The Selfish Gorm - A study of the Gorm (Patreon)

"One day, great woe fell upon the settlement. Unrelenting storms raged overhead. Out of the squall, a giant beast came to gobble up the strongest and most beautiful, then wandered back into the darkness with a lonesome cry, searching for a mate."

In respect of the various titular "Monsters" in Kingdom Death: Monster we know a varying amount about each. Some monsters are far off, unreleased with little to no information about them outside of a name, a picture and a locale (Spiral Knight for example). Others are still missing large portions of their history and culture which is due to be releases (White Lions -> Silver City or Watchers and their relationship to the Gold Smoke Knight's great foe) and where the player controlled monsters aka Survivors are concerned, their story is both shrouded in mystery and not completely told due to the nature of time.

 However, for a precious few we know just about everything there is to know about them short of a full spoiler lore book being released by APG containing everything the lead designer for that monster has written about them. Today we're going to look at one of the most comprehensively designed and well rounded monsters in the Gorm. 

This creature is described as being "100% Anna's creation" and it shows a wild depth of ingenuity; sophisticated blending of natural world occurrences and even a wonderfully tight nod to a semi-mythological period human history. It, along with only three other monsters, is so completely expressed within its expansion that there is a poetry and music to the design. Unfortunately this poetry is a combination of baby screams, insanity, vomit and nightmares and the music is so discordant that it causes acid to rain from the sky. But it is rare that something comes from APG's design floor that actually feels 'complete' on the first attempt - the Gorm is one of these entities.

We're going to take a deep dive look into the Gorm, so one can appreciate just how well created this creature is and also come to understand the what, why, how, when and where of this creature (as much as you can in a place where jellyfish wander around erasing history under the instruction of a big sky whale).

Physiology of the Gorm

The Gorm is a volatile quarry, but the complexities of its anatomy can unlock powerful tools for the settlement.

We'll start with the simplest of examinations, the physical nature of the Gorm, now unlike just about every single other monster, the Gorm is unique in that we have been given a sketch of its skeletal structure and here it is.

This sketch tells us a great deal from the start, the first and most obvious is that Gorms are a blend of Human and Elephant structures with the addition of a deep sea fish type lure that contains no bones within it. This gives us the three creatures of which the Gorm has been built around. It is mostly an Elephant, but it has human baby characteristics  (vomiting, crying) and a feeding method somewhat based on deep sea creatures.

The lack of a solid lower jaw, instead having two jointed mandibles means that Gorms do not chew their food and the behavior we see from Gorms in many different places during the showdown fights against them is built around this. Gorms will stun or confuse their prey with bright flashes from its lure before pulverizing or vomiting on the target in order to reduce it to a gooey substance which is easier to slurp up. They are capable of swallowing some smaller foods whole (survivors for example), but due to the volatile nature of their interior - this is a somewhat risky prospect. They may not actually digest their food when they do this, instead they could accidentally heal or even strengthen them. 

This is because Gorms are not just based on animals, they are also walking avatars of alchemy; the forerunner to modern chemistry and a subject one could read about for days and still only just scratch the surface. The Gorm version of Alchemy is rooted in the more mythological portion of the natural philosophy rather than the practical version because of the fantastical nature of the Kingdom Death setting. It is a subject worth diving into, there are some great videos on YouTube on this, but I will simply leave you with the Wikipedia link here and move on. We'll discuss more specifics later.

The "human" or "baby-like" portion of this is very much inspired by Anna's experiences as a mother, but twisted through a grubby fantasy lens to give us the darker side of motherhood. Gorms retch and vomit to the slightest provocation, sometimes without even a discernable reason for doing so. Likewise the cries and calls of the Gorm are twisted echoes of the cries of a baby, endless, soul destroying torment that tears through the night and can cause the undoing of the mind. Brought only to a halt by a soothing lullaby.

Yes, there's a lot of catharsis and angst written into the creation of the Gorm and they are drawn from the experiences of a young/first time mother. I wonder how the younger Poots will feel when they grow up and realise that the gaming world has been hunting, harvesting and wearing their personification in the game their parents created? 

However, the vast majority of what is left in the Gorm is not human or fish, but pachyderm - more specifically the Elephant; and it is this aspect which dominates the physical and behavioral traits of the creature. We will look at the general behavior later on, but the physical nature and behavior of the Gorm is very elephantine in how it both acts and reacts.

Externally at least, a Gorm from the neck down is almost entirely an elephant (with the exception of the hands, tail and reproductive organs). It has the same torso and leg structure, but the change in the front arms from flat feet to hands (yeah mammals have arms as front "legs", you've got an arm if a shoulder girdle is attached, a leg if it is a hip) has a major impact on its gait because Gorms "lose" an entire joint to walk with, check out this video of an elephant walking for reference. 

You can see that the wrist of the elephant is held straight when static/vertical and bent backwards when it moves forwards, in contrast a Gorm's wrist is held bent when static and likely doesn't move backwards much when it moves forwards, it's probably just held horizontal with the floor like a baby crawling. This creates a very odd gait where the back legs act like an elephant while the front ones act like an elephant/baby hybrid. 

Also, it's worth noting that due to their bone structure and weight; elephants can't jump. Their leg bones all point downwards, so they have no spring to their step. But, they can hear with their legs through vibrations, and it would be reasonable to assume given the very similar bone structure that Gorms are the same. Likewise, it is fair to assume that Gorms spend upwards of 12-16 hours a "day" (or around 60-70% of their waking time) eating. It is also fair to judge that Gorms are a sentient & social creature and tend to gather in herds at times, but the younger (and oldest) ones seem to spend periods alone.

Of course, in combat Gorms are formidable and terrifying creatures that would melt, squash, tear apart and kill unprepared humans in a matter of moments. Fortunately; no humans have to meet Gorms, just the human proxies monsters known as survivors. Survivors are far faster, stronger and more durable than humans could ever hope to be. Still, even they can have serious issues when facing a Gorm, just as a human facing an elephant would be in a great deal of trouble without a powerful tool.

The Lifecycle of a Gorm

Young Gorm roam the darkness devouring anything that moves (and many things that don't). During their mating season, older Gorm produce storms of incredible destruction. Ancient Gorm that have lived hundreds of lantern years will make a final solitary march to the fabled gormyards to die.

The Gorm travel enormous distances in their life cycles, shaping the landscapes with their enormous appetites and extreme bodily functions.

We know just about everything there is to know as far as the Gorm lifecycle is concerned; because the three different levels of the Gorm are based around its main life stages and the art in the expansion shows not just a young and old Gorm but also a pregnant one. We can see from the Gorm Den artwork that they have a mammalian lifecycle and can bring to term just one new Gorm at a time.

(They also get highly bioluminescent when pregnant apparently! This art also shows one of the scavenger/plant eating ways that Gorms consume, by behaving like a fly and vomiting on the stuff before consuming it.)

Young Gorms; once grown to a reasonable size wander around the landscape eating anything they can get their hands on until they reach maturity, where upon they start to produce Musth. This process is likely the same as it is in elephants, where temporin is secreted by the monster and they become more aggressive and dangerous. They are also drawn to the Gorm Dens where they will reproduce. These dens are a treacherous and deadly place to navigate for smaller individuals - especially survivors who's remains are used as totemic decorations in the place. It is a place filled with acidic liquids and toxic vapors. 

When Gorms become very old, and it seems they live a long time indeed, then they make the trek to the Gormyard, a place designed after the myth of the Elephant Graveyard and the location where incredibly old Gorms go to finally die. This is done by one survivor being 'bait' and the other survivors following the light of the bait-survivor's lantern showing through the abdomen of the Gorm (another example of how the Gorm's abdomen is partially transparent). Just like Elephants, Gorm segmented-tusks grow constantly through its lifespan and despite this creature's ancient age it is the most dangerous form a Gorm could be in. It might be ready to die of old age, but it's not willing to be slain by some pale, skinny wraiths.

Pieces of a Gorm

Finally, we get additional information on what a Gorm's body parts are constructed from via its innovations and gear. The gear is split between a purely physical nature in the Gormery and an alchemical nature in the Gormchymist. 

For a start, it seems that the Gorm has multiple brains located in different parts of its body, or at least one in the head and one in the hindquarters. This is because a Gorm's brain is "shockingly small" in size and because a Gorm can function even if it loses its brain. That suggests a somewhat decentralised nervous system, the most logical of which would be a second hindquarters brain or 'backup' held somewhere. Its bone matter is dense and sturdy but also very intricate in its jointing where required and a Gorm heart is described as being "titanic" (much like an Elephant's needs to be huge to pump their blood around their system). It's stomach lining has healing properties, while the Lure has confusing ones and it seems that a Gorms thyroid gland is capable of living on outside of the body for an unknown length of time due to its extreme potency.

Weapons and armor constructed from the Gorm tend to reflect the creature's sturdy nature, acidic stomach contents, regenerative powers or hypnotic/mind altering capabilities. The Gorm's bile is a very potent element, and it is the core part of the entire 'other half' of gear construction - generation of potions and creation of Gormite.

Gormchymist potions are as varied as they come, with very few potions duplicating effects in any way or shape, they are also somewhat 'random' in generation. Which is a tribute to the classic fictional alchemist's "Oooh, what does this potion do?" trope. 

The Gorm Innovations are all named after the four stages of the magnum opus. How the Philosopher's Stone is alleged to be created. They are Nigredo (Blackness), Albedo (Whiteness), Citrinitas (yellowing) and rubedo (reddning/purpling) and they are gained by the settlement in the same order as the four stages of the process. 

Nigredo is said to reference putrefication/decomposition, and ingredients are cooked to a uniformly black state (burnt). Albedo is the purificaiton stage, where impurities are washed away (if you look at the innovation art, the flesh is gone and only the white skull remains in the jar), in citrinitas this is the stage where 'silver is transmuted into gold' or in the case of the artwork, the skull becomes yellow to a point of being gold-like and then finally rubedo is the stage of 'red' (both gold and the philosopher's stone are associated with the colour red). 

To quote "The rubedo stage entails the attempt of the alchemist to integrate the psychospiritual outcomes of the process into a coherent sense of self before its re-entry to the world." I think it is particularly relevant to note that this stage imbues life back into whatever is being transmuted and often uses blood in the process. You should not overlook the presence of a crown on the skull here. There are precious few places where a crown is used in Kingdom Death and they always relate to very powerful Entities.

Here they all are side by side. 

To provide a small, side speculation on these matters, the elements we see in each one are, a head, a smoking skull, a yellow skull next to a lantern and finally a red crowned skull. If you were going to directly link these to Kingdom Death elements you could read:

• Nigredo - Survivors
• Albedo - Gold Smoke Knight
• Citrinitas - The Watcher
• Rubedo - The King

There is rarely wasted, dead end symbolism in Kingdom Death, so while I might not be accurate on these matters here, there is something to consider and unearth... Until next time.

Footnote: As always with these pieces, the only true "Facts" are the direct quotes from APG LLC (given in italics) and the images. However, APG has been known to change or retcon lore whenever it suits them, so even those facts can only be taken as accurate until any potential updates/revisions to the Gorm happen. Everything else is conjecture or speculation based on the information available in the official lore, core book or expansion book.