MrNexx
Rear Admiral
Joined: 25 Mar 2016
Posts: 2248
Location: San Antonio
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 Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 3:05 am Post subject: Minotaurs of the Galaxy |
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I accidentally an article.
Krynnish Minotaurs in Star Wars d6
Pirate Minotaur
Dexterity 1D/3D+1
Knowledge 1D/3D
Mechanical 2D/4D+1
Perception 2D/4D+1
Strength 3D/5D+1
Technical 2D/3D+2
Special Abilities:
*Senses: Minotaurs have very sensitive senses of hearing and scent, and receive +1D to Search checks when those senses are involved.
*Horns: Minotaurs can use their horned heads as a brawling attack; doing so is Easy difficulty, and inflicts STR+2D damage. A minotaur may also charge, which requires 3 meters of running room, and increases the difficulty to Moderate, but inflicts STR+4D damage.
*Large: Minotaurs are larger than most species of the galaxy. While this doesn't matter for a lot of things, in some cases, it can be a big problem. Vacuum Suits, space suits, and armor are frequently inadequate to minotaur physiques. Many standard starships aren't well suited to minotaur physiology, meaning they receive a -1D penalty to vehicle operation, shield, and vehicle weapon skills if the vehicle isn't designed to adjust to their size. This is, to an extent, a matter of GM fiat, but Imperial craft are noted for the relatively narrow range of sizes they will accommodate. Refitting a craft to accommodate minotaur crew members is usually an Easy to Moderate task requiring an hour's worth of work for each station to be converted.
Likewise, minotaurs find many standard-built weapons to be awkward; Heavy Blasters, Blaster Carbines, Blaster Rifles, and larger weapons are quite comfortable, but blaster pistols, sporting blasters, and hold-out blasters will require modification to fit minotaur-sized fingers. While most melee weapons pose little problem for a minotaur, they do find that human-scale weapons are often inadequate to take advantage of their size; the fist of a minotaur can crush a man’s skull easier than a strong man can with a club.
Story Factors:
*Honor: Minotaurs live by a complex code of honor that involves their personal reputation, the reputation of their clan, and their standing within the clan and their clan’s standing within the Imperium. Impugning a minotaur’s honor can drive them to rash acts, and a minotaur’s assessment of another’s honor can influence their reaction to them.
Move: 11-15
Size: 2m-2.8m tall
Imperial Minotaur
Dexterity 1D/3D+2
Knowledge 1D/3D+2
Mechanical 2D/4D
Perception 2D/4D
Strength 3D/4D+2
Technical 2D/4D
Special Abilities:
*Senses: Imperial Minotaurs have very sensitive senses of hearing and scent, and receive +1D to Search checks when those senses are involved.
*Horns: Imperial Minotaurs have bred for smaller horns than the Pirates prefer, and are more prone to trim them, resulting in a somewhat less effective weapon. They can use their horned heads as a brawling attack; doing so is Easy difficulty, and inflicts STR+1D damage. A minotaur may also charge, which requires 3 meters of running room, and increases the difficulty to Moderate, but inflicts STR+3D damage.
*Large: Minotaurs are larger than most species of the galaxy. While this doesn't matter for a lot of things, in some cases, it can be a big problem. Vacuum Suits, space suits, and armor are frequently inadequate to minotaur physiques. Many standard starships aren't well suited to minotaur physiology, meaning they receive a -1D penalty to vehicle operation, shield, and vehicle weapon skills if the vehicle isn't designed to adjust to their size. This is, to an extent, a matter of GM fiat, but Imperial craft are noted for the relatively narrow range of sizes they will accommodate. Refitting a craft to accommodate minotaur crew members is usually an Easy to Moderate task requiring an hour's worth of work for each station to be converted.
Likewise, minotaurs find many standard-built weapons to be awkward; Heavy Blasters, Blaster Carbines, Blaster Rifles, and larger weapons are quite comfortable, but blaster pistols, sporting blasters, and hold-out blasters will require modification to fit minotaur-sized fingers. While most melee weapons pose little problem for a minotaur, they do find that human-scale weapons are often inadequate to take advantage of their size; the fist of a minotaur can crush a man’s skull easier than a strong man can with a club.
Story Factors:
Honor: Minotaurs live by a complex code of honor that involves their personal reputation, the reputation of their clan, and their standing within the clan and their clan’s standing within the Imperium. Impugning a minotaur’s honor can drive them to rash acts, and a minotaur’s assessment of another’s honor can influence their reaction to them.
Move: 11-15
Size: 2m-2.5m tall
Two types of Minotaur are relatively common in what is known as the Bulls-Head Nebula in the western regions of the galaxy, Pirate and Imperial. The original breed, so far as can be told, are the Pirate Minotaur, massive creatures of great strength and ferocity, with haired hides, horned heads, and hooved feet. They have colonized many worlds of the Bull’s Head Nebula, often enslaving the natives. Where they cannot colonize, they raid, trade, or set up dangerous mines with slaves and prisoners extracting metals from asteroids and uninhabitable barren worlds. Moreso than their Imperial kin, the Pirate Minotaur are religious and superstitious, and maintain the old ways, including much of the Force-using tradition. Status within Pirate Minotaur bands is partially derived from one’s clan and one’s place within it, but can also be earned; a truly impressive slave might gain the right to be counted among the crew, should they be daring enough and seize their moment to shine.
The Imperial Minotaur are less common, but only as they are more insular. Living in a small cluster within the Nebula, they have minoformed a great number of worlds, both planets and moons, creating a powerful, yet relatively bordered, society. Whereas a pirate minotaur gains an initial place in society from his clan, which he then improves or destroys by his deeds, an Imperial minotaur’s deeds are all to the glory of their clan. The Imperial Family of the Minotaurs is the chief clan among them, but other families are ranked carefully below, each jockeying with their neighbors-in-status to raise that small bit above their near-equals. Beneath the minotaur families are the Loyal Families, non-minotaurs of various worlds who, nonetheless, have proven themselves loyal and valuable citizens of the Empire. Beneath these Loyal Families, there is the vast majority of the non-minotaurs, followed last by the slaves. Slaves of the Imperium are usually not mistreated, and laws exist to protect some of their rights, but they are still slaves, able to rise only through exceptional performance in the Arena.
Whereas the Pirate minotaurs colonize or exploit worlds, the Imperials colonize and exploit sectors. Their conquests are methodical, their fighters and capital ships establishing space dominance, their soldiers eliminating groundside resistance. The Imperium is pleased to work with local power structures, if such are amenable, and co-opting a legislature or royal family is their prefered method of conquest. Many Loyal Families started as the royals of some world or another, and chose to capitulate, rather than go to war with two and a half meters of disciplined tauroid. A pirate crew will have a mixture of weapons, favoring melee and other close-quarters weapons, but the Imperium Military has uniforms, and armor for each.
Each minotaur settlement, pirate or imperial, has an Arena, even if it is a mere circle in the dirt, but conflict within the Arena is a means to status. It is hard to gain sufficient status to change caste; to raise from slave to free, or from free to loyal, or for a minotaur to drag one’s entire family through the ranks, but there is much enjoyment gained from the trying. Not all combats are to the death, though rarely is death in the arena actively prevented; your opponent may have the right to surrender to you, but that does them no good if you chop off their head with an axe before they can surrender. Arena combat is almost always melee, using weapons or bare fists. Partially, this is because minotaurs favor combat which shows their strength and fitness, but it also has the practical effect of lessening accidental casualties in the audience, as missed spear thrusts tend to hit the dirt, not a bystander. Weapon choices and styles are agreed upon beforehand, however; some combat may be a wrestling match, others may be two minotaurs wielding their own choice of weapons, or the combat may have neither beginning with a weapon, but with them available within the ring, at varying levels of difficulty in acquisition. Imperial Minotaurs will also stage debates in their arenas; though no blood is shed, they are nonetheless cutthroat affairs.
The Arena is also a place where one can regain honor; cowardice, betrayal, disobedience, all can cause dishonor to a minotaur, who can prove their honor by engaging in combat against their accusers... and accusers may be plural. Old tales tell of minotaurs in disgrace and exile, condemned to create their own weapons, so they may face the crew they betrayed in “fair combat”, one with hand-crafted weapons facing a crew of five or ten with the best weapons they have. Survival means proving that the exile was correct; a good death at least mitigates the stain upon their honor.
Minotaurs and the Force
Imperium Minotaurs are neither religious nor superstitious. They have few Force Users, and the Arena takes the place that many other worlds would use for temples and religion. Pirate Minotaurs, however, hold many of the ancient traditions of the minotaur people, to varying degrees. They certainly have their atheists among them, but most are raised to revere Emperor, the god of vengeance and retribution, Champion, the god of justice, and a host of other deities. How many deities vary from settlement to settlement, clan to clan; some clans involve ancestors, or have incorporated deities from local belief systems. Emperor is regarded as their chief, the deity to whom all others must bow, but Champion opposes him, shielding others from the Emperor’s wrath. In the force-using traditions of the minotaurs, Emperor is associated with Dark Side practices, and Champion is associated with the Light, but minotaur culture draws a less clear line between the two… both the Champion and the Emperor have their adherents, individual minotaurs may pray to both at different times, and adepts of each are part of society.
To those outside the Bull’s Head Nebula, the force traditions of the minotaurs are unusual. Adepts trained in the way of the Emperor always take their first steps in Sense, with the mark of one who has mastered the basics of the form being Receptive Telepathy. The Emperor revels in wrath and retribution; knowing the truth of who has wronged, taking their own guilt from their own minds, is the mark of the Emperor. Adepts of the Champion, however, favor exploration of Alter, as a true Champion imposes the rightness of the world on a world gone wrong. Both expect that Control will come naturally with the study of their prefered discipline... that Sensing the Force, that knowing its truths, will bring with it the understanding to control it within oneself, or that Altering the outside world, guiding it through the Force and the Force through it, will enable them to do so for themselves. Unlike many who utilize Alter, however, Champions often use it to affect little beyond themselves, as shown by their signature powers, Force Leap, Force Lift, and Force Strike.
Force Leap (Alter Power)
Alter Difficulty: Very Easy
Effect: Force Leap is a simple expansion of one’s own jumping capabilities, propelling and guiding your direction by subtly following currents within the Force. In a Force Leap, one rolls both Alter and Climbing/Jumping (with appropriate multi-action penalties), totalling the dice and only suffering a mishap if the wild die on both tests returns a 1. Champions who engage in a Force Leap can achieve truly phenomenal leaps, even, at times, curving, gaining, or rapidly losing altitude to hit the desired leap.
Force Lift (Alter Power)
Alter Difficulty: Very Easy
Effect: Force Lift uses the force to reinforce one’s own muscles and lifting power. Similar to telekinesis, but instead requiring that the Champion take hold of the object and lift, using the Force suffusing the object to both lift and support the object being lifted. The Champion rolls both Lifting and Alter, with appropriate multi-action penalties, using the total of the two tests to determine the amount lifted, and requiring both tests wild dice to return a 1 to suffer a mishap.
Force Strike (Alter Power)
Alter Difficulty: Very Easy
Effect: Taking hold of a physical weapon (the typical Champion will use an axe, though any weapon can function), the Champion uses the Force and their own muscles to place it precisely, and with great force. Similar to the Jedi power of Lightsaber combat, this instead uses a simple, tactile, telekinetic to augment the Champion’s own ability, rather than tapping into the precognitive faculties afforded by Sense. The result is that the Champion’s Alter dice (minus the appropriate penalty for multiple actions) are added to both their Melee Weapons or Melee Parry skill, and to any damage that results from the strike.
Compared to Lightsaber combat, there are some difficulties with Force Strike. Notably, the power cannot be kept “up”; a use is good for a single strike, a single parry. If the Champion wishes to strike and parry in a single round, taking advantage of Force Strike each time, they are not involved in two actions, as an unenhanced combatant may be, or three, as a Jedi with Lightsaber combat would be, but four... Melee Weapon plus Alter, and Melee Parry plus Alter.
These powers are somewhat odd to Jedi; why use Force Lift, for example, when Telekinesis offers more strength, at range? But it flows from a differing philosophy of the Force. To a Jedi, the Force is a thing separate from themselves; it may be their ally, it may bind them and penetrate them and suffuse the galaxy, but the force is not them, and they are not the force. To a Champion, or an adept of the Emperor, THEY are the Force. The Force emanates from THEM, and so it is only natural that they use it within the reach of their hands, that they guide it with the skill of their bodies as much as their discipline, for their discipline with the Force is a mere extension of the discipline of their bodies. The Force is not an entity with a will separate from their own, but a manifestation of that will, and of their destiny.
Minotaurs and Technology
Minotaurs are not great technologists; those of the Imperium are able, and those of the pirate fleets are not incompetent, but they have no great technological advantage over the greater galaxy, nor any particular special technological gifts which set them apart. Situated as they are outside the main lanes of trade, the minotaurs lag behind, such that the state of the art fighter in the Bull’s Head Nebula in 1 ABY was close to a Z-95 Headhunter. Indeed, their computer technology is noted as being especially primitive, and though they will use captured droids, they lack the facilities to generate true droid intelligences to place in smaller scale bodies, or to create hyperdrives for anything smaller than a space transport.
In fact, they are noted to frequently favor older technology in many things; whereas a Gamorrean thug may sport a vibro-ax, it is quite likely that a minotaur wields one made of metal, with nothing more advanced about it than the programmed lathe which turned out the handle. Many prefer two-handed melee weapons for personal combat and boarding actions, but when longer-ranged weapons are called for, they will happily use blasters, slugthrowers, grenades, or vehicle-mounted weapons. In the Arena, turning up with a weapon reliant upon technology is viewed as a weakness; you may win, but there are sure to be debates as to whether you could have, if you’d been left with just a “plain” blade.
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