By Kimberly T.

I want to stress right from the start that some of the stuff I’ve put down here doesn’t quite match up with Todd Jensen’s Guide, or what tidbits of information Greg Weisman has dispensed to fans on Station 8’s "Ask Greg" webpages and at the Gatherings. Part of that is because I confess I didn’t thoroughly read and memorize the Station 8 webpages before I started creating my particular fanfic universe, I didn’t even find Todd Jensen’s Guide until a few months ago, and I’ve never gone to a Gathering (my husband, a total non-fan, says we have to spend our money on more trivial matters such as the mortgage and groceries.) Part of it is also that I just thought a few things would work better for my fanfiction if they were slightly, just slightly, different than the accepted canon.

BASELINE COMPARISON TO HUMANS

Gargoyles are roughly, pound for pound, five times stronger than the average human of similar height and weight. Their bones and skin are tougher than human skin and bone, so they can take more punishment before breaking/bleeding. The talons that tip each digit of their hands and feet are both sharp and extremely durable, and combined with their great strength are capable of punching through stone or metal.

Their senses of smell and hearing are far sharper than a human’s, equivalent in range and sensitivity to that of the typical canine or feline. Their sense of touch is generally on a par with the average human’s, and extends to every limb. The membranes and struts of their wings are sensitive enough to feel changes in air currents while gliding. Their eyesight is far, far sharper than a human’s, equivalent to an eagle or peregrine falcon’s eyesight, and very light-sensitive. They also see ever-so-slightly into the infrared range. On the downside, they are blinded by light at lesser levels of intensity than the average human.

Gargoyle reflexes are roughly at 150% of the average human’s reflexes; in other words they respond to stimulus (i.e. danger) in 2/3 of the time it would take the average human to do so. (Assuming, of course, they aren’t utterly stunned or confused by whatever is threatening them; moving fast doesn’t always mean they think fast.)

Gargoyles are omnivorous but lean towards carnivorous, requiring a much higher level of protein in their diet than humans generally do. There are no vegetarian gargoyles, unless they’re allowed all the eggs and milk they want (and they’ll want a lot.) Generally speaking, they eat about twice what a human of similar size would need in order to sustain himself for rigorous activity.

Gargoyles can swim, but they don’t float very well due to their dense muscular-skeletal structure; they either have to keep moving, rapidly treading water, or extend their wings to make a larger floating surface area (built-in life raft!)

STONE SLEEP

Gargoyles spend the day in ‘stone sleep’, their bodies transformed from dawn to dusk into a substance that greatly resembles common granite.

The stonelike substance absorbs solar radiation and transforms it into cell energy, for when gargoyles awaken. This keeps their food intake down to roughly twice that of the average human’s, instead of six or seven times that, for the energy to glide and power their feats of strength and generally accelerated metabolism.

Stone sleep is tied to the diurnal cycle, not to actual exposure to solar radiation; a gargoyle indoors or underground will still go to stone sleep when dawn comes to the world immediately outside, and wake up at sunset. Nor will they turn to stone at night if somebody shines a sunlamp on them, though they may feel somewhat lethargic.

Gargoyles do not age in their transformed state. This extends their lifespan to over twice that of a human; 200-year-old gargoyles are not rare. (Definitely uncommon, due to their harsh lifestyle, but not rare.)

A gargoyle in stone form has no sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, etc… Not even a sense of time passing.

Gargoyles can dream in their stone sleep, though they generally do not remember the dreams, any more than humans untrained in lucid dreaming will remember all their dreams.

A very thin outer layer of the stonelike substance, equivalent to the outer dead layer of skin in a human’s epidermis, does not convert back to flesh at sunset, and is broken and shed by the gargoyle awakening. (This used to rip the heck out of their clothes, until a kindly and exceedingly modest mage waaaay back in ancient times cast a spell that allowed a gargoyle’s clothing and personal effects to transform back and forth with him/her without harm. The spell has spread throughout all the gargoyles of the world by some means as yet unexplained; I’m guessing spell-seeds were tossed up into the Trade Winds that circle the globe.)

At sunset, when transforming back to flesh-and-blood, they awaken healed from nearly any injury that may have been suffered the night before. Note ‘nearly’; an amputated limb will not be regrown, though if the limb is sutured back in place immediately by a highly skilled surgeon, before the limb starts decaying, a sunrise and sunset will probably see it restored to full function.

A wounded limb still attached but so badly mangled that it’s no longer fed by an adequate blood supply (in a human, it would be prime for gangrene), will fall off and crumble to dust upon awakening at sunset. The remaining stump will be sealed over by new flesh, as if the amputation had occurred several days ago.

Broken bones not set properly before sunrise may heal crookedly, and the gargoyle may end up crippled for life unless the bone is re-broken and re-set before the next sunrise.

Healing extensive injuries takes a lot of energy, and the gargoyle who has just woken up healed will be weak and hungry until he/she has replenished that energy with larger than usual amounts of food.

A wound caused directly by magic (Hudson’s eye, blasted by the Archmage) may not heal without a healing spell in addition to stone sleep, but if the wound is caused indirectly by magic (for example, magic animating a tree limb that swings out and breaks somebody’s wing) it will heal as normally.

Damage done to the stone form will be reflected in the flesh when the gargoyle wakes up; a chip or crack will become a wound upon awakening. Breaking or smashing a stone gargoyle apart will kill him/her.

BREEDING, BONDING AND HATCHLINGS

When the Breeding Moon arrives, the female’s instincts upon awakening at dusk are to fly as fast and far and high as possible, to ensure that only the strongest and fastest male catches her, to breed strong, fast and healthy hatchlings for the next generation. (However, being civilized people, the gargoyles usually ensure that breeding pairs are isolated from the clan’s unmated males the dawn before the Breeding moon rises, so only the female’s mate flies with her.) These breeding flights usually conclude with the couple mating in midair. The females’ breeding season is appallingly brief for their incredibly long cycle, lasting usually only the four nights of the full moon.

The Breeding Moon will occur in late autumn of the appropriate year, and eggs bred then will be laid six months later, in the spring. At the laying time, the female gargoyle’s pelvis actually unhinges at the spine, in order to allow the giant egg to pass through the birthing canal. (Hurts like a m#$%#f&*$!, too.) Each breeding female lays only one egg, though very rare exceptions (laying two eggs, or one huge double-yolked egg) have been heard of.

The shell of the fresh-laid egg is soft and somewhat pliable until after dawn following the night it is laid; then it hardens to stone, and stays that way until hatching. The developing infant inside will turn to stone and back with each sunrise and sunset, just as the adults do.

Gargoyles eggs take ten years to hatch into infant gargoyles. At their hatching, they are roughly equivalent to the physical development of six-month-old human babies: able to roll over on their own, almost able to sit up without aid, and able to digest soft solids. They’ll begin crawling (and teething!) within two months of hatching.

Gargoyles are generally monogamous and mate for life, and they will bond to their mates in a form of pheromonal ‘imprinting’. A male gargoyle who has fully bonded to a female will have a slight change in his scent, having been ‘marked’ as hers, and vice versa. This will send off subconscious signals of ‘off the market’ to other, unmated gargoyles if they get close enough to get a good whiff.

The pheromonal imprinting also ties the males more closely to their chosen females’ fertility cues. This is why, in my "Life Goes On" series, Goliath has a real hard time (pun intended) every month when Elisa’s human biological cycle makes her fertile. He’s imprinted to her as his chosen mate, and his body is responding to his mate’s fertility with unabashed horniness. (Yes, he was once imprinted to Demona and she to him, but it wore off during that thousand years they were apart.)

However, this pheromone marking does not mean that a female separated from her mate during the Breeding Moon will not be driven to seek out another male to breed with; during those few nights, that biological clock is ticking REAL LOUD. And any nearby male, even one already bonded to another female, will go nuts with horniness if he’s close enough to get a whiff of her fertility scent.

Gargoyles and humans are not naturally interfertile. (Note I said ‘naturally.’ Magic and those pesky Fey can throw every biological rule out the window, from stone sleep to fertility and breeding cycles. In point of fact, a magical/supernatural incident once triggered an unexpected breeding season for an entire clan; more details will follow in an upcoming story.)

ITEMS OF (AHEM) INTEREST

Gargoyles have every erogenous zone that humans have, and a few extra. The areas of the back right along the wing joints are very sensitive, as sensitive as the inner thighs and crotch area of the average human. The base of the spine right above the tail is also somewhat erogenous, though not to as great an extent as the skin around the wing-joints.

A gargoyle can do amazing things with a fully prehensile tail.

DEATH (AND DISMEMBERMENT)

Note: I’m using the Red Cross standard definitions of clinical death (heart stops beating) and biological death (cells of the body are dying.) A man whose heart has just been stopped, though clinically dead, might be revived; that’s the whole point behind CPR. After ten minutes, biological death sets in and revival is next to impossible, except in hypothermic drowning cases.

Biological death triggers a rapid transformation/decay in gargoyle flesh; it converts to the stonelike substance again but quickly crumbles into fine gravel and dust. (This explains why there’s no fossil record of prehistoric gargoyles.) Biological death generally occurs about ten minutes after the heart stops, but severe violent trauma (say, being ripped in half) will bring it on sooner.

A severed limb that is not immediately reattached will start to ‘gravelize’ in about ten minutes, unless it is packed in ice to preserve it.

Gargoyles killed while still asleep (the stone form smashed) will stay in whatever fragments remain after the initial damage is done, instead of disintegrating into gravel.

Watchbeasts have all the capabilities of gargoyles regarding stone sleep, but they don’t have wings. The gargoyles of Wyvern Clan have a legend that explains why; read my story "Faith, Hope and Love" for the whole story.

Watchbeasts are considered by gargoyles to be full clan members, not merely pets.

Watchbeasts are generally much more intelligent than the canines and felines they roughly resemble; they are at roughly the same level of intelligence as a gorilla or chimpanzee. (Without speech or manipulative hands, though, they have a hard time showing it.)

Watchbeasts can understand many words and phrases of human/gargoyle speech, but do not have the vocal apparatus for speaking themselves.

Watchbeast eggs are somewhat smaller and darker than gargoyle eggs, but are laid and hatch at the same times. A watchbeast female can and often does lay more than one egg at the same time, but never more than two eggs. (I can hear some of you asking right now, so why did we see so few of them in the show? I’ll deal with that in an upcoming story.)

Watchbeasts have roughly half the lifespan of a gargoyle, living to roughly a hundred years of age. They come into season at the first Breeding Moon after hatching, when only fifteen years of age, though usually laying only one egg for the first breeding cycle.

Watchbeasts have a poorer sense of sight than gargoyles; still just as light-sensitive, but with not as much range for farsightedness. On the other paw, watchbeasts have keener senses of smell and hearing, better than the average gargoyle’s, and far better than the best bloodhound ever born.

Gargoyle culture will, to some extent, mimic the culture of the humans they live near. But there are some universal customs/social laws, caused mostly by their biology and psychological needs:

GARGOYLES PROTECT. Gargoyles have a very strong territorial imperative, and they protect all members of their clan, whether fellow gargoyle or human, within their territory/protectorate. Gargoyles who have formed an alliance with a large enough group of humans (say, an entire castle or village’s worth of people) will generally come to consider any human within their territory, even total strangers, as worthy of and needing their protection.

Gargoyles are highly social creatures, living in clans with very strong interpersonal bonds. Unkind people might say they have a ‘herd instinct’, though that isn’t quite accurate. Still, the instincts to seek companionship and to obey the clan leader are deeply ingrained in gargoyle psychology.

A friendly human or Fey can become part of a gargoyle clan, though not easily. But once accepted into the clan, they are as valued and trusted as any gargoyle.

Gargoyles generally have very little hierarchy to the clan structure. However, they will always have a leader, and a second-in-command (chosen by the leader) who can step in to lead if the leader is away or incapacitated/killed.

Beyond Leader and Second, they loosely divide themselves into two classes: warriors (which may be male or female) and rookery keepers (which also may be male or female). But even rookery keepers receive some warrior training, and clan members may transition from one role to the other with relative ease throughout their lives.

Large enough clans may decide to sub-classify further than Warrior and Rookery Keeper, and bestow titles on others such as Teachers or Mentors (a more common title for elders), Healers, Hunters, Fishers, and Bards or Storytellers.

Since the eggs of the clan are all bred at roughly the same time, and all hatch at roughly the same time, hatchlings are all raised together, treated as children of all the clan together. (This is very sensible, since not every male or female has the temperament to raise hatchlings well. And in the ten years between hatching and laying, many egg-parents may die in battle or from other causes; in raising all the hatchlings together, no clan has orphans.) Individual parents in certain clans may recognize their own young and vice versa, but they will generally not play favorites as a result; the rule of all hatchlings being raised together by the clan rookery keepers still applies.

Since eggs are laid on a 25-year cycle, most clans have developed a three-staged approach to their society. From their hatching (ten years after their laying) to their fifteenth year, young gargoyles are referred to as "hatchlings" and kept mostly in the clan’s rookery or in designated outdoor play areas, with rookery keepers on hand at all times to care for them and keep them out from underfoot of the rest of the clan. In their fifteenth year, they are moved out of the rookery to make room for the eggs about to be laid by the clan adults. At roughly the developmental level of eight-year-old human children, these young gargoyles will now begin their training as warriors or rookery keepers, or other apprenticeships available in the larger clans. Basically, they start going to school. This training will continue until at least their thirtieth year of life, when gargoyles generally become sexually mature enough to start choosing their mates. Some clans declare the young gargoyles to be adults by their thirtieth year, and grant them full adulthood status and responsibilities at that time even though they are not yet old enough to breed eggs; the Wyvern clan practiced that custom. By contrast, the Ishimura clan considers young gargoyles to be gakusei (literally, ‘students’) until his or her thirty-ninth year, the year before their first Breeding Moon, although gakusei are allowed and even expected to choose their mates between their thirtieth and thirty-ninth years. Either way, all gargoyles are considered fully responsible adults by their fortieth year out of the shell.

Most clans such as the medieval Wyvern Clan taught their young gargoyles what they needed to know to be warriors or rookery keepers or whatever through mentoring and apprenticeship, one full adult taking on one to four pupils at a time. The Ishimura Clan, on the other hand, gives its gakusei a much more formalized education for the first ten years or so, teaching the principles of Bushido, Japanese literature, mathematics and basics of nature sciences, and the basics of combat with all the students together in a classroom-like environment. After they have all learned the basics, they are assigned apprenticeships for more job-specific learning, such as Healer, Warrior, Storykeeper (Bard), Rookery Keeper, Fisher, etc., but will still gather for a few hours every night for formal instruction.

Crime is rare among gargoyles, because greed is virtually a foreign concept to them; most gargoyles own no more than they carry around with them, their clothes and weapons, and they have no use for money. (But note that an item may become treasured if it has sentimental value, i.e., having been given to them by a well-loved human.) However, instances of betraying the clan’s trust, needlessly disobeying the clan leader, and cruelty to hatchlings are all considered very serious crimes. Overaggressive behavior (picking fights) is a more common, less serious crime.

For minor crimes, gargoyles are punished by either being tasked with sweeping up all the clan’s gravel and stone shards (which is done every few nights anyway, by the more tidy clans), or being sent to the rookery (implying that the offender is behaving like a hatchling, and needs to grow up; very humiliating). Temporary banishment is a more harsh punishment reserved for the more serious gargoyle crimes, usually for short periods ranging from four nights to a full moon’s cycle. The worst punishment gargoyles can inflict upon one of their own is permanent banishment; many would prefer to be killed outright instead, rather than be alone and clanless for the rest of their lives.

A gargoyle forced away from the company of other gargoyles for an indefinite period of time will seek another creature to form a clan-bond with (human, Fey, stray dog, whatever), with increasing desperation for each passing night; being too long alone will cause them to become mentally unbalanced. (Yes, that’s one reason why Demona’s so crackers; one of many.) The company of another creature will help to stabilize them, but if the companion is non-gargoyle the gargoyle will start to take on more of the other person’s/race’s psychological characteristics.

Kissing was not originally a gargoyle custom, though many clans have adopted it from human societies as a gesture of affection. It doesn’t always work out too well, though, considering that a significant percentage of gargoyles have beaks or muzzles instead of human-style mouths. However, beaked or muzzled gargoyles gain some pleasure from rubbing said prominent facial features up against each other, something like a cat rubbing its whiskers against a beloved human.

A more common gesture of affection, appropriate not just for mates but for showing filial affection as well, is to brush one’s knuckles against the other’s brow ridges, or other facial ridges such as chin spurs.

Gargoyles are generally monogamous and mate for life, though rare exceptions to both rules are known.

Gargoyle generally choose their mates from among their own rookery siblings, though matings between different generations are not unheard of. Uncommon, but not nearly as rare as taking multiple mates or dismating (divorcing).

The customs for gargoyle mating ceremonies differ from clan to clan, but nearly always conclude with a mating flight, the newly mated pair gliding off some distance from the clan’s home and mating in midair. This is done partly in order to practice for the breeding season; mating in midair is risky business, and couples want to make sure their later egg-making efforts won’t end in a possibly fatal crash.

On the average, rookery generations end up with a few more males than females. Thus, an unmated gargoyle male finding sexual companionship with a human female is frowned upon, but tolerated. But if the human female has already been accepted as a clan member, the pair will be accepted as proper mates. On the other hand, an unmated female seeking companionship with a human male is not so easily tolerated, particularly as the Breeding Moon draws near. Such a female would probably face the utter condemnation of her clan if she did not, at the very least, accept a gargoyle male for breeding an egg with while she is fertile.

Not many gargoyle warriors survive to old age; most will die in battle, and some in fact would say they prefer it to growing old and infirm. But in gargoyle societies, the elderly and infirm are not cast aside; they will be taken off warrior duties, but then will either become rookery keepers, tending eggs and young hatchlings, or tutors and mentors to half-grown gargoyles just out of the rookery, helping them develop their hunting and warrior skills. Passing on a lifetime’s worth of knowledge is considered a very honorable duty.

A gargoyle in utter despair can commit suicide by taking flight just before dawn and staying aloft, turning to stone in midair, so his stone form will be smashed upon falling to earth. This is euphemistically referred to as "greeting your last sunrise."

(Mostly these are bits of information that the show didn’t mention, but logically must have taken place, at least according to the fanfic I’m writing. And I don’t really feel like wasting the time and energy to find a good way to shoehorn these particular facts into my stories, without making it obvious that they’re being shoehorned in. One can do only so many explanatory flashbacks in a story before the reader loses track of what’s supposed to be going on.)

The Wyvern Clan was not the only clan in Scotland back in the ninth and tenth centuries. In fact, at some point before Wyvern Castle was completed, the clan was so large that it had to split, before they outgrew their ability to support themselves by hunting and fishing in their claimed territory. Half the clan migrated inland, taking over half of the clan’s watchbeasts with them since they were more comfortable away from the water. They just might have settled near Loch Ness, to become the clan Sevarius thought existed in the episode "Monsters", or they might have gone elsewhere; this author ain’t ready to say yet. But the offshoot clan survived in Scotland, hiding quite well from an increasingly intolerant human population, until at least the nineteenth century. (They might even still be surviving today; again, this author ain’t saying yet.) The London clan knew of them, which is why Griff, upon meeting Goliath back during WWII, guessed he was of "Scottish stock."

The London clan has feathered wings and the heads (and a few other bodily characteristics) of animals, due to a spell cast on them back in the Dark Ages by Merlin; read "Revelations of the Labyrinth Pt.4: Guests and Pasts" for the full story.

Zafiro has the feathered wings and serpentine characteristics because in the early eleventh century, when the first Canmore was inciting the English to slaughter all gargoyles and the London clan (even though they no longer looked like conventional gargoyles, their way of ‘hiding in plain sight’) was getting very nervous, some London gargoyles split off from the main clan to travel to other, hopefully more tolerant lands. Most of them ended up settling in and intermarrying with a clan in France (more on them in a later story), but a feather-winged and snake-bodied ancestor of Zafiro encountered another prophesying magic-user (actually Merlin again; the old boy really got around!) who told him his destiny lay in another land, and magically sent him across the seas to Guatemala. He arrived just in time to prevent the gargoyle clan living there from being destroyed in conflict with the humans who lived there; the gargoyles recognized and accepted him as a gargoyle, but the humans nearly worshipped him on the spot, seeing him as an avatar of Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent and one of their major deities. His arrival saved the clan and promoted much friendlier relations between the humans and gargoyles, so much so that a Mayan magic-user forged the Sun Amulet and the four pendants in order to enable Zafiro’s ancestor, his mate among the gargoyles and two "attendants" to stay awake during the day. (The humans thought it was so "Quetzalcoatl" could hear and answer their prayers and worship 24 hours a day; the gargoyles thought it was so they could protect themselves 24 hours a day. Either way, everybody thought it was a great idea.) When the Mayans died out and were replaced by the Aztecs, the next generations of "Quetzalcoatl" again enabled the gargoyles to maintain healthy relations with the humans. But when the Spanish explorers came and started subjugating the native human populations, slaughtering thousands in warfare and slavery and hundreds of thousands more by introducing smallpox and other diseases, the gargoyles went into hiding. The last Aztec mage cast a great spell before dying of smallpox, that caused the rainforest surrounding their Mayan pyramid home to grow nearly tenfold overnight, choking out all the roads so no path led to it and rendering the pyramid nearly invisible to view except from directly overhead. The gargoyles knew well that the foliage was hiding them from the Spanish conquistadors, and so protecting their home evolved to include ‘protecting the Green,’ preventing deforestation by unsuspecting humans. They hid their home well until 1993, when a party of looters found the Mayan temple they dwelled in and slaughtered most of the gargoyles in their stone sleep, while the four pendant wearers were, ironically/tragically, out patrolling the rest of the Green.

Demona cast a spell out of the Grimorum Arcanorum the night before the final stone of the castle was set into place to break/complete the sleeping spell on the gargoyles. The spell she read over the gargoyle statues was a language acquisition spell, so the gargoyles would awaken speaking 20^th-century English instead of 10^th-century Scottish Gaelic. The spell worked on all of them, but was most effective on younger and more malleable minds, for the same reasons that youngsters usually catch onto learning a foreign language faster than their elders. This explains why the Trio were able to instantly grasp so many idiomatic phrases and slang terms that glided right over Goliath and Hudson’s heads.

When Avalon sends a person or people to ‘where they need to be’ via one of its magical skiffs, a language acquisition spell is bestowed upon the skiff riders: they will find themselves able to fluently speak the dominant language of whatever land they are sent to. This explains why Goliath, Elisa and Angela had no problems getting around Guatemala, Japan, Prague, etc. (English may be a popular second language to learn in foreign schools, but not that popular.) The spell takes effect subconsciously; the skiff rider will not even realize he/she is speaking a foreign language unless he/she tries to express a concept that the new language has no word for. The spell remains in effect as long as they stay in that land, but dissipates (and the language skills acquired with it) once they move on. Once Avalon has finished with leading people around by the prow, to coin a phrase, the submerging of the skiff will make the last application of the spell permanent. The riders have a parting gift, whether or not they ever realize it.