Keeva

That island had walked before man or beast or furre even crawled upon the earth. A timeless construct made by beings that existed on a plane short of the gods. They were the Builders, the Creators, the Makers; those that shaped the world and set the stage for life to flourish--at least that is what the folklore says. The truth was stranger, if only slightly. Men created the island, beginning their project on the sand only to send it out to sea. To fly above would show an island that moved along the water, mysterious and ancient. To swim below into the murky dark of the sea would reveal the massive legs that set the island into a constant, now aimless, path. The island was an achievement of a lost form of alchemy; a golem of epic portions.

The men who once walked across the surface of the island called the fertile valley and towering peaks Batiazes, to be understood in their now dead tongue as 'the Bastion of Knowledge'. In ancient times, it became known as 'the Last Bastion', for there was no reaching the island for those that would see the collections of scrolls and tomes burned in a most grand wash of flame as a tribute to their zealotry--religious or otherwise. The men had carved into their construct over the ages, into the mountains they had shaped, and made their glorious library. They practiced magic, they perfected alchemy, they studied philosophy, they mastered the arts, they dabbled in medicine--they were a people of wide and curious interests. Anyone outside the island might call them geniuses; just as many would call them mad men and cultists for living atop their abhorrent creation.

Whatever the truth was, the men were frail. Frail and mortal; there was no escaping their fate no matter how much they walked the vast archives for the answers to their weakness. Such was the nature of flesh. And so they created a different breed of golem: the Batian Gargoyle. Each one was different, as each one of the creators chose their material and set about making the creature to their own desires.

"This one shall be gold, the most beautiful of the land, dazzling to the eye to glimmer in the sun forever."
"Mine will be iron, the strongest of them all. It will never falter in battle."
"As for this one? I choose to shape it from marble, so that it might be both!"

And so each of the Batian Makers proceeded to shape their creation, though it was agreed that they would never have the face of a man. The bodies of men, women, and children alike were used, but a true member of the species does not have a humanized face. To give them a human face was to tempt a most unholy union, so they decreed. And so beast, monster, and even plant lent their features to the creations in a grotesque weave of man and beast that somehow managed to work once the creatures were animated. The creatures were intelligent; like children they learned and expanded their knowledge but they never grew. They never became old or sick or tired.

But their masters did, and it was only when death came for the very last of the Makers that the Batian Gargoyles were nearly silenced forever. Though it was the magic in their bodies that eventually spared them the fate of their masters. Some awoke to find their world now empty and silent. Without direction and without their masters to care for, they did the only thing they knew to: protect the archives, protect the island, continue to add to the archives. Those without wings tended to the land beneath the rocks, giving company to their massive brother so that he might not wander alone in the darkness too.

The Batian constructs continued their masters' work, the constant fear of being idle and trapped in their bodies looming. To have no purpose was to become idle, to become idle was to invite death; every gargoyle knew that. It was but one side effect of the magics that were woven into their forms, but the most pressing by far. They could not breed, few could feel love, but all of them were victim to their nature: to die to save another was an honorable death. Those that left the island for more to add to the archives sometimes never came back, if only because they gave their heart to another and refused to leave them unprotected. The gift was a figurative thing but the bonds were real. Being constructs made to protect and serve they submitted to these feelings and over time these feelings mutated into the capacity to love. The love of a Batian Gargoyle is unyielding and true, likely to outlast their partner unless they too were immortal. However, their loyalty was often their downfall, for those left betrayed often ended their existence in the only way they knew how: to return to the stone from whence they had came.

But for all those that wander, they are never lost, as any of the Batian Gargoyles could find their home if simply tasked to do it. One explained that they simply 'feel' the island's presence at any given time. It suggested they could tap into the earth around them and manipulate it, being creatures of stone and thus a part of the earth, giving them an expanded awareness that normal mortals just... couldn't grasp.