Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 6 - Cultures: Imperium Taurenicum Minotaurs

 


In the past 3 Setting posts, I have taken a closer look at three of the 9 cultures generated for my Local Campaign Area.  The first was the dominant culture of the area, the Eldorian humans, who despite not being native to the area, have given it their name. Next came the Thunderan Dwarves of the Cobalt Bastion, merchants and emissaries of an advanced and mercantile Dwarf republic. Most recently were the Thal'Sunari - Ancient Egyptian-like Elves with a tradition-bound culture. Today we're looking at the third of the 3 major cultures of the area, the Minotaurs.

For the Cultural Archetype, I selected Roman, which makes sense, given the Greco-Roman mythological origins of Minotaurs.

Roman: The major kingdom of the campaign is patterned after the Roman Empire. Naturally, the historical accessory The Glory of Rome is the best resource for setting an AD&D game in this realm.

Now, technology level could have been rolled, for a somewhat different take on a Rome-like culture, but I elected to go with Roman for that as well.

Roman: This is more accurately viewed as a specialized category of the Bronze Age or Ancient settings, although the Romans came to power hundreds of years after the end of the Bronze Age. Military organization and tactics continue to advance, along with the first real applications of military engineering and siegecraft.

As mentioned in the previous posts in this series, when I first started looking the Social Alignment table, it clicked that I have 9 cultures, and there are 9 (in 1e and 2e) alignments. I gave the Eldorian humans Neutral, the Dwarves Chaotic Good, and the traditionalist Elves Lawful Neutral. For these Minotaurs, I rolled, ignoring duplicates, and got Neutral Evil. I was leaning toward Evil to begin with, and I believe in later editions, Minotaurs are typically Evil. In OD&D, they are listed under both Neutrality and Chaos, so Neutral Evil definitely fits.

Neutral Evil: The people of the land are out to get ahead by any means possible. A nation in which mercantile wealth is pursued at the cost of other values might be described as neutral evil. Such lands tend to support whichever government that provides the most gain to the most powerful social classes.

For form of government, Monarchy, Dictatorship or Republic would seem obvious for a Roman culture, but I elected to roll, coming with an equally fitting government - Militocracy.  This is the culture's internal government, while the area in general operates under a sort of Religious Satrapy.

Militocracy: Military leaders run the nation under martial law, using the organization or apparatus of the army and the other armed forces. A militocracy might be based around an elite group of soldiers, such as dragon riders or war-wizards.

Hierarchy: A feudal or bureaucratic system which proceeds through different levels of a religious institution.

Satrapy: Conquerors and representatives of another government wield power over the region, ruling it as part of a larger empire. The satraps themselves might be bureaucrats and military officers, or they may be unusual characters or monsters of some kind, such as dragons, beholders, or vampires.

Now, the Local Campaign Area Chapter proceeds from here to Subsistence Systems, culture/race relations, and Population Level, but I feel like these are best addressed when we get to detailing and mapping the land itself and plotting the settlements.

I put our Roman Minotaurs into the Culture Name Generator at Vondy.com to see what I could get.  From the options that came up, I picked Imperium Taurenicum, and for their language and demonym, I just simplified that to Tauren.

I also thought of migratory patterns, and through some rolls and choices, decided on settlement waves for our 9 cultures. The Tauren Minotaurs arrived to this area in the first of three waves of migrations, roughly a thousand years ago, from the West.

I'm thinking the Taurens were an expeditionary force from a larger Western Empire, that came to this area and tangled with the Sunari Elves and other natives. Over time, contact with their original empire was lost, but the remnants here kept the name, and have tried to hang on to the culture.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 1 - World Hooks

Image
  Although I'm sure there is material I could use for setting generation in OD&D era 3rd party content, or in Strategic Review / Dragon, the 2nd Edition World Builder's Guidebook is something I've had in my collection since it came out - often perused but seldom used. My first step was to look at the 'World Hooks' table in Chapter 1 - Worlds and Planetology. I initially rolled, getting the 'Cultural' category, then the 'Seafaring' entry. I then decided to either roll or choose a 'hook' from each heading. For the category 'Climate or Landform,' to keep with 'Seafaring,' I chose 'Archipelago.' From 'Situation,' I rolled 'Religious.' From 'Historical,' I rolled 'Insurrection.' For 'Sites of Interest,' I chose 'Shrines.' The descriptions are thus: Archipelago: No large continents exist, only countless islands. (Ursula K. Leguin's Earthsea is a good example.) Kingdoms...
Read more

Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 3 - Cultures: Eldorian Human

Image
  In the first two posts on generating a setting for a try at soloing Original D&D, I used 2nd Edition World Builder's Guidebook to generate some World Hooks for the world our characters will adventure in, then generating some ideas for what the Local Campaign Area would be like, culminating in generating some cultures to populate it. This will be the first post taking a closer look at one of those cultures, some rolls and choices to further define, and breathing some life into it. We'll start with looking at the dominant culture of the area, one of 2 human cultures. For the Culture Archetype, I selected European Middle Ages. At its core, I wanted the culture to still have that familiar (TSR) D&D feeling.  However, there will be acknowledgement of the environment as well. A European Middle Ages culture doesn't just spring up on a large, grassy isle in a tropical sea, and if such a culture settles in such a place, there will be adaptations. European, Middle Ages: Th...
Read more

Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 9 - Cultures: Drak'Thul Marauder Lizard Men

Image
  So far, in the Cultures subseries of my Setting the Setting posts, I've detailed the dominant culture of the area, Eldorian Humans, our three major cultures - the mercantile Thunderan Dwarves, the Egyptian-like Sunari Elves, and the militaristic, Roman Empire inspired Tauren Minotaurs - and two of our minor cultures - the Vindhyaksha Goblins and the Hearthwarden Halflings. I'm saving our second Human culture for last, so next up we have Lizard Men. For the Cultural Archetype, I eschewed rolling and selected Barbarian. With our Minotaurs, Goblins and (yet-to-be-posted) Orcs having all gotten different cultures by rolling, I knew I wanted to have Barbarian on there somewhere and this was the best fit. Barbarian: The realm is a tribal group or kingdom of people considered barbarians by their neighbors. These can be historical barbarians such as the Celts, Picts, or ancient Germans, or you may prefer to mold your kingdom after fantastic barbarians such as Robert E. Howard's ...
Read more