Minotaurs in my 4th ed. game

Minotaurs

Minotaurs are half-bull, half-human. They are a mostly evil race usually associated with strong beliefs in honor and the sea due to their nation being located on the Blood Sea Isles. The Minotaur Empire now expanded to the mainland of Ansalon with the new territory of Ambeon.
Minotaurs that are from Ambeon are the only surviving successful descendants of that city, it was destroyed in countless wars of the years and all the survivors were taken to Silvanesti as slaves.
Minotaurs on this Continent are dwindling with the race thriving many leagues away on the Isles of Mithas and Kothas.
These Minotaurs found here are tribal and use the primal animal totem powers to try and survive in captivity.

MINOTAURS EMBODY the tension between civilization and savagery—discipline and madness—because
the minotaurs stand in two worlds. Tugged toward wanton violence but bound by conscience, numerous minotaurs are driven to rise above their dark impulses.
Such a minotaur walks the labyrinthine pathways of introspection, seeking the balance between the monstrous and refined. Like a deadly maze, this personal journey has hazards and traps aplenty. Innumerable minotaurs succumb to the wicked temptations staining
their souls, whereupon they find themselves thralls to the dread Baphomet, the Horned King. Minotaurs
must struggle to become more than the beasts they resemble or succumb to demonic brutality.

Physical Qualities
Minotaurs combine the features of human and bull,having the build and musculature of a hulking humanoid,but with the cloven hooves, a bovine tail, and,their most distinctive feature of all, a bull’s head. Fur covers their upper bodies, coarse and thick on their heads and necks, and it gradually thins around their shoulders until it becomes normal hair over their arms and upper torso. The thick hair turns shaggy once more at the waist and thickens around their loins and legs, with tufts at the end of their tails and around their powerful hooves. Minotaurs take pride in their horns, and sharpness, size, and color speak to the minotaur’s power and place within its society. Fur and skin coloring runs from albino white to coal black, and everything between, though most have red or brown
fur and hair, with lighter tones underneath.

Labyrinthine patterns are important to minotaurs and such decoration appears on minotaur clothing,
armor, weapons, and sometimes, on their hides. Each pattern is particular to a clan, and its size and complexity helps minotaurs identify family allegiance and caste.
The patterns evolve through the generations, growing more expansive based on its members’ deeds and the clan’s history, each knot remarking on a signature event.
Minotaurs live as long as humans do.

Playing a Minotaur

The minotaurs’ preference for labyrinths is legendary,but their connection to mazes is more than a
quirk. It is central to their beliefs and how they see the world around them. The labyrinth is the physical
representation of the spiritual and psychological journey each minotaur must undertake to make
peace with its conflicted nature.
Each minotaur must navigate the perils of the self to transcend bestial impulses. One minotaur
might achieve this easily. Another might wander the corridors of his or her mind and soul for an entire
lifetime, trapped within the circuitous passages of self-deception and monstrous desires. Those who fail
might descend into depravity, becoming the thralls of the Horned King, whose presence darkens every
minotaur community like a looming specter.
Minotaur society is similarly complex, stratified into discrete, merit-based castes. A minotaur
can move in social rank through aptitude, as well as great deeds or terrible crimes. Among civilized
minotaurs, duty and traditions reinforce the caste structure. Social class is a restriction and a weapon
among corrupted minotaurs.
Priests occupy the highest caste. Minotaurs look to holy ones for leadership, so priests command the
respect and accord of all the people. They define laws, pass judgment, and keep histories and traditions.
The caste can include a variety of mystics, shamans, holy warriors, and clerics. Minotaurs who
have escaped Baphomet’s depravity look to priests professing faith in Erathis, Moradin, Pelor, and
Bahamut, or some subset of these. Cabalists spread Baphomet’s wickedness among the minotaur settlements under their control. Although the priest caste holds the greatest power
and influence, the warrior caste is very powerful.

Battle prowess a high ideal, and many minotaurs strive to master combat training and join the warrior
caste. To wield a weapon with skill is important,but to know when to use a weapon is of far greater
value. Minotaurs who revere the gods also admire discipline and the judicious use of battle prowess.
For Baphomet’s minotaurs, weapon skill is a tool for acquiring power and defiling the world.
Artisans, scholars, hedge mages, and other skilled workers form the commoner caste of minotaur
society. Beneath these are the slaves. In civilized communities, the slave caste consists the corrupted
and the criminal. Evil minotaur societies enslave any whom they conquer, and any slave can be
sacrificed to Baphomet at any moment. Magicians, such as wizards, defy the norm in
minotaur culture. One wizard might have only enough skill to be considered a commoner, while
another mage is considered a warrior for her great destructive power. A highly educated and pious
mage could even be considered a priest. Station informs a minotaur’s outlook. Even those
who leave their secluded communities find it hard to escape caste expectations. A minotaur adventurer
might show deference to a priest. Similarly, minotaur rogues and other ne’er-do-wells might affect meekness around those whom they see as their betters.
Though many minotaurs are civilized, they suffer suspicion and hatred from other races. Animosity
stems not only from monstrous appearance, but also from infamy. Wicked minotaurs are remorseless
raiders and killers, and these are often the only minotaurs known in a given area.

MINOTAUR ORIGIN
Civilization’s wreckage litters the world, and in these ruins, one can divine the secrets of fallen empires that even time has forgotten. The empire of Ruul is one of these lost civilizations, brought low through moral corruption. Minotaurs once tamed themselves and Ruul's lands. Evil shattered all they created.

The demon lord Baphomet was once a great primordial with strong ties to the natural world. He can
rightly claim minotaurs, for it is he who raised them as soldiers to claim nature for him in place of Melora, his most hated deific foe. In the Dawn War, minotaurs fought against the gods on the side of Baphomet. But Baphomet was defeated. One myth says the Horned King hurled himself into the Abyss ratherthan face the final judgment of the gods.

In defeat, minotaurs were without direction in the world. Acting quicker than Melora, Erathis claimed
the minotaurs for herself, teaching them language and law. She called on Moradin to instruct them in
crafts. In the name of their new guardians, minotaurs founded the city of Ruul on a southern archipelago.

From its first founding, Ruul was destined for greatness. Erathis blessed Ruul’s people, and they
benefited from a close kinship with the lord of artisans. Legends hold that Erathis’s servants walked
among the minotaurs of Ruul, advising them and giving them the tools they needed to spread across the islands and beyond.

Baphomet, however, endured in the Abyss. Numerous minotaurs, in Ruul and elsewhere, still revered
the Horned King and could feel his influence on their souls. Eventually, Baphomet responded to their rites. He offered unbridled freedom and conquest. Corruption wormed its way into Erathis’s grand experiment.

Cultists of Baphomet secretly influenced Ruul’s policies. What began as Ruul’s peaceful expansion
became an adventure of subjugation. The folk of Ruul became cruel. They spread their beliefs by fire and sword, slaughtering those who stood against them and enslaving the rest.

Although some minotaurs clung to the ways of the gods, wealth and conquest blinded most of Ruul’s
folk to their traditions. As Ruul swelled in size, it also swelled in corruption. Decadent nobles committed
unholy acts in the darkness of their homes. False priests spread through the land, inviting others
into mysteries best left alone or put to the sword. Baphomet’s blood cults rose, poisoning the civilization with their wickedness. Eventually, the Horned King became the spiritual master of Ruul, his followers bold enough to show themselves in the streets.
Conquest quickly turned to desecration.

Its fall complete, Ruul's wickedness was something the gods could no longer abide. With Erathis’s allowance, Melora visited volcanic devastation on Ruul.
Kord aided her with storms the likes of which the southern seas have not again seen. In the end, Ruul
was no more. Its center destroyed, the empire's remnant fell into civil war and eventual dissolution. Its
survivors—some of whom, for their loyalty to the gods, received warning—scattered across the world.

Minotaurs developed an abiding fear of divine reprisals and a passionate attitude—love or hate—
toward the world’s deities. Although the destruction drove countless minotaurs to serve Baphomet more fervently, it made others repent or continue to serve the gods with more zeal. In the early days after Ruul’s fall, even good-hearted minotaurs held the empire’s
destruction against Melora and Kord. They revered the old gods of their people, Erathis and Moradin, and took up allegiance with Pelor and Bahamut to guard them against the reemergence of iniquity. In time,these preferences became traditions.

Minotaurs are products of a tragic history. Ruul’s bones are scattered on a volcanic archipelago in the
southern seas, and across the world. Baphomet’s blood lust and butchery run in minotaurs’ veins, a
tainted birthright. But a similar yet righteous ardor allows some to hold to civilization and better ways.