Axe of the Thunderhead

The Axe of the Thunderhead is the symbol of the social and political structure of the Thunderhead Dominion, born from the union of the lineages of Northern Caino.   It is often said, in the official history of the Thunderhead Dominion, that without the Mathom herds of the Elysian lowlands, the Minotaur would never have conquered their own nature, let alone all of northern Cairo. It is often observed, by minotaur academics in the Dominion's finest universities, that the vast majority of the current official histories were written by mathom historians.   While the truth may have been embellished, it is certain that the Dominion was born when the fierce tribalism of the early mobs met the sedentary collectivism of the herds. While a mathom roused can be as frightening as any minotaur, culturally they are more sedate, and favour diplomacy over violence. Some have observed that mathom display the kind of commitment to pacifism only possible from those with a deep, natural connection to violence.   The result of the interaction, the mechanism which made the Dominion possible, was the bicameral society divided between the driving ambition of the Thunderlords and the cautious council of the Ministers of Dust, as the senior court advisers were known. The minotaurs brought motivation and action, the mathom consideration and reflection.; between the two extremes lay a kind of wisdom. The sedentary nature of the mathom, however, also made them ill-suited to managing the business of a larger organisation than a single court. This left the nascent Domin­ion with a sizeable gap to fill in its administration, and the ones who filled it were the humans of the region. Mostly forest dwellers, Caino's humans proved to have a flair for navigating between minutiae and the big picture, and an ability to mediate between the two sides of the courts.   The human bureaucracy and mathom advises suffered badly during the civil war, with most of the imperialist factions pressing for minotaur supremacy and blaming non-minotaurs for the percieved failures of the Thunderhead. Only in the Thunderhead itself was the system maintained, and in fact grew more equal as the support of the wider populations of mathomm and humans became increasingly critical. Since the civil war, the divisions between lineages have become less clear. While this has allowed humans and mathom as individuals to rise higher than before, some see the changes as representing on erosion of traditional rights and privileges, and conservative members of all three lineages resent the loss of a protected role to the benefit of a few social climbers.