Minotaur are mighty, formidable creatures, known for their powerful builds and no-nonsense nature. Although most grow up in minotaur-dominated communities, they have spread out across Alaria, and can be found in great numbers in many large armies.
The making
Gaea made the minotaur in the likeness of the bull, one of her minor animal-children, named at the Birth of Man with all the beastfolk (see Beastman). She gave them the bull's body and a person's mind, and with the body came the bull's temper: a thing that stands quiet and gathering until it does not. A bull is placid until it is not, and then nothing in front of it matters. The minotaur carry that same engine, and a person's wit set over it to watch it run and be unable to stop.
This is the loop a minotaur lives inside. Feeling is banked, held down, treated as a weakness to be mastered, until the pressure finds its limit and breaks loose as rage. After the rage burns through, the banking starts again. The strength they are prized for and the fury that ruins them draw from the same store, and a minotaur cannot fill the one without filling the other. Most learn to time the release, to spend it on a wall that needs breaking or a line that needs folding, and to live in the long middle between.
The Danaki refuse that middle. They raise their children to show nothing in the open, to pack every grief and joy down out of sight, and to loose it all at once as battle-rage on command (see Danaki). Every minotaur carries this loop; the Danaki simply live it in the open. What the rest spend their lives learning to hold, a Danaki is taught from the first never to hold at all.
Hold it down. Hold it down. Then give it to the one in front of you, all of it, and begin again. — a Danaki teaching, spoken over children before their first muster
Vitals
- Size: Medium
- Height: 6-7.5 feet
- Weight: 200-350 pounds
Heritages
- Danaki — Communally raised berserkers who suppress all emotion as weakness, channeling pent-up feeling into devastating rage. See Danaki.
- Lorean Minotaur — Tactically brilliant commanders who place duty and protection above all; logic governs every decision. See Lorean Minotaur.
- Rentar — Spiritually devoted Minotaur of Chechol whose peaceful faith has been covertly corrupted by the lich Gynor. See Rentar.
- Korlan — A divergent branch of the Lorean who kept the tactical genius and cold logic but inverted the protective ethos; architects of the Tykos slave trade and the great market city of Slavos. See Korlan.
Game mechanics
Minotaur Horns
Passive ability. The horns on your head count as a heavy piercing melee weapon so long as you move at least 15 feet in a straight-line towards an enemy before immediately attacking. You get one level of advantage on your attacks made with your horns for every 15 feet you charged before you attack. This stacks up three times.
Danaki — Berserk
Major ability. Instant. It is said that the Danaki rage is the physical release of all the pent up emotions held within them. Whether this is true is up to you.
Whenever you take damage, you may enter a berserk state. While berserk, your movement speed increases by 20, and increase every instance of incoming and outgoing physical damage by 2. You remain berserk so long as you make an A/D roll or enter an engagement each round, up to a minute.
Lorean Minotaur — Tactical Supremacy
Passive ability. You may take an additional help action each round. When you take the help action, you may instead choose a willing creature within 30 feet and move it 5 feet in any direction. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Rentar — Divine Communion
Major ability. Through deep meditation and prayer, you commune with what you believe are divine forces for guidance in difficult situations. Once per day, you may spend 10 minutes in spiritual communion to ask a single yes-or-no question about a course of action you are considering. The GM must answer truthfully.