Minotaur
Basic Information
Biological Traits
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Major Organizations
Blood Horns
Barding School of KnoledgeBeauty Ideals
They see the beauty of the body as something ephemeral that will banish over time if ones doesn’t care too much about it. In their own words there are not “in love with the physical world”, and so they see beauty as a moral principle under them. But of course they care about beauty, just in a different way.
Taking care of one´s body to them is akin to a cultivating a bonsai tree, something that demands expertise and great care, a 24/7 commitment that can teach patience and humility. Being at peace with oneself is a great task that many humans have to struggle to achieve, and this is not the exception.
And so, they engage in exercise and specialized diets to mold the body into the things that we want. All that is not considered attractive, but the act of self-care and the struggle that comes with it has to reflect ones state of mind and stoicism against the blows of the world. And with it, male or female you are now attractive. Of course, one has to achieve said goals to be considered attractive, the struggle is just the fire that tempers the sword.
Gender Ideals
The man has to be a great warrior, and a philosopher. They must learn to love to combat and dedicate to it like an art, seeing the big picture each time that he engages in battle. Singings about the glory of battle like a true poet, honor and virtue are your greatest weapons. Experiencing death and the horrors of war makes a man contemplate the big questions of life. Poetry (except free verse) is built on the optimal deployment of limited resources — words that fit together with other words, and with words that aren't there — not unlike the strategic decisions a soldier makes on the battlefield.
But the woman has to forfeit the act of war, because she is a being too pure and close to nature and the gods to act like an animal and kill another being for purely mundane relationships. She is the master of her own body and can do with it whatever she pleases, while the men has to always maintain a modicum of might to fight in the wars. She has to immerse herself in the act of poetry and philosophy entirely, while the men is a dual creature, she has only one nature always: Being attune with the gods. And so, she must remain calm and stoic even in the face of annihilation, in a perpetual state of meditative trance to see things more clearly.
Courtship Ideals
Minotaur marriage is until the end of time, and when both parts die they both journey to a realm called “The Great Plains” where the couple will spend the rest of their lives in an infinite plain, playing and loving each other. And so, their spirits will always be together.
To assure that the spirit binding is honest and will never end, the couple has to spent copious amounts of time meditating in a special bath house called “The Long Fire”, where the two sit to meditate and tell the deepest and darkest secrets of each other. After a long time special herbs are placed in the fire to make smoke that helps them to achieve higher states of meditation, where the spirits of each other escapes the bodies and meld into one, running like an ethereal force and causing the rainbows in the earth.
Relationship Ideals
If for even a second they don’t stand each other, or one has said something that has offended the other part, the marriage can never be consummated. Love is a binary thing for them, either is there or isn’t, and so they stray away from meaningless sex. And so they can never have a discussion or a single time that they shake in their love for the other one. Such a things is considered a failure. Even for a single moment.
Common Etiquette Rules
They tend to speak quietly and with the truth, using long syllables in their natural tongue because they have all the time in the world, so they tend to use metaphors when talking. For other races they actually talk with a flowery language, like exaggerating all their words. This may or may not be truth, just a matter of personal taste because they have all the time in the world and so why should they talk with a laconic speech?
Common Dress Code
Culture and Cultural Heritage
Theirs is a culture obsessed with immortality, there are one of the races that can live longer in the entire world after all, and so most of their culture is based around it. The philosophers all derive their schools of knowledge in the question of mortality, their anthropology always wonders how other races can achieve true happiness when they can only live at most 80 years.
And so, the temples that they built are made from solid stone crafted with expert hands during at least 100 years. Such devotion to a single task is only achieve with an iron will and a life that can be half a millennium. Their temples are built to last, and with their enormous strength they have it easy to configure the logistics of buildings marvelous architectonic constructions like carving an entire mountain to build a temple to a single god there, a task that only the Angels can replicate.
They set themselves on a task and reproduce it again and again until perfection is achieved. They also enjoy quiet and delicate music because they have an acute sense of hearing so other instruments that are not the lyre or drums tend to dislike them.
Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals
Common Taboos
History
The Minotaur race in the beginning was comprised of several small tribes, the Minoans, the Dacians, The Seneca, the Haudenosaunee, and so on. They lived together in constant fighting in the Great Plains, between the city of Qart Hadasht and the Wound of the World. During the early conquest of Ares they were hired as mercenaries and shock troopers to fight in the wars of conquest, and so they gained the military savvy that the Edekhans had at the time.
Time passed and their role as mercenaries was extended to client states but tensions were high when Ares had started to enslave his rivals, and so they tribes feared the same fate if they did not please the conqueror.
Eventually the time came to put the tribes in their respectable place in the food chain and so Ares led the charge towards genocide. The tribes united in a single confederacy and fought valiantly the edekhans, but finally failed and were turned into slaves and warriors for hire.
They were employed as shock troopers again, being subject to horrible living conditions and mistreatment from part of the Edekhans. But their culture and unity was forged in the fires of struggle because they resisted the cultural conversion of the mighty Edekhan Empire until the First Schism came.
The civil war that divided the empire in two, the Eastern Edekhan Empire and the Western Edekhan Empire. And with the integrity fractured the western part of the empire felled in a matter of 200 years.
The Minoan and Haudenosaunee tribes were the only tribes remaining in the empire, with the rest wipe out from the rest of the earth. But they finally were free.
During imperial control they have learned a lot of things, like imperial rule and cultural determination because they had to stay alive during years of slavery and enduring many pains just to see the light of tomorrow. And so they emerged stronger than ever from that, using the old government system of tribes but with a more imperial touch to govern far larger population’s, creating a system of government with a mix of tribal and imperial bureaucracy. After that they established contact with many other minotaur tribes around the world to ensure the survival of the culture and established the confederacy not long after putting to the test what they have learned.
Common Myths and Legends
They have a large pantheon of god, many of them they share them with the Britons. They are: Stoicys, the god of struggle. Atlas and Amala, the titans that with their holy hands have created the Great Plains and with their flesh as a sacrifice they have created the world. Their god of death and decay is called Arriona, the minoic translation of Ares. This is demonization of Ares the Conqueror, a famous Edekhan and founder of the Edekhan Empire.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
They view the Tuskens as chaotic rebels that enjoy too much the physical world, with meaningless relationships that cannot last long.
And they see the stoic Bretons as their little brothers, with a lot of shared culture and history. The two races get along especially well and tend to coexist peacefully almost always. Rare is a war between the two of them.
They see the Edekhans as violent xenophobes with no redeeming qualities. Slavery is banned in the Minotaur Confederacy and so very slaver ship that comes to their ports, or a city of Minoaur culture even, gets their “goods” confiscated and the slaves freed. This has caused many wars among the two culture groups, not just the empires. It’s a rivalry that exceeds the mere boundaries of empires.
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