☆ Player - - -

( Player Name ) : Kathryn
( Personal DW ) : missazrael
( Age ) : 31
( Timezone ) : GMT +2 hours
( Other Characters ) :
Equius Zahhak ( stayb100ponyboy☆ Character - - -
( Character's Name ) : Signless
( Character's Age ) : Unknown, but an adult. If we're just talking head-canon, he's thirty-three human years old.
( Series ) : Homestuck
( Canon Point ) : After his death and the Vast Expletive
( Playability ) : Signless is a re-app, and he and Equius always managed to avoid each other before. Simply put, Equius sided with his ancestor Darkleer, who didn't want to interact with Signless because of their personal history, and Signless never pushed the issue.

( History ) :General information about the ancestors, and information specific to Signless here.

As with pretty much every character I play, Signless is a very minor presence in the Homestuck mythos, but he leaves a long shadow. We get his story entirely from Doc Scratch, and much later pick up bits and pieces from the Pre-Scratch trolls. What we know for certain is this: Signless was born a mutant, much like his ectobiology clone Karkat Vantas, and would have been culled immediately if the jadeblooded Dolorosa found him in the caverns and taken mercy on him. She rescued him and fled, raising him like a son, something entirely unknown in Alternian society.

As a young troll, Signless began having visions, visions which showed him the Pre-Scratch society and what life could be like without the hemospectrum. Seeing a peaceful world, and what trolls could be if they worked together, he began preaching acceptance and cooperation. His message resonated with the lower castes, and eventually gained the attention of the highbloods as well. By then, the movement had grown large enough that Alternia was on the verge of complete anarchy and revolution, and even the Condesce herself got involved. Signless and his friends were captured, and Signless was executed. His rage at the moment of his death lived on as the Vast Expletive, which Karkat is said to have inherited, and the 69-shaped shackles he wore eventually became the symbol of the underground cult that still followed his teachings, as well as Karkat's sign when he was hatched.

Pretty simple, right?

Weeeeeell, there's also the issue of Signless having been in Vatheon before. While under the sea the last time around, Signless got all sorts of things done. He helped his best buddy Psii start to heal and become a troll again after sweeps of trauma from being a Helmsman; he adopted a young elf named Sola and acted as a father figure to him; he bonded with Karkat and forged a relationship with his prickly descendent; he became the younger troll's go-to guy for the simple facts about sex and puberty (lucky him); he became moirails with Dualscar; he befriended Darkleer and then lost that friendship when forced to choose between Darkleer and Psii; he drowned and revived in a cape-related swimming accident; and in general made himself everybody's buddy and local helpful savior figure.

Which means it's going to be pretty interesting when he comes back as the Sufferer.

( Personality ) : Signless, in his previous Vatheon incarnation, was a sweet, good-natured troll, known for smiling all the time and extending a helping hand to anyone with a problem. He was infinitely patient, giving until it hurt, giving until it exhausted him and his mun completely. He would get on the network and preach things like forgiveness and overcoming fear, and even gave a "birds and the buckets" talk when all the young trolls kept coming to him for sex advice. He was, in short, a messiah figure, falling easily into the role of Troll Jesus.

Now though, he'll be from further along on his timeline, all the way up to his death by execution. We know from canon that Signless' final words were remembered as the Vast Expletive, and it's said that his rage in the last moments of his life echoed through the cosmos and were inherited by Karkat. It was also after his death that he became remembered as the Sufferer instead of the Signless.

So how is Sufferer going to be different from Signless?

One of the major differences will be in patience levels. Signless would listen and try to gently steer troubled souls in the right direction, doggedly following the right path until it led him where he wanted to go. Sufferer will get irritated much more quickly, and be more blunt when asked for advice. If someone is acting like a tool, Sufferer will tell them, rather than try to guide them towards that realization himself. He's seen that time is short--that time is very short indeed--and he doesn't believe in wasting it quibbling over details. In this, he will be much more like his descendent Karkat than he was before.

Signless experienced doubt--doubt that he was doing the right thing, doubt that he was making a difference, doubt that they would ever succeed in their insane plans--but he was very private about it. Psii and Dualscar saw Signless in his moments of the doubt the most often, but Karkat and a few others were privy to them as well. For the most part, though, Signless kept his doubts to himself. Sufferer will have no such qualms; he's faced down his own death, his own immense, crushing failure, and those experiences have grown into an unhealthy case of self-hatred. He has failed, and worst of all, he got off the lightest for his failure. He only had to die, while all his nearest and dearest suffered tremendously afterwards. As far as he's concerned, this makes him a failure of the worst kind, and he won't believe that anyone will actually want his advice or want to listen to his sermons anymore.

Finally, the Sufferer will arrive at Vatheon with a serious crisis of faith. When he was in Vatheon before, he drowned in a swimming accident--stupid capes, man, who swims with a cape?--and upon his reviving, mentioned seeing the "neverending light," his name for the afterlife. This time, however, there will have been no light, and no peace... just darkness and emptiness. What if everything he'd ever taught was a lie? What if he gave all these trolls hope, and they gave their lives for the cause, and the cause turned out to be wrong? It's a horrible thought, and one that Sufferer will be mulling over for a good long while.

This is not to say that Sufferer will be unrecognizable as the troll who used to be Signless. He'll still be fiercely devoted to his friends, and he'll remember all of his previous experiences in Vatheon. He's had his innocence and naivety shattered, and it's an older, sadder, more weary mutantblood who will arrive in the bubble this time.

( Strengths/Weaknesses ) : Sufferer's greatest gift is his oratory skill, and his ability to lead others in the face of trouble. However, as mentioned in the Personality section, he will be having a severe crisis of faith and confidence, and it will take a significant event to spurn him into action again. He just can't imagine why anyone would want to follow him, didn't you see what happened to the last trolls who did that? So his self-doubt will be his greatest weakness.

Also, physically he's never been anything special (although he rocks those tight pants and everyone knows it), but he'll arrive in Vatheon after being tortured to death, and his wrists will be covered in severe, bone-deep burns. The burns will be so bad that they cut off all circulation to his hands, and they will wither and die, necessitating the need for robohands. Don't worry, he won't ask Equius for any!

( Other Important Facts ) :JC Superstar is a spectacular musical.

( Sample ) :

In the beginning, there was pain.

The arrow that pierced his side was not the least of it, but only the last. By the time its barbed head sank into his flesh and hit something deep inside, sending a torrent of cherry blood spilling over his hip and down his leg, blood that looked almost black in the bright light of Derse, it was almost an annoyance and nothing more. Hardly a little pang, after the constant burning on his wrists, and the way the flesh crackled and turned black under the heavy irons. He had lost feeling in his hands long ago, the nerves dying under hot brands and his fingers curling inward towards his palms, and the hot blood that ran down his arms felt almost cool by comparison.

And then, after his blood--his cursed, mutant blood--gushed away from his body and left a sticky, clotted pool under his feet... then, there was nothing.

No neverending light, no peace, no absolution. Just darkness, and emptiness, and a million years crying soundlessly into the void.

And then there was a jolt, and a return of the pain, and he was lying face first on cobblestones, soaked through, and this was all very familiar.

Sufferer looks up, his hair soaked and falling in his eyes, his bare back exposed to the air and still slowly running with blood. His eyes blur, and refocus, and he's next to the fountain, in the Plaza. Vatheon. He's back in Vatheon.

Struggling, he tries to push himself to his knees, but he's hindered by the arrow protruding from his side, its shaft slick with blood and its blue (b100) feathers tacky and standing up like little brushes. His hands are useless; blackened, melted things on the ends of his wrists, and the chains he wore when he died, his shackles... they're still there, turned a cold, sullen black instead of pulsing red, and it's hard to tell where the chains end and his wrists begin.

His mind whirls, remembering Vatheon, images coming to him in fractured, fragmented half-memories--Karkat, growling crabbily after getting a hug... Dualscar's fins, moving under his fingertips... Sola, asking questions with that plaintive look on his face... Zelda... Johnny... Jacob... Dave... Disciple... Spider... Psii...

Psii.

He tries again to get to his feet, but his wounds and the chains on his wrists are too much, and he topples forward again, groaning as the arrow digs deeper into his side. He's worthless, useless, he led them all down the wrong path, everything he told them was wrong, he's a failure, he's failed them all...

Sufferer looks up at the bubble's dome, his eyes so bloodshot they're red almost all the way through, and his jaw works, his teeth grinding together and the tendons in his forearms standing out as he tries to clench his hands into fists. His voice is raspy, his throat raw and choked from the last time he spoke, centuries and seconds before.

He throws his head back and screams at the bubble's dome. "FUUUUUUUUCK!"

His voice ripples and echoes back to him, distorted, animalistic, the cry of a brute instead of a savior. Slowly, he bends back over his chained wrists, resting his forehead on the irons, and the red that stains the cold steel is not blood this time.

"...fuck."

( Questions? Comments? Concerns? ) : Y so awesome, Vatheon?