Appendix B: A Guide to the Gargoyles Universe

By Todd Jensen

“E”

EASTER ISLAND

A remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Its native name is Rapa Nui; its more familiar name was bestowed upon it by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who first sighted it on Easter Sunday in 1722 and named it "Easter Island" as a result. Easter Island is world-famous for its colossal stone heads, the "moai", raised by its now-extinct natives, which have become one of the world's great mysteries.

In the Gargoyles Universe, Easter Island is the current headquarters of Nokkar, an alien Sentinel sent to Earth to watch over it during his people's war with the Space-Spawn invaders. [He arrived here at some point before the early 7th century A.D.], and befriended the natives, sharing his mission with them. They built the "moai" in honor of him, modelling their features after his own. After the natives died out, Nokkar continued to watch over Easter Island, alone, before meeting Goliath, Elisa, Angela, and Bronx when the Avalon World Tour brought them there, and still carries out his Sentinel work today.

EDINBURGH CASTLE

A royal castle in Scotland. [Prince Malcolm was born here in 954,] and Prince Duncan resided here during the 11th century, plotting his schemes against Clan Moray within its walls. Edinburgh is now the capital of Scotland.

EGGS

The nickname bestowed upon the Avalon gargoyles by Tom.

EKIDNA

A New Olympian. Ekidna is particularly suspicious of, and ill-disposed towards, humans. [After New Olympus makes contact with the outside world, she will be the leader of an isolationist faction that wants nothing to do with the humans. Another member of it, although a reluctant one, is her daughter Medusa.]

Ekidna looks something like a hag (though with reptilian features) from the waist up, and like a serpent from the waist down.

ELENA, PRINCESS

The wife of Prince Malcolm and mother of Princess Katharine. A member of the ducal house of Normandy, she married Malcolm in 975; her father supplied her with the Phoenix Gate for her dowry. Neither she nor her father knew the true nature of the Gate, but the Archmage did, and sent his bandits to ambush the Princess and steal it from her. She and her escort, the Norman Ambassador, were beset near Castle Wyvern, but rescued by the time-travelling Xanatos, Fox, and Petros Xanatos. That same night, she and Prince Malcolm were married.

Princess Elena seems to have died at some point between her daughter Katharine's birth the following year and Prince Malcolm's near-death in 984, but we do not as yet know the details.

ELEXEX STEEL

A steel company in New York City. One of its buildings was one of the sites for the battle between Goliath and Hudson on the one hand, and Hakon's ghost and Wolf on the other.

EMIR

A Middle Eastern nobleman (his real name is as yet unknown) who was allied with Xanatos. When Xanatos decided to obtain immortality by forcing it out of Anubis, he assigned the task to the Emir, sending him to Egypt with Jackal, Hyena, Wolf and Coyote 3.0 to assist him. But the Emir had his own personal agenda in summoning Anubis; he had lost his only son to a fatal automobile accident two years before, and wanted the jackal-god to restore him to life.

Anubis refused to bring the Emir's son back to life, however, and in desperation, he used the Scroll of Thoth to make himself an avatar of the death-god. However, Jackal, who had become intrigued by Anubis, intervened to become Anubis's avatar instead, and promptly decided to use his new-found powers to destroy all life on the planet.

With some prodding from Goliath, the Emir at last realized his folly, and atoned for his earlier act by using the Scroll of Thoth again to transfer the avatarhood from Jackal to himself, and then undoing as much damage that Jackal had done during his avatarhood as was possible. Realizing now that attempting to bring back his son was wrong, the Emir instead sealed off the underground complex beneath the Sphinx where he had performed his act, and then presumably died, to be reunited with his son - and in the process, no doubt setting Anubis free.

EVIL NINJAS

The enemies of the Pack in their television series.

EXCALIBUR

The magical sword of King Arthur. It originally came from the Lady of the Lake; the young Arthur drew Excalibur out of the Stone of Destiny in order to become King of Britain. He thereafter bore it until his final battle, when it was returned to the Lady.

The Lady of the Lake presumably kept Excalibur afterwards until at some unspecified point, presumably in the late 20th century, the sword was transfered to the heart of a stone dragon mounted in the center of the maze in Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. When King Arthur and Griff were brought to New York by the Stone of Destiny, they undertook a quest for Excalibur, guided by a riddle about the sword that Griff had learned as a hatchling [which had been taught to the ancestors of his clan by the Lady of the Lake, Morgana le Fay, and Nimue] and by the words of the Lady of the Lake, and also assisted by the trio and Hudson. However, Macbeth learned of their quest, and decided to seize Excalibur for himself. The two former kings vied for the sword, Macbeth finally reaching the stone dragon first, and drawing a sword that he believed was Excalibur out of the statue. However, the dragon then came to life by magic, to battle Arthur and Macbeth; in the combat that followed, Arthur discovered that the sword which Macbeth had withdrawn was only a counterfeit and destroyed it; he then interpreted Griff's riddle to see that Excalibur was hidden within the dragon, shattered the stone beast with his mace, and regained his sword. He now bears it as he and Griff quest for Merlin.

Excalibur's powers are as yet unknown, although presumably it is an object made by faerie magic. It is undoubtedly a very well-made sword, at the least.

<Excalibur has been consistently linked to King Arthur since the early Welsh legends, where it is called Caledfwlch and named as his sword. It is thought to be somehow linked to the sword Caladbolg, which appears in Irish legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth named it Caliburn, and described it as having been forged on the Isle of Avalon. Later romancers, such as Robert de Boron and the authors of the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles, added in other familiar elements to it, such as the Sword in the Stone, the Lady in the Lake, and the arm clad in white samite. Sir Thomas Malory gave the story its present form in his "Le Morte d'Arthur".

According to Malory, King Arthur broke his first sword while fighting King Pellinor, and Merlin brought him to the Lake of Avalon, to receive Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake. Excalibur rose from the middle of the lake, clasped by an arm clad in a sleeve of white samite. Arthur rowed across the lake in a small boat, and took up the sword from the arm. He kept it thereafter, until his final battle.

With Excalibur came a magical scabbard, which according to Merlin was worth ten Excaliburs; it prevented its bearer from losing any blood. However, Morgan le Fay, Arthur's evil half-sister, wished to bring about the king's death, and therefore stole both Excalibur and its scabbard, replacing them with non-magical counterfeits. She then tricked Arthur into fighting Sir Accolon of Gaul, a knight whom she had suborned to her cause, Arthur being armed with the false Excalibur and Accolon with the true one. Accolon almost succeeded in slaying Arthur with his own sword; however, the enchantress Nimue intervened in the nick of time, magically sending Excalibur flying from Accolon's hand, so that Arthur was able to pick it up and slay him with it. (Presumably, this incident may explain how it was that Arthur recognized the false Excalibur in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for what it was; it is highly unlikely that he would be deceived by the same scheme twice). Morgan le Fay managed to steal the scabbard again shortly afterwards, and threw it into a lake from which it was never recovered.

After Arthur's final battle, he told Sir Bedivere, his last surviving knight, to throw Excalibur into a nearby lake. Bedivere twice refused, but the third time, finally obeyed his king. The arm clad in white samite appeared from the depths of the lake, caught the sword in mid-air, and sank with it below the waves. The Lady of the Lake had taken back Excalibur, presumably to keep until Arthur's return.

Contrary to both popular belief and "Gargoyles", Excalibur was not the Sword in the Stone - or at least, not in Malory. Some earlier French romancers, however, such as Robert de Boron (who introduced the Sword in the Stone into the Arthurian legend), have made the identification, and it still persists in the popular imagination to this day.>

EYE OF ODIN

The eye that Odin sacrificed in order to gain greater wisdom. At some point before 975, the eye was transformed into a jewel, which increased the powers of whoever wore it; however, it would also corrupt them, in a manner reflecting the strengths and weaknesses of its wearer. Its detailed history, however, is unknown until 1994. By this time, it had somehow come into Xanatos's possession. Xanatos donated it to the Museum of Modern Art, but afterwards had a Steel Clan robot steal it from there, partly to frame Goliath for the theft and thereby make the citizens of New York aware enough of the gargoyles' existence that he could manipulate the clan into giving itself up to him for its own safety, partly so that he could gain the leverage of having donated the Eye of Odin to the MOMA and still keep it for himself.

The following year, Xanatos gave the Eye to Fox as an engagement gift. When she wore it, however, it turned her into a rampaging "werefox". Xanatos had to make a temporary alliance with Goliath in order to remove the Eye from Fox and save her life. Once Goliath removed the Eye from Fox, he took it into his custody at the clock tower, to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Not long afterwards, Macbeth and Demona stole the Eye from the clock tower, alongside the Grimorum Arcanorum and the Phoenix Gate, under the Weird Sisters' influence. They then proceeded to give all three objects to the Archmage, allowing him to become a nearly all-powerful sorcerer. The Eye of Odin particularly transformed the Archmage into an enhanced version of himself, until Goliath finally stripped it from him, bringing about his destruction.

Goliath kept the Eye afterwards, hoping to keep it out of the wrong hands once again, until he and his companions came to Norway during the Avalon World Tour and encountered Odin, who now wanted the Eye back. In a final act of desperation to keep the Eye out of Odin's hands, Goliath donned it and was transformed into a sort of Avatar of Odin, possessing near-divine powers; however, the Eye slowly corrupted him even as it had done to Fox and the Archmage, so that, under the guise of protecting his friends, he became increasingly obsessed with destroying Odin as his one rival to ownership of the Eye. Angela finally brought him to his senses, and Goliath quickly discarded the Eye, reverting to normal. Odin claimed it, and made it part of himself once again, presumably permanently.

<The Eye of Odin stems from Norse mythology, of course; in it, Odin gave up one of his eyes in exchange for a drink from Mimir's well, which bestowed great wisdom upon the drinker. Mimir kept the eye in his well afterwards, but was later on beheaded by the Vanir, a band of Norse gods who were rivals to the Aesir, Odin's people.

Presumably Mimir's decapitation allowed an unknown party in the Gargoyles Universe to steal the Eye and begin its path that would eventually bring it into contact with Xanatos, Fox, the Archmage, and Goliath in modern times, until it was reunited with Odin at last.>

EYRIE BUILDING

Xanatos's personal headquarters. The Eyrie Building is a gigantic skyscraper in New York City, [located in Central Park South,] which serves as the base of operations for Xanatos Enterprises. It is crowned by Castle Wyvern, perched on its very summit as a sort of medieval penthouse.

Xanatos built the Eyrie Building in the early 1990's for the express purpose of raising Castle Wyvern above the clouds and thus awakening Goliath and his clan from their stone sleep. It also serves the more mundane function of a regular office building.

EYRIE PYRAMID

A pyramid-like structure placed over Castle Wyvern and the Eyrie Building in Puck's "Future Tense" illusion. It served as a sort of broadcasting screen, allowing the Xanatos Program, masquerading as Xanatos, to deliver public messages to the few remaining citizens of New York. It may have served other purposes, as yet unknown to us.

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