More than two sweeps after being returned to a restored Alternia, the trolls face impending adulthood and banishment from the planet. Gamzee Makara fully expects to be culled on conscription for poor health and sopor addiction - what he doesn't count on is the personal attention and protection of the Grand Highblood.

Karkat Vantas is a 6 sweeps old troll with a secret so big it could shake the very foundations of the Alternian Empire. But now the purrbeast is out of the bag, and the heretics who follow the teachings of his Ancestor rush to send their Messiah to the safety of a planet so distant, it knows nothing of Alternia. Meanwhile, Karkat hates his life and these stupid old squatters and his ancestor and pretty much everything there ever was in the world of forever. Platonically.

In which young Church ward Gamzee Makara is finally old enough to be officially initiated into the ranks of the subjugglators.

"And then I saw a new Alternia, for the old Alternia had passed away." -- St. Troll John Cusack How the Empire knelt to a clown, a mutant and a lawyer.