Minotaur [Dragonlance]

These minotaurs are a disciplined warrior people based on two remote sister islands, usually called minotaurs of the blood-red sea after the treacherous waters where they are met. They top seven feet and 350 pounds, with short red-brown to near-black fur and only a light fuzz on face and forearms. Their bull faces are coarse, with broad snouts and wide-set eyes. Curving horns reach 6-12 inches on females and one to two feet on males, and thick, short-clawed fingers finish their broad hands. Leather skirts and harnesses, looped for weapons and hung with military honors, are typical, and some wear steel or precious-metal rings in nose and ears.

Trained from youth, they fight to wipe out every foe. Surrender is weakness; anyone who yields is normally killed where they stand unless slaves or hostages are wanted. The double-bladed axe (1d10) is the favorite weapon, alongside daggers, whips and flails (+2 damage in minotaur hands), and especially strong individuals may wield a broad sword in each hand. They wear leather and rarely use shields. They head-butt foes at least six feet tall for 2d4 and bite shorter ones for 1d4, and they track by scent with 50% accuracy on a trail up to a day old, losing 10% per extra day.

Long enslaved by ogres, then mountain dwarves, then a proud priest-empire, they hailed the great cataclysm that drowned that empire as divine rescue, sailed to the sister islands and claimed them. Now they believe it is their destiny to rule the world, holding that the weak should perish and the strong command. Their armies are infamously ruthless, yet many are thoughtful, some even gentle, and they will ally with good when it suits them.

Might makes right. An emperor rules from the imperial capital, aided by a ruling council of eight that runs daily affairs. Every office is won by a fight to the death in the arena, and since anyone who defeats the emperor there takes the throne, minotaurs call their society the only truly classless one. Their clerics serve a horned god of vengeance.

Family honor comes first. Daughters get the same chances as sons, though only one of every four births is female. At 15 each youth fights a non-lethal arena bout as a rite of passage, and watching elders plus oral exams decide each one's trade.

Slaves, mostly captured humans with some elves, dwarves and ogres, do nearly all manual labor, treated harshly but without the casual cruelty of drakeborn or ogre owners. Lesser crimes like assault, theft or adultery earn floggings; murder and other grave crimes mean gladiatorial death, with monthly bouts in which winners earn another month. Private quarrels also go to the arena, the only place one minotaur may lawfully kill another.

They are superb sailors and shipwrights whose sturdy, slow ships carry cargo, fish, or sail for hire by humans, whose coin they take without liking them. For piracy they use fast longships seized from other peoples, and naval promotion depends partly on prizes taken. Their cities seem crude to outsiders: streets of permanent mud, unpainted wooden buildings left to rot and simply replaced, clanholds for families of 3d6 built around one room with a trough for cooking and washing, all-night taverns on every block, and slave-worked shipyards. Rural minotaurs live in shabby villages around a few stone temples to evil gods and the chieftain's house; commoners address him as 'Lord.'

Their one natural enemy is the kyrie, whom they treat as trespassers, and that centuries-old war slowly favors the minotaurs. They export fish, leather arms and armor, wool, cloth, silver jewelry and prized warships, import mainly lumber, and favor fish, mutton and strong ale.

Thornshore minotaurs dwell in isolated villages on the larger island's southwestern coast. Their sea-red cousins scorn them as lazy, clumsy and dull and have rejected every overture, so they are left alone. They build big, seaworthy ships, but mainstream minotaurs undersell them. They live in rough stone houses or mountain caves, love winding labyrinthine passages, and use natural cave mazes as their arena.