Kumohime Revisted

Spider woman by IanLIR

The kumohime may not be particularly well known outside of Japan, but it is a classic Japanese monster (for earlier treatments on this blog, see here, where I treat this yokai -- more specifically, obake or bakemono -- in relation to the Lolth, D&D's demon queen of spiders and goddess of the drow).  As I mentioned before, it is also known under the name jorogumo.  It is under this latter name that it is getting lots of love in recent releases of the Pathfinder RPG: it appears in both the Bestiary 3 and the Dragon Empires Gazetteer.  If you are playing PF or a 3.5OGL compatible game, and do not yet have the B3, then you may get the same basic concept by using another OGL monster -- this is in fact what happens in a volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path (I will say no more, to keep spoilers to a minimum) where the volume employs an aranea.  Here is the d20 version and here is the PF update.  I love the idea that there is a small country ruled by a jorogumo.  The Pathfinder designer whose idea that was needs to comment over here so I can lavish my fanboy praise upon them.  Dare I guess that it came from the mind of Dave Gross?

Any monster that puts to use the two classic fears of arachnophobia and Oh-my-God-that-beautiful-woman-is-not-what-she-appears-to-be has to be bi-winning in a way that puts Charlie Sheen to even more shame than he normally puts himself.  (Hey, 2011 references die hard.)  For more info on the appearances of the spider-woman (and sometimes, man) of many names in popular culture, take a look at the TVTropes entry on Youkai, then scroll down and click on "Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo Examples." (I had completely forgotten about Akira Kurosawa's hinting in Throne of Blood.)  And if you really want to blow an afternoon, do searches for "spider" and for "beautiful tropes" while you are over there.

A special thanks to the two artists featured in today's Mythopoeic Monday.  They got back to me with their permissions too late to be included in the earlier posting, but they gave me an excuse to revisit the creature and update the resources I found online.  Please repay their generosity by giving their DeviantArt pages a visit and maybe even a comment.

In parting, I offer you a thematically appropriate magical relic: Bat's Banner of the Spider God.  The banner could be used by a warrior in service of the Spider God -- perhaps the champion of a powerful kumohime.

KumoHime by WittA