Role

Chapter 3

A settlement in a clearing, deep within the Hardan woods.

Rudimentary thatched structures house a clan of free roaming Minotaurs, who
survive off the forest. Lacking ties to comfortable civilization within reach
nearby, led by an aged chieftain, governed by loose rules of conduct and with
a history of combat as a way of settling hearth and differences, is the
StoutHorn clan. A crude circle of rites to conduct the goring festivities
which the minotaurs conducted to commemorate everything, from the celebration
of the birth of a minotaur, to mourning the passing of a Sharp StoutHorn or
the festivities of a feast, was the prime landmark of the settlement. Their
pride were their horns, and indeed, in the early barbaric days it was
customary for the minotaurs to charge and gore their neighbours, friends,
relatives or perfectly startled strangers merely as a ritual of greeting.
Those days had passed however, and the days of merely verbally expressing
heartiness and eagerness to gore were in force.

In the hut of the chieftain was delivered, by unnatural means, a wonder baby
minotaur. The baby had a single, powerful horn emerging from its forehead,
more like a centaur rather than a minotaur, the length and girth of which
could put the best pair of horns in the Clan to shame. To the minotaurs this
was an amazement, and a gift from the gods, rather than some freak gene
mutation (since they were not so technologically, and verbally, advanced) and
it was immediately agreed to gore the youngling a few times to annoint him
the heir apparent to the aged chieftain.

Time passed, as it will, and the chieftain was no more. Dhaath, for that was
the name of the Centaur Minotaur, stepped into his place and became the
youthful chieftain of the blissful StoutHorn clan.

Blissful until the Empress of the nearby citadel of civilization received
reports from her arcane elite of entire swathes of the countryside lying
unclaimed, and allegedly harbouring unruly and disorderly criminal elements.
This to some extent was true, since those wanted by the Tribunal would often
rush into the villages and fields of Aturi to escape execution by the
ruthlessly efficient Mounted Guard of the city. But these elements rarely
wandered into the Hardan woods, which presented its own set of dangers, not
the least of them being its zealous druids who were not inclined to look
kindly upon intrusion into their sacred confines. The SoutHorn clan had
always been orderly in nature, and they had their own set of goring laws,
which in a sense were no different from those of civilization.

In a bid "to bring the bliss of order to those barbarians" and "to ensure the
safety of our citizens" and bolstered by the succesful expansion of the
Seantryn docks and the partially succesful urbanization of the Seantryn Bay,
the arcane elite headed by a crescent-shaped dagger wielding cloaked figure,
decided to advice the empress to expand the city to include the lucrative
natural resources of the Hardan woods which awaited her, to trade with and
fund the expansion of the ever growing cities of the eastern continent.

The economic reasons were only the sub plot. The elite magi under the chief
arcane had long studied the arts of manipulation of the anatomy of the
natural-born races. The minotaurs were a rac