Should we believe that the Gargoyle has always been the same person, we must also stretch that belief around the concept of this person being free from the chains of mortality. The Gargoyle did not seem to age, and while their followers would've tried to have you believe it was all home remedies and clean living, I suggest that the Gargoyle may have instead been feeding on the life force of their brood. Vampires across cultural mythos defy the rules of senescence by consuming the vitality of humans, often by ingesting blood, but not limited to as much. Sure, the Gargoyle may very well be a sanguineous snacker, but
Part of the initiation process to join the Castle invoves drinking a liquid made by the Gargoyle called the Tonic. There are countless stories involving vampires using their own intravenous secretions to catalyze a process by which they can turn normal folk into vampires, but there is another role that humans may fill for a vampiric lord known as a Thrall. The Castle as a collective of thralls working for and feeding the Gargoyle
Now, you may be wondering "why marine?" and this is fair when you have not lived a life so thouroughly wrought with experence as I have. At this point it makes far less sense to me that vampires would ever not be associated with the sea. Vampires are routnely depicted as a form of "undead", and dead things don't tend to breathe. They are also often severely susceptible to sun damage. Now where might a good place be to hide from the sun all day? Underwater, where you're also a lot less likely to run into any nosey humans. But this section says "Attire" so lets move on. The Gargoyle had a notably nautical taste in fashion. Perhaps it is credulous of me to think this has anything to do with other than taste, but leaving such a stone unturned could prove my Great Hamartia. We can not ignore one of the few perceptible qualities of such a figure as mysterious as the Gargoyle. We know they at least have an aethetic interest in the ocean, would it be so bold as to assume this interest is due to some type of bond?
So our cult leader is a vampire, but do they still need the water? And if so, how are they accessing it in a land-locked state like Arkansas? The area where the Castle lived was not too far from the man-made Beaver Lake. This lake flooded into the valley sometime in the 60s by way of a damming system. But the valley was not empty. Besides a forest of trees, a man nicknamed "Coin" had built a town, an ampitheatre and even the foundation of a pyramid on land covered up by the lake.