Hunters

For the character known as Hunter in Gargoyles: Bad Guys, see Robyn Canmore

Gillecomgain, the first Hunter.

The Hunters are fanatical gargoyle-hunters who wear a distinctive mask with three red slashes across the face. The Hunters are particularly known as an enemy of Demona. Many humans have adopted the name and mask of the Hunter throughout history, beginning with Gillecomgain in 994 and culminating in Jason, Robyn, and Jon Canmore in 1996.

History

Gillecomgain first assumed the Hunter's role and mask after he was attacked by Demona as a boy and his face horribly scarred; the mask that he donned bore three red slash-marks across it to match his facial scars, a feature which the Hunters' masks bore ever since, even after they had forgotten Gillecomgain's disfiguring. Gillecomgain hunted Demona ruthlessly as the Hunter throughout all Scotland, and also presumably destroyed any other gargoyle that he came across.

Gillecomgain also became a hired assassin, and as the Hunter murdered Findlaech in 1020 on behalf of Prince Duncan. He continued to serve as the Hunter until his death in 1032, when Duncan took up the role, and as the Hunter in 1040, attacked Demona's Clan in its stone sleep, forcing the survivors to join forces with Macbeth. Duncan was slain in battle not long afterwards, but his son Canmore recovered the Hunter’s mask and assumed it in 1057, when he invaded Scotland in concert with the English and overthrew Macbeth and Demona both.

After some unspecified event, Canmore resumed the role of the Hunter or passed it on to the Canmores who succeeded him to the post, descended from his son, Donald. The Canmore Hunters pursued Demona throughout first Europe and then the world over the centuries, ruthlessly hunting her and seeking her death. The details about them between 1057 and 1980 are as yet unknown, except for one who attacked her in Renaissance Florence in 1495, when she stole the Medici Tablet, and Fiona Canmore who hunted her in Paris in 1920. However, they seem to have been a constant menace to her.

By 1980, the Canmores had long since forgotten how the Hunters had begun, but continued to play the role out of force of habit and the weight of family tradition, not to mention the fact that it is much easier to keep a feud going than it is to end one. In that year, the current Hunter, Charles Canmore, attacked Demona at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and was slain by her, on the night of September 28th. His three children, Jason, Robyn, and Jon, took up the mission, culminating in their climactic encounter with both Demona and the Manhattan Clan in New York in 1996. The battles that they fought there caused the destruction of the Clock Tower, the revelation to the world that gargoyles exist, the near-death of several gargoyles and humans, the massive injuries to Jason Canmore, and finally brought the Hunters to an end, or, more accurately, moved them into a new phase, after Jon Canmore, the only one of the three still desiring to continue the feud, changed his name to John Castaway and set up the Quarrymen.

Macbeth also temporarily assumed the Hunter's mask in 1995 when he fought Demona during the time that she had placed her "stone by night" curse upon the human inhabitants of New York, telling her, "I wear this as a reminder of your treachery."

Characteristics

The Hunters always wore a hooded mask with three red slashes upon it as a badge, to conceal their true identity. They carefully upgraded their equipment over the centuries; the Renaissance Hunter pursued Demona mounted in a flying machine that looked like something out of one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, and Jason, Robyn, and Jon armed themselves in New York with an enormous airship, insulated suits, and even a robotic falcon.