Equius Zahhak, also known by his Trollian handle “centaursTesticle”, is one of the trolls. His associated zodiac sign is Sagittarius (♐), and he has one broken and one arrow shaped horn. He also has broken sunglasses and broken teeth. He has a prominent widow's peak and his hair extends down to his back.
The name Equius takes its root from the Latin Equus, or "horse." It may also be in reference to the play "Equus," in which a boy discovers his sexual affinity towards horses. This would explain Equius' almost unhealthy obsession for anything relating to "hoofbeasts." "Equus" can also be a variation of "calm" in Latin, which would be ironic for the fact that Equius has the habit of going on rages. His first name could also come from the constellation "Equueleus", which means "little horse".
Zahhak is a figure in Iranian mythology, who was strong and clever, but was easily manipulated by his evil counselors into world domination. Zahhak was also known as Bēvar-Asp, which translates into "[he who has] 10,000 horses" (100²).
The use of “centaurs” in the chumhandle is a reference to Greek mythology, in which a Sagittarius was identified as a centaur. Equius' typing quirk includes adding a bow and arrow (D -->) before speaking, which also references his sign, 'sagittarius' meaning 'archer' in Latin.
The “Testicle” part of his chumhandle may reference the erotic nature of his musclebeast portraits.
He also uses 100 and 001 to replace words that have "loo" and "ool" sounds in them such as look, fool, and pollute. He also replaces the letter 'x' and the word "cross" with a % (with two % next to each other meaning "doublecross"); these latter 3 quirks all reference his zodiac sign in a way: most of Sagittarius depictions show him with a bow and "cent" comes from the Latin centum, meaning "hundred" (although not in "centaur", since this word has a Greek origin). Aside from the 100% STRONG theme of his, the % might also be a reference to different percentages of milk, such as 1% or 2% milk. Spanish for X is also 'equis,' though it may also be a reference to the cross shape at the lower end of his sign. In addition, the word 'percent' comes from the pseudo-Latin phrase "per cent", meaning out of one hundred.
He also often references mythical beasts, and speaks with a certain tinge of superiority — becoming angry when Nepeta uses foul language (hell) and tells her that her “fraternization with the base classes” has “100sened her morals”.
After a series of “8acksta88ings” and “%%ings”, he ended up being the leader of the B100 Team.
Biography
Hivebent
Equius is a highfalutin troll who considers the members of the red team to be lowbrow trash, and his blood color, Indigo, is very high in troll society as far as colors go.
His lusus, Aurthour, is very similar to a humanimal, and the posters on his wall
are actually part of an old and respected Alternian tradition, despite their outwardly disturbing appearance. The posters themselves are taken from ironic art reviews made earlier by Andrew Hussie. Some have also appeared in the Jandrew Edits he co-creates.
Equius is extremely strong. So strong, that every time he tries using a bow and arrow, he ends up snapping the bow like a twig. Similarly, glasses shatter in his hand, and his gentlest touch bruises. As a result, he has never successfully fired a single arrow. Broken bows and arrows litter the floor of his room. He has acquired a near-fetishistic obsession with breaking them, similar to Vriska's obsession with smashing magic 8-balls. Nepeta misconstrues this as simply sucking at archery.
He likes to build robots, and builds a pair of robotic legs for Tavros, a robotic arm for Vriska, and an entire indigo-blooded robot body for Aradia. However, he is also referred to as being "misanthrobopic," finding pleasure in dueling the robots he builds in brutal cage matches (possibly making him the most powerful player pre-Hivebent), often losing teeth in the process (though they usually grow back). Broken robot parts are piled on his floor. The technology he uses to build his robots is very similar if not identical to the technology used to build Jade's dreambot and augment John's Bunny, as well as the technology Dirk uses with Brobot.
Sburb Sgrub proves to be no challenge for his incredible strength. Rather than building, Equius simply strongjumps to the first gate in his Medium realm, the Land of Caves and Silence. He beheads a massive enemy with a single punch and makes it to the second gate in very little time. He then delivers Aradia her robot. After he asks her if she feels any odd feelings or desires once she is ensconced within her new robotic body, she learns that he put a chip in her heart so that she would have romantic feelings for him. She then proceeds to flip the fuck out, rip her new heart out, beat it to a pulp, smack the shit out of Equius, and then kiss him.
Afterward, Equius arrives on Nepeta's planet, the Land of Little Cubes and Tea, where she welcomes him with a friendly pouncegreet!. When asked about what happened to Aradia, Equius tells her that he does not know, and says that she has disappeared.
Post-Hivebent
Equius dies with a smile.
Ever since Aradia blew up, he has spent much of his time with Nepeta (at least one hour of which consisted of talking about feelings in a broken robot pile). After receiving Karkat's warning about Gamzee, he instructs Nepeta to hide and goes searching for him. When he succeeds in finding him, it is pretty terrifying. Equius was killed by Gamzee Makara, who strangled him to death with a bowstring. He died with a smile on his face, possibly due to the pleasure of being strangled by a highblood, and as a form of erotic asphyxiation. It is possible that his title, "Heir of Void," is a play-on-words implying "void of air" as per Equius' death. If this is the case, it would also relate to his trollhandle, “centaursTesticle”, as a common way of castrating a horse is by simply cutting off circulation to the genitals until they stop working. Another reason to the smile on his face is in THIS CONVERSATION, where Gamzee explains if he could make him smile “it would be the best fucking miracle I ever did part of”.
Equius (or at the very least a doomed instance of him) was spotted standing next to two Aradiabots in [S] Roxy: Sleepwalk, surveying the wandering Roxy. It is later revealed by Aradia that he is “courting a vast plurality of (her) robotic doubles” after his death.
Equiusprite
After being killed by Gamzee, his body was sequestered by him until arriving in the post-scratch kids' session. Upon arrival Gamzee made multiple attempts to prototype his remains into Dirk Strider's kernelsprite, but Dirk took measures to prevent his attempts (mainly by appeasing him with orange soda), in order to eventually prototype Lil Hal. However, after 5 months, moments before Dirk decided to finally prototype his sprite, Gamzee successfully prototyped Equius, resulting in his resurrection as Equiusprite. Despite this, seconds later Dirk decided to go ahead and prototype Lil Hal, resulting in them becoming merged into Arquiusprite.
Personality and Traits
You like to solve things by punching them.
Equius is a complicated and initially disturbing troll. He is a firm believer in the blood-caste system and believes one should respect those higher than them and is personally disgusted by those who are lower. He believes one is not only allowed, but obligated to boss around anyone who is lower-ranked than them and to accept and obey orders from anyone who is higher-ranked. He believes "highbloods" should act with elegance and authority and "gutterbloods" should act with crass and submission, and most importantly, highbloods and gutterbloods should not fraternize. Any deviation from this pattern (such as Gamzee and Aradia's actions) flusters him greatly. He tries ordering highbloods to order him around, but notices the contradiction.
He is brilliant enough to build his own robots, intending to destroy them in bouts of rage. He has an appreciation for fine Alternian musclebeast art, depicting extremely muscular and well-endowed beasts displaying their brutish strength. He tries to keep up with many aristocratic practices, and has dabbled in slam poetry (mostly about his strange fetishes).
Equius has a tendency to quickly fly into a rage about practically everything. He is only able to express his rage by building robots, setting them to "Kill Mode," and smashing the shit out of them with staggering quantities of violence. In a pinch, other acts of destruction will do, such as when Aradia throws a bath tub through his wall to calm him down. He also gets profusely sweaty when placed in compromising situations, or when flying into said rage fits. According to him, he would probably be far more dangerous if he didn't have Nepeta as his moirail to keep him subdued.
Equius is freakishly strong, and has trouble controlling his strength; under his touch, bows snap, glasses break, and his exceptionally strong lusus bruises from little more than a gentle pat. This enrages him further.
He seems to enjoy the concept of domination, admiring his own strength, as well as the clout that his blue blood gives him over the lesser blood colors. However, it would seem that he would prefer to be dominated by the few trolls that occupy a caste higher than his own - or by anyone lower-classed who acts with a manner refined enough that it confuses him. He even went so far as to make an artificial heart which pumps blue blood for Aradia.
He likes games, but only if they are serious important games with high stakes. He has no interest in Flarp, and forbade Nepeta from playing as well. This may have saved her from being eaten by Vriska's Lusus. While alone with Nepeta, however, he will begrudgingly accept to engage in more frivolous antics (horsing around, if you will).
Relationships
Nepeta Leijon
Equius seems to care deeply for Nepeta Leijon, so much that he insists that she be on his team regardless of what Nepeta wants. He has an affectionate but possessive attitude towards her. Karkat disagrees, calling Equius the “ONLY BIGGER ASSHOLE THAN [him]” (although he says something to that effect about everyone), but Tavros doesn't mind, given Nepeta avoided Vriska killing or paralyzing her because of Equius role-blocking her. Since Equius lives next to Vriska, he might have been aware of all the trolls that Vriska fed to her lusus and wanted to protect Nepeta from that fate. Interestingly enough, Nepeta seems to reciprocate the feelings, telling Equius that he is lucky that she is watching out for him. Their relationship is the iconic moirallegiance, and theirs is perhaps the single most straightforward and uncomplicated troll romance among the entire group. It is also seen in their quirk prefixes, “D -->” and “:33 <”, if one were to take each less than and greater than sign and combine them, they would get the text form of moirallegiance; “<”“>”.
Aradia Megido
Equius has an obsessive crush on Aradia and created a robotic chassis for her upon request (complete with artificial passion for him programmed onto an artificial heart that pumps indigo blood (although this may have been Vriska's idea to begin with, as stated in the pesterlogs), fantasizing that in that way she could be considered a blue-blood and he could be with her romantically. Later on, he was upset about how Aradia had become his superior (being his server player and thus in control of his physical environment) but then took perverse pleasure in being dominated by her, even ceding the leadership title to her. His relationship with Aradia is hard to define, like much of troll romance, but his feelings tend to lean more towards the flushed quadrant. They were, however, together romantically. In the Ministrife, Aradia notes that Equius is courting a plurality of her robotic doubles in the afterlife, plausibly against her will, and mentions that she "“never should have kissed [him] that time it was such a mistake :(”" most likely separating her non-Aradiabot self from him for good.
Other trolls
Gamzee gets ready to kill Equius with a bow he just broke.
Most of Equius' qualms with the other trolls concern acting above or below one's rank. He questions how a troll like Gamzee, whose purple blood - a color historically associated with royalty - is a tier above Equius' indigo blood, could act so crassly, while Aradia, who is “of the most abject, verminous bloodline of all”, can conduct herself with (to him) poise and grace, casting doubts upon the practicality of the system. Equius becomes flustered and apologetic when a so called “highb100d” like Gamzee accepts an order from him without question. Judging from this conversation, Equius seems to have a complex, unconventional fetish for being "whipped into a state of contrition" for his "impudence." Equius's desire to be 'put in his place' is what ultimately led to his downfall. Equius could possibly have saved himself easily, but he was killed because he would rather uphold the caste system (or perhaps fulfill said fetish) than save his own life. The trolls he is in romantic relationships with (Nepeta and Aradia) represent the signs Leo and Aries, which along with Sagittarius make up the Fire signs of the Zodiac.
Lusus/Kernelsprite
Equius's Lusus, Aurthour.
Aurthour, after prototyping.
Equius's Lusus, Aurthour, is a muscled centaur with udders and a nice mustache. He serves as Equius's butler, offering him cold glasses of nutritious lusus milk, presumably among other things. He resembles a creature from one of the author's older works, Humanimals. Equius considers him to be one of the strongest lusus species in existence, the only one suitable for raising him and his absurd strength. Even though Equius tries to be as gentle as possible with him, his strength causes Aurthour to bruise incredibly easily, leading to a prominent black eye. Aurthour is also, according to Equius, the best there is at butlering.
Aurthour dies after an explosion caused a piece of Equius' house containing Aurthour to plummet into the rocks and spiderwebs below, to later be scooped up and deposited into his kernelsprite. In Alterniabound, it was revealed that "Aurthor's Ghost" had died as well. However, the means by which this happened is unknown, but it could simply be because Equius' planet got destroyed.
Trivia
- Equius is against the consumption of Alternian fauna
, making him somewhat of a vegetarian, if that is even a possibility on Alternia. - Equius' moirallegiance with Nepeta may be based on the good compatibility between the Sagittarius and Leo astrological signs.
- The number 100, which Equius uses in his quirk, is the element Fermium on the periodic table, which is the heaviest element that can be formed by neutron bombardment of lighter elements.
- His constant need for towels is a possible reference to horses tendency to sweat profusely.
- His blood, or an ink the color of his blood, is used to Void information in The Tome by Gamzee.
- "Equius" was suggested by Angetaro. "Zahhak" was suggested by nextian.
- The bags under his eyes match his blood color, which is a unique feature among his fellow trolls.
- His aspect, Void, may be a reference to the astronomical object Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star), believed to be a black hole that is conveniently located in the Sagittarius constellation.
- Equius' belief that lusus milk is the secret to being strong may be a reference to Heracles who was endowed with incredible strength after suckling the milk of the goddess Hera.
- Equius seems to be generally made up of references to Hussie's past and past works. His lusus quite resembles a humanimal, which were the main cast of one of Hussie's previous comics, and the paintings on his walls come from some of Hussie's old ironic art reviews. On top of this, Equius is also related to both robots and, in a way, rapping, which were both the subjects of And It Don't Stop, another comic which Hussie used to work on.
- Dirk, who has often been likened to Equius, is also related to quite a few And It Don't Stop references.
- Equius is depicted on the "IV: The Emperor" card in the Homestuck tarot card deck, which represents power and authority. The astral ruler of the card "IV: The Emperor" is Aries. He can also be seen with most of pre-act six cast on the "Six of Wands" card.
- Equius name bears a striking resemblence to the word "obsequious" which mean "obedient to an excessive degree", which is quite fitting given his personality and treatment of “highb100ds”.
- The RGB value of Equius's blood color is 0, 33, 203, the green value being 33 possibly being a reference to Nepeta.
- Equius swears once, after finding out Aradia was his server player.
- Equius is the only post-scratch troll that never attempted to murder another character.
