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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shades of Eternity" data-source="post: 9805858" data-attributes="member: 10869">ok will do this in chunkswill need to refine the text for the blog, but what the hey, I spent the day working on it and want to show off. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /><h3>The Ecology of the Gargoyle</h3><h3>Introduction: The Watchers Who Wake</h3>Perched on the edges of towers and tombs, the gargoyle waits. By daylight it is nothing more than weathered stone—another grim face among a choir of saints, sinners, and snarling beasts. But when the sun dips and the shadows thicken, the sculpture exhales dust, flexes wings of living granite, and steps down from its pedestal with the patient grace of something that has watched the rise and fall of kingdoms. Whether protector, predator, or something carved from deeper emotions than either, the gargoyle remains a creature of paradox: born of architecture yet undeniably alive; a guardian who can become a terror; a sentinel shaped by the memories, hopes, and fears of the mortals who raised the walls it first clung to. Their stories speak of loyalty and wrath, of stone that dreams, and of ancient clans who still glide under moonlight—silent watchers over a world that rarely notices them until it’s far too late.<h3>Origin & Reproduction of the Gargoyle</h3>(Ecology of the Gargoyle — Section II)The birth of a gargoyle is neither an act of passion nor an accident of nature—it is an architectural event. In this slow alchemy, emotion, magic, and the memory of stone itself crystallize into life. Scholars debate the exact moment a gargoyle “quickens,” for unlike other creatures, gargoyles do not begin as babies. They start as statues—silent, inert ornaments perched above the world, waiting for their moment of awakening.<h4>The Seed of a Gargoyle: Emotional Masonry</h4>Gargoyles do not arise from ordinary walls or mundane buildings. Instead, they require places saturated with what mythwrights call “emotional pressure.”This pressure may take the form of:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reverence in an ancient cathedral spire</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fear in a fortress that has endured centuries of siege</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sorrow in a plague hospital or medical college</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Joyful noise in an amphitheatre where crowds once roared</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Unquiet memory in ruins haunted by regret or triumph</li> </ul>Where strong emotion meets carved stone, the boundary between symbol and organism becomes thin. The statue begins absorbing the psychic echo of the people who built, worshipped in, or suffered around it.Some sages claim gargoyles are the dreams of buildings, sloughed off and given form.<h4>What Sparks the Awakening</h4>Three known triggers can cause a slumbering gargoyle statue to animate:<h4>1. Ambient Magical Saturation</h4>Leyline intersections, arcane disasters, divine miracles, and wild magic surges can all catalyze petrified forms into actual life.<h4>2. Overflowing Emotion</h4>A significant event—battle, plague, festival, tragedy—can “overcharge” a structure, causing one of its carvings to awaken in response to the intensity of mortal feeling.This is why gargoyles often arise after:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fall of a kingdom</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A great betrayal</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A holy revival</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A siege broken by courage or vengeance</li> </ul>Each event leaves an emotional imprint that becomes a new personality.<h4>3. Clan Awakening</h4>Existing gargoyles can awaken new gargoyles by transferring a portion of their inner “humours”—the alchemical fluids within their stone bodies—into an unawakened statue.This ritual, called the Sharing of the Vein, is performed rarely, usually:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">When a clan rebuilds</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">To replace fallen kin</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">To defend a threatened home</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">To prepare a generation for a long-term watch</li> </ul>Not every statue accepts the humours. Some remain stone forever. Others awaken… different.<h4>Biological-Stone Reproduction: The Humour Cycle</h4>Unlike constructs, gargoyles possess interior “organs” formed of alchemical liquids that mimic the Four Humours—but in their own peculiar way:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Flame Humour — rage, courage, vitality</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Glass Humour — memory, reflection, illusion</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mortar Humour — devotion, protection, social bonds</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ink Humour — knowledge, secrecy, runic magic</li> </ul>In a mature gargoyle, these humours pool in a core chamber. When preparing to “birth” a successor, the clan performs a rite:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Elder Cuts Their Vein (symbolically or literally)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Humours flow into the chosen statue</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The statue absorbs them over weeks or months</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At the next Stone Sleep cycle, the statue cracks and awakens</li> </ul>The newborn gargoyle stands fully formed—physically adult but mentally empty, needing guidance like a hatchling.<h4>Why Gargoyles Have No Children</h4>Gargoyles cannot reproduce biologically. Their Stone Sleep cycle converts their bodies into dormant architecture. Fertility in the mortal sense is impossible.Instead, gargoyles “reproduce” by extending the legacy and emotional inheritance of their home.For them, lineage is not bloodline but structureline.Your ancestors are:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The building that birthed you</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The clan that shared its humours</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The emotions that shaped your stone</li> </ul>Thus every gargoyle is, in a sense, a living piece of history.<h4>Rare and Forbidden Origins</h4>A few aberrant cases deserve note:<h4>The Weeping-Born</h4>Statues created out of obsession or grief, especially those carved in mourning over the dead, may awaken as melancholic gargoyles. These often have Weeping-Angel-like traits:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Motionless when observed</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Capable of terrifying speed</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Vanishing from their plinth only when no eyes are upon them</li> </ul>Such gargoyles rarely integrate with clans and often haunt graveyards or abandoned urban districts.<h4>The Carved-Born (Crafted Gargoyles)</h4>A mortal sculptor of exceptional skill, channeling vice or virtue into their art, can create a gargoyle intentionally. Many wizards, liches, and dragons exploit this method to raise guardians.These gargoyles reflect the sculptor’s own soul—an imprint that can create tragedy or twisted devotion.<h4>The Cataclysmic Brood</h4>When a region suffers overwhelming magical catastrophe—earthfall, planar breach, necrotic storm—entire clusters of statues might awaken at once, creating whole clans without elders.Such clans are often unstable, powerful, and dangerously unrooted.*******************up nextAppearance!</blockquote>

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