— Xefros Tritoh
(This is technically a video script, not an article! Prepare for discrepancies.)
Welcome to Hiveswap Lore, a video series designed for Hiveswap fans who want to learn more about the game’s expansive background story. Here we’ll cover the history of Alternia and Earth, get to know the people and forces that shaped them, and as we’ll do in this installment, learn about our Player Characters.
Let’s get started by looking at the Hero Titles, one of the intricate methods Hiveswap uses to characterize one of it’s main characters: Xefros Tritoh.
Xefros Tritoh is an all-around Very Good Boy living in the Very Bad interstellar empire of Alternia. Alternia is a dystopian wasteland kept afloat by a mysterious, all-powerful Guardian, the ruthless conquering of other civilizations, and the just-as-ruthless subjugation of it’s own people:
A species of alien known as Trolls.
This subjugation is structured through the Hemospectrum, a strictly-enforced Caste system that assigns its people different societal standings — and corresponding occupations, or Roles — according to Blood Color.
As a Dark-Red Rustblood, Xefros sits at the bottom of this system, while the Fuschia-Pink Heiress that destroys his suburb during Hiveswap is at the top.
Because of this, Xefros — and all others born with his blood hue — can look forward to nothing but a lifetime of exploitation, abuse, and suffering.
Oh, and Butlering. As a gutter-blood, Xefros has been forcefully assigned the slave-labor role of Butlering for highblood trolls, providing grunt work for those leading the neverending warfare against all other life in their universe. And it’s with this imposed Service that our look at the Hero Titles begins.
In his episode on Mario’s Jump (and other versatile verbs), Mark Brown from Game Maker’s Toolkit explores how designing highly-flexible and nuanced Verbs is often a great way to provide a Player with interesting choices.
Giving characters powerful tools can enhance a Player’s sense of connection to both the character *and* the game space, as the interplay between the world and the ways the Player Character can manipulate it’s systems makes both feel more dynamic and fully realized.
By using the Hero Title system introduced in Homestuck, Hiveswap aims to achieve something similar. This story-driven RPG Class System is made up of 14 Classes. The classes come in 7 Pairs, each linked to a Verb — like “Know”, “Steal”, or “Destroy” — that describes their core function, and one or more Archetypes that link the pairs together.
Each Class in a pair is distinguished as either Active (Self-Oriented and Direct; Yang) or Passive (Support-Oriented and Indirect; Yin) versions of an Archetype.
So while Thieves and Rogues are both versions of an Outlaw, and both will have a predisposition towards Stealing, the Active Thief will tend to act for their own benefit, while the Passive Rogue will more often move to
support or empower others.
The system is complicated further by the Hero’s Aspect, which describes what existential idea the Hero interacts with. Two Witches will differ greatly, for example, depending on whether they change “Life”, or change “Space”, as they draw from different sources of magic.
What are “Life” and “Space”, you ask? Well, I was being literal when I mentioned existential Ideas. Hiveswap draws heavily from sources that dealt heavily with the implications of a reality where thought creates reality.
Plato’s Theory of Forms, Jung’s Collective Unconcious? All here.
The consequence is that in Paradox Space, reality is made of 12 fundamental particles of thought. Thought creates reality in Hiveswap, and so every character in it’s cast inevitably gets their wishes granted in some way.
And twelve basic, fundamental ideas can be combined in infinite different ways to create literally everything in all of reality. So the Aspect of Space contains anything an individual can imagine as being linked to the idea of “Space”, and everything in that conceptual domain is something Jade —
The Witch of Space — has a natural talent for Changing.
Think Avatar: The Last Airbender, but through psychic powers instead of martial arts, and with each “Element” associated with different philosophical and metaphysical roots that describe it’s relationship to reality.
However, Hiveswap is a Point-and-Click puzzle-adventure game with an emphasis on storytelling, not an action-brawler, or even an actual RPG (yet). So instead of being used to determine how the Player interacts with the game world, Hiveswap’s verbs provide a basis for world-building, instead.
In this, Hiveswap’s writing is comparable to something like Dark Souls, where clues to the nature of the world and powerful figures within it are scattered across text descriptions, dialogue boxes, and environmental detail.
The Hero Titles let us expand this approach to character analysis, helping us understand the complicated interpersonal contexts of the cast, as well as giving us insight into the nature of their deep inner worlds and unique personal strengths.
Which brings us to the cultural image of the Butler.
Butlers are by definition, “Ones who Serve”, meaning their existential relationship to reality is roughly synonymous with that of the Hero Classes Knight and Page.
Dave, as The Knight of Time, is associated with acting like a Butler for his friends, and spends most of his adventure either: 1) engaging in acts of service by helping others with their goals Or 2) giving others goods and resources, as if on a silver platter.
Which brings us back to this kid. Xefros is a Butler-In-Training for the Alternian Empire, meaning he’s forced to learn to provide food and assistance to Highblooded trolls, with death as the price of any failure — all for the benefit of the Empire, not himself.
He’s also a Butler-in-Practice to his best friend Dammek, a Bronzeblood only a single rung above him on the Hemospectrum, but a few years older and considerably more driven. Dammek is an ambitious outlaw, and the leader of an extensive Rebel Network that aims to take out the Empire once and for all.
He has a habit of starting massive ventures and expecting Xefros to come along for the ride. Andso Xefros, like Dave, develops a habit of acting in service to the goals of others, rather than following through on goals he sets for himself.
Between preparing to Serve the Empire and keeping up with Serving his friend, Xefros notes repeatedly that his own interests and dreams are left by the wayside, since he simply doesn’t have the Time to keep up with them.
In other words, societal forces and toxic friendships have combined to force Xefros to Serve Time for the benefit of Others, and so he is playing out the role of a Knight. As a result of his upbringing and life circumstances, he also thinks quite a lot about Time. Thus, we can understand Xefros, at least partly, as a different interpretation of the title Knight of Time.
But that’s not all there is to the story. Because where acting to serve his friends came fairly naturally to Dave, for Xefros the entire effort is harmful to his personal growth, and deeply unfulfilling.
Our first clue to this fact comes when, perhaps because he’s associated with all of this Passive behavior, Xefros notes that he prefers to passively engage with narratives, as opposed to doing something action-oriented like playing a game.
Because what Xefros really wishes he could do, above all else, is make a run at fame and fortune by playing the Sport of Lords — a combination of Billiards and Football known on Alternia as Arena Stickball.
In his sport of choice, Xefros plays the role of Pusher — the most dangerous game position, but also the only one allowed to score, and one that usually finds itself protected by their teammates because of this. Xefros references feeling particularly at home when he feels protected by his Brawler.
This echoes a set of other characters from Homestuck who enjoyed being protected or assisted by friends, such as Tavros Nitram and Jake English.
What these characters have in common is an association with the Page Class, which we’ll find many connections to as we draw hints of what Xefros is really like under all that pressure and responsibility from his idle thoughts and childhood memories.
If a Knight embodies the mantra “One for All”,
then the Page embodies that of “All for One”.
Where Knights tend to step into the role of the Butler to aid their friends, Pages’ innocent and giving nature tends to win them allies invested in helping them grow stronger, or giving them what they want. Where Knights simply are Butlers, Pages can more often be found surrounded by them.
Both classes are also linked to the image of the Warrior, hinting at the third definition of Serve: To deliver a swift and decisive defeat, or humiliate someone so much they can only say “I got Served.” Pages are often the recipients of this kind of Serving, too.
So Xefros eats bitter leaves provided by his Sloth Dad, believing he’s being generous — but ultimately, the action serves to make him stronger, and
builds up his capacity to take further action in the future, rather than empowering the people around him.
This tendency to benefit from the aid of others is at its strongest with a Pages’ Imaginary Friend, who the Page imagines as far more competent and impressive than themselves, and who serves as a role-model and mentor figure.
For Jake English, this was a mental version of his best friend Dirk Strider, who Jake likens to the Batman to his personal Robin. For Tavros, it was a made up figure named Rufio, referencing the character from the Peter Pan film “Hook”.
For Xefros, that slot is filled by Xultan Matzos, a legendary Arena Stickball player that Xefros likens to “a figure from History” — again thinking in terms of his relationship to Time.
Joey also points us to Xefros’ Page nature when she calls him Xerox.
In the 90′s, Xerox (Logo pictured above) was the colloquial term for both a product and the company that produced it. Particularly, Xerox was a popular brand of photocopier, meaning a machine designed to copy text and images onto a blank Page.
This hints at another Page skill — imitation and copycatting. Tavros finds narrative success by imitating Peter Pan, and Jake English copies female action heroes like Lara Croft — Boobs & Butt Pose and all. And Xefros credits his imitation of Xultan’s stance with at least occasional Sports success.
Take a moment to imagine the implications a whole community of people being inspired to empower and aid a single individual, who happens to be excellent at identifying effective role-models and talented at learning through mentorship and hands-on coaching from others.
Now you have a sense of why the Page class is described as one of the most powerful classes, with late-game Pages carrying a reputation for limitless potential.
As a Burgundy-Blood, Xefros has a (so-far untested) ability to commune with the dead along with his Telekinesis, meaning he could even come to meet his Hero despite Xultan’s death, as Pages’ progressions often involve having their imaginary friend become real.
However, that’s an open question. We don’t really know how Xefros’ psychic powers will develop as Hiveswap continues, because both raising the dead and Telekinesis are powers linked to his Blood Color, not Xefros himself.
Hiveswap’s Extended Zodiac describes individuals as being -Bound to a given Aspect. The -Bound suffix is borrowed from Earthbound, a game about kids developing psychic powers and taking on enemies quite similar to the ultimate threat looming over Hiveswap (who we’ll talk about some other time).
Now, while every character has a true Aspect, we’re also told that a character might manifest their abilities as another Aspect entirely if corrupted by an outside influence.
And Alternia’s Caste system itself is one such corrupting influence — it’s a system meant to systematically confuse and subjugate its citizens, and so it will naturally have an impact on the ways they think about themselves.
Each of the twelve Blood Castes contains an alphabet of 24 Symbols — 2 for each Aspect. However, the Caste as a whole is linked to the Aspect of it’s
“True Sign” — one of the Twelve signs from the Zodiac we know here on Earth.
For Rustbloods, this True Sign is Aries, and it’s associated Aspect is Time.
This means all Rust-Blooded trolls are coerced by Alternia into thinking in and attempting to interact with Time, regardless of where their true strengths actually lie.
Let’s take a look at how Xefros’ relationship to Time itself is unhealthy for him.
Pages, like Knights, are a version of the Warrior archetype, and both classes share a penchant for fighting — along with a thirst for glory and recognition for their heroism in society’s eyes. This desire for personal stardom and success is one of many parts of himself Xefros gives up as he’s forced to give his Time to other’s agendas.
Making things worse, he knows full well that in a few more years, he’ll face exile from the Empire’s Homeworld as he comes of age. No adults are allowed on Alternia on decree of it’s brutal Empress, and all trolls who grow up are funneled off-planet to fuel the Empire’s variety of war efforts.
And to top it all off, since Trolls’ standing on the Blood Caste is linked to their lifespan, Xefros can only expect to live for, at most, two dozen sweeps — around 51 years old, in Earth years. The end result is that Xefros experiences life through a lens of resignation and exhaustion.
But beneath those burdens, Xefros is actually a Rage player. And even while thinking in terms of Time, it’s through Rage that he best leverages his Page potential and wins over his most powerful ally yet: Joey Claire.
Rage is a more nebulous and abstract concept than Time, so let’s describe a few of its nuances. Rage describes negative emotions, doubt, and the search for hard, objective Truth.
As a Page, Xefros “Serves” Joey Rage — giving her reason to doubt, distrust, and take umbrage with his otherwise innocent statements. At the beginning of their relationship, Joey finds Xefros immensely frustating. Xefros acts as a “bringer of confusion”, remaining fixated on talking to Dammek even when Joey repeatedly makes it clear she isn’t him.
When Xefros makes a request of Joey, she’s inspired to Serve him Rage in one of three ways. She can give him the banal truth (Earth), fear through physical threats (tap-dancing), or provide him with the mental image from a Nightmare (squid-god). Whatever her answer, Xefros will doubt her claim.
Dammek was also at times moved to Serve Xefros Rage. Trolls sleep while enmeshed in a somewhat dangerous Soporific slime that dilutes the impact of constant, unending nightmares of horrific violence and brutality that plague the species as a whole.
These nightmares are inflicted by the psychic Chucklevoodoo powers of the Grand High Bloods, one of the Castes highest on the Hemospectrum.
These powers are equated to the Rage Aspect in Homestuck, and with the Rage-bound Capricorn as its true Sign, the entire Caste of the Purple-Bloods is linked to the Rage aspect.
Which means that by being exposed to the Chucklevooodos, Xefros was actually being Given Rage, and as he now has somewhat of an immunity to these debilitating nightmares, it’s fair to say it was to his benefit. Uh. Arguably, anyway. Still a pretty dick move, Dammek.
And soon, Joey’s confusion and frustration give way to a sense of concern for Xefros, making her wonder if he needs help.
While Rage is one of the most seemingly negative Aspects, this is misleading. It’s a necessary part of reality, particularly where rebellion is concerned.
The ability to observe the raw reality of injustice being experienced, and the focus and fury necessary to smash the mechanisms that inflict it, are both concepts closely intertwined with Rage.
You will find Rage in the righteous protest or the rightful critic.
Or in the mouth of someone sticking up for a friend. At the climax of Act 1, Joey serves Xefros some intense Rage, calling out Dammek’s belittling behavior and the ways it caused Xefros’ lack of self-esteem.
When Xefros tries to hold onto his relationship with Dammek with empty justifications, Joey tears righteously tears them down. When Xefros acts like Alternia’s view of his blood color means his life is nothing, Joey rips the entire concept of the Hemospectrum wide open.
Joey praises Xefros for his strengths, validates his sense of self, and promises to raise him up and help him develop healthy standards for how his friends treat him.
At the end of Act 1, Joey has committed to Serving Xefros, and it’s her Rage at his confused sense of self and the society that produced it that leads her to do it. Now, what will we learn about who Xefros is and what he’s really capable of, as he works on discovering his true self and seeking out the other members of the rebellion with Joey’s assistance?
Between Joey’s passion for the spotlight and Xefros’ ability to stoke the furious flames of rebellion in those who get to know him, maybe the Rebel Network has found its secret weapon after all?
Interesting questions to consider as we wait for Act 2.
I hope this video has been helpful to you in understanding Hiveswap.
If you like what I’m up to here, please feel free to spread the word! I really want this stuff to reach the eyes of the growing Hiveswap fanbase, because there’s a lot of fascinating stuff to uncover and I want everyone to join in on the fun!
That’s all for now. Until next time,
Keep Rising!
Flying through Storytelling 