#gohma

Lolth-sworn Drow

Eldritch Knight Fighter

He's 265 years old

Cis male, polyamorous panromantic demisexual

Has hella PTSD, to the point he's selectively mute

Speaks Drow, Drow-sign, Undercommon, Common, Common-sign

Likes spiders, hates Lolth

Likes dogs

Dyes his hair black in his youth

Stoic, soft spoken, heart of gold type

In Baldur's Gate specifically:

6'4" in height

280 lbs of beefcake bulwark muscle

Romances Astarion

Soldier/Outlander backstory

Besties with Lae'zel, is godfather to Xan post-game and spends a few years mentoring him as a fighter.

Adopts the hyena at the beginning of Act 2 and names him Claw (also names the owlbear baby Bite, hatches the owlbear egg and names her Slash.)

Worships Lolth and Loviatar

Afraid of thunder, bulettes, and crowds

Loves the rain, it has significance for him

Believes he got his magic casting abilities from magic spiders in his past (this is not true, his mother was a sorcerer and his father a fighter)

Fanboy of Drizzt Do'Urden

I have tons of fics about him on my ao3- many of them spicy and involving a dear friend's own tav, whom Gohma is partners with.

And some dear friends have even written many a fic about him!

I also have a ton more fanart of him (some of it spicy 👀), most of it on my bluesky!

In this iteration of Hyrule, gohmas aren't "monsters," they're simply natural animals that evolved and exist in the world. They're named after monsters from folklore/legendary tales of past Heroes and Princesses, but they themselves are not magical, or "evil." Just critters.

People will sometimes refer to gohmas as "spiders" colloquially due to similarities but they're technically not spiders at all despite the resemblance. They're more like a hybrid of spider and scorpion. Let me explain! These guys are arachnids, with two body segments and eight jointed legs. More like a spider, the abdomen is rounded. They also produce silk from their abdomens and make webs. Their legs are "hairy." More like a scorpion, their pedipalps are pinchers/claws they use as weapons and for general grasping. More like a spider, they have "jackknife" chelicarae (mouthparts) and are venomous.

There are a variety of colors of gohma, from green to red-brown, and their chelicarae are often vibrantly colored like those of Earth's jumping spiders. These guys have eight eyes, one pair bigger and forward-facing and the others arrayed. But their most notable and famed characteristic is their round, almost spherical abdomen ("almost" because of the very slight point at the back end where the spinnerets are) that has defensive patterning with the appearance of an eye.

Yep! These animals aren't like the monster-y gohmas of old, which are said to have had a single giant, evil eye (or a large eyeball embedded in their abdomen, in some cases). But the eye-pattern, which is meant to frighten predators and which has given rise to tales of "eyes watching from the trees" is the reason why they're called gohmas!

Gohmas are a rarer animal in Hyrule these days due to "pest control" efforts in their habitats in recent centuries, and are indigenous to the jungles of Faron. Most varieties live there, preferring warm, humid climates and the cover of the many plants and caves there. A few varieties live further east, nearer Lurelin and the other beachy villages on the coast, and dwell in and around palm and coconut trees (they're also known to bury themselves in the sand to surprise prey). All gohmas are social creatures. The ones in the east live in small family groups that protect the territories of their chosen trees with larger claws than their relatives further west. The jungle ones are straight-up eusocial, forming bigger colonies that have one or more egg-producing "queens." Gohmas eat insects, using their sticky webs to catch them. Jungle gohmas like to weave webbing on banana and other fruit trees to catch the flies and other bugs that are attracted by the sweet fruit scent. Smaller, younger gohmas in the colony will even lay webs over the openings of scented, alluring carnivorous plants and "steal" prey from them! Larger gohmas will just straight up grab frogs, rodents, and small birds with their claws, kill them with venom, and then wrap them up to be liquified and eaten.