Though I have received a hint or two from Hale about this topic as far as MV is concerned, what is the general consensus here about the topic? I have posted this again here for everyone who may not have read over or thought about it to have something to pick their brains with.

I have been giving some thought to the breeding and maturing of minotaurs as an individual race outside of them being created (no longer done, presumably) by (dirty, nasty, evil) Elves.

To open, I am quoting Meridan (our grand loremaster) from the Great Library's transcription:

Quote:
Mino's do breed - its not pretty, and we don't want to go into specifics. The way I'm envisioning it, Mino's are not immortal, and are born Minos. There might be a few who were actually transformed and remember life as something else, but they'd be rare in the extreme - the rituals have been mostly lost, at least to the mainstream wizards out there...



Now, here we see that they do indeed breed and are in fact born as minotaurs. The question that naturally follows is "Who are they breeding with exactly?".

Personal reasoning has led me to 3 possible points:

Theory 1) The minotaur are asexual creatures and give birth once or twice (at most) in their lifetime to another asexual offspring who will do the same after reaching full maturity.

This theory is a stretch and the least practicle, but it warrants listing in the possibilities. A purist could say that at character creation, the screen clearly labels any minotaur character as a "Male". This would negate this theory in terms of game mechanics. However, since "Asexual" is not listed as a choice of sex, then it would not matter whether "Male" or "Female" was checked.

Personally, I do not care for this theory as it, to me, takes away part of the minotaur individuality in terms of family life amongst them. Even though it has never been stated, I hear "asexual" and I think "empty" or "unemotional". Certainly, this is not the case.

Theory 2) Minotaur females do in fact exists, but cannot be seen in game mechanics.

While this may be a great idea for UBI to incorporate into gameplay, actually creating female minotaur (as with HG females), there may be a reason why it was not done. The Elves created the minotaur from Human slaves to use as shock troops and muscle power. Now, I run the risk of being sexist-sounding, but hear this out first please. The Elves most likely obtained slaves from enemies captured during battle. And most fighting in battle were probably male. Now, of these mostly male slaves, the Elves probably selected the largest ones to change into minotaur. That being said, you could see why only Males exist. Or perhaps the Elves intentionally created only Males in order to keep control over the breeding.

While I support the idea of adding Minotaur females (perhaps created from Human Females by Doomsayers), I do not believe this theory is the best one to go with either as it makes for boring gameplay to have invisible concubines.

This brings me to the third, and most probable theory.

WARNING: This part is now Rated PG-13, send the kiddies away!!!

Theory 3) Minotaur males take Human/Half-Giant Females as mates. The minotaur only creates Y-chromosomes, so the child will always be male, and the minotaur traits are always dominant over the human/half-giant traits in every generation, so the child will always appear to be minotaur.

Now, this is my personal belief on the matter. There are two ways to look at this, however. One way could be said that the minotaur, much like many animals, have a "mating season" where they will find a mate and do the deed. This may involve raiding villages and raping women there, or capturing them and bringing them back to the minotaur settlement to be held as brood mares for the society there. In general terms, "sex slaves".

Another way is to say that these Human and Half-Giant females actually want to be there. Obviously they would have a high stature in minotaur society as "mother" figures to a load of burly boys. Nursing would be possible as with any child, human or not, and since the child would technically be half-human, then it would survive off the mother's nursing. This would naturally lead to a higher chance of surviving and hence, more minotaur, so this is ideal for their society.

The question that follows this is: "Why in God's name would a Human of Half-Giant female want to live amongst the Minotaur society?"

Well, to answer that is certainly circumstantial at best. Any number of reasons may convince a female to live amongst the minotaur. She would certainly be protected and loved with an almost religious mindest. Perhaps she was orphaned as a child and grew up in minotaur society. Or perhaps, on the more perverse side, some of these "ladies" may actually receive some sort of higher sexual pleasure among the minotaur males. Enough so that they involve themselves fully into minotaur society for the remainder of their natural years.

Now the issue of a continual supply of females comes to mind. Either the minotaur does produce an occassional X-chromosome, which is completely inate except for a few recessive traits, resulting in the birth of a completely normal looking Human/HG female, or there are "cults" of women who are naturally attracted to the minotaur lifestyle in general. There is certainly room for both situations.


In closing, we do know that mino's breed, and they are probably just as regular about it as any other race. I would like to think that I have at least broken some ground here as these ideas are pretty much off the top of my head.

Please, tell me what you all think.

http://forum.mordkessel.com/viewtopic.php?t=10573

<Diorad> Volkan came up with a good idea regarding you and that "den mother" title
<tigress> ohshit
<tigress> do I have to take one in the face for the team?
<Diorad> he thinks maybe we should bring it into the lore. You see, it's never clarified in the main SB lore how minos reproduce, so we decided a long while back (pre-beta) that cadors only reproduced with willing human females called sarifs...
<Mick> bestiality
<Diorad> but Volkan's idea was that minotaurs have an extremely short gestation cycle, like a few weeks. So there's really be only need for one mother...
<Diorad> basically, we want you to be a cumrag for the cow men.
<tigress> good lord
<Mick> OMG
<Mick> lol, yeah that's gotta be a sig
<tigress> minos are really large though, seems like they'd have long gestation peroids
<Diorad> and since there's only one mother in the harem, it'd never be clear whose spawn is whose, so a keb (mino calf) would be raised by the entire community
<tigress> like elephants take 2 years
<Diorad> do they? maybe baby minos are born kitten-sized and extremely vulnerable
<tigress> aw
<tigress> mew
<tigress> mew
<Diorad> wait, your character's gonna be aelfborn isnt it?
<Mick> cow gestation period is 9 mos, just like sapes
<Diorad> well minotaurs arent cows, dumbass
<Diorad> it makes sense for the elves to engineer their ideal shock troops to be easymade, right?
<tigress> yeah, I usually play aelfborn
<tigress> cause they're crazy
<Diorad> oh. They're sterile.
<tigress> yeah, that's a side effect
<tigress>
<Diorad> are there any neph or humans chicks around that can fit a baseball bad sized hoo hoo in their cha cha?
<tigress> yeah, I'll think about it
<tigress> what would the mother be, though? a human doomsayer?
<Diorad> I would think a valkyr warrior. Bigger hips.
<Diorad> but any human could do.
<tigress> haha fuck yeah, I'll do it if I can be a gigantic Valk warrior
<tigress> like, 30 int and 210 str
<Diorad> you could hit on Steven all the time and the cadors could get pissed that he's mootching in on their woman!
<tigress> hahaha

The sarif idea would be a cultural thing that's possibly widely practiced or possibly particular to MV. I thought on it more while I was in Florida, and I thought that perhaps there are many sarifs all living together in a sort of burlesque house, but they are all trained by and obediant to a den mother. They would sort of be as cross between nuns and geishas. They're trained from an early age in the arts of caring for young minotaurs and charming, calming and pleasing elder ones.

They wouldnt be whores, only cadors reknowned and powerful enough to receive the sanction of a warchief before even approaching the den mother with the idea. The cador would then have to prove his worth to the den mother somehow (having favors owed to her by the horde's most powerful minotaur gives the den mother some degree of political power, perhaps), and she would assign one of her sarifs to court the minotaur.
As sarifs are trained to be strong and capable themselves (a battle-ready female will produce battle-read offspring, as the theory goes), courting could range from raiding and pillaging an enemy of her choice, a ridiculously expensive outing of some kind, or just a good old "Wham bam thank you maam" encounter.
After the birth of the keb, I dont imagine most cadors would want to be particularly involved in the upbringing of their son, aside from making sure he doesnt turn out a disgrace. The sarifs would raise the infant kebs until they are large enough to walk sturdily and hold an axe, at which point they would either a) be given to their father to live with him and be taught the way of the cador b) be placed a specialized sort of warrior school, where they're taught to be guards or raiders until they "graduate", or c) be kicked out onto the streets of Mordkessel to grow, learn and fight amongst themselves in the alleys and live off the scraps of the city. Any of the above sounds plausible.

When I got back I was going to write a sarif subclass lore in the style of the class lore in the main SB page, along with one for such potential subclasses as Ancient Minotaur, Spawn Minotaur, Chaos Priest, Xbow warriors and whatever spec we ended up using a lot, but no one really liked the idea and I started working and remembered I hate life too much to spend that much time writing and drawing.

I see. So that goes along with Theory #3 that I leaned towards. Excellent.

You mentioned that the young kebs would be raised by the mothers until a certain age, after which they would be released to either their father's custody or to fend for themselves to learn the ways of a warrior for Morloch and the Horde.

Where, in your opinion, would those minotaur that are chosen to be Doomsayers fit in? I ask because I am extremely interested in playing a Mino Doomsayer for MV, if for nothing more than loreplay reasons.

Would these young kebs be raised as warriors only to heed the call to enhanced spirituality later, or would they, in a sense, be marked from birth and destined to serve as the voice of Morloch?

Hmm. I hadnt thought about that. The minotaur lore certainly seems to imply that minotaur doomsayers are taught by their predessecor, however. Perhaps it's more common for warriors to let their offspring be raised in the streets and doomsayers to squire their kebs. Actually, I imagine minosayers, along with nephilim, would have more free time on their hands them most people in the horde, so I guess teaching a young mino the ropes on tribal-demonic magic wouldnt cramp their style too much.

hey, whatever happened to that mymloch guy

he hated you and left

from his last post

robble, i am a pretty awesome guy