Ecology of the minotaur, part 2: the curse of the maze

In my first post on minotaur ecology lore I promised to fit the diverse portrayals of the minotaur into a cohesive narrative but seemingly gave up halfway through. I will try to fulfill my promise starting in this post. More entries in the series will follow, hopefully...

As I mentioned before, fantasy gaming has a tendency to take monsters from mythology and warp them unrecognizable. The minotaur was turned from a unique monster into an entire race, and being trapped in the labyrinth was inverted into affinity with solving and living in mazes.

The myths of the House of Minos

While reading about Minos and the Minotaur one may notice parallels between their origins. Zeus, in the form of a white bull, brought Princess Europa to Crete and seduced her. She married King Asterion, who became the step-father of her sons (including Minos) by Zeus. Poseidon sent a white bull and (either he or Aphrodite) charmed Queen Pasiphae into bearing the Minotaur by it. Minos became the step-father of the Minotaur. The Minotaur is named Asterion, after its step-grandfather.

Both stories have clear parallels: a divine bull (a transformed Zeus or Poseidon's gift) seduces royalty (Princess Europa or Queen Pasiphae), giving birth to a son (Minos or the Minotaur Asterion) who is fostered by the king (Asterion or Minos).

Furthermore, later writers split Minos into two kings to explain his contradictory behavior. The first Minos was a just and wise king who was deified after death into an underworld judge-god. His grandson, the second Minos, was the cruel tyrant who gave rise to the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

These stories are clearly the duplication and modification of the same original story, which is quite common in mythology due to its oral roots. In fact, one short story I read conflates them and calls the Minotaur the son (by telegony) of his namesake King Asterion.

Ideas for the ecology of the minotaur

As seen in my first post on minotaur lore, there is no shortage of diversity when it comes to minotaurs. While other GMs may devise their own details, what follows are my ideas for minotaurs in my setting by picking and choosing the sources I read.

An idea I devised for making minotaurs less generic is giving them a unique supernatural affliction, inspired by my reading of "On the Ecology of the Minotaur." All minotaurs suffer from "the minotaur's curse," and it ties them inexorably to the maze. More specifically, the Plane of Maze.

The plane of minotaurs' mazes

The Plane of Maze (from “Demiplane of Maze” in Ultimate Toolbox by Alderac) is the plane where all maze spells are set, and if you know the path you can reach it through any maze. The plane is full of all sorts of mazes: hedge mazes, briar mazes, stone mazes, ice mazes, watery mazes, etc. It is the home plane of minotaurs.

The Plane of Maze may be said to contain countless mazes, which collectively compose one great maze. Between the mazes, if you manage to get there, is the Gulf of Azroi (from Mongoose's Classic Play: The Book of the Planes). This place is utterly dark and lit only by the baleful lights of the azroi hives in the far distance. Every footstep will take you within a new maze unless one of the gatekeepers guides you. The powers of the plane include Asterion (the original Minotaur), the demon lord Baphomet, the azroi themselves, and innumerable living dungeons.

Many mazes in the plane are alive in some fashion, serving as extensions of their ruler. Such rulers are known as maze masters, labyrinth lords and dungeon dukes, and they are similar to the dark lords in the Ravenloft campaign setting. Their curse is that they may never leave their prison, no matter how many times they successfully solve it. They range from solitary hazards for heroes to overcome all the way to kings of enchanted realms.

There are a number of minotaur cultures native to the plane. These include the noble golden minotaurs (from Mazes & Minotaurs), the savage herds lead by bull lords (from Masters and Minions: Maze of the Minotaur), the Native American-styled tauren from Warcraft, the Romanesque sailing minotaurs from Dragonlance, Narnian minotaurs, etc. There are many cults with wildly different beliefs, such as the cult of Baphomet and the cult of the White Bull.

The curse of the minotaur

The effects of curse are obvious. Firstly, the curse is what gives minotaurs their characteristic appearance: the features of a bull, ram, ox or similar beast of burden. Although, a la Mazes & Minotaurs no two are alike and their appearance may vary from the popular image to the point of being a bull-centaur as depicted in Renaissance art. Secondly, all minotaurs are ultimately doomed to become trapped forever within their own personalized maze. The young Baphometian braves encountered in the wild by adventurers have a fair amount of freedom, but as they grow in age and wisdom that freedom steadily declines.

How one contracts the curse is frightening variable. Any of those from the bloodline of Asterion may manifest the curse without warning, or the curse may be invoked deliberately by rituals passed from Baphomet himself. Those who demonstrate bullish behavior may find themselves falling into a maze, while those who build mazes of stonework or legal arguments may find that maze growing around them with a life of its own. Those who cast the curse deliberately may be deranged satanists who consider it a blessing, or understand the curse for what it is and place it upon others as vengeance.

Minotaurs are not actually a race due to the curse's nature, but they are often confused with bovine beastmen. The key difference is that minotaurs are not simply bovine beastmen, but the bulls of Minos. (Minos is the long dead king who invoked the curse in the first place.) They cannot actually breed true, except in the case of Asterion's bloodline and even then the curse may remain latent for generations. Baphometian cultists sometimes claim they breed true, but this is merely a case of casting the curse on their child in utero.

If the minotaur cannot breed true, then how exactly do minotaurs form herds on the Plane of Maze? They cannot all be descendants of Asterion, cultists of Baphomet, or unrelated bovine beastmen, can they? You would be right: there are any number of explanations. In the same way that the curse turns people into minotaurs, the plane will create its own populace. In much the same way that the gods supposedly sculpted humans from clay, the living dungeons of the plane will raise minotaurs from the dust. If they cannot be bothered to do that, the next best thing is casting the curse on anyone they desire.

The curse appears whenever it would be convenient for the story, regardless of prior statements! Since it is a curse, it may be broken and restore the minotaur to their original form (or the form they would have had without the curse). As a fantasy, not everything needs a complicated ecological explanation with perfect consistency. I prefer multiple choice pasts and futures.