Ecology of the Minotaur Maze City

For many years I often imagined a Minotaur City for my game world. It could be nestled among great mountain inner valleys, or deep underground in a giant cavern. What else did I imagine for this city? Nothing, really. I never gave it much deeper thought. I just thought the idea of a giant maze that made up a city for minotaurs was a great idea. The one constant I had in mind was that it would have tunnels that connected to smaller maze lairs inside various dungeons, where small bands of minotaurs could go from time to time to hunt or just relax on a nice pile of treasure.

Well, a couple of games ago in my campaign where the party is descending deeper and deeper into the night below, I hit on minotaurs as a wandering monster encounter. Several of the bull beasties came charging out of a side tunnel, great axes in hand, and dealt the party a decent little tussle. That was at the end of the game, and we finished things with the group recovering and doing a treasure search (nothing of real value), and imagined them a possible raiding party from somewhere else.

Between that and the next session, I pondered my mythical Minotaur cityscape, and wondered if the party might decide to check deep down that side passage for where the minotaurs had come from. So without actually committing much to the pre-game notebook, I decided that if the party should continue on a few miles down twisting smaller passages tracking the minotaurs, they might indeed encounter such a gigantic maze. In my megadungeon in the subsurface of the southlands above I have a minotaur level, so this would fall in with my dreams of connection to that. So I decided I would wing it as best I could in the next game.

So at the start of the last game, the party went forth into the smaller passage, and after a small amount of time of tracking (they have a ranger with them), they came across the rest of the minotaur raider camp, along with several more minotaur raiders and a shaman. After dispatching them, the party balked at traveling further into that passages, but Krysantha the druid decided she wanted to explore a bit more. Changing into a bat, she flew off to look deeper. So here is where I had to improvise a bit.

After some miles, Krysantha came upon large caves with underground streams that Minotaur fishermen spear-fished, and saw other signs of “civilian” population. Flying yet further, she came into the gigantic cavern. Several miles across and half a mile high, the area was mostly filled with walls of cyclopean ancient stone 100 feet high and 20 thick that created a massive maze. Kryantha spied armored guards at a gate entrance, and concluding that she had indeed found a large community of minotaurs, flew back to the party to inform them of the find. Like any good party of D&D adventurers they discussed the possibility of assaulting the place that was doubtless evil and savage, but in the end decided that they should, for now, stay on the previously chosen path and quest (The City of the Glass Pool far below, ‘natch).

But now that there is actual in-game evidence of my Minotaur Metropolis, my imagination is truly fired up by this. Perhaps the party will one day return to explore it deeper, or perhaps it can be used as part of a separate campaign down the road. But either way, I have to think more how I will handle it, and indeed what sort of nasties and goodies to have within the city. Are there just semi-permanent encampments of tribes within the might maze? Or are there actual buildings, maybe fairly tall ones (all of course with maze-like corridors) in town-like clumps within the various dead ends of the maze? Are there spaces within the maze walls, passage ways for the Minotaurs, a temple section, a palace, a marketplace, etc?

What cool ideas can you come up with for my city maze?