It is this teller's opinion that minotaurs work best a chimaeric race made by mad mages or spiteful gods, as for the scale of mindless savages to noble treehugger, one can have their ancestors the originals as mindless creations while the descendants are free to be cool Conan-like barbarians, brutal imperials with an obsession with might or you know a few bleeding heart treehuggers. If they become a race that has will, of course they can choose to be lame.
What's rare however is for an author to use the minotaur as a singular being.
Really a lot of their particulars and conflicts with other races can be logically constructed from their size and possible diet. Though one can easily make them carnivores, herbivores or omnivores without breaking the image of the being.
As for what a minotaur looks like, there's a lot of ways to do this while still giving that visual recognition as a minotaur, though it's hilarious that a beautiful woman given cowlegs and horns will still be recognisable as minotaur by many. We are what we are!
Thing is, this is one of those beings that unlike elves you can easily get away with making it a birth blessing/defect/disease/curse. The same can easily be done with gorgons and cyclops. Having elves be such things requires sufficient skill to not turn the reader off by the oddity of it. Most readers will be far more forgiving of mutant minotaur children.
Having humans like centaurs but bovine lower bodies could technically be called minotaurs, but uh, somehow that feels wrong. Very wrong.
Always fun to have a guy called Minos involved somewhere in there, but wholly optional.
Still if looking for a bulky race with a strong visual impact you could well do worse than the bullmen.
Between those with merely a bull head, and other configurations of minotaur which is your favoured form? This question is for any who gaze upon it.
Very well said and argued and good point, I might have to shake up my Minotaurs a little. I’ve typically made them bovine and docile by nature, but I’ve a French story where there’s one who is an out and out political animal, all cunning and ruthlessness.
I like the idea of the race being physically strong but preferring not to fight directly and instead relying on their wits. It adds something different to them and the Orcs.
The bovine are often depicted as slow to anger, but the rage of the bull is well known, loved, mocked and in real life put in far too close proximity to man. Hence, they've fittingly been put as berserkers in fiction a good few times.
On that, it'd be quite cheeky having minotaurs be matadors to monstrous creatures.
It hasn't come up in a story yet, but for orcs this teller mixed in a little grasshopper, a little locust. Normally the brutish chitinous orcs are lumbering docile people that are prized as slaves for their strength and natural obedience, but occasionally their green skin turns towards red and reddish black and they become intensely violent reveling in destruction, only the most cunning retaining some control over their urges, control they often turn to commanding the horde.
Naturally this is far less of a problem if you never keep orcish slaves, but ever does the greed of people invite disaster.
Legend tells of yellowish orcs, of even harder carapaced metallic orcs, but who knows if such mutters of a magifactured race are true...
This would have neatly separated orcs from goblins, but in that setting, goblins are mismatched beings with verminous body parts, from mammal, fowl and...
Well. I have three minotaur "encounters" to relate.
1. When "Dragonlance Adventures" came out (one of the last hard backs for the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game), I made a joke and wound up forever barred from playing Minotaurs (we had already barred Dragonlance Ogres from play as ridiculously powerful) - I said "Darn, Minotaurs can't be bards. I wanted to play a minotaur bard named Jon Bovi..."
2. At GenCon one year, a friend asked me to pick up some stuff he had being signed at the TSR booth in the dealer's room, as he'd gotten into a second round of a multi-round game and would not be able to make the scheduled pick-up. While waiting in line, the guy ahead of me struck up a conversation and, at one point, asked me if I had read any of the Dragonlance novels. I honestly said: "I read the original trilogy when the compiled version came out, and liked it - until I read the Twins trilogy and saw how good it COULD have been. But none were as good as 'The Legend of Huma.'" He gave me a slightly shocked look, then said: "Well, I think you'll be happy to know I have a sequel coming out in February, and it features Kaz, the Minotaur..." That was my first (of two) encounter(s) with Richard A. Knaak...
3. There are minotaurs in a serialized fiction I'm writing (currently about 55 chapters away from the heroes meeting minotaurs on ScribbleHub) - they are pretty much the bestial sort, though; hadn't really thought much about it but I pretty much have their society looking a lot like the Klingons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
An interesting read! The timing is also ironic when I've just spent quite a bit of time recently brainstorming a Little Red Riding Hood retelling with elements from the minotaur's myth (a bizarre combination, I know, but I can't unthink it now).
Don't draw the attention of the deconstructionists! Minotaurs are perfect just as they are. :)
Lmao yes indeed
It is this teller's opinion that minotaurs work best a chimaeric race made by mad mages or spiteful gods, as for the scale of mindless savages to noble treehugger, one can have their ancestors the originals as mindless creations while the descendants are free to be cool Conan-like barbarians, brutal imperials with an obsession with might or you know a few bleeding heart treehuggers. If they become a race that has will, of course they can choose to be lame.
What's rare however is for an author to use the minotaur as a singular being.
Really a lot of their particulars and conflicts with other races can be logically constructed from their size and possible diet. Though one can easily make them carnivores, herbivores or omnivores without breaking the image of the being.
As for what a minotaur looks like, there's a lot of ways to do this while still giving that visual recognition as a minotaur, though it's hilarious that a beautiful woman given cowlegs and horns will still be recognisable as minotaur by many. We are what we are!
Thing is, this is one of those beings that unlike elves you can easily get away with making it a birth blessing/defect/disease/curse. The same can easily be done with gorgons and cyclops. Having elves be such things requires sufficient skill to not turn the reader off by the oddity of it. Most readers will be far more forgiving of mutant minotaur children.
Having humans like centaurs but bovine lower bodies could technically be called minotaurs, but uh, somehow that feels wrong. Very wrong.
Always fun to have a guy called Minos involved somewhere in there, but wholly optional.
Still if looking for a bulky race with a strong visual impact you could well do worse than the bullmen.
Between those with merely a bull head, and other configurations of minotaur which is your favoured form? This question is for any who gaze upon it.
Very well said and argued and good point, I might have to shake up my Minotaurs a little. I’ve typically made them bovine and docile by nature, but I’ve a French story where there’s one who is an out and out political animal, all cunning and ruthlessness.
I like the idea of the race being physically strong but preferring not to fight directly and instead relying on their wits. It adds something different to them and the Orcs.
The bovine are often depicted as slow to anger, but the rage of the bull is well known, loved, mocked and in real life put in far too close proximity to man. Hence, they've fittingly been put as berserkers in fiction a good few times.
On that, it'd be quite cheeky having minotaurs be matadors to monstrous creatures.
It hasn't come up in a story yet, but for orcs this teller mixed in a little grasshopper, a little locust. Normally the brutish chitinous orcs are lumbering docile people that are prized as slaves for their strength and natural obedience, but occasionally their green skin turns towards red and reddish black and they become intensely violent reveling in destruction, only the most cunning retaining some control over their urges, control they often turn to commanding the horde.
Naturally this is far less of a problem if you never keep orcish slaves, but ever does the greed of people invite disaster.
Legend tells of yellowish orcs, of even harder carapaced metallic orcs, but who knows if such mutters of a magifactured race are true...
This would have neatly separated orcs from goblins, but in that setting, goblins are mismatched beings with verminous body parts, from mammal, fowl and...
Insect.
Surely no relation.
Interesting
Well. I have three minotaur "encounters" to relate.
1. When "Dragonlance Adventures" came out (one of the last hard backs for the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game), I made a joke and wound up forever barred from playing Minotaurs (we had already barred Dragonlance Ogres from play as ridiculously powerful) - I said "Darn, Minotaurs can't be bards. I wanted to play a minotaur bard named Jon Bovi..."
2. At GenCon one year, a friend asked me to pick up some stuff he had being signed at the TSR booth in the dealer's room, as he'd gotten into a second round of a multi-round game and would not be able to make the scheduled pick-up. While waiting in line, the guy ahead of me struck up a conversation and, at one point, asked me if I had read any of the Dragonlance novels. I honestly said: "I read the original trilogy when the compiled version came out, and liked it - until I read the Twins trilogy and saw how good it COULD have been. But none were as good as 'The Legend of Huma.'" He gave me a slightly shocked look, then said: "Well, I think you'll be happy to know I have a sequel coming out in February, and it features Kaz, the Minotaur..." That was my first (of two) encounter(s) with Richard A. Knaak...
3. There are minotaurs in a serialized fiction I'm writing (currently about 55 chapters away from the heroes meeting minotaurs on ScribbleHub) - they are pretty much the bestial sort, though; hadn't really thought much about it but I pretty much have their society looking a lot like the Klingons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Maybe you could give some of your Minotaurs a code of conduct later and maybe your Jon Bovi can appear as a bard in your stories.
As to your encounters with Knaak they sound awesome, he sounds like a great guy.
An interesting read! The timing is also ironic when I've just spent quite a bit of time recently brainstorming a Little Red Riding Hood retelling with elements from the minotaur's myth (a bizarre combination, I know, but I can't unthink it now).
Hahaha interesting stuff
Cows can be plenty dangerous. Any large animal can be.
True, however having lived on farms, and dealt with them I found them easier to manage than some of the horses and other assorted animals.