Monday, September 11, 2017

Ecology of the minotaur

D&D has a history of taking singular monsters from Greek mythology and turning them into an entire race, which typically act contrary to their mythological origin. D&D also has a history of giving mythological and medieval monsters ecology that loosely mimics real world animals or is needlessly convoluted. I am going to list different varieties of the minotaur that include unique individuals, demigods, divine blessings, curses, playable races, etc and try to fit them all into a cohesive narrative.

How others have used the minotaur

The Minotaur of Greek mythology was a unique individual with a grotesque background. Poseidon sent a white bull to King Minos with the expectation that it would be sacrificed. Minos kept it as a trophy, so Poseidon cursed Queen Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull. Somehow she gave birth to the Minotaur. Minos was horrified, so he commissioned Daedalus to build an inescapable maze to contain the Minotaur. Minos then forced the Athenians, who he had conquered, to sacrifice virgins to it every few years. Then Theseus came, killed the Minotaur, and eloped with Minos' daughter.

The Cretan bull is sometimes conflated with the bull who carried Europa for Zeus. Both bulls were immortalized in the constellation Taurus. In contemporary stories the Cretan bull is sometimes re-interpreted as Poseidon or Zeus in disguise, making the Minotaur a demigod.

The Minotaur novel by Phillip Simpson rewrites the Minotaur, here called by his more obscure name Asterion ("starry"), into a fairy tale hero. He is the demigod son of Poseidon, abused by his wicked stepfather Minos, and loves his half-sister Phaedra.

White Wolf's Scion game, being dark and gritty, rewrote the details so that Poseidon drove the bull to rape every woman in Crete until Hercules killed it during his seventh labor. These poor women gave birth to the race of minotaurs, who are all-male and rape more women to maintain their population. Whoever was hired to write that is either horribly tone-deaf or misogynistic.

D&D not only turns minotaurs into a race (the result of ritual transformations and/or breeding true), but they are characterized by trivially solving mazes. This completely misses the point of the original myth. They are connected to Baphomet (a demon lord loosely based on the imagined satanic deity of the same name), not because of any mythological resonance, but because they are both bull-headed. Dragonlance introduced minotaurs as a playable race with a culture modeled after Greece and Rome.

In Classic Play: The Book of the Planes by Mongoose Publishing, we are introduced to the Azroi (their name derived from Asterion, an obscure name for the Minotaur). These creatures live on the outskirts of the Afterworld in the Gulf of Azroi and claim the souls of atheists and agnostics. Anyone who enters the Gulf becomes trapped in infinite maze spells, except for the Azroi themselves. They are mentioned to be worshiped by minotaurs and similar creatures, but exist in fear of the apparently mythical "glith" (who appear in Monster Encyclopaedia as some manner of dwarf-like elemental).

Pathfinder, once again, recycles minotaurs as a race of savage humanoids who lurk in dark mazes waiting to pounce on unwary adventurers. Other supplements introduce the minotaur elder (grey furred, summons traps and mazes), labyrinth minotaur (fiendish minotaur, wear bronze masks and steel horseshoes), bronze minotaur and obsidian minotaur (golems in the shape of minotaurs).

Mazes & Minotaurs, being based on Greco-Roman mythology, introduces minotaurs as a race of bull-headed humanoids who live in mazes and wield big axes, but it also adds some interesting twists and variants. The standard minotaur is described as being a unique mix of man and bull per individual: some are bull-headed humans, some have hoofed feet (or hoofed hands), some have pelts, etc. Variants include the albinotaur (a creepy albino), bronze minotaur (bronze armored skin, tougher, less alert), dancing minotaur (nimble, satyr-like, wield one-handed swords), golden minotaur (golden skinned, noble, honorable), gorgotaur (enormous, hoofed hands, cannot speak), megataur (massive, greater strength, slower wits), psychotaur (psychic powers of confusion and concealment), red minotaur (red skin, breathes fire), silver minotaur (silver skin, athletic, speedy, fast healer), twinotaur (two-headed), quinotaur (huge merman minotaur). Similar but unrelated monsters include the minoton (bronze automaton) and impostaur (bandits wearing minotaur masks). The golden minotaurs are speculated to be the remnants of an ancient race who degenerated into the other variants and/or the descendants of a cursed king (perhaps a reference to Minos or Asterion?). The gorgotaur is also speculated to be the original breed of minotaur, with the rest being hybrids thereof (explaining their randomized appearance).

Synthesizing and twisting the minotaur ecology

I feel that turning minotaurs into just another race of savage humanoids, or fantasy Romans, or fantasy Native Americans, robs them of their mythological mystique. They are not considered "legendary" by the standards of the monster manual and thus lack lair actions (I have so much more to say about the arbitrariness of a "legendary" keyword in a setting based on myth and legend, but I digress). At that point, why not just stop the preferential treatment and call them herdfolk?

One way to make minotaurs stand out would be to drop pretensions of gygaxian naturalism, or at least the convoluted attempts at pseudo-naturalistic biology. Make the maze itself a physical or spiritual part of the minotaur! Maybe minotaurs do not live in mazes by preference, they are all trapped in their own personal maze spells (and thus cannot get lost in any other mazes). Each maze reflects the nature of its minotaur: the maze of a dancing minotaur is decorated with frescoes of bull fighting, the maze of a psychotaur is full of optical illusions, the maze of a pyrotaur is hot and dry, etc.

In Greek mythology "liminal beings" like the minotaur were caught between wild and civil natures. This unique perspective granted wisdom and made them dangerously uncanny. Minotaurs in the game could likewise display both savage and civil qualities, benefiting from the best sides of their dual natures.

You could treat the minotaur as a family of related monsters, in order to provide variety and keep them around longer, rather than discarding them once the party exceeds their CR.

"Where did minotaurs come from and how do they propagate?" could be answered in so many different ways. D&D and Pathfinder have them as the products of divine blessings/couplings/curses that are (sometimes) able to propagate themselves just fine. That is just fine for humanoids. If they are going to be "monstrosities" then I insist that their method of propagation should not be conventional.

The Hack & Slash blog has a wonderful article listing various twists on the minotaur ecology.

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