Minotaur

Minotaur

(Creature)

Beast

Humanoid

Minotaur

Level

Varies

Adjective

Minotaur

Images of minotaurs

Source: Monster Core, pg(s). 232

Legacy 2E: minotaurs were

CE

Large

Humanoid

in Bestiary 237.
As non-player creatures, minotaurs have

Common

Large

Beast

Humanoid

traits.
As an ancestry, minotaurs have the

Uncommon

trait, and the littlehorn heritage can be

Medium

in size.

Type

Monstrous humanoid

CR

4

Environment

Temperate ruins or underground

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

Minotaur

Images of minotaurs

Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 206

Ⅰ

Ⅱ

Minotaurs are an ancestry of large, bovine-headed bestial humanoids. While often believed to be brutish in nature, minotaurs are talented artisans with a natural affinity for puzzles, mazes, and labyrinths.

History and myth

Minotaurs originated from the archipelago of Iblydos before spreading out across Golarion.

Several myths have been made about the origins of minotaurs. A common story among minotaurs is told about a famous Iblydan stonemason named Tavdrinos, who received a murky vision to create a temple for an unnamed hero-god involving twisting columns, charging bulls, and an unknown figure making a defiant stand. After 17 years of labor to build a three-story temple, Tavdrinos arrived only to be berated by the hero-god for misinterpreting the bulls of his vision as allies rather than enemies. The hero-god then cursed the mason and transformed them into the first minotaur, and Tavdrinos then fled with anger into the caves underneath the temple and continued to craft stone statues.

According to another legend, in the distant past before Earthfall, Lamashtu gifted the Azlanti people of Tulo with the birth of a two-headed calf. The people were horrified and killed the creature. Shortly afterward, the women of Tulo all gave birth to minotaurs. At first they raised these minotaur children, but when in later years they had further "normal" offspring, they shut the minotaurs in a maze and forgot about them. Ten years later, the fully grown minotaurs escaped from the maze and massacred the people of Tulo.

During the First Siege of Absalom in 23 AR, the Casmar minotaur warlord Voradni Voon attempted to besiege Absalom with an army of centaurs, harpies, and minotaurs he had brought from Iblydos by teleporting them with a gate known as the Brazen Arch. He intended to ascend to divinity through the Starstone but was defeated by the volunteer guards of Absalom—precursors of the First Guard—led by the god Aroden. Their defeat, retreat, and the destruction of the Brazen Arch all forced Voon's forces to settle the Isle of Kortos, where they have since continued to hassle the isle's other inhabitants.

Appearance

Minotaurs are typically about eight feet tall, usually with deep brown or black monotone fur that turns to gray as they get older; white and gray fur is also not uncommon. They have horns, cloven hooves, and tails.

Variants

Some groups of minotaurs have developed unique adaptations to their native regions, from shaggy minotaurs with thick fur and modified hooves that can resist freezing environments; or great-horned minotaurs with a propensity to charge foes with their massive horns. Some have smaller frames, like littlehorn minotaurs. Minotaurs who have pale fur and a supernatural sense of direction and connection to the afterlife are known as ghost bulls.

Abilities

Despite their size, a minotaur's hooves have delicate balance points that allow them to step quietly when they want to. Some known as stalkers have sound-muffling shaggy fur on their hooves that make them even quieter.

The pale-furred ghost bulls are said to possess powers of divination, likely stemming from a personal or familial connection to the afterlife. Minotaurs known as slabsouls draw upon a supernatural connection to stone and walls to conjure granite slabs with which they can crush foes.

Ecology

Most minotaurs are born to two minotaur parents, as might be expected, but a rare few are born to human parents as the result of a curse. Offspring are typically raised by the parent of the same gender.

Habitat and society

A minotaur ambushes a campsite.

Seoni hits a minotaur with an aqueous orb.

Most minotaurs spend their lives perfecting their artisan skills.

Minotaur horns are a source of pride and often accented, such as adding rings and chains to longer horns that are often cast in rare metals, or dyeing or engraving patterns on them. If a minotaur possesses smaller horns, they might shave the fur around the base of the horn, and add circular tattoos or metal horn tips to them to improve their appearance.

Minotaurs often live within insular, underground, communal enclaves. The innate desire to learn has led many minotaurs to migrate from Iblydos to new regions, preferring mountainous or cave systems and living with like-minded ancestries, such as dwarves, hobgoblins, and orcs. Conflicts between minotaurs in competing tribes can turn violent, with the losing tribe either forced to flee the area, or having its survivors absorbed into the winning tribe.

Minotaurs' long traditions of community isolation give many an unbiased outlook with regard to events that facilitates any adaptation required.

Minotaurs take pride in their architectural skill. They often hew buildings in their communities from stone and erect more than twice as many buildings than they need, with the excess serving as functional art and places for the young to practice hunting and stalking skills. Each generation adds wall frescoes or contrived expansions like twisting hallways, unexpected overhangs, or shared gardens, resulting in an architectural flow that can confuse unfamiliar travelers but is filled with many spaces for social gatherings and quiet reflection. Minotaurs prefer these maze-like domains as homes, and the customized terrain grants them advantages over intruders or prey.

Minotaurs are hunter-gatherers and feed primarily on lichen and other flora. Communities rarely eat meat expect during monthly rituals where stalkers venture out and return with dangerous game for a feast in the hunter's honor.

Most minotaurs are blunt and literal, and rarely employ clever wordplay, sarcasm, or irony. Some of their expressions and gestures, such as flaring nostrils and rolling eyes, can intimidate those from cultures unfamiliar with minotaurs, but these expressions are used to inject emotion and spiritual elements into their stories. They further emphasize a single emotion with piercings and tattoos, but wearing too many for fierceness' sake makes them look silly to other minotaurs.

They pity domesticated beasts of burden, and either free them if they can, or kill them if freeing them proves impossible. Minotaurs who have been shamed are made to serve as pack animals to atone for their crimes.

Social misconceptions

Sometimes a lone minotaur leaves its community because of a compulsion, exile, or personal reason and lives in a maze, warren, or old ruin. The solitude drives them to become monstrous hunters that torment and terrify their prey while stalking and chasing them before killing them. Some who have experienced violence or intolerant interactions with other humanoids may choose to retire to a lair, which they fiercely guard.

Most societies judge minotaurs based on encounters with these lone outliers and as fierce carnivores from their monthly hunts, which experiences fuel outsiders' myths and dark legends portraying most minotaurs as savage carnivores or cannibals.

Language

Minotaurs speak Common tongues and Jotun, and some also learn Cyclops, Dwarven, Fey, Petran, or Sakvroth. Some minotaurs learn to understand lowing as a form of language, which allows them to communicate with cattle, bison, antelopes, and other grazing herd mammals.

Expressions

The minotaur expression "an angry bull stamps once and gores twice" both warns against overtly aggressive displays and suggests that actions engender fear more than words.

Religion

Minotaurs raised in enclaves usually avoid associating with any kind of deities. Given examples like the story of Tavdrinos, divine creatures are believed to be petty and uncaring, due to the extreme difference in power between a deity and a mortal. Minotaurs instead often adopt logical or spiritual philosophies that view the mysteries of their existence as puzzles that could be solved through research and consideration. Many minotaurs live by edicts to construct lasting architectural works of beauty, seek increasingly complex puzzles, and sharpen their skills. Common anathema among minotaurs include leaving their fate to a divine power instead of mortal initiative, or choosing not to investigate a mystery.

When they do follow a deity, they often choose one focused on self-improvement and control, such as Irori or Nethys.

On Golarion

Inger-Maggor, a powerful minotaur.

Many minotaurs have spread across Golarion from their origins in Iblydos. For those who still live there, they have similar names as the archipelago's humans. During childhood, Iblydan minotaurs all use the surname Tavdrinos, the first minotaur. By adulthood, the individual's childhood friends and allies collectively give them their first name. A minotaur's surname constantly changes and is often based on their most memorable achievement.

A small subculture of minotaurs in Oprak assist in engineering works throughout the Mindspin Mountains

Minotaurs have migrated east as far as Minata in Tian Xia, which is also home to a different bovine ancestry called sarangay.

Large conclaves of minotaurs live in the mountains of the Isle of Kortos, where some 40 different minotaur droves in the region range in size from modest raiding groups to large and sophisticated communities. Most worship Baphomet, although they commonly engage in peaceful dealings with the isle's human inhabitants. The minotaur settlement Hazrak is located in the Isle of Kortos' Riven Hills. Its inhabitants trace their town's origins to the First Siege of Absalom, when the surviving minotaurs fled to the island's central highlands, where they (or their descendants) founded Hazrak.

Warspawn

After the Godsrain in 4724 AR, minotaur clans on the Isle of Kortos reported individual members from each clan being exposed to the Godsrain and transforming into larger and more bestial-natured warspawn. One warspawn claimed to be the reincarnation of legendary warlord Voradni Voon, who wanted to reunite the isle's minotaur clans and reattempt the famed First Siege of Absalom.

References

Paizo featured minotaurs as an ancestry in Howl of the Wild.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.

External link

• Minotaur (real-world mythological creature) on Wikipedia