Terra Advena - Gargoyles

Gargoyles are, technically speaking, a gnoll subspecies. That's not something anyone really knows about, though, because unlike all the land-bound gnolls, gargoyles haven't been a part of their cohesive society for several millenia.

Gargoyles could, in their natural state, actually fly. That's because they were essentially bats that went humanoid. And they were quite a bit lighter than they are now. That meant they generally had an advantage over their land-dwelling cousins, which would have already driven a wedge between them (not that the rest of the gnolls were really getting along at this point, either - they didn't codify into the Imperium until after dragons showed up and forced them to either work together or lose all their territory piece by piece). However, the gargoyle's ability to fly led to something else that more notably changed their development.

In spending time in the airways, early primitive gargoyles found out-of-the-way locations inaccessible by land - locations where large, crafted towers pulsed with arcane energy. Eventually, they explored the towers, and found that they were the legacy of some earlier civilization or... something. It was never entirely clear what, to the gargoyles. The important part, however, is that they cannibalized the arcanotech they found their to rapidly spur their own development as a species.

Within a few hundred years of the discovery, gargoyles were a half-millenia more advanced than the land-dwelling gnolls they were related to, and really didn't bother having anything to do with them anymore. They found that one of the functions of the ancient arcane towers was to provide power to floating islands far above the earth, and they settled those, eventually building their cities up along the top. The gargoyles themselves never developed a single unified culture, but instead had individual... fiefdoms, ruled by sorcerer-kings who had so thoroughly immersed themselves in the arcane energy of the towers that they were, if not godlike, then at least something that seemed close to it.

The Fall

If they had continued on that path, it's likely that they would have eventually moved to some sort of arcane-energy-fueled-ascension or some such. About 1200 years ago, however, a problem cropped up - a devastating plague spread throughout their cities. A plague is bad enough, but there are ways to deal with it, magically speaking. Worse, though, was that when they attempted to do so, they discovered the plague reacted to arcane energy, spreading all the faster *and*, in a horrific backlash, generally draining the energy from everyone around when they tried it.

Within fifty years, the gargoyle population had shrank from hundreds of millions to less than a quarter of that, and several of their floating cities had come *crashing down* when the plague devoured enough of the energy there wasn't enough left to keep them afloat. Desperate to halt it, researchers working together came up with a potential solution - they would work a powerful spell upon their entire species that turned them to stone momentarily, hopefully killing any foreign bodies (such as the plague) in their systems.

Obviously, from the fact that gargoyles aren't currently the undisputed masters of Advena, it didn't work. Well, it did, but not quite as they wanted. The attempt to turn back to flesh failed, the residual virus somehow having merged with their system and siphoning off the energy of the incantation and preventing it from completing. They were no longer dying, but they couldn't change back all the way. Significantly heavier, they could no longer fly, and they soon discovered that while they still required air, they didn't need to eat or drink - they subsisted, instead, on ambient arcane energy in the world.

Unfortunately, doing that up in their floating cities, many of which were already destable from the effects of the plague, further reduced the energy keeping them afloat, so it wasn't long before the gargoyles descended, for good, back to the grounds of Advena. And down there, they were away from their most advanced laboratories and research centers, which further slowed down their efforts to reach a new cure. Then the most devastating discovery was made - as a consequence of the transformation, they could no longer reproduce. The species suddenly had a distinct end-date.

On the other hand, it took a score of years to discover that they also no longer seemed to be aging. There was some renewed hope with this, as immortality does somewhat reduce the concern about breeding. The problem, they found over time, was that despite their physical ability to ignore age, their minds were incapable of holding centuries upon centuries of memories, and the eldest among them began going completely and utterly insane.

They reacted to that, in turn, by eventually finding the only fix would be to effectively "reset" their memory, giving them what amounted to more storage space. The process took substantial time, however - about half as long as the number of years they were removing - and they were effectively comatose during it, which would never do for security sake. They wove a final powerful spell to provide gargoyles with the ability to force themselves into a form of deep hibernation, thickening themselves to true stone, and then, group by group, they slept, clearing their minds.

Current Day

The spell would have done what they intended this time, were it not for the fact that by the time it should have expired, there were none left sane enough to wake their brethren. And so the race slept for five hundred years. Until humans arrived on the western shores of Advena and began to settle the now-grown-over remnants of gargoyle's landed territories. What the new arrivals once took as decorative statues began to lurch to life when exposed, once more, to fresh arcane energies from the wizards and other arcanists amongst the humans.

After so long asleep, however, the gargoyles didn't awaken as planned, with only selected memories missing, but effectively true amnesiacs, with basic skills, such as speech, and almost nothing else remaining. Most of them no longer even remember their past as a species, though in the three centuries since humanity's arrival, they have begun to piece together what they can. But most still sleep in secluded caves away from the sun, or atop mountains almost impossible for those without wings to climb, and the species has no direction or purpose left they can recall.