Granite: [link]
Marble: [link]

THE POWER IS YOURS.

While I'm at work, my brain gets an awful lot of free time to come up with bizarre concepts like this. At first I just wanted to draw a gorgon who had tough, plated tendrils instead of hair (like they do in Magic: the Gathering), then I thought it might be cute to make the gorgon act like a pretentious pain-in-the-ass artsy type as she petrifies someone, then I wanted to add a second gorgon to take issue with her assessment, then I decided their dispute would be about which type of stone to use.

And the idea just kept expanding until I sort of planned out their whole society.

Gorgons, much like the myths, don't occur naturally. The first three gorgons, known nowadays as The Originals, were three human girls who were cursed and turned into hideous (okay, well, they're not that hideous really) monsters to guard some cruel wizard's keep. The transformation, aside from the obvious physical impacts, had a number of effects on the girls' minds. It wiped their memories of their human lives, it drove them just a wee bit insane, and unexpectedly, it also made them very, very SMART. Before long they killed their master and roamed free to begin giving the gift of gorgon-ness across the land.

Gorgons, as an all-female race, have no means of reproduction except to transform other human women. Practically speaking, it's actually pretty easy for them to spread the curse, but gorgons are total elitists and are EXTREMELY finicky about who they will allow into their ranks. (And the humans aren't exactly beating the door down to get in, yanno.)

Gorgons live in groups of three to five, appropriately called "cliques". The leader of a clique is the Elite. Cliquemates regularly refer to each other as "sister" even though it's extremely rare for two gorgons to be actual sisters. The gorgons' main pastime is what they refer to as "live statuary," which is the art of petrifying hapless victims in such a way as to create a pleasurable composition.

In this picture, we see our old friends Alex and Azalea from "Gorgon and Victim" (Azalea's design has seen significant changes), as well as Azalea's chain-smoking older cliquemate Abelia, the Elite of the clique. As her thought bubble might imply, Alex has been stuck with these gorgons for a long time now...the gorgons like her so much that they keep petrifying and re-petrifying her with different poses and stone types. (I think that by the time I do another picture involving these girls, Alex will be a gorgon herself!) Abelia has commandeered Azalea's necklace and is using its control magic to pose Alex, since gorgons give the highest praises to statues that suggest the victim was willing. (Terrified-looking victims are passé; they're just too easy!) If the rest of the gorgon art-world found out about the necklace, they'd ostracize its owner immediately; use of control magic or other magical aids to pose subjects is considered EXTREMELY poor form!

Incidentally, Abelia's clique has a third member named Amaryllis ("Rylli"), a shy, well-meaning gorgon who usually fixes the mischief her cliquemates cause. I don't have a clear picture of her in my head; all I know is that she's purple and has glasses.