Strife

**Strife** is the medium by which combat is presented in Homestuck.

## Strife Encounters

A **strife encounter** begins when a character confronts an enemy. The encounter is then resolved through combat, either ending when the opponent is killed or when the fight defuses itself.

When characters and enemies take damage during strife , their **Health Vial** decreases. Enemies die when their Health Vial is completely depleted , disappearing completely and dropping loot in their place. Characters' vials can be replenished by picking up vitality gels.

### Commands

During strife, the player character is given different strife commands to choose from.

John can pick from the following commands:

* Aggrieve  (green) – John attacks with his weapon. His dad performs an *Auto-Pastry*, nullifying the attack.
* Abjure (cyan) – John defends against his dad's *Guardian Rubric: Coddlebrand* where he offers John a birthday cake.
* Accede  (blue) – John accepts a cake from his dad into his Sylladex.
* Abscond  (magenta)

Rose can pick from the following commands :

* Aggrieve (green) – Rose attacks with her weapon. Her mom performs a *Blotto-Parry.*
* Aggress (green) – Clicking reveals a sub-option called "(Passive)". Rose passive aggressively makes an empty suicide threat by sticking her needles in an electrical outlet that has no power.
* Abjure (cyan) – Rose defends against her mom's *Guardian Rubric: Ironic Indulgence* where she gifts Rose a beautiful pony.
* Abstain (cyan) – Rose defends against her mom's *Guardian Rubric: Ironic Negligence* where she offers Rose a martini. Rose defends with an *Auto-Perrier*.

Dave can pick from the following commands , however none of them can be selected due to his Bro slicing the command menu in half:

* *Aggrieve* or *Aggress* (green)
* *Abjure* or *Abstain* (cyan)
* *Abuse* or *Accuse* (orange)
* *Assail* or *Assault* (red)
* Abscond  (magenta)

Jade can pick from the following commands :

* Aggrieve  (green) – Jade engages in a variety of silly faux gunplay with her Grandpa's taxidermized likeness.
* Arraign (purple) – Jade shoots a bullet at Bec which is promptly vaporized.
* Ar (purple) – Reveals another command when selected.
	+ Arsenalize – Jade shoots at Bec who shrinks the both of them down and places them onto the bullet. They ride the bullet to the other side of the island. They are both then returned to normal size.
	+ Artillerate – Jade shoots at Bec who teleports the both of them away and onto the Frog Temple.
	+ Armamentify – Jade shoots at Bec who teleports the both of them to different places around the world, landing back at the island.
	+ Arf – Jadee shoots a bullet off into the distance and tells Bec to go fetch. Bec runs off and catches the bullet in his mouth, then returns it to Jade.

During a strife, a character's guardian can perform special attacks from their *Guardian Rubric*.

### Quips

Quips are snappy lines of text that often appear during strife encounters. They serve no purpose other than to commentate on the action.

* John vs. his Dad
	+ AUTO-PASTRY! when John uses Aggrieve.
	+ DOTESMITE! when John uses Abjure.
* Rose vs. her Mom
	+ BLOTTO-PARRY! when Rose uses Aggrieve.
	+ EMPTY SUICIDE THREAT when Rose uses Aggress > (Passive).
	+ A BEAUTIFUL PONY when Rose uses Abjure.
	+ AUTO-PARRIER! when Rose uses Abstain.
* John vs. Shale Imp
	+ DON'T MOVE OR THE BUNNY GETS IT at the beginning of the fight.
	+ PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX when John attempts to Aggrieve.
* John vs. Shale Imp Part 3  – SWEET CATCH! when John catches his dad's PDA.
* John absconds from many imps in his living room  – NICE ABSCOND, DUDE!
* Rose can't read the captcha code of the Sburb disc, and then her laptop dies  – FACEPALM x2 COMBO!
* Dave atempts to abscond from Strife with his Bro  – CAN'T ABSCOND, BRO!

### Echeladder

Characters can climb to new levels on their **Echeladder** by winning strife encounters. The levels on the Echeladder are called **achievement rungs**. Climbing to new achievement rungs gives the character a new feather in their cap and increases various stats. It also awards the character with boondollars.

Leveling up increases Gel Viscocity and Cache Limit.

Supposedly, inanimate objects  are also capable  of leveling up  when used to kill enemies.

## Strife Specibi

A strife specibus  (pl. *strife specibi* ) is an abstract interface that lets characters adopt a kind abstrata for attacking enemies. The specibus is allocated to a kind abstratus and contains a Strife Deck.

A strife specibus can only be allocated to one kind abstrata, but one character can keep many usable strife specibi inside a strife portfolio .

### Strife Deck

The **Strife Deck** holds weapon artifacts inside of a strife specibus. The After a kind abstratus has been selected, accessible captcha cards containing valid artifacts  can be moved into the Strife Deck from the Captchalogue Deck.

Apparently, John's unallocated strife specibus came with one empty captcha card in its Strife Deck.

### Kind Abstrata

A **kind abstratus** refers to a class of weaponry or fighting style. When a character has an unallocated strife specibus, its back can be browsed for kind abstrata  to choose from. Allocating a kind abstratus to a strife specibus is permanent . Characters use their strife specibi to fight according to their kind abstrata.

#### Naming Convention

The names of kind abstrata follow a convention: The name of the weapon + the word "kind". If the name of the weapon is longer than 8 letters, it gets abreviated. Here are some examples:

* The abstratus for fighting with hammers is *hammer + kind = hammerkind*.
* The abstratus for fighting with humorous weapons is *joker* + *kind* = *jokerkind*.
* The abstratus for fighting with fancy Santas is *fancy santa* abbreviated to *fncysnta* + *kind* = *fncysntakind*.

#### Abstratus Alteration

If a weapon currently wielded by a character is broken or modified, the kind abstratus associated with the weapon can be changed as well. During this change, all weapons in the strife specibus's Strife Deck will either be ejected  or transformed  so that they fit the new abstratus.

For example, when the head of John's sledgehammer breaks off, his abstratus changes from hammerkind to handlekind. Because of this, the head of John's smaller hammer also breaks off  and is ejected from his Sylladex. When he puts a repaired sledgehammer back into his Strife Deck, the specibus automatically switches back to hammerkind, which ejects the handle of his small hammer .

#### Known Kind Abstrata

* hammerkind  – Used by John Egbert. Fights using all kinds of tool hammers and battle hammers. If the head of the hammer breaks off, this abstratus can turn into handlekind.
* needlekind  – Used by Rose Lalonde. Fights using knitting needles.
* bladekind  – Used by Dave Strider. Fights using swords.
* bunnykind  – Used by a Shale Imp , then was equipped by John Egbert . The *Con Air* stuffed rabbit fits into this abstratus.
* handlekind  – Created when the head of a hammerkind hammer in the Strife Deck is broken off.
* riflekind  – Used by Jade Harley. Fights using sniper rifles.

Many kind abstrata are listed on the back of John's unallocated strife specibus .

\*All of the Homestuck humans' starting kind abstrata are on this list, excluding Roxy's *fistkind*. *chainsawkind* is also listed, being Kanaya's favored weapon.

†The full names of these abstrata are partially covered the cursor. Possibly, the full names of these abstrata are *jumpropekind*, *shovelkind*, and *hatchetkind*.

‡*plungerkind* is listed twice. The reason for this is not known, but it is possible that one refers to toilet plungers and one refers to blasting machines.

§Dave's Bro is shown to possess many throwing stars and fireworks  among his vast collection of weapons. Throwing stars are also the favored weapon of Sollux, but he does not use the *thrwstarkind* kind abstratus since he can simply throw the stars using telekinesis.

¶John's Dad is seen using a can of shaving cream as a weapon  against Imps.

## Footnotes

1. ↑ On page 36 , John has a hammer captchalogued at the top of his Captchalogue Deck, with four total captcha cards. On page 38 , he moves the hammer from his Captchalogue Deck to his Strife Deck. Then, on page 40 , John is shown to still have four total captcha cards. This means that the captcha card did not go into the Strife Deck along with the hammer.

But, because the captcha card containing the sledge hammer on page 167  is shown to go into the Strife Deck with the artifact, we know that weapons still need to be stored in captcha cards inside the Strife Deck.

Therefore, it must be assumed that John's unallocated strife specibus already had an empty captcha card inside it.