A YJA Moment: Demona and the Gargoyles

Gargoyles are a race of Mythics all but extinct in the modern-day.  They are huge demonic-looking creatures, who operate in the night but turn to stone in the day.  While Gargoyles existed throughout the world, the most notable Clan was on Castle Wyvern in Scotland, where they protected the nobles from invaders.

The creatures did not have names for each other, but two were given titles by their human allies.  Their leader was known as Goliath and his second-in-command and mate was known as Demona.

Betrayed by their allies during a siege, most of the Gargoyles of the castle were shattered while in their statue forms.  The court magician, however, cast a dangerous spell that shielded the remaining Gargoyles, including Goliath, from the human view.  But the spell itself had the unexpected effect of trapping the Mythics in their stone forms permanently.

Demona. who had left the Castle during the battle, returned to find her people either shattered or cursed. Unable to break the magician's spell, she traveled the world to find a way of freeing them and a means of exacting revenge on the humans.  Learning from the great sorcerers of the world, she became an accomplished practitioner in the mystic arts.  Not content with mortal magics, she attempted to barter power from the Mythics, which led to her being cursed by the fae known as Pan.

The curse robbed her of her stone form - during the day, she would become a mortal being indistinguishable from a human.  She used this ability to further infiltrate the human world, using her sorcery to change her appearance when necessary.  She eventually gained influence in several groups - As Mystique she became a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, and as Domanique Destine she rose the ranks of Stark Industries.

All the while she schemed.  Using homunculus arts she created a simulacrum of Tony Stark that she made the heir to the Xanatos fortune.  She tried in vain to create offspring but Pan's curse prevented her from using magic on herself, so her Goliath-Demona child instead became the metahuman known as Nightcrawler.

Her plans were many - she convinced Tony to relocate Castle Wyvern to atop Stark Tower to keep it close to her.  She then used Stark's apparent demise to have Xanatos take control of the company - her homunculus would be genetically identical to Tony allowing him access to all his secret files.  She then made deals with Weapons Plus, betraying the Brotherhood in exchange for cloning a new Gargoyle race.

Ultimately Demona hoped to use her influence in the Brotherhood and Orchis to heighten the tense relations between humanity and its metahuman sub-species, causing a conflict that would cause open warfare.  If enough humans were killed then the Mythics such as the Gargoyles could then rise up and reclaim the planet as their own.  She came very close to doing so, arraging for both the Sentinel attack on the Xavier Mansion and Magneto's murderous response against Checkmate leadership using an Aircraft Carrier.

In the end, the Avengers defeated Demona and imprisoned her in the "Black Mass" supernatural containment wing of the Triskelion.  Clan Wyvern has temporarily relocated to Outland, in order to figure out what to do about David Xanatos and his possession of their home.