Brooklyn

        

Above right: Brooklyn, as he appeared in "Future Tense." (Both pictures courtesy of Dracandros.)

Gender: Male

First Appearance: "Awakening" Part I

Other Appearances: Every episode of Gargoyles and the Goliath Chronicles except "The Silver Falcon," "Outfoxed," "Avalon" Parts II & III, "Shadows of the Past," "Heritage," "Monsters," "Golem," "Sanctuary," "M.I.A.," "Grief," "The Hound of Ulster," "Walkabout," "Mark of the Panther," "Eye of the Storm," "The New Olympians," "The Green," "Sentinel," "Bushido," "Cloud Fathers," "Ill Met By Moonlight," "Vendettas."

The gargoyle who eventually chose the name Brooklyn hatched in the year 958 AD, into the Wyvern gargoyle clan in Scotland. Within days after him, his younger siblings who would later come to be called Broadway and Lexington hatched as well. These three quickly became very close and were known to all as the Trio, of which Brooklyn was the de facto leader. He has a cool, sarcastic demeanor that often conceals emotions and passions which burn brighter than most. His skin is a dark shade of red, with dark red-brown inside his wings and black outside.

Like all young gargoyles of his clan he was trained in the ways of the warrior. He and his clan lived in uneasy peace with the humans who built their castle on the clan's ancestral Wyvern Hill, until a dark time in 994. A Viking horde led by Hakon followed a band of refugees to the castle and laid siege to it. The betrayal of the Captain of the Guard allowed the Vikings to breach the castle's defenses. The humans of Wyvern were rounded up as prisoners, and Hakon slaughtered the gargoyles while they were locked defenseless in stone sleep. The Trio, who had been sent down into the Rookery with the gargoyle beast Bronx for misbehavior the night before, were spared this destruction. With Goliath and Hudson, they attacked the Viking encampment, freeing the humans and slaying Hakon and the Captain. However, the Magus turned them to stone, believing that the Princess Katherine had been murdered because of them, and so they slept, for a thousand years.

Awaking in the modern world, the gargoyles had a major case of culture shock. The Trio adapted the fastest to the world and culture of the 1990's, while Goliath was slower to accept and Hudson never fully let go. Of these, Brooklyn and Lexington adapted most quickly of all. After Xanatos was sent to prison, the Trio began exploring their new world in earnest. The strong rebellious streak in Brooklyn's nature attracted him to the dark and wild side of modern culture, including black leather and motorcycles. He enlisted his brothers' help to design and build a motorcycle, which he took on a joyride to indulge his passions. On this ride he faced the first of three great tests of character.

After riding with a biker gang for a short while, they discovered what he was and in fear and prejudice attacked him. With the unexpected intervention of Demona on his side the young gargoyle fought them off, though his bike was destroyed in the process. Having Brooklyn's ear, the ancient gargess began to tempt him to the dark side, unfolding the half-truth of human deceit and villainy which she had long ago come to believe in fully herself. The evidence she showed him in a short tour through New York's underbelly was too much for him to ignore, and he began to believe she was correct.

At Demona's urging, Brooklyn returned to the castle and stole the artifact called the Grimorum Arcanorum, which the gargess had assured him contained a spell which would make Goliath see the truth about the humans. He gave the spellbook to Demona, then lured Goliath to the Cloisters outside the city to meet her. But Demona had lied to him, and the spell she had cast was not one to clear the mind, but enslave it. Filled with rage over having been tricked into this betrayal, Brooklyn fought her and the clan leader and got the spell away from her. Brooklyn commanded the enslaved Goliath to stop Demona, and saved the Grimorum when Demona dropped it in a gambit to secure retreat. Weary to his soul, Brooklyn commanded the enslaved gargoyle to follow him back home. Demona had removed the counterspell from the book and Brooklyn was unable to abrogate the enchantment, but the human Elisa Maza twisted the spell against itself and freed Goliath from its geas. The incident gave Brooklyn a deep smoldering hatred of Demona, which flared into full blaze whenever he encountered her in the future.

The gargoyles' lives in their new era proved to be anything but dull. Shortly before Xanatos got out of prison, an ancient warrior called MacBeth attacked the clan at the castle, and took Brooklyn, Lexington and Bronx prisoner. Brooklyn's toying with the bars of their cage gave Lexington an idea which freed Bronx and led Goliath to them. Brooklyn and Lexington escaped as MacBeth's mansion collapsed around them in a burning wreck. The young gargoyle also was engaged in battles with Xanatos' Steel Clan robots, the escaped Pack members Jackal and Hyena, and the reanimated abomination Coldstone. When the Pack resurfaced under the leadership of Coyote, Brooklyn tried to counsel Lexington about his uncontrolled hatred of them, and temper his rage with reason. He desired to protect his younger sibling from throwing away his life, but ended up saving his own life by his words, for they led Lexington to reassess his priorities and save Brooklyn rather than annihilate the Pack when he had to choose.

For all the excitement in his life, Brooklyn began to grow lonely, and strongly desired female companionship. When he saw the mutate Maggie being chased by the Gen-U-Tech mercenaries, he thought she was a gargoyle and became convinced that she needed and wanted his help. His first skirmish with the mercenaries was ended by a tranquilizer dart, with Broadway pulling him out of the fray. Elisa ID'd them as a bioengineering firm owned by Xanatos, and with Goliath and Lexington the young gargoyle attacked the building, taking Maggie with them and giving the geneticist Sevarius the excuse he needed to feign death and avoid providing a cure to Elisa's brother Derek for the mutagen he had been injected with. Maggie fled again and returned with the other mutates, who- mistakenly believing Xanatos to be their ally- took up residence at the castle. Brooklyn's loneliness was unabsolved.

After being turned into a human and back again by the fay Puck, and dealing with a city full of quite literally stoned humans in another of Demona's attempts to cleanse the world of the human scourge, Brooklyn fought Demona again at MacBeth's mansion when she and MacBeth were under the Weird Sisters' spell. Due to the trickery of Coldstone's third personality, the clan was defeated and captured, but was saved by Elisa. Shortly thereafter, the secretly created clone Thailog took his life into his own claws and in one of his jaunts attacked Elisa and Brooklyn's siblings. Brooklyn had been with Goliath at the time however, and was able to clear Goliath of any wrongdoing in the incident.

Only a short time after the first Thailog incident, Brooklyn faced his next test. A fierce rivalry developed among the Trio for the position of the clan's second-in-command, and in the meantime, Xanatos secretly upgraded the Pack with genetic engineering, cyborg enhancements and power armor. Led by Coyote 2.0, the enhanced Pack attacked and defeated Goliath, Elisa, Hudson and Bronx, taking them prisoner. After Fox tipped the Trio off to the rest of their clan's location, Brooklyn led the Trio against the Pack in a carefully orchestrated attack which freed their friends and allowed the whole clan to battle and eventually defeat the Pack. These actions confirmed Goliath's opinion of the young gargoyle, and he was made the clan's second-in-command, a decision even his brothers applauded.

Meanwhile, the mutates' hatred for the gargoyles, fostered by Xanatos and the misguided Derek / Talon, had festered and grown. When Talon found out that Sevarius was alive and had been carried out of the Gen-U-Tech parking lot by Goliath, he assumed that this confirmed that the two were working together, and flew into a rage. Forcing Maggie to reveal where the clan lived, he sent the rest of the mutates to attack. The Trio defeated them, and rather than destroy the mutates or keep them prisoner, Brooklyn decided on his authority as Second to release them. Though questioned by the others, this proved to be a wise decision, for Xanatos showed his true colors and betrayed the mutates, proving what Elisa and the gargoyles had been trying to tell them all along. Due partly to Brooklyn's magnanimous decision, the mutates made up with the clan, and became their allies. The young gargoyle soon faced his greatest test.

Shortly after the events with Sevarius and the mutates, Goliath disappeared off to Avalon with Elisa and Bronx, without warning the others. As second-in-command, Brooklyn was forced to assume command of the clan and become their leader, with little or no training or preparation for such an occurrence. His feelings warring within him, Brooklyn allowed the strong-willed Talon to make the situation worse by inadvertently alerting Xanatos to the three's disappearing act, while Fang took control of the Labyrinth. Frustrated, and with some gentle urging from Hudson, Brooklyn accepted his position as the clan's new leader and led them and Maggie on a strike against the Labyrinth. By his quick thinking and good acting, Brooklyn enabled Maggie to free Talon from the case he'd been locked in, and defeated Fang and his minions. The young gargoyle resolved to lead the clan to the best of his ability, and to find Goliath and company if possible.

When Arthur Pendragon and Griff were teleported to Manhattan by the Stone of Destiny, Brooklyn led the clan to their defense against MacBeth, Fleance and Banquo. With the assistance of the gargoyle's clan, Arthur retrieved the sword Excalibur and proved himself as the once and future king. Brooklyn also appeared to Goliath in Puck's nightmare vision as an experienced leader, embittered against Goliath and with Demona as his mate.

After Goliath's return, Brooklyn allowed him to become leader again, and became Second once more. Like his brothers, he vied for the favor of Goliath's daughter Angela; but Angela was strong-willed, and refused to be so easily won. During the ColdTrio fiasco Coldstone's evil personality inhabited Brooklyn's body, and committed much evil in it. This scenario also damaged Brooklyn and Lexington's chances of wooing Angela. Brooklyn tried to act as a calm counterpoint to Goliath's unreasoning rage during the Hunter's Moon, but without much success.

In the Goliath Chronicles, while the city was incited to a furor by the Quarrymen, Brooklyn inadvertently allowed a group of criminals to escape because of his inner turmoil and daydreams. Goliath's over-reaction to this led Brooklyn to run away, where he befriended several human children who had also run away from home. One of the kids betrayed him to a street boss called Radar, and Brooklyn was captured. With the help of several of the others, Brooklyn escaped and the street gang was defeated. When Demona tried to trick Angela, Brooklyn and Goliath tried to convince her that Demona was up to no good, and were proven correct. In Titania's vision to Goliath of a world in which he had never lived, Brooklyn was again leader of the clan, and leery of the wild-eyed human throwing himself at them claiming to be one of them.

Tensions between the gargoyles and Quarrymen came to a head when Jon Canmore dropped a building on them and blamed the destruction on the gargoyles. Most of the clan was presumed dead except for Angela and Bronx, who were put on a passenger train by assistant DA Margot Yale to be taken to the north of the state and incarcerated. But Xanatos had bribed some of Canmore's men, and the gargoyles survived the building's implosion. As Canmore's quarrymen made an assault on the train, indiscriminately attacking human and gargoyle alike, the clan came from behind to rescue their friends and the innocents on board. Despite Canmore's destruction of the bridge over a chasm in front of the train and his sabotage of the train controls, Brooklyn's quick thinking allowed he, Hudson and Lexington to stop the train's charge and save everybody on board. The gargoyles finally got the respect and recognition as heroes they deserved, all charges against them were dropped, and Canmore was taken into custody.

In Greg Weisman's Master Plan, Brooklyn was chosen by the errant Phoenix Gate to become the TimeDancer, having more influence on the course of history and future than any other single human or gargoyle in the history of the world. He was to find his mate Katana in feudal Japan, and return to the present after 40 years of timedancing with his mate, their son Nashville, their unhatched daughter Tachi, and the gargoyle beast Fu-Dog. Unfortunately, the series was terminated before this could be put into effect.

Brooklyn has most of the abilities possessed by other gargoyles, including phenomenal strength, a prehensile tail, wings upon which to glide (which, unlike those of most gargoyles, had winghands), perfect night vision, great speed, and highly tuned senses. He is more agile than any other gargoyle met to date, save Lexington. Where other gargoyles largely ignore all but the most extreme heat and cold, Brooklyn seemed closer to a human in his tolerance range, but still superior in this respect. Brooklyn has demonstrated a working knowledge of magic, especially in being able to read and understand the Grimorum, and know that no spell therein was an appropriate counterspell to Goliath's enslavement.

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