# Race: Minotaur > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Rare | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Neutral. Respected for their power and their word, kept at arm’s length, and still bought and sold as beastfolk in the markets of the north and west. | > | **Guide Section** | Rare Races | ## Overview Minotaurs are heavily built humanoids with the heads of bulls, found in the Wind Valleys of Fangrum in [[Continent - Q'Shar|Q’Shar]]. They are strong, deliberate, and regarded almost everywhere as people of their word, which is a reputation very few beastfolk peoples enjoy. Their sense of direction is flawless, an adaptation to country that turns and doubles and conceals itself, and it makes them unmatched guides. ## Made, Not Born For most of Gryth’s recorded history minotaurs have been counted among the beastfolk, and that is still how the slave markets, the arena bills and the common speech of the north treat them. Scholars know better. The minotaur was once a created lineage, and a deliberate one. The work was done in the hidden temples of Lenasia, by adepts of Telik’Avorun, the Mystic god, Master of Shape and Thresholds. What they performed there was profane by any standard anyone has since applied to it: humanity fused to bovine stock in rites that the Lenasian temples have never explained and have never once denied. The rituals are long finished. The temples are still there. None of this signifies any more, except to the people who write the books. Minotaurs breed true, raise families, bury their dead and build communities wherever they are permitted to, and have done so for long enough that a minotaur asked about Lenasia will generally shrug. Whatever they were made from, they are a people now. ## The Wind Valleys Fangrum is beast country, and the minotaurs of its valleys are among the most settled of its peoples. The herds there are large and old, with pasture and territory held by families across generations. The Beastial Jungles below them are no one’s idea of a safe neighbour, and a minotaur raised in the valleys grows up knowing exactly how far it is to anywhere and exactly which way the ground falls. Fangrum’s beast races share one position absolutely, which is their hatred of the [[Region - The Tohon Empire|Tohon Empire]] and of Emperor Twi’Kur personally. Tohon’s expansion has reached Fangrum’s edges, and the minotaur herds have supplied a disproportionate number of the fighters who have made that expansion expensive. A minotaur will discuss Tohon at considerable length and should not be encouraged to. ## Keepers of Thresholds Wherever a thing is holy, dangerous or very old, there is a reasonable chance a minotaur is standing near it. They are drawn to sites of religious and magical significance and have been since the beginning, which those who know the Lenasian history regard as the one piece of the old work that clearly took. Minotaurs serve as priests and priestesses in temples that have no other connection to Fangrum. They stand as consorts to exarchs and grand paladins, an arrangement of long standing and real honour in the orders that practise it. Above all they guard: relics, reliquaries, vaults, tombs, and the doors of places that should not be opened. A minotaur appointed to a threshold stays at it, and the contracts offered to them tend to be measured in decades rather than years. ## Honourable, and Still Breathing The minotaur reputation is for power and for honour, and both are deserved. A minotaur keeps an oath, states a position plainly and does not posture. What they also do, and are perfectly open about, is survive. A minotaur will fight hard for what they have undertaken to defend and will not throw their life away doing it, and if a position becomes unholdable they will say so and withdraw. Other peoples find this harder to classify than outright cowardice or outright heroism would be. The orders that employ minotaur guardians have long since made their peace with it, on the grounds that a guardian who is alive next year is worth more than one who died magnificently last spring. ## Minotaur Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1. **Age.** Minotaurs reach adulthood at about 17 and can live up to 150 years. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. **Size.** Your size is Medium. **Speed.** Your walking speed is 30 feet. **Horns.** You have horns that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, the strike deals 1d6 + your Strength modifier piercing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike. **Goring Rush.** Immediately after you take the Dash action on your turn and move at least 20 feet, you can make one melee attack with your Horns as a bonus action. **Hammering Horns.** Immediately after you hit a creature with a melee attack as part of the Attack action on your turn, you can use a bonus action to attempt to push that target with your horns. The target must be within 5 feet of you and no more than one size larger than you. Unless it succeeds on a Strength saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier, you push it up to 10 feet away from you. **Labyrinthine Recall.** You always know which direction is north, and you have advantage on any Wisdom (Survival) check you make to navigate or track. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for the character. ## Connections - [[Continent - Q'Shar]] — Homeland (the Wind Valleys of Fangrum) - [[Region - The Tohon Empire]] — Hated by Fangrum’s beast races; minotaur herds supply fighters against its expansion --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Minotaur.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*