There’s a lot of vagueness and unexplained history here. Vriska is unable to even smash one of her magic 8-balls. grimAuxiliatrix [GA] had also been trying to get ahold of Vriska. GA let Vriska know that her lusus had died. GA’s lusus was the A Virgin Mother Grub, it had decided to stop producing offspring and died shortly after. She is telling Vriska that her own lusus will die as well as many others have already. Aware of Karkats curse, she doesn't believe that is the case. GA believes the death of the lusus is an inevitable result of the game. This is much like the destruction of their planet. Vriska relates her bad luck to the curse. Though GA points out her bad luck is just a messy floor. Vriska‘s problem is that she is dangerous. GA feels that despite this she is important and it's her job to try and keep Vriska in line.

Vriska is obviously not cool with this but is too concerned about her lusus to really care.

We start back on page 2061 Karkat had recently entered the Medium. His home had been terribly vandalised by his game host Terezi. He’s gotten the hang of the game quickly, fighting mobs, and gathering resources. He’s just discovered his own toilet, not in his home but out in the field. He calls up Terezi for an explanation. Having a blind home designer who is sensing the game via tasting colors on her screen has some drawbacks. Though it’s likely that Terezi is just screwing with him.

Terezi reminds Karkat that meteors are currently destroying his home planet. Everyone left on it is in trouble. He had no idea He needs to talk with Aradia([AA]) to get caught up because Terezi needed to “step-out” of her tree for a bit. After this conversation we had a 100+ page flashback. So now we’re back to this point.

Karkat, still in a field of the medium standing in front of his toilet. arachnidsGrip [AG] pesters him, He is aware of AG’s predilection for betrayal and general evil. She wants to be on Karkat’s team. He doesn't buy this at all. Her actual purpose seems to have been to psyche him out as she is the “leader” of the blue team. Also to threaten use of her mind control powers on him. Karkat reminds her that she is bound to an agreement with “Better scourge sister” to not use her powers. That other sister is on his team. However, she uses her power to make him rejoin the chat after he leaves it, just to flex on him.

We’re given brief looks at 2 of the other trolls. centaursTesticle [CT] we see in his room with his lusus. His walls are covered in pictures of nude muscle bound centaurs. Mercifully they are censored. His lusus is also a centaur, but with an utter, and a black eye. He’s surrounded by broken robots and bows. CT himself wears broken shades, broken teeth and has a broken horn. He wears a tanktop with the mark Sagittarius on it. We also see a troll under the sea poking a sea creature with a trident.

Using her telepathic powers Aradia is riding the giant stone frog head home. She broke this off of the frog ruins she had been living in. She needs to start the session for the blue team. She decides to go to her previous home. She mentions she lived there before she found her “calling”. The voices of the dead had ordered her to move to the ruins after the death of her lusus. She mentions she never buried it, but it’d have been unusual to bury the dead.

Her old hive is nothing but an overgrown foundation. It has some holes around it that she had dug to test her archaeology skills. She sits on the foundation floor and opens her Crosbytop and loads the game. Next to her is a music box. She logs in on to the session started by her co-leader. She wanted to be the second player in the chain. She’s selected a specific troll to be the third in the chain.

Shortly later, her non-prototyped sprite is already out. No fancy base, the Cruxtruder is just deployed next to the remains of her home. All the others had used their Lusus as a prototype, but hers is long gone. Her instructions from the dead are to use the giant stone frog head. This is the true reason for her taking it.

It's revealed to us now that the first player in the chain was not Sollux or AG, but Nepeta. We can see her watching Aradia in utter confusion. This technically makes Nepeta, who didn't really even want to be on the blue team, its leader. She likely has no idea.

Later again, we see Aradia no in the medium. She’s in Land of Quartz And Melody as the Maid of Time. She mentions the player she is hosting has an important item to give her. But it's one too expensive to alchemize. Once this player gets to the second ring, they will be able to meet her in person. This is how John eventually ended up seeing Rose at her house. This item is important to Aradia’s plan.

Nepeta hosting her is also part of the plan. For some reason Nepeta isn't able to actually see Aradia in game. She needed someone less savvy with games and who would be more oblivious to what was going on. Someone only following instructions.

The reason Aradia hasn't been visible is because she had been dead. A ghost. It's possible none of the other trolls knew this. Though to us it was pretty obvious (right?)

Aradia prototypes her sprite once more, with herself. She is now a frog girl sprite. Nepeta is now able to see her for the first time. She explains that her death was caused by ignoring the advice of a friend. She asks Nepeta to keep this a secret, and she agrees to do so.

Travos has been told his friend Nepeta won't be joining him. She seems to be obedient to some arse hole going by centaursTesticle [CT]. Travos was reminded of his accident and wondered if Nepeta wasn’t better off on the opposing team. Thinking back to the days of his more intense and dangerous role playing, he is looking forward to the game he will soon play with his friends.

We flash back to Travos in a “boy skylark” outfit holding a tiny “dagger lance”. He is going to engage in some “Extreme Larping”. He pesters Aradia to let her know his game grub has laid eggs and that means he is nearly ready to play. Terezi is supposed to join them but she is running late. Aradia reminds Travos that the class of character he picked is not effective until higher levels. But she is supportive of his choices. Aradia is very different from the character we met recently. It would seem these events took place prior to whatever changed her. She gives Travos a pep talk and reminds him that the “clouder” will be at the top of its game, they will have fun.

The eggs hatch into little bats called Gaming Flapstractions that will provide the game data. This game also has 2 teams. Team Charge is his team and Team Scourge is the opposition. The clouder is a member of team charge and will affect the scenario he will play. The bats fly off but one remains his “stat bat” to keep track of his attributes.

We see a bit later Travos is surrounded by large monsters backed to a cliff. He’s chatting with arachnidsGrip [AG], the mean spider girl. She seems to be his clouder and has made things far too difficult. He lets her know this but she’s yelling at him for being weak.

He tries to contact his team but neither Aradia or Terezi respond. AG appears before him with the monsters pressuring him to make a move. Travos refuses, he knows the only right move here is to give up but AG will not allow that. They had agreed to not use any of their troll powers during the game but she’s breaking that rule.

AG’s power seems to be mind control, or at least powerful mental suggestion. She convinces Travos he can fly like Pupa Pan. With this he jumps off of the cliff. AG laughing psychotically as he lay broken at the bottom. He reaches out to Karkat to let him know what just happened, he can no longer feel his legs. Karkat just tells him to stop playing a “girls game”. If girl games are that dangerous maybe that is good advice. It seems as dangerous as the extreme roleplaying stuff was the real danger was AG.

Last time we met Aradia Megido. A troll with very powerful telekinetic powers. Despite her powers though she seems completely without emotions, desires, or memories. Aradia gives off ethereal vibes and can hear the dead. We start today off with a look at arachnidsGrip [AG]. AG has glasses with one lens being solid, one robotic arm, fangs and blue makeup. But this is all we get. Apparently we the readers are not cool enough to learn more about this character. For now they are just arachnidsGrip [AG].

Sollux pesters Aradia. She is floating just outside his window but he doesn't know this. Sollux apologises for freaking out on her. He says he doesn't mind not being the leader, he just wants to play the game. Aradia informs him that he won’t be playing the game yet. She tells him to look out his window. Before Sollux can even see her she snaps him into an instant sleep with her powers. He passes out right into the mind honey. Sollux wakes up much later. We're told he has dreams of visions that will help guide his allies. He’s now the last to log in and needs to log into Karkats server. We see his lusus is still fine but there is an intense meteor shower occurring all around him. Upon awakening he accidentally consumed some of the mind honey he had passed out onto. This causes his eyes to shoot intensely powerful laser beams Cyclops style. This destroys everything above him, likely vaporizing his lusus.

Now we are the cat-troll living in a cave. We'd seen this character briefly before but didn't get an introduction. Safe to assume this is arsenicCatnip [AC], her real name is Nepeta Leijon. She has cat-like facial features. Pretty much the :3 face, with fangs. She's wearing a blue hood, a blue tail, and an oversized green jacket. She lives in a cave and likes roleplay. She empathizes that she likes “Friendly” roleplay. Not the dangerous kind that gets people hurt. But she also likes to hunt large beasts with nothing more than her claws and fangs. Her cave's littered with the blood and corpses of her kills. She uses the blood to paint “wall comics”. Her claw gloves are her primary clawkind weapons. Her lusus is a large 2 mouthed cat sleeping in the corner named Pounce De Leon. Nepeta seems aware of her lusus’s fate, but not when it will happen. But we're shown it’ll be a cave-in. I am not sure we are always shown the fates of lusus in this way. But, it isn't surprising to see weird time skips and flash forwards at this point. Though they're written like they are from someone's perspective. Karkat pesters Nepeta. He reluctantly role plays with her to recruit her into the red team. He refers to her as the “autistic girl”. As if he and every bloody character in this thing isn't neurotypical in some way. Karkat, Terezi, Gamzee And Tavros are already in the game. He needs her to log in from Travos and wants grimAuxiliatrix [GA] to log in from her. But, much like when Terezi tried to recruit her she says she needs to talk to someone first. Karkat's annoyed by this but can't actually do much about it.

That guy is a troll we've yet to meet. centaursTesticle [CT]. They choose that name for themselves. We’ve only seen this guys creepy silhouette. This was during the scene where grimAuxiliatrix [GA] removes Travos’s legs with a chainsaw. We can learn a lot about this guy from this conversation. He’s not at all receptive to Nepeta’s roleplaying. He seems to be all business and always fully serious. He’s also a classist as blood color seems to determine a trolls class. Also their text colors seem to represent their blood colors. He accuses Nepeta of having "loosened morals" for having “fraternized with the base classes”. Nepeta doesn't care about blood color or classes. Nepeta mentions that CT uses a bow. Also CT has seemingly no idea how to actually use a bow. This means Nepeta is actually a better hunter as he is. She's actually taking out large prey with nothing more than her claws. CT apparently is against killing beasts as he venerates them.

CT claims Aradia and him have made a deal that he will co-lead the blue team. It seems she’d made this deal with everyone on that team. The collective ego’s of everyone on that team just seem to have made that possible. Nepeta tells him she will be joining the red team. This really seems to upset CT. He claims she is too delicate to associate with base blooded hooligans. Painfully Nepeta obeys CT’s demands and lets Travos know she can't join the red team. Travos is ok with this. He mentions this happened during the dangerous role player event that caused his injury. So perhaps it's better that Nepeta stays with the blue team.

A few times we’ve cut to a girl who seems to have strong psychic powers destroying the frog ruins. We now get to meet her. Her name is Aradia Megido, she mentions she had interests such as Archeology. But, but she no longer remembers any of that. She says her current calling is to destroy the mystic ruins she found because she's bored. Like Sollux she hears the voices of the dead and they guide her. She’s always been able to hear these since an accident involving a kind of role playing caused an accident. This accident also killed her lusus. Instead of building her own home she’d apparently been living in the ruins. This is also where she had also discovered the game. Knowing this game would destroy her civilization she gave it to Sollux to adapt and play. She’s named the game SGRUB (like SBURB). She got him to get 12 players for the game including herself. He believes he’s the leader of the blue team but she says that isn't the case.

Her modus is a Ouji Board she can only gets items if the spirits will it. In this case she's given the Bing CrosbyTop used by Spades Slick. She says she had found it during an archaeological dig. She has no idea who the person is but she finds its mobility practical.

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] is pestering her. GA has genuine concern for Aradia. She mentions that today is the day that Aradia wanted to doom everyone. GA tried to remind her that she doesn't actually need to follow the will of the voices in her head. But, this doesn't seem to work. Aradia and GA will be on separate teams but GA offers to help should Aradia need her. It seems Aradia's transfixed by whatever will is controlling her and ignoring GA.

Aradia checks in on Sollux in a conversation we’d read before. The one in which she informs him of the ploy and he tries to abort the game. She’d then go visit his home. Or at least the roof of it where his Lusus is chained up. Sollux’s Lusus isn't a threat to her as she uses her powers to hold the creature in the air above her. She holds the creature while she responds to some chats on the cosbytop.

arachnidsGrip [AG] pesters Aradia. AG seems to know everything Aradia is doing. She asks if she has hatched her plan against Sollux yet. Aradia is working on that. AG also mentions that the plan is that she and Aradia would co-lead the blue team. AG mentions that she had a present for Aradia that she will find later. Aradia has no reaction to this. AG wants a “team” name for the pair of them. Apparently they had some kind of beef in the past and have only recently begun collaborating. Aradia seems to tolerate this arrangement but doesn't actually seem to like AG. AG just seems to talk considerably more than she listens.

Last time we met Travos. He’s odd, especially for a troll. He’s not afraid to show vulnerability and isn't ashamed of his interest. At least not to the audience. Though this isn't why I dislike the character, these are positive traits. The reasons I don't like will come later. Also that creepy expression on his face.

During his zoning out flash forward thing Travos has gotten a few messages. Firstly arachnidsGrip [AG]. This one is new, the troll under Scorpio. They are mean. They inform Travos he is on the red team while she is on Blue. She points out his team has “blind girls” and points out his disability insinuating team blue is for disabled people. Travos doesn't want to talk to her but also doesn't seem to be doing much about it. He mentions he’s given a name to his self esteem, on the advice of grimAuxiliatrix [GA]. He named it Rufio a character from the Peter Pan based movie “Hook” (1991). This gets him ruthlessly insulted by AG for having imaginary friends. She instructs him to stop listening to GA and she rambles on like a dang coke fiend for a bit before leaving.

Polar opposite to this encounter Travos then chats with Gamzee. Gamzee apologized for zoning out mid conversation even though they had not actually started the conversation yet. Gamzee is also on the red team and is cool with Travos. He’s actually somewhat nurturing towards Travos being more confident. They enjoy some slam poetry and discuss the game. The chain for the red team is that Karkat will log in from Terezi. Gamzee will then log in from Karkat, and then Tarvos from Gamzee. Then supposedly 4 others. We know karkat is in already but Terezi is off doing something in her forest. Then after faygo they have the worst rap off in all of paradox space. Fortunately, it doesn't actually show us any of it. I’ll be thankful for that small mercy.

Terezi is doing a thing in the forest. Which is to say she is in a forest which is burning all around her. In front of her is a giant scale. On one end is an egg, her lusus that she has never met. On the other scale is a giant skull. The skull is over an ominous button. We can guess if the egg hatches then the skull will depress the button. Terezi also mentioned that the day she meets her lusus the world would end. The reason she hasn't met her lusus yet is because it had not hatched yet.

Terezi explains that there is a dragon in the egg. The dragon is blind until it reaches maturity so it was able to psychically connect to Terezi and teach her how to survive without sight. She was able to access her dream self and vaguely see the world around it. To us is familiar, as is her outfit. She was seeing Prospit.

The fire from the forest was caused by falling meteors. This is much like what Rose experienced before entering the medium. The heat of these fires hatched the young dragon causing the doomsday button to activate. The dragon is immediately struck by a falling meteor and killed. We are told this one will be prototyped into a sprite. The doomsday device counts down from 6:12.

Last time we saw apocalypseArisen [AA] floating over to Sollux’s Lusus. Given the effects of the curse that Karkat had unleashed we could assume something bad was going to happen. The audience asks to “be the other girl” hoping to learn more about AA.

We start off with grimAuxiliatrix [GA]. She is riding on the head of her lusus, a giant flying bug with horns. She appears to be flying around Jade's tower, but most of it is submerged in the ground. The frog ruins are nearby, intact but very weathered and rusty. The audience isn't pleased with this and asked to stop being the “other girl”.

We now see adiosToreador [AT] in his room. He is bound to a wheelchair. His lusus is a tiny bull that flies around him. His name is Tavros Nitram. He likes fairy tales and fairies in general. Many of the posters in his room are just fairies with troll features. He wants to capture and train the various wildlife of Alternia to fight battles for him. These are apparently in the form of card games. He also enjoys “Hardcore roleplay” which leads to his accident. He’s also into slam poetry, though given how badly he gets destroyed by Dave we can assume he’s not very good at this.

He plays a card game called Fiduspawn with his lusus. He throws a ball which hatches into a weird spider alien face hugger. It attacks a “host plush” teddy bear causing another weird alien horse thing to burst from its chest. This new thing eats the spider thing that created it. Tavros then uses his mind control to take over the creator and do battle with his lusus. Though apparently that means he commands it to take a nap with it. I guess he doesn't like violence. He decides to also take a nap which is a struggle given his disability, and giant horns. Later he equips his jousting lance in his strife specibus. He practices with this weapon in hopes of becoming a Cavalreaper. But he suspects he will be culled for being disabled…

That's kinda f#%ked up. The trollian empire is brutal but that’s straight up bad eugenics.

On Travos’s wall is a poster for Pupa Pan. He wants a man to come with some Special Stardust so that he can fly and enjoy adventures. Though he mentions this desire to fly had been around long prior to his accident.

We are shown a future where Travos has Robotic legs built for him by a friend who likes robots. He seems to be in the same place the troll had been when chatting with the kids. He mentions GA was kind enough to remove his old legs with her chainsaw. We see his blood is brown. We also see that the troll with the mark of Sagittarius watches from the shadows. Travos mentioned this was the friend who was into robotics, he likes to silently watch and it's creepy. We’ll meet them later I am sure.

We got a glimpse of a troll floating around the frog ruins before. She removed the head of the frog statue seemingly with just her mind. Perhaps these are psionic powers like the ones Sollux. We still don't know who this is but she further destroys the frog statue just by giving it a little, uncaring kick. We can assume this person is very powerful. What we're given is that this person is apocalypseArisen [AA]. The one who was able to confirm the vision Sollux had. She's also the one the other trolls don't seem to like chatting with anymore for some reason.

Sollux and AA are chatting. They speak of going to a new dimension. The voices haunting them should stop once they get there. AA’s outlook is generally hopeless and depressing. But she’s mostly just emotionless, she mentions she doesn't remember anger. She mentions that Karkats anger is vital to him sabotaging his own plan. His sabotage of his own plan is critical to a greater plan. She mentions the voices never lie. This is familiar to the old ones that Dave and Rose can hear. AA informs Sollux that this game isn’t a way to save their world. Their world is already fated to be destroyed. They can only hope to preserve their species. She also lets him know that he isn't the leader of this operation. Someone else will enter the game before him. Sollux doesn’t like what he is hearing. As a Seer himself he’d know if this was true. He now wants to abort the whole game in hopes it will change something. He reaches out to Terezi to let her know. But she already offloaded the leadership role to Karkat. Frantically Sollux demands Karkat quit playing the game. This doesn't work. Karkat already accused Sollux of trying to put Terezi in charge as a way of weakening the red team. He now thinks that this is another attempt to gain an advantage. Also he’s already installed the game and has begun playing it with Terezi. This leads to the usual petty arguing that we’d come to expect. In doubt of his hacking prowess, Karkat runs the code that Sollux created. This was the Mobius Double Reacharound Virus, the one that makes computers explode. The code worked shortly after while Karkat was away from his PC. This is what caused the giant hole in the side of his hive. This code also curses everyone on his contact list to grave misfortunes. Specifically their Lusus will die. Karkats has become the first. It got killed in the explosion. We're told all the trolls except for one would prototype their Lusus. This would make their monarchs extremely powerful.

Apparently the prototyping process prefers the dead or doomed. Though this isn't required. We see Gamzee Holding the head of his sea dragon Lusus which looks to have been impaled somehow.

Sollux is beating himself up for even giving Karkat that code. He realized that he was just showing off and it cost everyone dearly. He decides to delete the code and all of his viruses so that cant do any more harm. He noticed one virus he had found was not one of his. He had found it, and it triggers only if the universe is destroyed. He mentions even if he deleted it, it's likely to have spread. It seems to contain an ominous gif of various pool balls. It gives strong vibes of “The Felt”

We are told that the code summons an indestructible demon into a void world. It will then rule over it. This Demon can also traverse time. And the creator of the code is the demon itself. We can see that this code has installed itself in a server that exists beyond the medium. One placed there by Rose to house the GameFaqs entries. This means this impossible to kill time traveling demon is not only already out but no longer bound to one universe. Sollux’s Lusus starts to act up. He’s apparently built his hive on Communal Hive Stem which is like an apartment building. He has his Lusus chained up on the roof of this structure. His Bicylops Lusus has a visitor, its AA floating in the sky around it.

Last time the story was focused on Terezi attempting to recruit her team for “the game”. This attempt was going poorly as her friends all had excuses to delay any commitment to the game. But Karkat wanted leadership of the team so Terezi just gave it to him. We then got a look into a future where Karkat is already in the medium, his home was covered in paint and modified by Terezi’s blind gaming.

We go back to a time prior to this skip to when Karkat was about to confront the crabby neighbour living below him. He had dropped a vault through his floor which was no dough upsetting to the one living below him. He faces a giant white crab monster.

He mentions this is his Lusus Naturae and Custodian. I assume that the custodian is the relationship between the trolls and these creatures, and a Lusus is the creature? Lusus meaning “freak” and Naturae Meaning untamed. This creature apparently raised Karkat. Trolls do not have parents. Karkat describes that imperial drones carry Filial Pails (based on websters this is just a bucket relating to offspring. I’ll leave that to your imagination. This bucket is tossed into a slurry by the Mother Grub who produces thousands of eggs. Those eggs hatch into larvae which metamorphosis into the more humanoid-like forms. After some trials in the deep underground a lusus may adopt them to raise on the surface. They use droids to build a hive, then once adults, they leave the planet. It makes sense that the Trolls we’ve met are only “teens”.

Anyway this fight isn't met with a cool animation sequence. We are given a bit of a cool track from Toby Fox but just told to imagine how cool the fight was. I guess someone was feeling tired that day. We are told that Karkat ended the fight by feeding the lusus. He describes the relationship as being codependent as he is protected by the creature but must also care for it on some levels.

Then we’re introduced to the next troll. We’d seen them as twinArmageddons [TA]. We had seen them before helping grimAuxiliatrix [GA] with her computer. We get the intro explaining how cool he is, almost Dave likes his coolness. But he is also moody as hell. We the readers are told to F#%K off. If I had to guess, the character's obsession with duality is some sort of split personality or bi-polar disorder.

Anyway we are introduced instead to a cat-troll living in a cave? Nope GA changed his mind and decided it's his turn.

His name is Sollux Captor, He confirms his bipolar disorder. He’s a computer wiz as we already know. He claims he can hear the voices of the dead with his mutant brain, or see visions of the the future? He knows this game he has adapted will somehow be necessary to save his people but he doesn't know how.

He apparently doesn't need an inventory modus as he has psionic abilities. In demonstrating his psionic abilities he manages to slice open one of his Beehouse Mainframes with a giant ninja star. This seems to be a server made out of a large beehive. Obviously slicing it in half made the bees unhappy. But he just makes them sleep with his power. He mentions the mind honey that came oozing out should never be eaten. He uses this to feed his lusus.

Sollux contacts Terezi. He has picked her as the leader of one of the 2 teams he’s planned for this game. He decides 2 teams will optimize their chances of success. Terezi is on board with this idea but isn't really sure about the whole world ending thing. Sollux points out he isn't the only one with this vision as apocalypseArisen [AA] had also had this. He also predicts before he dies he too will be blind like Terezi. Though everyone dies in his vision his death is the most brutal. Terezi thinks that Sollux might still just be a little melodramatic. She’d confirm with AA but she finds that AA is not fun to talk with these days.

Last time we met Terezi, the troll behind the handle gallowsCalibrator [GC]. She’s still in her room. She decides to equip her walking cane as her strife specibus. This counts as a canekind. She mentions she will need it for the Medium. This is very interesting as she somehow knows the Medium exists. Her current goal is to recruit her team members. She chooses arsenicCatnip [AC] as she frequently role plays with her. What follows is pretty much the kind of roleplay I saw many teen girls do in the early 2000’s. It’s weird and cringy with a lot of asterix. AC is some sort of lion with many mouths and baby cubs. While Terezi is a dragon of some sort. The scenario is that AC is preparing a meal out of something called a choler bear. She offers it to Terezi in exchange for not eating her cubs. After whatever the heck that was, Terezi asked AC to join her team for the game. But AC needs permission from someone named Blar.

She then contacted Gamzee in the conversion we saw earlier. Gamzee suggested she recruit Karkat instead. He told her he’d join whenever he's done spacing out on the beach. She assumes that will be an eternity and moves on.

Reluctantly she answers Karkat who’d just begun to pester her. He informs her he’s the leader now whether she likes it or not. He’s decided this is best. Terezi has decided she doesn't give a darn. She just lets him have it stating she didn't think he’d actually want to be leader and she really doesn't care. Karkat seems disappointed by the lack of a fight and let her be second in command. She instructs him that she will start a server and he will join it and “lead the adventure”. She also mentions she had no “Lusus”. It's not mentioned if we can assume this is the troll word for “guardian” though they had mentioned “Custodians” . She can hear her Lusus in her dream but believes that if she ever meets then the world will end. This inspires Karkat to deal with the crabby neighbour downstairs before entering the game. But we don't see this.

The story skips ahead. Karkat's home is now covered in bad drawings and has some odd modifications to make it taller. It's now located in a land with black islands and red water called The Land of Pulse and Haze (LOPAH) . There's also a giant hole in the side of his house, and a sprite near it. He sees Karkat calling himself the Knight of Blood. He is wielding a sickle called the “Homes Smell Ya Later”. The hero stands before his own toilet which is on an island and not in his home. Karkat complains to Terezi about who reminds him that she is blind. She tells him he’ll need to host the next player so the chain will start. She also knows about the meteors that will soon crash into her. Karkat doesn't know anything. He’s apparently not contacted any of the other players. But she reminds him that if they fail to get her into the game he's screwed. “A while” prior to this. We see the frog ruins. The same ones from Jades island and a meteor floating in the veil. They are now in a cave. Floating near them is a troll with solid white eyes and a tattered dress. She has the mark of Aries on her shirt. Seemingly with only the power of her mind she removes the head of the main frog statue. As this statue has a head in Jades time, this may be either a copy of the ruins or somehow a distant future version of them.

In a different place we see a trollian hand with many rings picking up a 2L bottle of Faygo from a beach. They complain of “land dweller rubbish”. One of the rings has the sign of aquarius on it.

So far in act 5 we’ve met Karkat and Gamzee. Karkat is some kind of angry kid who seems fed up with everything and has “ambitions”. Gamzee is just some sort of stoned juggalo.

We are with Karkat as he attempts to code using a Trollian programming language. This language sounds like looping recursive hell. He shows off a virus made by twinArmageddons [TA]. The virus will apparently make the target's computer explode. This also apparently curses the user and everyone it then spreads too. Notably this is importing 2 libraries Universe 1 and 2. He has no idea how this code works and is too proud to ask.

TA reaches out to invite Karkat to invite him to the game. He describes it as a game in which their civilization depends on them playing it. TA had somehow adapted the game using some kind of technology that apocalypseArisen [AA] (who we haven't met) found in a ruin. Boy does that seem like a good idea. Karkat also mentions that TA has a “mutant brain”. It seems like TA can hear thoughts or something but it isn't explained yet. More on the game TA explains there is a red and blue team. TA is leading the Blue team. Karkat is on the red team but he's upset he isn't the leader. TA chose gallowsCalibrator [GC] for that. The accusation is that TA chose a blind girl to lead his opposition so that he could win. Though Karkat isn't very vague about his jealousy over his self given status as a great leader. TA mentions he doesn't really care and if Karkat can get GC to agree to give him leadership of the team then he can have it.

After this conversation, Karkat notes that the resident below him is getting “crabby”. He needs to have an encounter with them soon. This is similar to the kids not wanting to face their guardians.

We are then taken to another character. This one we’ve met before as gallowsCalibrator [GC]. Her room is very colourful, but she can't actually see it. Though from what we know she can taste colours. So perhaps the semi transparent colorful curtains make the air taste nice? Her name is Terezi Pyrope. She has a wall covered in colorful dragon scales, dragon plushies called Scalemates. Terezi also enjoys roleplay. She describes it as hardcore justice and “orchestrating the demise of the wicked”. She has many Trollian law books in braille. Almost shocking such a brutal culture would have respect for accessibility needs. She also has a bunch of chalk drawings on her walls. She mentions she lives alone in the woods. Also she is currently the leader of the red team with 5 friends. The blue team also has 6 players.

She starts us off with a scenario. One of her Scalemates is on trial. She is the prosecuting attorney and the Judge which she calls the Honorable Tyranny. She is prosecuting Senator Lemonsnout, and defence isn't a thing in Alternia. She proceeds to slap the yellow plush to interrogate them. They’re accused of stealing beetle reserves. The key witness was murdered. It seems the green plush was stabbed by a dagger. However, the senator dropped his personal satchel containing illicit beetles in the courtroom. As the prosecuting attorney she can decide the fate of the accused. The Honorable Tyranny is apparently just there to be menacing. She borrows old movie tropes from Batman and no country for old men and flipped a coin. Though the coin flip is favorable to lemon snout. She reminds him that justice is blind and hangs him anyway. Lemonsnout hangs from Terezi’s treehouse along with many other Scalemates. She adjourns and ends the fantasy by licking the drawing of the Honorable Tyranny she made on the wall. She says the red chalk taste good.

We are currently in a new act. All the stuff involving human kids getting sucked into a video game will be put aside for a while. The story is now focused on these trolls and how they came to be in their own failed session. Karkat is the first of these trolls we get introduced to. We know him as carcinoGeneticist [CG] before this act.

We are still checking out Karkat's bedroom. His PC looks somewhat normal except the tower is a big purple larval sack. Also, there are way too many cords running to the display. He has a copy of game Grub magazine which we can assume is the Trollian equivalent to Game Bro. He also shows a DVD copy of the trollian version The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This is mostly useless info, but he does mention “blue bloods” seem to be trolls with literally blue blood. The blue bloods are higher socially and snobbish.

A fellow troll pesters Karkat, terminallyCapricious [TC]. We haven't actually seen this one yet, though they did try to contact Jade at some point. TC considers Karkat to be his best friend. Though Karkat seems to hate this guy. TC is really into “miracles” and the drink Faygo. Karkat and TC talk about a big thing that twinArmageddons [TA] has going on. We know TA is the computer savvy one who was helping grimAuxiliatrix [GA]. Karkat has no idea what TA is up to though and figures it will be another project that wastes time.

We then go to TC, we see he is pretty different from the other trolls. He's obsessed with clowns. I had no idea what this was when I first read through this. These are references to a specific fandom for a band. More details on this come out later but to spoil it for your sanity TC is a Juggalo. I still don't know much about Juggalo culture but it doesn't seem like something I’d mesh well with. It’s also pretty much non-existent in my area. Anyway TC’s profanity laden introduction tells us his name is Gamzee Makara. He considers himself a fan of “clowns of a grim persuasion which may not be in full possession of their mental faculties”. He describes his as an obscure cult following some minstrels. These minstrels will lead them to a planet that doesn't exist yet. He mentions the cult's looked down upon by the rest of society. That's a bit of an ironic comparison to how the Homestuck community is sometimes viewed. Anyway his room is a mess of clowning/busking tools. This includes juggling pins, horns, and a unicycle. He doesn't know how to adjust the unicycle's height so it is too tall for him to actually use. There's also a lot of Faygo and pie tins of green sludge. His fetch modus is some kind of random nonsense. He claims to have no understanding of it and actively chooses not to. Also as he takes his husktop (laptop) it seems he can break the fourth wall and see the UI. The “pies” that he “bakes” are just pie tins filled with the Sopor Slime that is in troll beds. He mentions that he is not supposed to eat the stuff and it causes brain damage. He claims to not know this (despite explaining it) and blames his custodian. The custodian is apparently “out to sea”. We can see Gamzee’s hive is on a beach next to the sea. He’s equipped with a juggling pin which is a club type.

While on the beach he attempts to answer a pester from another troll. His inventory system tosses a bottle of Faygo into the ocean. He then just violates the “rules” entirely and just grabs his laptop out of the ui with his hands. This is pretty concerning, it also raises the questions of why modus exist at all. The modus, and other inventory systems are not a mechanic of SBURB, they just exist in the universe. It’s as fundamental as gravity, and yet this guy is so spaced out he can just ignore it.

The other troll pestering him is gallowsCalibrator [GC] (the blind troll). GC wants Gamzee to play a game with her. This is apparently the big mystery game that they had all been excited about. Ganezee agrees to join once he is back inside. Though GC knows he will just space out on the beach.

We’ve entered the 5th Act. My hot take from my original read of this is that the trolls kind of suck. I know they are a fan favourite, but I'll explain as we do this thing. One thing you may notice is the trollian language. It’s from The Elder Scrolls which apparently landed the writers in some hot water from Bethesda. But the archives use it, and provide a handy codex. Anyway we start out on –Turdodor Fuckball– Alternia. We're greeted with a character we have met before. carcinoGeneticist [CG] gets introduced in the same fashion John was. It is his 13th “wriggling day” (birthday). We learn his real name is –Bulgereek Nookstain– Karkat Vantas. We can see his room has grey walls and floors. His bed seems to be a big purple larval thing filled with green stuff. We can see a purple sky and clouds outside.

Much like John he is into bad rom coms and he has posters for them all over his room. The cast on these posters are just photoshopped earth actors with grey skin. Horns are also added, and the titles are ridiculously long. With more totally not controversial actors like Will Smith. He also is an amature coder. He has a cool Sickle in hopes of becoming something called a Threshecutioner. Karkat mentions he has a new chat system called Trollian and he is going to play a game with 5 of his friends. A game that doesn't exist yet. It seems this is a past event from where we left off, from before the trolls got into the game. He shows off his stuff. His bed is something called a Recuperacoon and it's full of Sopor Slime.

His modus is a system that puts his items in an encoded vault that he needs to hack to use. This is the least practical one yet. Taking the vault into his inventory doubled the weight and sent it through his floor. This means his scythe is now gone and there is a hole in his floor.

He also shows his programming manual. The ~ATH - A Handbook For The Imminently Deceased. This doesn't look like any language I know about but I pretty much only code in Typescript these days.

Karkat goes out of his “respiteblock” (bedroom) and onto his “extraterraneal landing slats” (balcony). He explained he designed and built his “Hive” (House). Trolls get taught to do this very young. He also lives with his Custodian (troll version of a guardian). He goes into a poem but cuts to a rant. Karkat likes to rant. He mentions he has grand ambitions but no real direction. He feels tonight will change this.

Note this isnt act 5 yet, I think we are in an epilogue for act 4.

The situation has become bad.

We start with Roses “final” entry to gameFaq.com. We vaguely saw in [S]Descend Rose's gate exploded. She explains here that she blew it up. She’s mentioned that both the troll and the old gods have told her this is a doomed session . With this in mind there is no sense in playing the game as intended. She's now hellbent on changing her fate. She’s also used magic to place her guide on a server that can exist outside of earth. Her hope is it will help “any future species” who may find it.

Meanwhile, hours after the Reckoning, the Warweary Villein(WV) is wandering a destroyed planet. He's wrapped in the bed sheets from John's dream bedroom. The Warweary Villein is now the Wayward Vagabond. He thinks back to the events that got him here. WV was for some reason spared by Jack. Perhaps it was to make him suffer being a survivor. Or perhaps Jack felt the WV was so little of a threat he just ignored him entirely. He saw John's dreamself over the body of Jade's former Dream self. She is dead. He takes her ring though we don't know why he’d have known to do so. The clouds of Skaia reveal events past, present and future. John sees himself near a castle and knows that is where he must now go.

The Postal mistress (PM) also crashes to the desert planet. Her clothing bloodied she fashions some new clothes from a Prospite banner. She has her sword the ground has a bunch of mailboxes around her. The Postal Mistress becomes the Peregrine Mendicant. She recalls slaying the Hegemonic Brute (HB). HB had attempted to take the white kings scepter from her and failed. She now holds the crowns of the white king and the queen. Using HB’s walkie talkie she summoned Jack. Her mission from him was to kill the white king and queen. These crowns would be evidence of that. Even though she didn't actually harm them, She’s tricked Jack. She's presented with the Green package. The package she absolutely must present to John. She finds him and completes her mission. John now finally receives the package from Jade, the one he should have received at the beginning. He just found Jade's dead body not long ago. Now he has the message that came with it. The message doesn't seem to be from Jade, it's someone else who says they convinced Jade to give him this present. John will meet them soon. It doesn't really mention who wrote but it does mention all the contents of the box.

There is a second letter which is actually from Jade. She mentions she can't see John reading but isn't sure why he looks sad. She’d lived on Prospit most of her life, and used the clouds to see the future. She knows that when John wakes up it’ll be because something bad has happened but she’s happy he is awake. The present is something that her “Penpal” had suggested. The penpal had gotten the idea from someone else. She knows these are items that John needs for some reason. She can't wait for him to wake up and she really wants to finally meet him in the real world. This is of course devastating. As John sits alone in his grief the tip of the sword is at his face. Jack has come for him and he wants the ring. But, he's interrupted by the contents of the box. It's the Bunny, in some new ultimate form. It is now modified with mechanical parts and seems to be fully autonomous. It’s also geared up with some crazy weapons including a hammer, 2 needles, a rifle and broken sword. Jack seems to know that this is and he is not going to mess with it.

On the desert planet the Authority Regulator (AR) is near some old frog ruins. He is wrapping himself in caution tape and seems to have found some arms. The Authority Regulator is now the Aimless Renegade. He witnessed The “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) use the MEOW book on a machine aimed at a dog. This created some sort of green energy and a puppy. AR hopped on his rocket board and flew out of the temple as it began to fire green light. He returned to the lab where John had been. John is still there though as he is in the dreaming world he is no longer awake in the lab. The lab is on one the asteroids affected the Reckoning and is currently being flung into a portal. AR decides it's his duty to protect citizens. He straps John to the rocket board with caution tape and sends him off into space. This is apparently safe, folks can just breathe in space. Jack flees the scene. Somehow he knows not to fight the mecha bunny. Meanwhile Jade's Grandpa is landing his spaceship. We see grandpa collect Jade's body and return to his ship. He leaves Rose's Mom and John's Dad Behind. John must have moved far from this as he doesn't see any of it. On the ship in the sky Granpa follows tradition and we see Jade's taxidermied body.

That’s pretty messed up there.

We see the white queen fly her ship into a portal she looks as Prospit is now in crumbles floating in space. She lands on the desert planet with her entourage. The White Queen becomes the Windswept Questant (WQ). We see her many years later finding and repairing the Egg ship. Then years later she is with WV, PM and AR in Can town. The mayor of cantown had been harbouring a secret. In his rusty knife all these years he had hidden a ring. The ring of power. John witnesses this. He sees it in a cloud.

Next to that cloud is another one with.. Awl damn it Andrew Hussie (AH) with another recap.

So as before I suggest reading that if you’re confused. Here are the many points I missed, or did not explain well enough.

• The Lil Cal sent back with the Bro baby is specifically the Dream version Cal. The “real” Cal got sliced up in the fight between Dave and Bro. This might imply that Cal is actually originally from the dream realm. AH mentions that Cal was so annoying to Dave that he was in Dave’s dreams. This would make Cal a manifestation of pure annoyance.

• A little more on the old gods. We know both Rose and Dave can hear them though Dave doesn't want to. This is because they are the “Children of Derse”. I think this is a balance. Derse kids get the old gods chattering in their heads. The Prospit kids get early access to the clouds of Skaia. Jade took advantage of this to help everyone.

• The reason that Daves egg hatched was apparently time. His bird wasn't trying to keep the egg from Dave by keeping it in the tower, it was trying to hatch it. It did so at just the right time. I don't think that was really clear enough in the story though. Dave sprite could have easily confirmed this.

• I completely conflated “Skaia” and “The Battleground” and had to go back and make a bunch of edits. Sorry.

• he confirms that it was Becquerel (Bec) that DD used the MEOW book to make. I figured that’d be a spoiler but I guess it is kind of obvious. He mentions it will make him “dangerous” though we don't know how yet.

• I may not have it clear enough. The battlefield changed on each player entering. So if a 4th player entered it would evolve further. AH hints at this. - he suggests one of the reasons Jack may have spared WV is out of respect for a fellow mutineer.

• the dueling pistols that were left with Jade's Grandpa were in Jade's room. I think AH mentioning that might be for a reason given the room recently blew up and scattered some stuff.

• The dog Halley was called “Harley” by grandpa as a result of a speech impediment. Harley is also Jade's surname. - way back when AR surrendered to WV, this was because the symbol for Bec was carved into the pumpkin WV was carrying. AH points out that AR was afraid of the events he witnessed in the labs.

• I didn’t notice that the “ships” found by the exiles represented the items used to access the medium. These were actually in the meteors which had hit their homes. Johns grew into a tree that became an apple ship that PM found, Roses was a wine bottle and the cork was the ship WV found. Daves was an egg and the ship the WQ had come in on. She found that ship split into two because Bro cut the meteor in half. AR didn't find a ship yet.

Buckle up I’m counting this animation as several pages. This is another one of those critical moments in the story. It starts a bit awkwardly. Since we never actually saw Dave unlock the egg to get the medium. The story kind of skipped that to try and trick us with the Davesprite timeline.

So the animation starts with that event. As Dave was climbing up the radio mast to get the egg the bird sprite started to peck at his head. The result was Dave and the egg falling off of the tower. The giant meteor would have landed directly on him at that time. But, what Dave may not have seen was that the meteor was split in Half. This gave him the extra split second he needed. Though we don't see Dave actually crack the egg it's implied. Dave is rescued by his brother's rocket board. When the meteor came down Bro was riding on top of it, He split it in two with his sword saving Dave. We then see present Dave in his red tux looking towards his first gate. Though he didn't see his brother at that moment he likely knew that he was there protecting him. This is why he’d been thinking of him in the last panel.

Next we see the starship that Jade's Grandpa is piloting flying closer to Skiai. Roses mom has a mean looking sniper rifle, Dad has a pipe in his mouth and a cake in hand. They are going to kick some ass or something.

When we last left Jack, he’d just slain the black king. The army of the Warweary Villein(WV) was surrounding him as they’d come to do the same thing. But though they had the same goal they are not allies. Jack begins slaughtering the army as WV watches on in horror. Using the ring, Jack summons miles of red vines. These vines begin to cover the battleground destroying everything in their path. They even rip the planet itself asunder. An underling surrenders the scepter to Jack. Though he uses this to start the reckoning.

Jack then flies to Prospit and destroys it using the same Red Miles. He also severs the chain holding the moon of Prospit causing the moon to fall towards the Battleground.

Before this we See the former white queen and her entourage escaping. We’d see a ship leaving just as Jack arrives implying that she escapes. Also you may notice one of her entourage is holding a bucket of paint. This character is actually important later.

Also on Prospit is Jade and John’s dream selves. Jade is awakened and currently in the dreamworld of Prospit. But John has never awakened and has not yet gained control of his dream self. Jade know she needs to wake John up but now with the moon falling towards the Battleground she needs to move fast. As the moon falls John falls from the tower. Jade catches him but she is now between Skiai and a falling moon about to smash into it. She tries desperately to wake him, including slapping him around but he will not awaken. In disparity she throws him out of the path of the moon. But, she cannot escape. Jade's dream self is killed. I’ll note she was still wearing the ring of power from the white queen when this occurred. Being disconnected so violently from Jades dream self the dreambot explodes. This caused Jade's awake self to fall from her tower in the waking world.

Also John finally awakens in the dream world. Too late. lazy bastard.

the Battleground is not destroyed but the moon of prospit leaves a massive creator. We see about 30% of the planet's surface, another 30% is by the red miles.

Jacks rampage continues as he moves to the Land of Heat and Clockwork (LOHAC) where Dave currently is. But he encounters Big Bro instead on a huge turntable. They fight, we only see the fight end with Bro destroying the turntable they are fighting on.

There is an intermission involving Squiddles for some reason. I’m sure there is actually a deep point to the Squiddles stuff. Relate to the old gods, but in this instance they are just a tension cut. It’s not related to the story.

John is with the babies as the Reckoning clock counts down. Watch baby has an item with it.

• John has the colonel sassacre.
• Jade has the “modified” half knit bunny
• Rose has the unmodified oil stained bunny
• Dave has Maplehoof (interesting..)
• Johns Grandma(?) had the oil stained fedora
• Roses mom(?) has Mewtini
• Jades Grandpa(?) has the dueling pistols
• Big Bro(?) has Lil Cal

Odd that John's guardian isn't actually his dad but his grandmother. But anyway the babies are pulled towards the Battleground by the Reckoning but fall through portals. Warping them through time and space.

We also see The “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) who uses the MEOW book on the machine. The machine is targeting Halley, the normal dog. The creates the usual sludge copy but the machine goes haywire with green sparks. The Authority Regulator (AR) watches in terror at the situation. It seems this is the birth of Bec? We see Dave and Rose fighting their way to their first gates. With Rose we see an explosion by her gate and her flying away.

Lastly, we see Bec outside Jade's tower in the waking world. There is a massive meteor in the sky and the part of the tower where her room was is just a smoking limb.

Before ending this I’ll gush about the animation here. It’s friggin’ amazing. The way the animation moves to the music, another piece by Toby is well coordinated. There are moments of the music which highlight the motifs of the characters involved giving them their own sound profiles. This one also has a lot of visual artist involvement including some of Lexxy Douglass’ work. I think she’s my favorite of the visual artists for Homestuck.

The time of reckoning is near!

As far as we know this means all the asteroids in the veil get warped around many of them into Skiai. carcinoGeneticist [CG] mentioned that this was the game's way of making the player hurry up and kill the black king. But this isn't quite fair, or normal. Johns only passed the second ring and Jade isn't even in the game yet (at least not in the waking world). What extra unfairness as the game seems to be the entire reason John exists. The game somehow made him create himself in a lab just to play it, and it’s doomed him.

CG contacts John once more. John's surrounded by babies and wonders how the reckoning is going to get them to their timelines. CG reminds John he can't really stop the reckoning. Also it’s about to start in a few minutes. It’s not an instant process but it's way too early to prevent. CG has mentioned that his own session was different. That he knows that the event is occurring too early, but he’s never said way. John asked CG what is different here. CG only responds with “JACK NOIR”.

John had no idea who Jack was at this point. In the troll session Jack had been an ally. He helped the trolls defeat the queen then became their exiled guide. He’s not supposed to have committed regicide and become a usurper. By taking control he is advancing the game's plot way ahead of schedule. John is not really processing any of this.

CG mentions he might as well give the babies to bunnies now. John thinks about this a minute and we get what many consider to be the most stupid moment in all of Homestuck. As once again John relives that scene from Con Air.

(I had to watch is many times, you owe me).

This animation's done with Micheal Guy Bowman serenading us with a version of How do I Live. The song featured in this scene of Con Air. John emotionally returns to the oil covered bunny to Baby Rose. Rose doesn't really want it but seems to take it anyway. This while practically punching the baby version of her mother out of the way. As he does this CG is watching in cringe and confusion. As John was taking in the raw emotion of this moment, baby Jade tugged on his pants. John remembers he had taken the modified bunny that Rose had made for him. So he once again repeats the scene but for baby Jade. He gives her the half knitted bunny as the music hits its crescendo. At this point as CG is dying of cringe gallowsCalibrator [GC] comes from behind him pointing at the screen and laughing. I’ll point out that this doesn't even make sense! She can't see the damn screen!

Anyway I can kind of see why this might be somewhat of a real emotional moment for him. Again he hasn't actually met most of his friends in person. He recently ran into Rose but she was asleep. This is the only moment so far where he is with all of his friends in person. Even if they are all babies. John takes his friendships very sincerely and isn't afraid to show them vulnerability. We’ve seen this in the notes he had left to each of them. Today is really another birthday for all of them and he again gets to give them gifts (except Dave I guess?). He could have also at least pinned a note to himself or something but there is still time i guess. Another way we can see this is that John is processing some serious Trauma. For John movies are his source of comfort. Engaging in flatout escapism seems like his reaction to all the crap he is dealing with. Last time he was dealing with stuff he learned he had vandalized his own room and had no idea why. He also learned his father wasn't really a professional busking prankster. He learned his was a mundane businessman. Though we now know his fathers interest in japery is actually from John's grandma. Johns now just learned he was born in a lab. His father isn't actually his father at all, John may have just realized he's adopted. He saw his grandmother's death, by a meteor. He might also have noted that the meteor was actually his baby self crashing to the planet. So in some sense he may now blame himself for his grandma’s death. There’s also an existential horror here. He is his own creator, and the creator of his friends. What responsibility must he feel from this? Especially knowing that they are all doomed. That part probably is what broke him at this time with CG pushing that knowledge onto him.

And this ends Act 4…? Well no. I guess Andrew decided to follow up the dumb moment with a psyche out. That's fine because I have a 10 page minimum.

Speaking of Trauma Dave is looking at his blood soaked hands. He’s just unceremoniously tossed a body out of his window into a lake of lava. It was his own body. He’s learning that time travel can be dangerous. He hid the body quickly because he knew if Jade saw it, that it might freak her out.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] pesters Dave. She asks Dave what his blood smells like, what it tastes like. Apparently this is the first time she’s pestered Dave. GCs trolling is weird and only effective in how persistent she is about it. She draws a lot of pictures, but given she is blind they dont really make sense. Dave explains what his blood looks like, he poetically calls it a vermillion symphony to his eyes. Though it's hard to say if he really feels that or if he’s just trying to be cool. He’s trying to use the fact that he can see to counter troll, which is a bit mean but GC is rolling with it. adiosToreador [AT] is pestering Jade. Though Jade is still asleep in the waking wor;d her dream bot is allowing her to respond. She mentions to AT that she would wake up but she needs to figure out how to get John to awaken first. She doesn't know how yet. AT has so far absolutely failed at trolling. Even with the timeline advantages Dave and Rose have both counter trolled him into dust. It seems he’s just giving up now and trying to help Jade. He mentions this to Jade and tries to help out. Firstly, At mentions he can't really tell if she succeeds or not but he knows that she will wake up soon. He also lets her know that her robot will blow up in the future; he is able to confirm this with her future self. She also says that the other trolls are not as bad as they seem. AT seems skeptical on that one. Jade points out the other trolls refuse to talk to while she is dreaming. AT mentions that is odd as he preferred the dreaming world, at least until his dream self died.

Rose is using her newest gear to do some house cleaning. In that she is effortlessly making Orges explode with her cool spell wands. grimAuxiliatrix [GA] pesters her at this time. GA’s first encounter with Rose was actually with John using Rose's account. This has led to GA having a really bad opinion of Rose ever since. GA is wondering if she’s reached the “Smart Rose” or the “Dumb Rose”. Rose explains there is actually an explanation to that. But she’s actually a little too busy at the moment to chat about it. Also she’s worried it will affect the timeline. GA takes this as scorn and leaves the conversation.

Back to GC and Dave. GC attempts another photo edit of Dave and his bro being Marty and the Doc from Back to the Future. Dave mentions he hasn't actually seen his Bro in awhile. Neither have we the audience. He wasn't on the ship with Rose's mom and John dad. She confirms that between now and The Rift (the event where the trolls cannot see past) he doesn't see his brother again. She ribs him for missing his brother and suggests that she will guide him instead. She mentions he will meet friendly crocodiles past the first gate and he 's terrified of them.

An Authority Regulator (AR) had been on the beat in Derse and he witnessed a weird puppet flying a rocket skateboard into a transportalizer. Upon following the puppet to issue a citation he ended up in a lab way out in the veil. He confiscated the rocket board from the puppet and decided to try it outside. Now AR is rocketing around the veil feeling more alive than ever.

AR comes across an asteroid with the frog shrine on it. We know that this asteroid would crash into ancient earth and eventually millions of years later biome Jades Home island. Frogs are considered illegal under Derse rulership, so AR needs to explore this illegal site.

In the frog ruins AR sees the time capsule lotus thing where Jade finds the SBURB beta. It's currently waiting on an item. Deeper in the ruins, deeper than we have seen there is another lab. AR passes a giant single panel screen. We see what looks like Johns grandma as a baby, in a very fancy home she is next to a fedora covered in even more crude oil then the one currently in the Lab with John. The date is 04/21/1910.

A man enters the frame, the adoptive father of the baby. Colonel Sassacre. It's mentioned a meteor had landed in the bakery his wife had owned and this baby was in the creator. Unlike John's grandma, the wife wasn't in the bakery at the time. Another meteor strikes in the backyard taking out the family doghouse. In this new crater was another baby. This one a boy with dueling pistols, and shot the colonel dead. However the family dog, Halley, was fine. It arrived to greet the babies. Halley looks kind of like Bec, but normal. The machine is targeting the dog.

We see these 2 children at 13 years old. The boy is riding off on Halley for a life of adventure, the young girl is forced to live with the “wicked pastry baroness”.

AR of course has no idea what any of this means but it doesn't appear to be illegal. At that moment the “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) appeared behind him. AR knows DD is a higher rank then him and chooses to hide. He witnesses DD throw some books around. It looks like the MEOW book was not the only thing DD stole from Daves room. DD also took the SBURB beta, and Roses wizard fanfics. Only needing the MEOW book he tosses the other items. The SBURB beta’s land in the lotus time capsule. This explains how Jade would find them millions of years later. The fanfic lands next to the capsule. Maybe it just rotted away there.

DD then takes the MEOW book to the machine still targeting Halley.

John had seen the origins of the guardians. His father, Rose's mother, Dave's Brother, and Jade's Grandfather. You are releasing at this point that the families are missing a few pieces. Though single parents and kin care are normal practice. There isn’t even a hint of the question, who's John’s mom? Where are Dave and Jade's parents? We just saw an important moment from the day John was born, but his father is with John's grandma.

John had used the appearifier to get genetic data from the 4 guardians. Then a machine processed that data and created 4 baby paradox clones that look a bit like the guardians. The adorable 3 eyed kitten Dr. Meowgon (formally Vodka Mewtini) Hits a button on the console. John has no idea what these buttons actually do so he’d have likely done this himself.

The 4 tubes drop into 2 different vats. Tubes 1 and 2, John's dad, and Jade's grandpa go into one vat. In the other, Rose's mom and Big Bro. Then the machine makes 4 more babies. John becomes an “Ecotobiolobabysitter”. John has just become his own father, and his own grandfather. He's also the father of his friends. The kids are all biologically related.

We learned the guardians are connected by a mystery of meteors. They'd all met up at the lab that John is now in but have since left. We see Jades grandma, who isn't dead yet, piloting a huge starship. The starship is a modern battleship but with his own theming. Grandpa also seems to know what is going on here. As he puts it he is just giving the others a ride before he returns home to die.

We see John's dad return the pink scarf to Rose's mom. This is the one he had found on the day a meteor destroyed his mother and her shop. They hold hands as the ship appears to fly towards Skaia.

Back to John and his babies. carcinoGeneticist [CG] reaches out to John. This conversation seems to be an early one from CG’s perspective. He is being an asshole and he’s confused about the timeline. He does know what's happening though. He tells John he’s actually made himself and his friends. These paradox clones will be returned to their correct times. Time in the Medium views time in John's world like we would view a recording. This is because the world he is from will be destroyed. Though so will the world he is currently in. CG reminds John that he is in a null session.

CG is somewhat sympathetic to John. In his session with 12 players he was the one to make himself and his friends. John also uses this opportunity to screw with CG. John mentions humans typically hatch from eggs into larva. We already saw the payoff of this.

Meanwhile John is trying to care for 8 babies. They're crawling around a lab and playing with the random items the guardians had left. This includes maplehoof and some dueling pistols. CG comes back and John confuses him into explaining “The Reckoning ''. This is the event that causes the babies to go to time and unite with their guardians. The meteors that have fallen are the vehicle that get them from the medium to earth. John asks CG to contact him again in a few minutes. This of course pisses CG off, but it's not like the guy has anything better to do.

Many of the adventuring kids in this story are no longer bound to a computer, they’ve adapted their technology with the “alchemy”. This means they are not spending as much time in their bedrooms. You may remember much of this story started with the kids playing SBURB in their rooms. I think this scene shows this a little bit. Davesprite was outside of Daves room and since Dave wanted to talk with him he also left his room.

Now at this time we also know there is some crazy stuff happening with the Derseite Kingdom and the new rulers are up to some shenanigans. Jack noir has committed Regicide, killing both his king and queen. We know his 3 accomplices are out in the medium causing trouble. We saw a thwarted attempt from “Courtyard Droll” (CD) to steal the white ring of power. Jade managed to prevent that. As Dave leaves his room to go hang with DaveSprite the “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) sneaks into Daves room through his window.

Dave’s conversation with his future self is about how it's weird that he has a copy of a book Rose was told to destroy by the old old gods and how that can't possibly be a bad idea. This is just Dave being ironic though and him receiving affirmation that he needs to actually destroy that book and not be an idiot.

Of course upon returning to his room the book is now gone. He’d use time travel to see who did that but he notices his own bloody corpse laying on the ground. Not even his bedroom is safe anymore it seems. Fortunately being surrounded by a lake of lava he can just dispose of the corpse by chucking out the window.

John is in an ecobiology lab way out in the veil. Somehow this place is connected to his father, Rose's mother, Dave's brother, and Jade's Grandpa. John finds a terminal for displays which may be an Apperifier of some sort. We have seen these before but John has no idea what this is. He tries some buttons and sees a feed in the top right screen. This is a feed of a place John is familiar with as it’s his old neighbourhood. It's from a few months prior to his birth and there is a Betty Crocker factory there that he doesn't remember.

Zooming in, John sees his own father walking with his grandmother. The system targets his grandmother. Shortly after a meteor falls onto the Crocker Factory, the explosion narrowly misses his father and grandmother. If you remember way back on page 545 John accesses the family vault. There are newspaper clippings mentioning this exact event.

John hits the blue button. Normally this would take the targeted object out its place in the timeline and appearify it into the present. The Rose had used to take Jasper from her own past (page 931). But we also know that if this is attempted with something which would change the timeline the device will only create a green sludge copy. The DNA of that item can then be used. The one John is using goes a step further and places that sludge into one of 4 glass tubes.

John changes the view to 4, bottom right. This shows Jades island 2 days later. A large yacht near it, a boat named “Jade”. The story tells us that Jades Grandfather was the owner of the Croocker Factory that was just destroyed. Baby Jade is on the yacht somehow with Roses patchwork bunny. The system targets her grandfather. A meteor is seen in the distance but it's not near them. John creates another sludge copy this time of Jades grandpa. It is also stored in a vat.

John changes to view 3, bottom left. This shows the next day. A huge urban city in central america had been hit by the meteor that we just saw. Dave's Brother is next to the smoking crater. His favourite record shop is now gone. The system targets big bro. Another meteor flys over head. John presses the button again. Filling the 3rd vat of sludge.

John changes to view 2, top left. This one is on the day of his birth. April 13th 1996. There is still a huge crater where the Croker Factory was. South of that there is a strip mall (This are not common everywhere so I’ll link to what this means).

John's father is outside of “The Prankster's Gambit”. Roses mom walks nearby with baby Rose in her arms. The story tells us she is working for Jade's grandpa to investigate the “celestial anomalies”. A meteor crashes down onto the joke shop. Johns grandma was still inside. Roses mother flees the scene leaving her scarf. Johns father suspects the owner of the scarf knows something. We see Rose on a hill also playing with the bunny, though one that she hasn’t altered yet.

This means the bunny from Con Air, given to John by Dave on his 13th birthday, is somehow given to Rose as a baby. Later she will modify it with knitting, and it will somehow end up with Jade as a baby. The bunny exists in multiple places at the same time.

It also means that all of the guardian characters are linked by this mystery. John Presses the button. The 4th vat is filled with green sludge. The machine begins to execute a process.

Giving a bunch of teens the ability to spy on each other like Sims characters has some creepy side effects. Fortunately, unlike most of the fan fiction, this story isn’t too crazy about that kinda thing. Andrew has some class. But despite this Dave is still a bit creepy about Rose’s privacy. At least about her Journals. Earlier Dave had convinced John to send him a copy of the item code for Roses Journals so he could “get his snoop on”. So now he is doing that.

One of the two book's titled MEOW. It's filled with the letters M, E, O, and W much like the graffiti on Roses walls. This is apparently related to DNA. We code our human DNA with codons. The second journal contains Wizard fanfiction. Rose supposedly hates wizards. I tried to read this but it's rough. Rose's love of the thesaurus made this written work as thick and inaccessible as a pit of hot magma. Tossing this into the Hemmingway app made my screen turn pure red. From what I can gather it's a scene of 12 wizards looking at evidence of some sort of crime. One suggests eating a snack but gets denied. Dave has about the same difficulty. He decides to use his juice stained SBURB beta as a bookmark. It has no use to him now but that beta will somehow end up going to Jade.

Dave checks in on Rose. She is burning her original copy of the MEOW book. She was told to do this by the old gods from the furthest rings. The told her to destroy the book. Dave seems to want to assume she is just insane. But they are both currently living inside of a video game where this kind of thing could be very real. She then questions how Dave knows about what is in her books. Dave tosses John under the bus, claiming John was snooping on Roses stuff. (Bruh). Rose doesn't quite buy this but doesn't seem to care. It seems she actually likes wizards but doesnt like that her mother likes them.

Rose tells Dave that he is the “Prince of the moon” and the gods want to talk to him. He just needs to be less distracted and try looking into the sky without his shades for once. His reaction to that is odd silence.

Davesrpite then also speaks to Rose. He has some knowledge of what Rose is experiencing having been in the future. But he mentions that she didn't burn that book in his timeline. She mentions she has now seen some of the future as a result of waking up in Derse. The timeline has changed and now the book needed to go. They agree the Gods are usually right though Dave's terrified of them. This is why we were silent on the subject. Davesprite mentions he could hear the god sing and choose to drown them out. Given these are Lovecraftian horrors I can assume they are capable of driving people mad.

As a refresher, Rose is building John’s base as a player. Dave is building Rose’s base. Then Jade is building Dave’s base. Though Jade hasn't been doing much of that yet. Dave’s been a bit sensitive about Jade's “improvements” after she prototyped a dead bird. Though Dave is currently asleep though and can't really stop Jade from doing changes to his base. Though jade is also asleep she is using Jadebot to use her laptop.

It turns out Jade is actually decent at this. Unlike Rose who was terrible at architecture, Jade's building skills made Dave's sturdy. Her job was difficult. John's house got moved to the top of a giant mesa above the clouds. Rose's home was moved to an island. Dave's apartment got removed from its highrise. It's reattached to a structure of metal beams protruding from a lake of lava. No land to work with. Jade's work is being admired in the dream world of Prospit. She has amassed a small audience of Prospiterians watching her play the game. She mentions she should wake up soon and that her neighbour (John) will be doing the same.

There's a bit of an awkward transition here. Dave is now awake, we don't get a reaction to him seeing his new home. He just smashes an imp and goes right to alchemizing. So this again. Dave has a bunch of items provided from his future self we haven't seen yet.

• Dave combines his shades with his phone to make the same iShades that his future self had.

• Combining the turntables and his pc he makes a portable floating PC. Stronger than the iShades. He will use it for SUBRB.

• he combines a puppet tux with a red puppet, to make a softer red tux.

• he tries to combine the Caledscratch (Daves broken sword), and some Ruby Contraband (like the frog John found but red and with ruby for eyes). This one is too expensive with a resource he doesn't have yet. But with the holo attachment he can see it’d make a Broken Scarlet Ribbitar.

• combining a shitty sword and a Sweet Bro Hella Jeff drawing he makes SORD, a free and crappy item. He can't even hold it apparently as it's a shitty Jpeg.

• combining a Snoop Dogg photo and mini A/C and Caledscratch makes the Snoop Dogg Snow Cone Machete. It's a weapon.

• combining a Sweet Bro crawling and a skateboard made the Unreal Air, another free shitty item. It just floats away. He makes and captures a second one.

• combining a game brom magazine with turntables makes a vintage game brom magazine. It seems that the turntables can make older versions of an item?

• batarang (batman's boomerang/ninja star thing.) with a poster of the midnight crew. This makes a set of 4 suiterangs. Daves makes a few of these as they are cheap.

• combining his tux with the midnight crew gives him an all black suit but he says it’s stiff and he doesn't like it.

• combining his tux with a poster for “The felt” would make a green tux but it needs a green Grist he doesn't have yet.

• combining a rump plush with a poster for “The felt” makes a Jutting Out And Impudent Felt Plush. Dave's enamoured by it.

• combining Combine dead things in amber and the rump plush makes a Foam Mutant Smuppet Encased In Amber. This seems useless but Dave likes the direction.

Until now we had been combining with AND (&&) logic Dave tries the previous combination using OR (||) logic. These are logic gates. This makes an Amber Mutant Smuppet Abomination. This is also a useless item but the logic thing is neat.

• AND combining the Mr. T plush and a fetus in a jar Dave apparently has to make a Foam Fetal Mr. T In A Jar.

At this point Dave's surrounded by underlings. The underlings are too creeped out by Dave circus of freaky abominations so go near him.

• AND Combining camera and captchalogue card to make a Captcharoid Camera. This item is powerful as it can make a captchalogue card of any item it takes a picture of as a ghost item.

• AND combination of the fetus in a jar and a self portrait of Dave taken with the Captcharoid Camera. This would make Dave's brain in a Jar, but it's too expensive. But Dave is able to take a picture of the Holorgram.

• Daves brain in a jar AND a sweet bro drawing OR and the Captcharoid Camera. This SBAHJIFIER cost -1000 artifact grist. This item will make a SBAHJ comic of anything it takes a picture of.

A while back John went on an alchemizing spree to create a bunch of items. Many of those are already obsolete by future Dave's provision of awesome recipes. Now it’s Rose’s turn, and she has a better alchemizer to work with. This is somehow related to the release of a new SBHJ comic about Santa (in April). This SBHJ comic was also made into a seasonal album. Remember that combining items doesn’t remove the original

• The first item combines the HUB power cube with her laptop. this makes a hubtop with unlimited battery life.
• She combines the Bronzed Vacuum with an umbrella to make something useless.
• Viceroy (formally Casey) with a plush squid to make a Huggable Soft Salamancer Plush. She gave this to Viceroy as a gift.
• black ink and Gushers made Bodacious Black Liquid Sorrow Gushers. - using the new hubtop, and a hairband Rose now has a Hubtopband. This is like the laptop glasses John and future Dave had.
• combining the Vodka and W magnet she makes Magnetic Wodka, this is vodka but magnetic?
• a Wizard statue with a ball of yarn made Silken Wizardbeard Yarn (With Magical Properties). Also she realizes that wizard statues just add magic to things.
• a wizard statue and knitting needles made NeedleWands. These are strong weapons.
• combining the velvet pillow, a pile of scarves, and her shirt she makes a Velvet Squiddleknit Dress.
• further expanding on the NeedleWands with a grimoire, she gets the Thorns Of Oglogoth. Oglogoth is pretty much Cthulhu. This weapon is apparently imbued with the strength of The Deep One.

And that’s all. We zoom out with Rose surrounded by her new gear. Further zooming out we see her home is now infested with underlings. This must have arrived during her alchemizing. Testing her new gear, Rose provides an explosive welcome to her new house guest.

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the Postal Mistress (PM). She is the pre-exile form of the Peregrine Mendicant. PM's task is assassinating the black Queen and King, by Jack Noir. She instead took this information to the white queen who abdicated her throne and gave PM her ring of power. Making the situation worse Jack Noir decided to just kill the black queen himself. PMs current mission is to seek the white king on the Battlefield Skiai. But as she is waiting for a transport the ring gets pilfered from PMs pocket by a spy from the black kingdom. This spy is a “Courtyard Droll” (CD) who looks like this universe's Clubs Deuce in a ridiculous outfit. Performing a stealth mission in a vibrant pink hat taller themselves is a challenge.

CD sneaks off to report back. They report to a “Draconian Dignitary” (DD, Diamond Droogs) that they have the ring. DD mentions that Hegemonic Brute (HB, Hearts Boxcar) is looking for the king on the battlefield. It is not mentioned which king. Given the Sovereign Slayer (SS, Spades slick, Jack Noir) just killed his own queen it could mean they intend to kill either King or possibly both. DD also reminds CD that the ridiculous outfits and hats are no longer needed. The the new leadership, has banned them, but CD prefers it.

This report is abruptly cut short as CD is drop kicked by Jade. This is probably the first time we see any player directly involve themselves in the game. Inadvertently Jadebot is attacking her grandfather's taxidermied corpse. Jade retrieves the ring but it is too late to give it back to PM who is blasting off to the Battlefield. She puts the ring on as a reminder to deliver to PM somehow. It seems the ring has no effects on human players.

We then have a huge animation showing the war in the Battlefield. It starts by showing us that the battleground changes depending on the number of prototypes in play. Currently this session has 3 as Jade hasn't prototyped anything yet. At 1, it's a seemingly normal chessboard. At 2 sprites the chessboard is a much bigger and a cube. At 3 sprites the chessboard is seemingly a whole planet. The ground is still a black and white grid. There is now plantlife, hills, lakes, and even non combatants occupying the board. The board changes, but as we’ve seen this change also affects the pieces. The weird outfits are from Johns harlequin doll, or Roses tentacle princess. Also, the powers that the queen’s rings have are also from the sprites.

With this in mind the battlefield is weird. The pawns are about as you’d expect they are caprecians with swords and uniforms. They are marching under Dersite and Prosprit banners. But then we see them hopping out of futuristic dropships. There are also huge battleships flying in the sky shooting at each other down. We also see huge horse shaped creatures with tentacles about the size of buildings. These are fighting rook armed golems that are about the same size. There are also a bunch of weird homunculus abominations. These ones are about 4 times the size of a regular caprecian running around. The kings are also gigantic. They have some of the sprite powers that the Queens ring provides. But the kings powers come via scepters instead of the rings. I’d guess these were all created in labs like the one John is currently in. carcinoGeneticist [CG] had told John about the use of ecobiology for creating weapons of war.

On this scene 2 stories unfold. One is of a Warweary Villein living as a humble pumpkin farmer on Skiaia. This is the Wayward Vagabond (WV), and the Mayor of Cantowns former life before becoming an exile. WV forms his own tattered banner, from the burnt remains of his pumpkin stall. His farm got destroyed in the fighting. WV somehow amasses an army of the disenfranchised. WV’s army is one made from those done with the fighting and done with the monarchy. He marches his new army directly to the black king and prepares to face them. But at this time the Jack Noir arrives onto the battlefield with all his new powers provided by the ring. As WV looks upon the massive king and its scepter it looks like the king could have easily won against them all. But Jack cuts the king’s scepter in half. This makes the king into a nearly normal sized fat caprecian. Jack finishes the job cutting the black king's head clean off while WV and his army look on in confusion.

The second story is that of PM. They arrive on the battlefield and stand before the White king who is just as huge and terrifying as the black one. She would present the ring of the white queen to him but she discovers it is now gone. The White King seems to know what is going on anyway and surrenders his sceptre to PM. This leaves him vulnerable, and Hegemonic Brute takes advantage of this. He attacks PM causing the white scepter to fly off a cliff into a nearby stream.

From what I am getting from this, PM need both the ring of power and the sceptre for some greater task. It seems the white monarchs knew they’d inevitably lose the war. They have found some desperate way to change the fate of the land. Though Jack Noir seems to be aware of this and is taking matters into his own hands.

Dave has awoken in the dreaming world. Or he’s sleeping in the waking world. Unlike John and Rose it seems there wasn’t much stopping him from doing this sooner. Rose had just shown up in Dave's dreamscape and woke him up to jam to some tunes for a while. One weird thing about Daves room in the dreaming world is that Lil’ Cal is not only there but seems to be moving on its own. In the real world Cal had appeared to do this, but Big Bro was moving Cal at near light speed. The strife between big bro and Dave destroyed Cal. So how the hell was Cal here and moving on its own? Rose took the wise route by hucking Cal out of Dave's window before she returned to the waking world.

Dave had no complaint he found Cal very annoying. But, Cal’s gets caught by a random rocket board going through the streets of Derse. Also in Derse, are the exiles from a time before their exile. Aimless Renegade (AR) is an Authority Regulator at this time. This scene of a weird puppet falling onto a preposterously convenient rocket board caught AR’s attention. AR would need to investigate. Cal absconds into a transportalizer followed by AR.

John is on the Land for Light and Rain (LOLAR) where Rose entered the game. Since Rose was asleep when John had gotten there he’s decided to go exploring with his jetpack. He discovers the Island cave where Rose's mom had gone to with Maplehoof. Though it is still swarming with monsters, these ones look a bit more demonic. But John's new Fear No Anvil is very strong and takes care of them quickly.

John finds the same transportalizer and goes through it. He's sent to a lab floating on an asteroid in the veil. This is entirely off of the planet he was just on. It seems This is the same place Roses mom, John's dad, that guy who looked like Jade's Grandpa, and Cal all ended up at. We know this is the case because dad’s old oily fedora, the Colonel Sassacre, Maplehoof and Cal are just there next to the transportalizers. John naturally hops on Maplehoof, because free mount. The lab itself is huge, there is a huge wall that looks like old tape drives. The center of the lab has 4 massive jars containing huge chess pieces. Around those are jars that seem to contain capricians. John also discovers a Junior ectobiologist lab suit that seems made for him. The suit even has his green ghost logo on the belt. There is also a 4 monitor display wall.

It seems AR is outside of the lab. John isn't aware of them, and they are not aware of John. AR doing some sick tricks in ZeroG on the rocket board. This is against their uptight personality but they seem to be letting loose.

John is still at Rose's house awkwardly loitering around waiting for Rose to wake up. John visits Rose’s alchemiter. It looks like Dave had upgraded her alchemiter at some point to be similar to his own. John uses this to create the item from the code given to him by DaveSprite.

The item is a very expensive and gigantic hammer. Though by scaling it to a usable size he could actually build it. This is likely with the help of Maplehoof recently looting a huge amount of rare resources. The hammer, called Fear No Anvil, is a clockwork and ruby theme. John asked DaveSprite where he got it, but was only told “Hephaestus”. Hephaestus is also the name of Daves web browser oddly enough.

Dave, the “real” Dave, is hanging out with Rose in the dreaming world. It seems his computer from there can still see Rose's house and Rose and Dave have noticed John is there. Rose decides to return to the waking world to greet her guest.

Meanwhile twinArmageddons [TA] is helping grimAuxiliatrix [GA] with her computer. It seems the trolls have software called Trollian. It looks like the trolls can see the timelines of calling the kids (“chumps”). The “viewport” feature even allows them to see the kids. They are currently watching Rose wake up next to a panicking salamander child. She notices immediately that someone was using her pesterchum account. She goes to confront John on this but gets pranked as a bucket falls on her head filled with gushers.

John, being impatient, decides to rocket off and explore the Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR). This leaves Rose watching him zoom off as she’s just missed his departure. He takes Mewtini with him. As they’ve swapped companions they’ve also given them new names. Not knowing what names they had previously. John has named Mewtini as Doctor Meowgon, I think this is a reference to Dr. Egon from the GhostBusters Movie. Casey is now Viceroy Bubbles Von Salamancer.

John for, possibly, the first time has just met Rose. Which is to say he’s crashed through the wall of her bedroom in a jetpack. Somehow Rose is still asleep. John is trying to not be a creep about this situation. So in true non-werido fashion John is now on Rose's laptop. He responds to the troll who is messaging her, pretending to be her.

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] is trying to reach Rose. It seems from GA’s perspective this is her first contact with any of the kids. GA considers Rose a friend in Rose's perception of time. Someone she has trolled into submission of some sorts, the GA John is about to talk with knows none of that.

John uses this opportunity to hype himself as Rose's crush. He suggests GA contact John in the past to confuse him. This will explain some of the conversations between GA and Rose on page 1093 and 1592.

We get to see a bit of what is going on when the Trolls end here. We see GA in a compound of some sort on a PC. Other trolls are on her side but we can’t see who. Also gallowsCalibrator [GC] is behind her. The set-up is like an old fashioned LAN party. QA us contacting another troll twinArmageddons [TA] who we haven't seen yet. It seems that TA is sort of the IT guy of the groups and GA needs them to help with setting up the “viewport”. GA is apparently not good with computers and TA is a bit of a dick about. But, they forget GA is in the same room as she goes and bonks him for his comments.

TA is much like the other trolls, grey skinned, symbol of Gemini and 4 small horns. They have notable glasses with one red and one blue lens.

Bothe Dave and Rose are asleep in the waking world which means they awake in the dream world. As the both reside in Derse when creaming they’ve met up to jam. We get a taste of some really good tracks here. The whole time they are jamming Cal is just warping around annoyingly so Rose chucks Cal out of Dave's window.

For some reason we now get to see what Maplehoof is up to. Maplehoof went to the same island with Rose's Mom on the Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR). They'd been waiting outside while Roses mom utterly destroyed a huge monster inside. Maple hoof collects all the Grist and other resources that Roses Mom left behind. It seems she has no need for any of that. All the grist Maplehoof collects goes to Rose for some reason. As it is too much, much of it goes to a “gutter” where it's redistributed to the other player via GristTorrent. We then see maple hoof follow Mom into a transportalizer.

We also see the fedora John had delivered find its way to John's Dad on the Land of Wind and Shade (LOWAS). His current hat is stained with oil. He had found a replacement to his missing shoe. John's dad also encounters the same stranger that saved John from the Basilisk back on page 1455. They are holding the Colonel Sassacre. Also, look suspiciously like Jade's long dead grandpa. John's dad follows him through a transportalizer.