Minotaur

The Minotaurs were a species of towering, bull-headed warriors that stalked the lands of Greece, first bred by Ares to serve as brutes in his armies. Standing some eight feet tall and walking upright, they carried massive axes and blades into battle, and from the labyrinth-bound beast of Cretan legend to the armored guardian of Pandora's Temple they were a recurring enemy of Kratos.

Nature and origin#

The Minotaurs were a species of bull-headed brutes, standing about eight feet tall, that walked upon their hind legs and carried a variety of massive war axes and blades. According to the journal kept by Kratos, it was Ares who first bred several Minotaurs to serve as war brutes, and they came to make up much of the War God's army. Many different breeds were developed to fill different roles. Kratos himself never employed them in his own forces, judging them far too dim-witted, yet unpredictable, to be trusted.

In the legends of Greece, the Minotaur was held to be the offspring of King Minos of Crete's wife and a sacred white bull, a creature part man and part bull locked away in the heart of a labyrinth built by the architect Daedalus. Every nine years seven young men and seven maidens were sent from Athens to be sacrificed to it, until the hero Theseus, aided by Minos' daughter Ariadne, slew the beast. Because this one Minotaur, named Asterion, was so widely known and its unnatural form so singular, most of the people of Greece assumed it the only one of its kind, never realizing that others stalked the land.

Beasts of war#

The Minotaurs served wherever the gods loosed them. During the siege of Athens they formed a large part of the army of Ares, and within the Underworld the burning Hades Minotaurs patrolled the depths. In Pandora's Temple, Kratos faced a unique foe in the Challenge of Hades: a giant, immensely strong, partially undead Minotaur clad in steaming armor, known as Pandora's Guardian, which served as the final trial. The Spartan destroyed its armor and impaled it against the wall.

As Kratos' journeys carried him across Greece and to the Island of Creation, he met ever more dangerous breeds. The Erebus Minotaurs were wreathed in ice and could be summoned by other warriors, as Theseus did in his duel upon the Steeds of Time. Larger and stronger Hades Minotaurs appeared on the Island, and in places such as the Bog of the Forgotten and the Catacombs of the Fallen Kratos confronted colossal Minotaurs composed of solid volcanic stone, the Titan Minotaurs. In the final fall of Olympus the beasts fought once more as minions of the gods, including powerful breeds such as the Minotaur Elite and the Labrys Minotaur.

Endurance through the ages#

The Minotaurs proved among the most persistent monsters of the Greek world, recurring through every stage of Kratos' war against the gods, from his first campaigns and the siege of Athens to the destruction of Olympus. Long after the fall of Greece, in the Norse realm, the dead-strewn halls of Valhalla materialized Minotaurs once more to test Kratos, conjuring the old enemies of his homeland to stand against him again.