Demona
Demona was Goliath's former mate, once a member of the Wyvern Clan. She is now one of its greatest enemies, and possibly the most dangerous gargoyle in the world.
Contents
History
Past
Demona was hatched in the year 938. By 971, she and Goliath were already falling in love with each other.
Apprenticeship
However, the young Demona - at that time, known only as "Angel of the Night" or simply "Angel", pet names which Goliath had bestowed upon her - had already begun to develop the weaknesses that would lead her down a dark path to come. Showing a strong interest in magic, she secretly entered the Archmage's service as his apprentice, in which role she served largely as a servant and errand-runner. The Archmage treated her harshly, dominating her by his threats, and she obeyed his commands out of fear. This reached its climax in 975, when the Archmage commanded her to steal the Phoenix Gate from Princess Elena.
Just after Demona stole the Gate, an older version of herself appeared with a duplicate Phoenix Gate, and whisked them both away to the year 994, accompanied by an older version of Goliath (both from the year 1995). There, the older Demona showed the younger one the aftermath of the Wyvern Massacre and Goliath's petrified form on the battlements, urging her to use the Phoenix Gate to avert this disaster and destroy the humans. The younger Demona was horrified at her future self's coldness and callousness, and refused to become like her, but was also disturbed at what she had seen. The Goliath from the future did what he could to comfort her, urging her to not worry about this catastrophe but to remain true to her love.
The younger Demona then returned herself and the two time travellers to 975, where she hid the Phoenix Gate from the Archmage, pretending that she had lost it. The Archmage, furious, cast her off as his apprentice then and there. Afterwards, Demona and Goliath attended Prince Malcolm's wedding; she broke the Phoenix Gate in half there, giving one half of it to him as a token of her love, while keeping the other half for the same purpose. ("Vows")
Life at Castle Wyvern
Demona grew older and became one of the greatest warriors of the Clan, protecting the humans of the Castle but remaining troubled over the vision of the future she saw and becoming more and more angry by the humans' treatment of her and her kind. In 984, her former teacher the Archmage tried to take over Wyvern but was defeated. In a last attempt to kill Prince Malcolm, the human leader at the time, the Archmage shot him with a poisonous dart which only a spell from the Grimorum Arcanorum could cure. The Clan's leader, known later as Hudson was entrusted to bring back the book and he decided to take Goliath, by this point the Clan's second-in-command, and Demona with him. Together they tracked the Archmage to a cave and were able to retrieve the book and return it to Castle Wyvern, saving Prince Malcolm's life. Demona expressed many misgivings over Hudson's advancing age and ability to lead, and it was this and Hudson's own feelings on the matter that convinced Hudson to step down and allow Goliath to lead. ("Long Way To Morning") In truth, Demona wanted this for Goliath, and herself very much and Goliath soon made her his second-in-command. One member of the clan, Demona's rookery sister Hyppolyta, disagreed with this turn of the events and felt Goliath was not the best choice for leader. Demona often argued with Hyppolyta about this.
In 987, Demona and Goliath conceived a child and the next year Demona laid the egg in the rookery of the clan among many others.
The Wyvern Massacre
By 994, Demona had finally had enough of the constant ingratitude of Princess Katharine, Prince Malcom's heir, and her human subjects towards the clan, and decided, with the Captain of the Guard, to betray the humans to Hakon and his Vikings. The two plotters urged Goliath to take the entire clan and drive the Vikings away from the castle, intending to have Hakon capture Castle Wyvern in the gargoyles' absence at night. But Goliath, unwilling to leave the castle undefended, only took Hudson with him ("Awakening" Part One). The Captain, desperate to have the plan succeed, decided to have Hakon attack during the daytime instead. Demona was alarmed, knowing that in the daytime, the clan would be trapped in its stone sleep and defenseless. She dared not warn the rest of the gargoyles, however, for fear that if she did so, she might have to reveal her part in the conspiracy, and so fled alone to hide upon the beach.
She awakened that night, and returned to find her clan destroyed by the Vikings. Horrified and grief-stricken, she hid herself when Goliath returned to the castle, too afraid to face him. By the time that she re-emerged from hiding, Goliath and the other survivors had already been put to sleep (seemingly forever) by the Magus.
Looking up at her mate's petrified form, Demona cried out, "What have I - what have they done to you?" In that moment, her mood changed from grief to anger and hatred, burying the guilt that she felt over having contributed to the destruction of her clan underneath her rage at the humans, blaming them for her woes so that she could avoid facing her own responsibility for them.
She saw below Princess Katharine, the Magus, and Tom loading the rookery eggs on the cart and driving away with them, but made no effort to go after them. Instead, she kissed the stone Goliath one last time, and glided away. ("City of Stone Part One")
Macbeth and the Hunters
Coming to a nearby farm, she raided the barn for food. The farmer's young son Gillecomgain, hearing the commotion from the animals, came to investigate, and Demona promptly slashed him across his face with her claws, scarring him, in her anger. This proved a fatal action for her, for Gillecomgain vowed revenge upon Demona and her race, and grew up to become the first Hunter, an enemy both to Demona and to all gargoyles.
Demona continued to wander about Scotland, attacking any human who got in her way and stealing food to survive. In time, other rogue gargoyles, the survivors of clans that had been destroyed by the humans, including Demona's Second, joined her, and by 1020, she was the leader of a new clan, if a rather ragtag one, which turned to banditry. By that time, the grown-up Gillecomgain, as the Hunter, had become one of her worst enemies, and a danger to all the surviving gargoyles left in Scotland as well. ("City of Stone" Part One)
In 1020, the Weird Sisters were assigned the task of watching over Demona and Macbeth by the Archmage, and set to work at once ("Avalon Part Two"). They persuaded Demona to attack Gillecomgain at Castle Moray, when he went there on Prince Duncan's orders to assassinate Findlaech, and there she met Macbeth for the first time, and actually saved his life, although having to allow the Hunter to escape in order to so do ("City of Stone" Part One).
Twelve years later, the Sisters again persuaded Demona to fight Gillecomgain at Castle Moray by Macbeth's side. This time, she slew the Hunter, and Macbeth saved her life, for which she grudgingly thanked him, hoping that their dealings were now at an end ("City of Stone" Part Two).
They were not. When Duncan finally decided to destroy Macbeth in 1040, he feared that Demona and her clan would aid Macbeth against him, and so attempted to destroy them as the Hunter. This backfired, however, for it helped force Macbeth and Demona into an alliance against Duncan as the common foe. All the same, Demona did not quite trust Macbeth, until the Weird Sisters appeared and made Demona this offer: if she would agree to the alliance with Macbeth, they would rejuvenate her. Demona, (by now the gargoyle equivalent of 51 and prematurely aged by her strenuous living), agreed to this, and the Sisters caused her and Macbeth to switch ages (making Macbeth 51 and Demona the gargoyle equivalent of 35, the age that Macbeth was then). In so doing, they also made them both unaging and immortal, only able to die if one slew the other, although they did not mention this at the time.
With the aid of Demona and her clan, Macbeth overthrew Duncan in battle and became the new King of Scotland. He placed her clan under his protection, and declared her his primary advisor ("City of Stone" Part Three). Following his coronation in 1040, Macbeth gave Demona her name, because he thought she fought like a demon. And for the next seventeen years, Demona could know peace and safety at last. Other gargoyles came to know about this new golden age between humans and gargoyles and flocked under her leadership and her clan grew in size. Learning from the lessons of the past, she arranged for the clan to sleep in different places, so if one "cell" was discovered and destroyed the rest would live on. This peaceful and happy respite came to a tragic end in 1057, when a grown-up Canmore invaded Scotland with the help of the English, seeking to regain his father's throne and achieve his revenge. Demona and her clan valiantly fought against the English invaders, but in a private council, Bodhe urged Macbeth to cast off his alliance with the gargoyles, since (so Bodhe thought) the English were only invading Scotland because of their hatred for their kind and would go home if Macbeth abandoned Demona's clan.
Unfortunately, Macbeth did not immediately reject this advice, wishing to show his son Luach that "a wise king considers all his options, and then decides," and equally unfortunately, Demona, though not invited to the council, was secretly eavesdropping on it. Convinced that Macbeth would indeed betray her and her clan to the English, she decided to betray them first, and so abandoned Castle Moray on the eve of the final battle. Deprived of the gargoyles' aid, Macbeth was defeated by Canmore; however, Canmore had Demona's clan destroyed as well, probably because as an army they were all together and thus easily smashed. Demona was alone once again, the last gargoyle alive in Scotland (or so she thought), and eventually she fled for other parts of the world. ("City of Stone" Part Four).
Throughout The Centuries
The period of her life between 1057 and 1994 is far more sketchily-recorded than that between 994 and 1057.
Demona roamed most of the world, pursued both by Macbeth (who first hunted her to seek revenge and later simply to end his long life) and by a new line of Hunters descended from Canmore, who had somehow learned of her survival and chosen to hunt her down (although how the hunt came to be resumed is as yet unknown). Growing increasingly bitter towards humans, she finally decided that she must destroy them all, partly as the only means of ensuring survival for herself and what little remained of her race, partly as a means of gaining her revenge. She took her first step towards this goal when she stole the Medici Tablet in Florence in the year 1495, upon which was engraved the Fulfillment Spell ("Hunter's Moon Part Two"). In 1920, Demona journeyed to Paris to locate the Praying Gargoyle and use it to destroy humanity, but was foiled by Fiona Canmore and Team Atlantis. Though the Praying Gargoyle was destroyed during her defeat, she was able to retrieve the Atlantean crystal inside it and moved it to holy ground where in sisty years it would regenerate. ("The Last") Sixty years later, in 1980, she returned to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and regained possession of the relic, killing a Hunter in the process ("Hunter's Moon Part Three). The Weird Sisters watched over her and Macbeth all this time, and twice intervened in her life, under as yet unchronicled circumstances ("Avalon" Part Two).
Modern Day
Xanatos and the Manhattan Clan
At some point between 1980 and 1994, Demona met David Xanatos thanks to some maneuvering behind the scenes by Brooklyn, Finella, and Mary, with Owen/Puck handling the actual introductions, and the two of them formed an alliance for the purpose of reviving Goliath and his clan from their stone sleep, each for personal reasons. After Xanatos moved Castle Wyvern to the top of the Eyrie Building, thus breaking the Magus' spell, Demona revealed herself to the awakened clan, pretending that she had been under the Magus' spell. She helped dupe Goliath into making the raid on Cyberbiotics, but in the course of it, revealed to him the full depths of her bitterness, destroying Fortress One in order to kill as many humans as possible. When a horrified Goliath refused to join her in her crusade against humanity, she tried to kill him, but Elisa Maza saved Goliath's life, in the process making an enemy of Demona ("Awakening" Parts Two, Three and Four).
From that point on, Demona attempted to either convert the gargoyles to her viewpoint, or, if she could not accomplish that, to destroy them. Among other stratagems, she tricked Brooklyn into helping her temporarily turn Goliath into a mindless zombie under her control, created the cybernetic gargoyle Coldstone, summoned Puck for the purpose of getting rid of all the humans in New York (which he didn't fulfill), and even tricked Goliath into yielding up to her his piece of the Phoenix Gate, so that she could go back in time to 975 and meet with her younger self, just as she had already done from her younger self's perspective. ("Temptation"; "Reawakening"; "The Mirror"; "Vows") Her first round of schemes after Goliath and his clan's awakening climaxed when she placed a curse over the humans in New York, causing them to turn to stone during the night so that she could smash them at her leisure. This curse was foiled, not only by an alliance between Goliath and Xanatos (thus ending her alliance with him), but also the unexpected intervention of first Macbeth, and then the Weird Sisters ("City of Stone" Parts I-IV).
The Sisters took Demona and Macbeth away with them, and used them to first steal the Grimorum Arcanorum, Eye of Odin, and Phoenix Gate from the clock tower, and next to attack the Avalon Clan. ("High Noon"; "Avalon" Part Two) After the defeat of the Archmage's forces, the Sisters lifted their hold over Demona and Macbeth, and caused them to forget everything that they had undergone while the Sisters had enchanted them, after which the Avalon Clan sent them away into the outside world ("Avalon" Part Three).
Thailog and Angela
Avalon brought Demona and Macbeth to Paris, where Demona met and fell in love with Thailog. The two gargoyles used their combined wealth to set up Nightstone Unlimited, and afterwards plotted to add to their fortune by Demona marrying Macbeth in her human form as Dominique Destine, then afterwards locking him up, faking his death, and inheriting his wealth as his "widow". Thailog's real plan, however, was to trick the two into killing each other so that he could obtain all their money for himself. Fortunately, the Avalon World Tour also brought Goliath, Elisa, Angela, and Bronx to Paris, and they were able to foil Thailog's scheme and save Demona and Macbeth's lives. It was on that occasion that Demona first saw her daughter Angela (having no memory of their encounter on Avalon). ("Sanctuary")
Returning to New York with Thailog, Demona learned from Sevarius that Angela was her biological daughter. She decided to recruit Angela to her cause, as well as setting up a fresh clan for herself, by letting herself be captured by the gargoyles and imprisoned in the Labyrinth, where she arranged for the cloning of Hudson and the Trio, and did all that she could to subvert Angela over to her side, without success. Demona, Thailog, and the Clones then captured the clan, but when Thailog tried to kill Angela, Demona discovered that she had come to care about her daughter and turned on Thailog, freeing the Gargoyles and telling Goliath to "save our daughter!" ("The Reckoning")
Operation Clean Slate
Not long afterwards, Demona used her resources at Nightstone Unlimited to complete the scheme that the Medici Tablet and Praying Gargoyle had begun, Operation Clean Slate, by employing Sevarius to create the CV-1000 Carrier Virus. On the night of the Hunter's Moon, in St. Damien's Cathedral, she used the Fulfillment Spell engraved on the Medici Tablet to merge the carrier virus with a case of D/I-7 detergent that she had stolen from Xanatos, creating a powerful plague designed to destroy all intelligent life on the planet, the Praying Gargoyle's magic becoming invoked to protect gargoyles from the plague. Fortunately, when Demona revealed her plan, Goliath intervened at the last moment to destroy the Praying Gargoyle, forcing Demona to abandon her plan. She managed to escape St. Damien's Cathedral, however. ("Hunter's Moon" Parts One, Two, and Three)
On Halloween, 1996, Demona returned to St. Damien's Cathedral to retrieve the crystal from the shattered remains of the Praying Gargoyle. ("Invitation Only")
Future
2198
Despite the foiling of her scheme, Demona will continue to plot the destruction of humanity with considerable bitterness. When the Space-Spawn invade Earth in 2198, however, Demona is faced with an even greater enemy to her kind than humans, and so accepts Samson's invitation to join the resistance movement, making use of her assets (such as her knowledge of magic and her ability to turn into a human in the daytime). However, Demona is uncertain as to whether she will be able to fight on the side of the angels for long. Some rumors, however, claim that she will indeed learn that she was responsible for her own misery and suffering, and undergo some sort of change of heart. These same rumors also state that she will have two more great loves, but their identity is as yet unknown.
Characteristics
At present, Demona continues to bitterly hate humans, and wants the entire species destroyed. But she hates some humans more than others, especially Elisa, the Hunters and Macbeth. She is vaguely aware of the detective's feelings for Goliath and his for Elisa, and is utterly jealous (deep down, she loves the Goliath of her imagination, but the real thing is a disappointment to her).
Besides, Elisa simply does not live up to Demona's beliefs about humans all being evil, traitorous, and hostile towards gargoyles, and that worries her even more. She also has strong hatreds for the Canmore Hunters, who have hounded her so often, and Macbeth, whom she still blames for the destruction of her clan in 1057 and his ongoing attempts to kill her. The one general exception to hatred in her heart at present is Angela, whom she has strong feelings for, but which as yet have not been enough to turn her from her path.
Demona's hatred of humanity is still fueled in part by her repressed guilt. She knows deep down inside that she is responsible in part for the Wyvern Massacre, but is unwilling to consciously admit it, and perforce makes the human race her scapegoat, to avoid facing the blood on her hands. She also continues to have a strong craving for power, hoping that when she destroys humanity and gargoyles subsequently rule the world, she will rule over them.
Demona is currently immortal and unaging thanks to the spell that the Weird Sisters placed upon her in 1040. This spell also ensures that she can only die if she kills Macbeth or he kills her. Demona can still be temporarily killed, or wounded, however. If Macbeth is close enough at the time that such an event happens, he will feel her pain - and vice versa, thanks to the magical link between them. The same may also apply to feelings of pleasure.
At present, Demona turns into a human during the daytime thanks to a magical gift that Puck bestowed upon her, taking on human form at dawn and reverting back to a gargoyle at sunset. The process is very painful, and Demona's one consolation for this is that if Macbeth is close enough, he can share her pain. Demona will still have this feature by 2198, although her human alias by that period is unknown to us as yet. Her human alias, at present, is Dominique Destine, the CEO of Nightstone Unlimited, though she abandoned Nightstone after the failure of Operation Clean Slate.
Demona is a cunning and resourceful opponent, and a good fighter. However, her anger and hatred have a tendency to interfere with her plans; she will in the heat of battle make the mistake of using her laser cannon as a club rather than firing it, for example, and she will often alienate her allies or betray them, thus losing their assistance permanently. This has, fortunately, resulted in Demona's efforts to destroy humanity all failing.
Physically, Demona is an attractive female gargoyle with a shock of red hair and pale blue skin. She is usually armed with a mace or a laser cannon or both. Her human form is that of an attractive red-haired woman, with a striking resemblance to her gargoyle form (close enough, in fact, that the muscular structure of her human head and her gargoyle head, according to a computer program of Robyn Canmore's, are virtually identical).
Demona currently resides alone in a mansion in Gramercy Park, with appropriate decorations such as a door-knocker shaped like a demon's head.
Future Tense
In Puck's nightmare vision of 2036, Demona joined the resistance against Xanatos, and eventually fell in love with its leader, Brooklyn. She begged Goliath to give Angela the Phoenix Gate so that she could use it to hide in time, Goliath refused. During the final assault on the Eyrie Pyramid, she was disintegrated by Xanatos in cyberspace. ("Future Tense")
Appearances
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Apocrypha
In the non-canon Goliath Chronicles, Demona allied with a man known as the Assassin and had him try to kill Goliath as part of a plan to make herself look like she'd reformed in the eyes of Angela. However, the Assassin, who was working with the Quarrymen, ruined the deception, and Angela once again felt betrayed, something for which Demona felt true remorse.
Behind the Scenes
Voice Actor: Marina Sirtis
Demona was originally named Dakota, and she was supposed to be the leader of the gargoyles in the first comedy development of the series. She was deemed uninteresting as a hero, and was changed to a villain.
See also
- Demona at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
