Minotauros

[Bohemond]

I’ve got a Uroxi PC who wants to do the Minotauros HQ. It’s mentioned in passingbin Storm Tribe, but there’s no detail whatsoever about it (other then that the quest prize is getting a pair of horns). Are there any other mentions of the quest anywhere or details about the myth? 

[soltakss]

There is a description of Minotaurus in one of the Wyrms Footprints magazines, but they are quite hard to get hold of. I am not sure if it made it into the Wyrms Footnotes collection.

In any case, I am not sure of the HeroQuest is described, as it is more of an in-depth description of Minotaurus and a really good writeup of Minotaurs.

Just off the top of my head, the Quest is about becoming closer to Storm Bull, via his son Minotaurus.

So, you basically become a Minotaur, or become part-Minotaur, with benefits being Bull Horns or Battle Rage, or both. 

How would you do it?

• Become like Storm Bull - Find a Chaos Foe and defeat it
• Become like a Bull - Grapple with a Wild Bull and take some of its powers
• Gain Battle Rage - Grapple with a Minotaur and take some of its powers
• Keep the Powers - Gain some control of the Beast Rune

 

[jajagappa]

19 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

It’s mentioned in passingbin Storm Tribe, but there’s no detail whatsoever about it (other then that the quest prize is getting a pair of horns). Are there any other mentions of the quest anywhere or details about the myth?

That reference is carried over into the Book of Heortling Mythology p.182 as well: "The race of minotaurs are descended from Urox through his son Minotauros. Members of this subcult gain no magic, but are seen as a friend by most minotaurs. Some heroes of this subcult even have minotaur followers. One heroquest path of Minotauros is the Horn Quest – human follower may quest to have a pair of magical bull’s horns grow out of their temples."

The quest is not noted in Arcane Lore, but there are some bits there that may be of use:

p.59: "the Raging Death (the Storm Bull Mustering Ground)" - sounds like a good starting point.

p.59: "To Storm Bull Mountain" - probably the same as Stormwalk Mountain

p.100-102: "The Berserkergang Path" - this is Storm Bull's quest to gain the Berserk powers and could be a model to use.  The steps include:

• Departure via a Whirlwind (which must be summoned)
• Humakt's Threshold - either quester or Humakt must die to cross over
• the Bridge of Passage - On the other side of the pillar, a long rope-and-plank bridgeextends into the mists. When crossing the bridge of passage, each member must check to see how he fares. The bridge creaks audibly under the weight of any character with a high Death Fame. Other characters cross the bridge silently.
• Guardian of the Gate - only warriors may pass - must bear weapons and have made the bridge creak
• Court of Kargan Tor - many people fighting or feasting
• Lord of the Table - At the head of the table squats a colossal drunken warrior, the son of Urox and Lord of the Table. He is horned, wears sword and axe, and his shoulders are at least 4 yards above the straw-strewn floor. Each quester must gain the Lord's attention by reciting past deeds of boldness loudly and repeatedly. If the quester fails his attempt, a mass of berserks converges and throws him out, humiliating him.  If he gets the Lord's attention, then he has to drink with the Lord. Any hero who manages to down his mug awakes and
  invokes Urox from within - the Berserkergang.  If a hero fails to down his mug, he collapses unconscious under the table and awakens intact back at the mundane starting point. All those who succeed also gain Death and Disorder Fame.
• Urox' Secret Ale - Instead of the magic mead (or in addition to it), a hero can ask the Lord of the Table for one of the Bull's secret ales - Ambrosia (yellow), Ironground (green), Stormbeck (brown), or Deepmain (blue).  The hero will find the ale even more difficult to stomach than the mead. If he succeeds, he gains some of the attributes of the Storm Bull. The green brew provides the constitution of a bull; the orange, the strength; the yellow, the size; and the blue, the speed. This attribute increase is effective whenever the quester is engaged in combat, and is thus an additional berserker-type ability. Failure to down the mug has identical results to failing to down the magic mead. - Note: this might be the place to drink of the Ale of MInotaurus.
• The Bull of Terror - through the Back Door of Kargan Tor's court is a grassy meadow.  The Bull of Terror is here and will charge with its fear-inducing power.  Any quester returning through the back door without defeating the Bull is disgraced.  If the quester defeats the Bull of Terror, he should immediately skin it. Soon thereafter a burly horned warrior comes, puts on the Bull's skin, and congratulates the quester. This is Urox himself, who scoops up a double handful of the Bull of Terror's blood and offers it to the quester to drink.
• The Parts of the Bull - Storm Bull then cooks the bull and offers the quester one of the parts.  As the slayer, the hero may take as his share any one organ of the Bull he desires. The organ is received in the form of a small, stone amulet in the form of the named organ. Each organ of the Bull of Terror provides its devourer with a slave spirit who knows a single ability. The spirit uses its powers on command, even while the master is berserk.
• Humakt's Testing - Anyone that has drunk the magic mead of the Lord of the Table, wears a horned helmet, and carries a weapon can leave Urox's Gate and go before Humakt, demanding the right to the secret Battle Rage. Humakt's Herald stands forth, and commands the hero to prove himself by withstanding five mighty blows without flinching. If he takes each blow without flinching, he is immune to exhaustion and disease while berserk. If the hero is not knocked unconscious, incapacitated, or killed during the test, he can ignore most
  wounds whenever he is berserk, as well.
• Departure - he may go back via the Bridge of Passage.  Somewhere on his return he will be attacked by a foe.

 

[Bohemond]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

There is a description of Minotaurus in one of the Wyrms Footprints magazines, but they are quite hard to get hold of. I am not sure if it made it into the Wyrms Footnotes collection.

In any case, I am not sure of the HeroQuest is described, as it is more of an in-depth description of Minotaurus and a really good writeup of Minotaurs.

Just off the top of my head, the Quest is about becoming closer to Storm Bull, via his son Minotaurus.

So, you basically become a Minotaur, or become part-Minotaur, with benefits being Bull Horns or Battle Rage, or both. 

How would you do it?

• Become like Storm Bull - Find a Chaos Foe and defeat it
• Become like a Bull - Grapple with a Wild Bull and take some of its powers
• Gain Battle Rage - Grapple with a Minotaur and take some of its powers
• Keep the Powers - Gain some control of the Beast Rune

 

Thanks for that tip! I actually have most issues of Wyrm’s Footprints, but I rarely look at them these days. I’ll dig through them. 

[Bohemond]

Thanks to Soltakss, I found this paragraph in Wyrm's Footnotes 12, p. 9 "As he crossed the earth with great swaggering strides one day he encountered a most beautiful woman and became enamored of her. During those days of love and life she bore the Storm Bull a son who begat a race of half-man/half-beasts. Their father was called Minotaurs and their mother is a daughter of Uleria the Goddess of Love. This race, called Minotaur, inherited their grandfather's rage as a natural ability and are greatly feared for their battle fury."

That doesn't give me a whole lot more to go on, but it's something. Thanks.

[M Helsdon]

5 hours ago, soltakss said:

There is a description of Minotaurus in one of the Wyrms Footprints magazines, but they are quite hard to get hold of. I am not sure if it made it into the Wyrms Footnotes collection.

It should also be in the recent RQ2 reprint. I typed it in for Rick.

[soltakss]

I forgot about the Beserkergang path, that should be very useful.

[simonh]

Also check out Appendix R “The birth of the Minotaur” on page 137 of the RuneQuest II Classic edition. It has an extract from the WF article and notes and rules for the battle rage in RQ2.

[Bohemond]

So is battle rage an inherent part of the Horn quest? 

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, Bohemond said:

So is battle rage an inherent part of the Horn quest? 

I don't know if an inherent part, but I'm sure you've got to do something to prove yourself a bull and therefore worthy of being a child of the Storm Bull.

[Bohemond]

I finally had time to sit down and sketch out the rough outlines for a Minotauros hero quest. 

 

Minotauros

"When he grew, he became strong and wild, so wild his mother could not control him. So he left her. At first, he went wherever he wanted and did whatever he wished. He trampled down buildings and knocked over fences. 

The he met the Stranger. The Stranger sought to kill Minotauros, but Minotauros was too powerful. He defeated the Stranger and continued his roaming.

When Barntar heard about a young bull that roamed freely, he wanted Minotauros for his plow-team. So he confronted Minotauros and wrestled with him to tame him. They wrestled for a day and a night, knocking down trees and kicking over hills. Everything fled them. But finally, Minotauros exhausted Barntar and shook his head so violently that Barntar flew across a nearby mountain and never bothered him again. 

Then he saw Uralda, the Great Cow, who was lovelier than all other cows. She invited him to couple with her, and so they did. Then she said, “Follow me, my bull, and I will give you a good home.” But he saw that following her was just another way to be tamed, and he refused. The bulls he sired on her have always been rowdy and untamable. 

Finally, he met his father, the Storm Bull. His father looked at him and laughed. That enraged Minotauros, who charged his father. But the Storm Bull was stronger than Minotauros. Not matter how hard he tried, he could not defeat his father. Finally he lay on the ground, exhausted. 

The Storm Bull roared with laughter, shaking ground for miles around. “This is my son!” he bellowed. “He is fearsome and not to be tamed! He will do as he pleases!” And Minotauros realized that his father was not laughing at him, but laughing out of pride. His father picked him up and embraced him. “Go now, my son, and do what you wish. No one will ever be able to make you do anything.”

The key idea here is that Minotauros needs to demonstrate that he is his father's son, so that the quest is about proving that the quester is a true son of Urox. The quest is short, having only four normal stations, but they can come in any order, and failure in any of the first three knocks the quester out of the myth (since he stays where he is and never meets Urox). That explains why Uroxi with living horns aren't common. 

The Stranger can be almost any enemy except Chaos. 
Sometimes Barntar wagers something to Minotauros in a contest where losing results in joining Barntar's plow team. 

Unlike the first two stations, Uralda cannot be defeated with strength or combat. As a result, this is the station where most Uroxi are defeated. 

The Urox station doesn't involve actually defeating Urox. Rather it involves enduring until the quester has impressed Urox. 

The quest is most commonly performed to gain magical bull's horns. These automatically grant a bonus to social interactions with other Uroxi and minotaurs.
But it can also be done to force someone to acknowledge paternity or another relationship or to forcibly 'adopt yourself' into someone's family or to enter in an alliance with minotaurs. 

Any thoughts/suggestions? 

[jeffjerwin]

There's a strange set of bull gods/cultures in Genertela: KefTawar and his son Bisos (Pelanda/Carmania), and the Tawar Hsunchen in Fronela that suggests a northwestern bull-man cult that may have some connection to Storm Bull. 'Turos' and 'Tauros' are clearly related.

[Joerg]

57 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

Sometimes Barntar wagers something to Minotauros in a contest where losing results in joining Barntar's plow team. 

How exactly would this outcome play out for a minotaur character? What kind of life would ensue for the Tamed-to-the-Plow minotaur? A life among the durulz, as a plow for hire?

[PhilHibbs]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

How exactly would this outcome play out for a minotaur character? What kind of life would ensue for the Tamed-to-the-Plow minotaur? A life among the durulz, as a plow for hire?

In RQG, I'd impose a small reduction in the character's Death Rune rating. His father would then come along and tell him "no one can make you do anything". So a loss, but not an end to the quest.

Edited November 2, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[Darius West]

On 9/2/2018 at 11:33 PM, Bohemond said:

I’ve got a Uroxi PC who wants to do the Minotauros HQ. It’s mentioned in passing in Storm Tribe, but there’s no detail whatsoever about it (other then that the quest prize is getting a pair of horns). Are there any other mentions of the quest anywhere or details about the myth? 

Perhaps there is a reason the Minotauros HQ doesn't get mentioned. We get a tantalizing hint of the Praxian version of the Minotauros HQ from the Travels of Biturian Varosh.  Norayeep mentions in embarrassed terms how her brother Morak (who has horns) was the product of some sort of Warrior Society Ritual that their mother took part in (cue giggles at the obscene subtext).  Think about it.   What better way of gaining a beast rune than by committing ritual bestiality?  It certainly had its antecedents in various belief systems on Earth.  After all King Minos' wife Parsiphae had a special brass cow made by Daedalus so she could have sex with her husband's prized bull (she got cursed with unnatural lust by Aphrodite), and thus gave birth to the minotaur. Just don't mention cow tipping.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Darius West

[Bohemond]

23 hours ago, Joerg said:

How exactly would this outcome play out for a minotaur character? What kind of life would ensue for the Tamed-to-the-Plow minotaur? A life among the durulz, as a plow for hire?

If the defeat was substantial, I would suggest a Lingering Penalty to his ability to frenzy or something comparable--he's been 'tamed' and needs to recover the wild side of himself. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

On 11/2/2018 at 12:26 PM, Darius West said:

Perhaps there is a reason the Minotauros HQ doesn't get mentioned. We get a tantalizing hint of the Praxian version of the Minotauros HQ from the Travels of Biturian Varosh.  Norayeep mentions in embarrassed terms how her brother Morak (who has horns) was the product of some sort of Warrior Society Ritual that their mother took part in (cue giggles at the obscene subtext).  Think about it.   What better way of gaining a beast rune than by committing ritual bestiality?  It certainly had its antecedents in various belief systems on Earth.  After all King Minos' wife Parsiphae had a special brass cow made by Daedalus so she could have sex with her husband's prized bull (she got cursed with unnatural lust by Aphrodite), and thus gave birth to the minotaur. Just don't mention cow tipping.

Given this story, I'm reminded that "getting horns" is an expression for being cuckolded in many languages. I wouldn't normally have seen it as relevant, but... well.