Homestuck/Characters/Exiles

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


During the course of a session, five Carapaces, Dersite or Prospitian, will be exiled by being sent through a Skaian portal. They land on the barren home of the players, and together rebuild a new society, while advising the players of the session via terminals that grew out of the meteors that destroyed the player's homes.

There are three known groups of Exiles: the desert wanderers of Pre-Scratch Earth, the violent gangsters of the Midnight Crew who advised the Troll Session, and the starving Dersites who pester Roxy on Post-Scratch Earth.

All Exiles are an example of:

  • Fake Band: Both the Midnight Crew and the desert wanderers both.
  • Flat Character / Satellite Character: Only a few Exiles in each group recieve much focus. For the wanderers this is WV and PM. For the Midnight Crew, it's Spades Slick. For the starving Dersites, they have their unnamed leader.
  • Meanwhile in the Future
  • The Needless: We don't know exactly how long the exiles wandered the wastelands before joining together, because we don't know when their meteors landed, but it was long enough to wear down and turn all their clothes brown or grey. Yet, in all that time, they seem to have survived without any clear source of food or water. They are still capable of feeling hunger though.
  • Nominal Importance: Of a sorts for the desert wanderers. They don't really have names, they only have initials. They're still important though, WV especially within terms of the game. Averted for the Midnight Crew, though it was played straight back when they were agents.
    • Insistent Terminology: Averted. Technically, the correct way to refer to them would be as "The WV" or "The PM", but that sounds a bit silly so nobody does.
    • In Universe Nickname: Jade refers to WV and PM as "Mr. Mayor" and "Miss Mail Lady", while Dave and Karkat simply refer to WV as "The Mayor". Fans extend this to the rest of the exiles.
    • I Have Many Names/Meaningful Rename: Their names change to fit their current roles, while keeping their initials.
  • Single-Issue Wonk: All of them seem to have at least one obsession. They all outgrow it to an extent.
  • Walking the Earth: Or Alternia in the case of the Midnight Crew
  • Voice with an Internet Connection

Pre-Scratch Exiles

The Pre-Scratch Exiles are examples of

  • Ascended Fridge Horror: Fans speculated that because the Kid's scratch would reset their Universe, the Exiles we know would die as part of it rebooting. Then Jack Noir himself came and slaughtered them all, leaving just PM and a mortally wounded WV.
  • Big Good: PM
  • Chess Motifs: PM and WV are both Pawns, AR is probably one too. WK and WQ are royalty though.
    • PM traveled to the other side of the board and was promoted, AR sacrificed himself early on for John, similar to a Rook, and WV is a subversion in that he rejects the rules and attacks his own king.
  • Five-Man Band:
  • Gender Flip: Flip the genders of all the Exiles and their story becomes a fairly standard following of Hero's Journey.
  • Homage: WV and PM are seen by many to be one to WALL-E [1]
  • Iron Woobie
  • Killed Off for Real: AR, WQ, and WK. The White Royalty may return after a fashion as the Alpha session's new royalty, but it remains to be seen.
  • Leitmotif: Explore, for all of them.
  • Official Couple: WK and WQ. PM and WV are hinted at throughout the comic.
  • Took a Level In Badass: Oh so very much so. Although the WQ and WK actually vaguely stepped down in their badass levels, PM and WV were just normal pawns that are now respectively a Queen destined to become a space warping One-Man Army and the hero of a (failed) revolution.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Subverted. Word of God states they were going to use the teleporters in the bases to escape their universe, and then destroy the bases so no one else could follow them. Then Jack arrived. Needless to say, it failed.

Wayward Vagabond / Warweary Villein / Wastelandic Vindicator / Wizardly Vassal / The Mayor

Years in the future, but not many, a WAYWARD VAGABOND records a stuttering step in the sun-bleached dust.

Exiled to the ruined Earth during the Reckoning, he plants suggestions in John's head using a mysterious terminal he finds in a bunker in a desert where Rose's house used to be. Prior to his exile, he was a simple WARWEARY VILLEIN attempting to eke out a living as a farmer on the battlefields of Skaia. He incited a revolution against the Black King, fulfilling his role as a game concept, but his army was slaughtered by Jack Noir. The fourth playable character introduced.

"Perhaps one day you will find something new to bear. A burden befitting of the peasant you truly are.
Oh my what's that shiny thing in the water."

  • Audience Surrogate: He provides the all-caps directions that John hears in Act 2 after the meteor destroys John's suggestion box.
  • Authority in Name Only: "The glorious founder and mayor of CAN TOWN. A number of rather civic-minded CITIZEN CANS offer adulation to their fair and magnanimous leader."
  • Bad Dreams
  • Berserk Button: KINGS. He's okay with WQ though.
  • Bloody Murder: By proxy at least; WV's blood on Jack's hand is used as a starting point for RED MILES. Odd use in that it's entirely cosmetic. Jack can use RED MILES regardless of whether or not he has a source of blood, it just looks cool.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Fortunately for him, his grasp on reality is pretty tenuous.
  • The Chosen One: Subverted. Word of God says that WQ privately chose him to wield the ring. It doesn't happen.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: Several times, most notably saying John was the apprentice of a thief.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a Dersite, he's one of the nicer people in the series; his earlier rudeness to John was simply because he didn't know about human etiquette. He was even able to lead an army of both Prospitians and Dersites against the Black King.
  • Dangerous Deserter: Zig-zagged. WV deserted the Black Army to be a farmer, but none of his superiors seem to care -- at least until he got fed up and raised an army to overthrow them. Then, the only one to act on it was an usurper who left him alone alive to see the ruination of his dreams.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Zig zags around. He was built up for some time as the central Exile, seemingly destined to be the one who faced Jack even as PM took a more proactive role. Then Jack punched a hole through his stomach, and PM got the ring anyway. But he still ends up much more important to the main characters directly, while PM remains more distant.
  • Extreme Omnivore: In addition to haven eaten a pumpkin, a potted plant, several pieces of chalk, a chunk of uranium, a cyborg bunny's eye, and he learned proper human etiquette by eating a book on it. It seems like he'll eat anything as long as it's green, or if it had been green at some point in time. Doesn't matter if it's edible or not.
    • The one exception to this is paradox ghost slime, which he describes as "unappetizing sludge."
  • Foreshadowing: Nannasprite's exposition to John and WV's interruptions hinted WV's true role long before it was actually revealed.
  • For Want of a Nail: Jack Noir was able to slaughter all the Exiles, escape into the trolls' session, and kill Bilious Slick...because WV hit the Caps Lock key at the wrong time.
  • Genius Ditz: He wastes lots of time doing stupid things like playing with cans, but the Wayward Vagabond seems to be remarkably adept with computers (even bizarre alien computers he has never seen before) as well as being able to think very fast on his feet and having "an uncanny knack for tracking precise distances [he has] already traversed, in whatever units [he chooses]."
    • Which makes some sense for a chess piece who spent his life on a battlefield.
  • Heroic BSOD: Seeing the armies he led into rebellion getting brutally, mercilessly slaughtered may well account for his eccentricities.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: All of the joke speculation that WV is an Imp. He's a Pawn [2]!
  • Hilarity Ensues: Pretty much everything WV does. Including going on a road trip in the middle of a battlefield. Except his backstory, that's not hilarious at all. At least until he meets up with John. Then it was hilarious again.
  • I Have Many Names: More so than the rest.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jack really wanted that uranium.
  • Informed Attractiveness: It's sort of hard for us to see the intricacies of chess people hotness, but apparently he had quite the gaggle of admirers at one point.
  • Instant Fanclub: His planetary army is revealed to be basically this. He is apparently also attractive and has numerous fan girls.
  • Iron Woobie: Poor guy saw his entire army slaughtered in front of him, AFTER his farm was burned down. It's been theorized that the previously-just-for-laughs Can Town is actually his way of coping with the guilt.
    • Not to mention seeing a friend brutally murdered in his sleep in front of his eyes by Jack AGAIN.
    • Poor guy can't get a break. While asleep, he dreams that he transforms into Jack Noir... And then is forced to watch as he slaughters his own army.
    • Not to mention everything that applies to PM pretty much applies to him.
  • Jerkass: At first, but only because he didn't know how to be polite.
  • Leitmotif: Vagabounce.
  • Mayor of Can Town
  • The Messiah: He managed to unify two armies directly opposed to one another.
  • My Greatest Failure
  • Not So Different: He and Jack have a lot of a similarities, although Jack is outright evil whereas WV is more foolish than anything else. And of course, they're counterparts in eliminating members of the Black Royalty.
  • Number One Dime: A MAYOR DOES NOT RELINQUISH HIS MAYORAL SASH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER PERIOD
  • Plucky Comic Relief: He is a Cloudcuckoolander to the extreme, and even being on a Trauma Conga Line barely manages to faze him. Nevertheless, virtually everything he does is humorous and while he does still have plot importance, it is fairly minor.
  • Psychic Dreams for Everyone: A subversion. Somehow, WV is able to enter dreambubbles; something no other carapace has ever been known to do. He can do this even without being in the Furthest Ring. However, it's the norm for players with a dead dreamself.
  • Red Herring: There were a number of hints that he would put on the White Queen's Ring. The ring ultimately went to PM, who was already a white queen.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Raised a planetary army in response to constant warfare burning down his farm.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: To the Black Army
  • Sidequest Sidestory: In an ordinary session, WV functions as a backdoor means to eliminate the Black King, though it is seemingly extremely difficult to do so. Didn't happen in the Kid's session because of Jack.
    • Killed Off for Real: His alternate in the Troll session is implied to have been this, due to none of the Trolls reaching Skaia in time to aid him before he was destroyed by the Black King.
    • This fact is never outright stated in story, but was confirmed on Hussie's old Formspring.
  • Supporting Protagonist: In terms of story, PM is the hero of the Exiles, but he is the one we focus on the most and was introduced first. This was subverted later, with WV becoming much more directly important to the protagonists.
  • Sure Why Not: WV being an ex-soldier is technically Fanon that hasn't been outright stated in story yet, but Andrew canonized it via Formspring responses.
  • Take a Third Option: Opted to attack BOTH the White King and the Black King, he and his army simply attacked the Black King first.
  • Trademark Favorite Drink: Tab -- purely because it's drinkable.
    • He repeats the same "drinking" binge with shaving cream later in the story (and earlier in his past).
  • Trademark Favorite Food: He compulsively eats anything green, and he sometimes doesn't even seem aware that he does so. He also describes green text and buttons as "attractive" and tells John not to die in the "tasty fire" when he's surrounded by green flames.
  • Transformation Sequence: Literally, in his dreams.
  • Trauma Conga Line: His farm burns down, his army is slaughtered, his mission from John is a failure, he's exiled and wanders Earth alone for several hundred years, watches as Jack murders John, he has a horrific nightmare about Jack, and just as things are looking up for him, Jack comes in, rips uranium out of his stomach, and leaves him to bleed to death.

Peregrine Mendicant / Parcel Mistress / Prospitian Monarch

Minutes in the future, though perhaps not as few as implied by circumstance, a PEREGRINE MENDICANT trundles precious cargo beneath the gleam of the celestially ominous.

Like the Wayward Vagabond, a wandering soul living in the future who, while wheeling around a collection of mailboxes, stumbles across a Sburb capsule. Prior to the Reckoning, she was a simple PARCEL MISTRESS on a quest to deliver a very important package. The sixth playable character.

Aimless Renegade / Authority Regulator / Armaments Regent

Years in the future, which is to say, THE PRESENT MOMENT PRECISELY, an AIMLESS RENEGADE prepares for company.

The third future wanderer, who is investigating the Frog Temple and is covered in yellow police tape. Prior to his exile, he was an AUTHORITY REGULATOR tasked with the enforcement of the law in the kingdom of Derse. The eighth playable character.

Windswept Questant / White Queen

A WINDSWEPT QUESTANT suddenly appears.

The fourth exile, who suddenly appeared out of an egg-shaped Sburbcraft. Communicated with Rose through her Sburb device. Prior to her exile, she was the WHITE QUEEN, adored sovereign of Prospit, who abdicated her throne in order to help PM on her quest. After PM becomes the Prospitian Monarch, she is appointed as her royal adviser.

White King / Writ Keeper

The former King of Prospit, who hid inside the time capsule in the Frog Temple to survive and become the Writ Keeper on the future Earth.

  • Badass Bookworm: He's been shown to be completely engrossed in Rose's novel and on Skaia he led armies.
  • Chekhov's Gun: When he appears as the Writ Keeper, he is seen reading "Complacency of the Learned", a story written by Rose. The story is nominally about wizards, but Word of God has said that it represents Rose's subconscious mind about the creation of the universe -- specifically the Troll's game of SGRUB. What knowledge the Writ Keeper will gain from it remains to be seen.
    • Unfortunately, we never know what he learns because he's immediately killed. He'll probably be reset with the Scratch, but he'll know nothing of his past life.
  • Flat Character: Has appeared very few times, so his personality as of yet is still more or less an unknown.
  • Leitmotif: Riches to Ruins Movements I & II, shared with WQ.
  • Official Couple: With WQ
  • Off with His Head
  • Red Herring: As the Writ Keeper, he seemed to be built up as having an important role in the lives of the exiles... then Jack kills him within 20 seconds of his actually appearing.
  • Sixth Ranger
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: Almost immediately after emerging from the seed, Jack kills him before he can do anything at all.

Post Scratch Exiles

Carapacians

A bunch of "Exiles" taken from the Post-Scratch Session by the Condesce, to form the backbone of her new empire. They mostly live on floating cities that resemble chessboards, and according to Dirk they're essentially slums. Roxy lives in one of these cities, and was raised by them. On occasion some of the Carapacians sneak into her lab to hunt her cats. None of them have names or distinct appearances, with exception to one who led a hunting party into Roxy's lab, who is still nameless.

  • Call Back: A lot of them almost look like known exiles like the Midnight Crew, but none of them are exactly identical to them. Most notably, the apparent leader of the hunting party looks sort of like a cross between Jack Noir and WV, and uses a crowbar.
    • The ones that most closely resemble PM have one of their eyes covered by their robes. Their apparent leader does as well.
  • Expy: In terms of appearance at least. Their apparent leader looks exactly like a cross between WV and Jack Noir, having slanted pupils but having rings under them and claws for fingers. Others are more indistinct though.
    • In sprite form, two of them resemble AR and default pawns (like WV) with different robes.
  • Faceless Masses: Mostly.
  • Fan Nickname: The Skaia imageboard tags them as the 'Famished Ruffians'.
  • Reduced to Ratburgers: Roxy tries to avoid thinking about how they're probably breaking into her lab to eat her mutant cats.
  • You All Look Familiar: Aside from their apparent leader, all of them share their appearance with another exile in their group, including robes, though this might be Andrew simply copying sprites, as it didn't seem to be the case with their drawn crowd shot.

Troll Session Exiles / The Midnight Crew

The Midnight Crew were originally non-canonical characters from Problem Sleuth, wherein they were Team Sleuth's Psycho Ranger counterparts, waging grand warfare against the protagonists through donation-funded commands. In the Homestuck universe, they were apparently so popular that the MS Paint Adventures site that the characters visit features a Midnight Crew adventure as the followup to Problem Sleuth, something which Andrew Hussie apparently considered in real life after abandoning the all-Flash version of Homestuck.

The Midnight Crew featured in an intermission between Acts 3 and 4 of Homestuck, wherein they invaded the mansion home of their rival gang The Felt with the aim of ending their gang war once and for all. They later out to be part of the Homestuck canon after all, existing in the distant post-apocalyptic future of Alternia (612 Alternian years in the future, to be exact) in much the same capacity as Earth's exiles, taking Mutually Fictional to Up to Eleven levels.

All Midnight Crew members provide examples of:

  • Anti-Hero: Type V. They're only considered heroes during "Operation Regisurp" in the Troll's Session, due to their alliance with the protagonists. In the kid's session, they are definitely evil, and their leader is the primary antagonist.
  • Evil Counterpart\Psycho Rangers: of the characters of Problem Sleuth
    • Spades Slick: Problem Sleuth
    • Clubs Deuce: Ace Dick
    • Diamond Droog: Pickle Inspector
    • Hearts Boxcars: Fiesta Ace Dick
  • Face Framed in Shadow: Justified as they're former citizens-slash-Agents of Derse, and therefore have shiny black carapaces.
  • Killed Off for Real: The Intermission ends with only Spades Slick alive, after traveling to a timeline where the other three are dead. Later on he kills Snowman, ending the universe and himself.
    • Or so it seemed, until Andrew listed Slick as "?" instead of dead in this panel. Slick is later confirmed to be alive behind the fourth wall.
  • Meaningful Rename: Like other Prospitians and Dersites.
  • Nice Hat
  • Porn Stash

♠ Spades Slick ♠ / Scurrilous Straggler

The leader of the Midnight Crew. Armed, dangerous, and extremely violent. He and Diamonds Droog are probably the smartest members of the crew. Notably, Spades "made this town what it is." "Wasn't nothing but a bunch of dust and rocks before [he] got here." Long before the Midnight Crew, he was the Jack Noir present in the trolls' session, who allied with the trolls to overthrow and exile the Black Queen but was exiled himself in revenge. He wandered the post-apocalyptic Alternian desert for years as the Scurrilous Straggler before founding the Midnight Crew and returning civilization to the planet.

Though it seemed he died in the destruction of the Troll Universe, Andrew Hussie (in comic that is) swooped in and saved him. He was badly hurt and had to be turned into a cyborg

GC: K4RK4T, H3S 4 J3RK!
GC: H3 H4S ST4BB3D YOU ON MOR3 TH4N ON3 OCC4S1ON!
CG: SOME OF THOSE STABBINGS WERE ACCIDENTAL!

  • More Dakka: Averted, we have never seen and probably will never see what Spade Slick's gun is, if he even has one.
  • Named Weapons: He's got OCCAM'S RAZOR, a DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD, a BUTTERFLY EFFECT KNIFE, and his very own RAPIER WIT. There's something of a theme to these names...
    • Don't forget the BAIT AND SWITCHBLADE.
  • Never Found the Body: Although he's caught in an exploding universe in Cascade, we never see him die. Eventually we find that Hussie saved him somehow.
  • Not So Above It All: Here and here, as a Mythology Gag. Characters in Problem Sleuth did stuff like this all the time.
  • Only the Author Can Save Them Now: Literally. The author himself personally rescues him from the Scratch.
  • Percussive Therapy: Nothing rankles him like Lord English's "stupid" obsession with clocks. Spades will smash any clock -- even a laptop readout.
  • Perpetual Frowner
  • Pet the Dog: Showing Karkat his blood is "candy-red" too during the Hivebent intermission to calm him down.
    • And again, he tries to console Karkat after Sollux died.

There, there, you blubbering goddamn pansy.

♣ Clubs Deuce ♣

♦ Diamonds Droog ♦

  • Awesomeness By Analysis
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Although all the members of the Midnight Crew are well-dressed, Droog takes particular pride in his classy outfit.
  • The Chessmaster: He was able to, using the forensics evidence of some destroyed clocks and a single lost tooth, figure out exactly when Fin was going to try and bite him from the past, and fill him full of lead instead. Meanwhile, he used knowledge of The Felt's temporal abilities, Clubs Deuce, and a time bomb to redirect Trace, who was attacking from the future, and kill off both him and Doze at the same time. Pretty safe to say that Droog is the smartest and the best planner.
  • Crazy Prepared: His BRAWLSOLEUM has multiple BACKUP HATS, several tasteful suits, and a shitload of guns and cards. He eventually subdued and captured Stitch as well, just in case.
  • Death Dealer
  • Guns Akimbo: His weapons of choice are an AK-47 and a second assault rifle of a different type. Note that instead of two K4RK4T, H3S 4 J3RK! or pistols he's wielding full sized assault rifles.
  • More Dakka: The inevitable result of dual weilding assault rifles.
  • Porn Stash: Grey Ladies, which he keeps inside a newspaper.
  • Shout-Out: His name refers to the Nadsat term for "friend" from A Clockwork Orange, and his theme is called Carbon Nadsat.
  • So Proud of You: His treatment of Aradia, to whom he is an exile guide, is peppered with this. In his one shown conversation he used phrases like "Atta girl" and "That's what I like to hear". Aradia however seems to resent it.
    • Though it's implied that is not all there is to it, considering Droog has a fetish for grey women, and Trolls and Aradia specifically are grey. His Porn Stash was in his hands at the same time as his comments above.
  • The Stoic: Even when he's angry, he doesn't show it.

♥ Hearts Boxcars ♥

Snowman

Although not a member of the Midnight Crew, she is the fifth Exile of the Troll Session. See her own section for more details.

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  1. ↑ Post-apocalyptic non-humans (one dirty but an endearing Nice Guy and one Badass white girl) meet up and develop a relationship. The white girl ends up doing drastic things to save the life of the boy and is ultimately successful. That description could apply to WV and PM or WALL-E and EVE.
  2. ↑ Which is virtually the same in the scheme of things, they just don't drop grist and fight on the Battlefield instead
  3. ↑ Discovering his "misstep" in the intermission between Acts 4 and 5 was the first.
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