THE CHILL YOU FEEL, it comes from me

[skullpiles]

my name is death and i excel
I CAN OPEN THE GATES TO HEAVEN OR HELL
cast aside the flesh of thee
CAST ASIDE AND SET YOU FREE

Character Name: Gamzee Makara
Character Series: Homestuck
Character Age: 10 sweeps // early 20s
Character Gender: Male

AU Background: In this AU, SGRUB was never played and Earth was never created by the trolls. Events prior to the game are still as they were; Tavros was crippled, Terezi was blinded, Aradia was killed and received the robot body from Equius. They all grew up (except Aradia), and their lives progressed on Alternia and beyond.

After Karkat got it in his head that he needed to get Gamzee off the slime, things went down hill pretty quickly. The slime had damaged his brain pretty severely, and that coupled with the fact that indigobloods are known for being violent and capricious, he managed to slaughter a few of Karkat's neighbors before he was eventually calmed. Karkat ended up heavily scarred for his trouble, but in the end they became bonded tightly as moiriails and are rarely ever far from each other for long.

Gamzee gave up the slime completely then. He doesn't even sleep in it anymore because of the temptation. The sleep rage is harsh to deal with, but he still considers it the better alternative. He started to show a lot more issues when it came to abandonment, stemming from the fact that his lusus had left him alone for so long. The loneliness had been crushing, which was part of what made him turn to the slime in the first place. It numbed a lot of the pain he didn't know how to deal with.

It took a good while for him to be able to function well on his own again. He's still brain damaged, and has a lot of trouble remembering things. There are large portions of his childhood that he just cant remember anymore. Still, he's much sharper now, clever, and has come up with his own tricks to help him hold on to memories that he'd rather not lose.

As a highblood, Gamzee was taken with others from his class and dropped off on a particularly violent and harsh planet, then left there to survive as the initiation into becoming a Subjugglator. There he found a book bound in skin and written in all colors of blood, bearing his symbol. It had belonged to The Grand Highblood and left there for 'the right young troll to find.' It taught him ways to use Subjugglator voodoo in ways that pretty much broke the established system. After returning to Karkat, he used what he learned to rip out the chuckle voodoos implanted in those that have regathered, freeing them of that innate fear of going against the monarchy, paving way for this secret rebellion to actually take place.

The first time he attempted removing a chucklevoodoo was with his own. He hadn't been properly prepared and ended up hurting himself in the process. Gamzee's eyes turned pitch black and he suffers from a widespread pain coming from needing to keep constant control over the voodoos he keeps contained inside of him. It does get easier over time, and being active seems to ease it somewhat. So he always seems to be moving in someway.

Karkat's plans are still in their infancy at this point, focusing on gathering trusted comrades. The plan is actually fairly simple at it's core. "Keep Feferi alive to take the Empress' place."

The first time he was actually allowed to go off on his own was on what was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission. Equius had been exiled somewhere after a moment of defiance, allowing his moirail to escape imprisonment for her own transgressions. They'd gotten word of a blue blood with a broken horn serving as a prostitute on a little moon out in the middle of no where. None of them actually thought it was him, but Gamzee wanted to check it out anyway.

He was supposed to just find out if Equius was there or not, then report back and they'd plan on how to get him out. Instead, Gamzee ended up confronting the blueblood, wanting to know how far he'd fallen. He treated him like shit, trying to rile him up and get him to fight back. Did he regret what he'd done or was it all worth it? Equius more than proved his continuing loyalty, and Gamzee found himself drawn to that strength. By the end of the whole ordeal they had ended up matesprits, and Gamzee had to drag Equius unconscious and bleeding out of the brothel, threatening to beat anyone to death who got too close with the blueblood's own severed leg.

The scum that owned the establishment? He got too close.

Gamzee had developed quite an obsession with blood and it's colors, the inside of his shuttle is painted in the various colors trolls have too offer. It starts in simple splats and shapes that eventually evolved into elaborate patterns and symbols as it spreads out across the walls of the cockpit. Even the skull of the previous owner of said shuttle sits painted over the control panel. While he still has an array of horns, he's taken more to collecting skulls and has acquired a rather impressive pile of them. He also braids trinkets into his hair, mostly trophies from those he killed durring and after his Subjugglator initiation.

Be it his natural disposition or something brought about by the sopor, Gamzee is a violent, psychotic killer. There are times where he literally can't help himself. It's a compulsion, and calling his fascination with blood and death an obsession wouldn't be far off the mark. He is quite easily the most powerful out of all of them but in turn he's most definitely the least stable. Being his moirail, Karkat had a lot of trouble coming to terms with this, but in the end started making sure that he was pointed in the right directions when certain compulsions started to arise.

His facepaint changed to resemble a voodoo skull, rather than a simple clown. He does consider himself a Subjugglator, focusing more on the voodoo and dream manipulation. Fear is a powerful thing, and he's not above using it to his advantage. He never lost his faith in the Mirthful Messiahs, so his belief is just as firm if not moreso than before. He quite literally becomes The Darkness of the rebellion, doing the dirty work, scare tactics and torture. He hunts the vile and oppressive, offering them a chance at salvation through The Dark Carnival.

He still bakes pies, using as a way to keep calm under suggestion from Karkat. His experiments can get... interesting. It's best not to ask him where he gets his meat from.

Karkat has been slowly bringing everyone back together and is following in his ancestor's footsteps with hopes of changing the way things are, but rather than an all out rebellion he's planning on doing things more covert this time around.


Abilities:

Jokerkind - this pretty much makes Gamzee a weapons master. In Homestuck, everyone has what is known as a 'strife specibus', which allows them to equip weapons to it and pull them out whenever they want. Someone can have more than one, but would have to switch between them and use one at a time. With jokerkind, he doesn't have to switch. He can just whip out whatever weapon he wants and use it. He has all of them. All the weapons. Including a severed leg.

Voodoo: Ancient Subjugglator mysticism, similar to traditional voodoo, hoodoo, and obeah but intertwined Dark Carnival mythology. Over doing it at one point turned his eyes black, but now that he's getting older, rings of purple can be seen as the irises change to match his blood.

He can create little voodoo dolls called 'chucklevoodoos' and drop them into the subconscious of whomever he chooses, which can cause psychosis and befuddlement. He's also learned to rip out the chucklevoodoos others have had implanted in them all their lives, and he keeps them inside of himself to use in various ways.

Due to the nature of them having been physically linked to someone, they take on some aspects of their host. In this case, they became dark, twisted versions of the zodiac. They seem almost like independent creatures after going through the ritual to separate them, but they are tightly bound to Gamzee.

Fear - As a Subjugglator, Gamzee has the ability to psychically amplify fears through dreams. Because he carries the voodoos of his friends, he tends to 'leak' fear and it tends to make those around him feel anything from uncomfortable to disturbed to mindbreakingly terrified. He's recently begun using it to distort himself. He'll resonate with existing chucklevoodoo's and make people frightened enough they won't have a clear memory of what they saw.