Appendix B: A Guide to the Gargoyles Universe

By Todd Jensen

“I”

IAGO

A gargoyle from the Wyvern clan. [Iago was hatched in 938, alongside the rest of his rookery generation, which included Goliath, Demona, Othello, and Desdemona.] Unlike most gargoyles, Iago was not a particularly noble or honorable individual, being corrupt and scheming. [He entered into an alliance with the Archmage after Castle Wyvern was founded in 971, combining his cunning with the Archmage's magic, although the details of their plots are as yet unknown.]

Iago also lusted after Desdemona, and decided to gain her for himself by duping her mate Othello into thinking that Desdemona and Goliath were lovers, then claim her in the confusion that followed. However, his scheme eventually failed, leaving him with a strong grudge against Goliath afterwards. [He was temporarily banished from Castle Wyvern for his crime, but had returned by 994.]

Like most of the other Wyvern gargoyles, Iago was killed by Hakon and his Vikings in 994 during the massacre. When Demona and Xanatos created Coldstone in the winter of 1994-95, they used pieces of Iago and Desdemona's stone, as well as Othello's own fragments, to assemble his body, resulting in the revival of Iago and Desdemona's souls as well as Othello's. Iago nevertheless remained dormant until after Coldstone was damaged by the virus at the Golden Cup Building and all three souls began vieing for control of him. When Iago became the dominant soul in possession of Coldstone's body, he tried to kill Goliath and the other gargoyles, as well as setting Othello and Goliath against each other once more as he had done a thousand years before. His plans were foiled, however, and he was temporarily defeated by the virus.

Iago was re-awakened by Demona and Macbeth when they kidnapped Othello from the clock tower, and helped them against the gargoyles and Elisa until Coldstone and Desdemona's souls defeated him. He nevertheless remained a threat, always attempting to recover control of Coldstone's body, until Xanatos recaptured the cybernetic gargoyle in the Himalayas. Puck and Alex then temporarily transferred the souls of Othello, Desdemona, and Iago to the bodies of Broadway, Angela, and Brooklyn, during which time Iago, in Brooklyn's body, eagerly plotted to dispose of Broadway/Othello and seize Desdemona in Angela's body for himself. But he soon became disappointed with Brooklyn's fighting skills, and after seeing the robotic body Coldsteel that Xanatos and Owen had made for him, became sufficiently impressed with it to allow Puck and Alex to transfer his soul to it. The rest of Iago's story can be found in the entry on Coldsteel.

ILLUMINATI

A mysterious secret society that manipulates the world behind the scenes. The head of the Illuminati is Mr. Duval, [who is really Sir Percival, a former knight of King Arthur's Round Table and the last Fisher King.

Percival/Duval founded the Illuminati Society in or around the year 642.] By the late 10th century, it had already developed its current name and its logo, a pyramid with a fiery eye at its summit. (This same symbol also appears on the Great Seal of the United States, suggesting some sort of connection between the Illuminati and the Founding Fathers). The Illuminati's overall history is as yet veiled in shadow (not surprisingly), but it is known that in 1924, they made Mace Malone go into hiding after he became their advisor on organized crime, to protect him from the syndicates.

In the 1990's, the Illuminati became aware of the gargoyles' existence through Xanatos, and began to hunt them, hoping to control them. Their first recorded attempt came when Mace Malone persuaded Matt Bluestone to lure Goliath to the Hotel Cabal; Matt helped Goliath escape and Malone became trapped in the hotel himself, but the Illuminati were apparently satisfied, enough so that they inducted Matt into the Society anyway. [After the gargoyles were revealed to the public, the Illuminati entered into a partnership of sorts with Jon Canmore, helping him to set up the Quarrymen under the alias of "Castaway" and providing him with the necessary funding, for their own as-yet-unknown purposes.]

Known members of the Illuminati, past and present, include Duval himself, the Norman ambassador who accompanied Princess Elena to Castle Wyvern in 975, David Xanatos (who is a lower-echelon member), Mace Malone, Martin Hacker, and Matt Bluestone (the last a novice at present).

As yet very little is known about the Illuminati's methods for exerting control, although presumably much of this comes about through a combination of having members in strategic places (Hacker gives them at least one FBI member, for example, and Xanatos is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world) and blackmail. The Illuminati are known to have a hold over organized crime through the secrets that Mace Malone gave them in the 1920's, and use this to extort a share of the crime syndicates' spoils, serving as a silent partner to organized crime as a result. They also operate the Hotel Cabal in New York as a device for breaking down the resistance of their prisoners and thereby wresting valuable information from them.

The Illuminati supply their older members, such as Mace Malone, with rejuvenation drugs that help prolong their life-span and recover or preserve a youthful strength and vitality.

The goals of the Illuminati are, at present, unknown. While they do reportedly control almost everything (Matt has claimed that even the President of the United States is their puppet), we do not as yet know what their purpose is in so doing. [Percival/Duval originally founded the Illuminati in order to "make things right" - presumably in an effort to restore the ideals that his former liege lord King Arthur had worked for in the time of Camelot - although it is unknown as to whether this is still his objective.]

[The gargoyles are not the only people in the Gargoyles Universe who are due for clashes with the Illuminati. King Arthur and Griff will have a number of encounters with them during their quest for Merlin, probably connected to Duval's true identity as Percival, and the Director will set up the Redemption Squad in part as a means of battling them. The Illuminati will also quickly become involved when the New Olympians reveal themselves to the outside world. Although the gargoyles, King Arthur, and the Redemption Squad will all cause the Society a number of setbacks, it will not be destroyed or broken up - at least, not in the present.

In 2198, when the Space-Spawn invade and conquer Earth, the Illuminati decide to throw their lot in with the invaders. They form a secret pact with the alien occupiers, agreeing to undermine any attempts by the conquered Earthlings to overthrow the Space-Spawn in return for the release of those of the abducted world leaders who were secretly Illuminati. It is unknown as yet as to whether Duval is still the leader of the Illuminati at this point, when they advance from mere manipulators to quislings.]

<The Illuminati Society is a concept that has been around even before the creation of "Gargoyles". While no doubt the belief in a secret society controlling events behind the scenes has existed for centuries, the particular name "Illuminati" dates from May 1, 1776, when one Adam Weishaupt founded a society by that name at Ingolstadt in Bavaria. The Bavarian Illuminati were Deists who saw themselves as truth-seekers; the Bavarian government, however, came to view them as a threat, and finally shut them down in 1785. Rumor has it, however, that the Illuminati survived this attack, although going into hiding, and later on caused the French Revolution. In recent years, the notion of the Illuminati as still around and manipulating world events has become a popular one among conspiracy theorists, and even formed the basis of a Steve Jackson trading card game. Along the way, this popular image of the Illuminati used in "Gargoyles" came to absorb into its mythos both the Freemasons (drawing on the popular beliefs that the Freemasons are a sinister secret society that helped influence the Founding Fathers) and the Knights Templar.

The Illuminati's pyramid and fiery eye symbol is a common element of its mythos outside of "Gargoyles", originating in the beliefs of many people that this design upon the Great Seal of the United States and the back of the one-dollar bill is the mark of a secret conspiracy connected to the foundation of the U.S. Duval's true identity as Percival, a Grail knight and now Fisher King, may well be thanks to the connection of the Grail to theories about such societies.

The purpose of the Illuminati in conspiracy theories varies, although one popular one is that they plan to impose a Satanical dictatorship upon the world, in which Christianity will be abolished. (If the Illuminati is indeed led by Percival in his Fisher King role, of course, then such a goal for it is highly improbable).>

[INDULF]

[The King of Scotland from 954 to 962. Indulf was an ambitious nobleman, descended from past Kings of Scotland. In 954, upon Maol Chalvim I's death, he seized the Scottish throne through a sudden coup while the late king's sons, Duff and Kenneth, were attending their father's funeral at Iona, and took the late king's widow, Queen Katharine, as a hostage. Duff and Kenneth were forced to yield to Indulf's usurpation, and he held the Scottish throne, with Katharine and her new-born son Prince Malcolm, as his prisoners until 962.

In that year, with the help of Robbie, Prince Malcolm escaped, and Katharine threatened to throw herself off the battlements unless Indulf surrendered to Duff and Kenneth. Realizing that with her death, he would be without a hostage, Indulf agreed to yield, and with his rivals' permission, abdicated and went into exile to Ireland with his son Culen. Indulf died there, some time between 962 and 967.

<Indulf was a real Scottish king, the son of Constantine II, who was King of Scotland from 900 to 943. Little is known about him beyond the dates of his reign, and his place in the royal Scottish pedigrees. He did indeed abdicate in 962; in actual Scottish history, he then retired to a monastery, but was soon forced out of retirement to battle the Vikings at Findochtry in Moray, where he was slain.>]

INTO THE MYSTIC

A shop in Soho, London, [owned and operated by the London gargoyles]; Leo and Una presently serve as the shopkeepers. It was founded some time before 1940, [and helps finance the London clan]. Its products consist of magical supplies of various kinds; the gargoyle shopkeepers use this atmosphere to help disguise their true nature, pretending that they are wearing costumes of mythical beings.

ISHIMURA

A village in Japan, where a clan of gargoyles lives peacefully alongside humans. The gargoyles of Japan retired here after peace came to the islands (presumably at the end of the Japanese feudal period in the mid-19th century), and live with the human villagers, helping to protect their village from criminals. The humans are on good terms with the gargoyles, and keep them secret from the outside world so that they can go unmolested.

The gargoyles of Ishimura live in an old temple in the village, perching on its roof in the daytime. They face inwards in their stone sleep, as a gesture of trust towards the humans whom they live with. From time to time, they teach the local humans bushido, the code of honor that they themselves practice.

One such pupil was Taro, but he was a poor student. When he grew up and became a wealthy businessman, he decided to exploit the gargoyles for his own benefit; duping Yama, a dissatisfied member of the clan, into helping him, he abducted the entire clan (alongside Goliath, Angela, and Bronx, who were visiting Ishimura with Elisa on the Avalon World Tour) and took them away to a nearby theme park that he had just built to be put on display there. Fortunately, Elisa and Hiroshi, the police constable at Ishimura, rescued the clan. Afterwards, the humans of Ishimura decided to strengthen their covenant with the gargoyles all the more, and to take regular bushido lessons from them.

[By 2198, many gargoyles will go to Ishimura to learn bushido - among them Samson, Delilah (2), and Zafiro (2).]

More information on the gargoyles of Ishimura can be found in the "Gargoyles" entry, under the section on Japanese gargoyles.

Previous | Introduction | Next