Legends of Belariath

Minotaurs History

(as written by the Ilnaraem Loremasters)

The Minotaur have roamed Belariath since well before the coming of Man, figures in the lore of other races as far back as can be recalled. Once they were a nomadic people, living in an easy harmony with the land, their size and strength a source of pride and certainly violence, but also a profound naivety- an innocence in how they viewed the world around them. They were giant children in a great playground, life a fantastic game; each tribe a team and each chieftain the strongest, cleverest or bossiest kid of the bunch, selecting a few best buddies to keep all the others who wanted to play in check. They were no fools, nor strangers to the realities of combat and death, but they had no words for cruelty nor deceit in their tongue; hearts inherently warm and welcoming, if at times easily inflamed.

It was in the early ages of Men that this changed, when High Human kingdoms had just begun to truly take hold of their independence, though still under the heavy influence of the Elves. The Minotaur didn't pay much mind to the affairs of Elves and Men other then to try and avoid them, not out of fear but for the sake of it, as both races tended to go running from their kind screaming in the few interactions of which the Chieftains were aware.

Disappearances were not uncommon among the tribes, wanderlust and brawls gone wrong claiming many without a word as to why, so they were slow to realize that a surge in them was more than just a bad few years. It was when the youngest mate of the warrior-poet Arkhem, Chieftain of the tribe of Gwaridorn, vanished from their own camp that he sent a host of fighters and trackers to retrieve her, and after a hunt of six months the Minotaur learned what cruelty truly meant.

The fighters Arkhem had sent, their numbers thinned, returned to him a woman bare and beaten, bruised and scarred; bearing the memory of a thousand-thousand humiliations on her face, and a weighty ring of gold in her nose to keep them ever-fresh. Those fighters who had freed her explained what they had found; a great theater many miles from their home in the tiny territories Men and Elves claimed for themselves, not fifty yards outside one of their walled cities, where dozens of their people were being auctioned off. The rings that each was brought back wearing were to denote their quality as merchandise... those fit in their minds for little but toil granted cheap iron, those smarter or more serviceable as household slaves granted silver, whereas the very beautiful and desirable were given gold.

Arkhem watched the eyes of his youngest mate as all of this was told, saw her heart breaking in shame to see the looks of unadulterated horror crossing the faces of those who overheard, all eyes upon that glittering weight in the center of her sweet features, and he could not bear the sight. Striking the precious adornments of his status as Chieftain from his massive chest, he hurled them to his closest aid, ordering that their gold be melted down and forged into a solid ring. There before the awestruck faces of his entire tribe did he pierce himself with a red-hot nail and take on a ring to match that of his mate, swearing to her that she would never again know shame under the eyes of her own kind. With out an order, the whole tribe began to follow suit.

The power of this act- the transformation from horror into beauty, from the greatest crime their people had ever witnessed into the greatest act of love they'd ever imagined, sparked an awakening among the Minotaur. Soon the four tribes were all following Arkhem and the Gwaridorn's example, and soon after that were all following them to war. The tribes suffered harsh losses to be sure, but they were meager compared to the devastation wrought against the old Kingdoms, some of them destroyed outright; smashed to dust and forgotten. Thus did the Minotaur as Monster find its way into the ethos of the 'higher' races.

It wasn't Arkhem and his fellow chieftain's wish to destroy the progress of Human and Elf kind however, simply to thoroughly adjust its attitude in regards to their people, and when they felt this had been achieved the war was called to an end. Taking what they'd learned during their long conflicts, each tribe took up station surrounding the Human and Elven kingdoms, north, south, east and west. They built grand fortresses and walled cities in mountain terrain smaller races struggle to cross, and in time came to consider themselves tribes no longer.

So were the four kingdoms founded; Gwaridorn, Ilnaraem, Marnona and Thaedas, great watchtowers over the world of Men, and yet almost wholly beyond its reach. For ages since relations between Minotaur and men have been icy at best, though none truly remember why. Recently cracks have begun to form however, and the Ilfirian Empire has been eagerly slipping through them.