Bambara Grimmgrin

**Bambara Grimmgrin** was a dwarf artificer and one of the members of the Leaves, an adventuring party on the Sword Coast during the events of the Calamity of Memories in the Legend of the Leaves campaign.

# Early Life

Bambara grew up in a well-known craftsmen family in Valley Forge near Sunset Mountains. His father Balfe Cleftjaw was an engineer in the local mining facility. His mother Pulsa Greystone worked as a glass artisan. Her work was especially popular at the town festivals, where she was making spectacles with her crafts.

## Engineering Training and Further Education

During his engineering training, Bambara felt the need to expand his knowledge beyond his father's expertise, as he was interested in more than he had picked up from watching his father's craft.

During one of the town festivals, Bambara was especially taken by one firework act, which inspired him to get interested in explosives and the art of creating them and bending its power to his will. He soon turned all of his attention to studying the physics and science behind the craft of explosives, which in turn paved his way of becoming an artificer.

## Love, Marriage, Death

As an artificer apprentice in the Valley Forge Artisan Guild, he met Calama Glasseye, a human artificer specialized in the relationship between science and medicine. Together they had a child Cobana.

When he was 4 years old Cobana fell sick. In spite of all her efforts, Calama couldn't find a way to cure him. Bambara tried to find and bribe the best physicians in Faerun. However, no one seemed to have a cure for the illness. One morning, after endless days of coughing, the house suddenly stood silent. Cobana was buried at the foot of the Sunset Mountains.

## A Hell of a Hundred

After the death of his child, Bambara left Calama and his hometown, roaming the world offering his skillset in various towns until he became part of the infamous mercenary group A Hell of a Hundred, known for taking anyone who will serve the "power of the coin and blood".

Bambara spent 20 years in the group as the main engineer, providing his skills to dubious and often times morally ambiguous ends. It is in this time when he met Omihi and Arahna. He was responsible for their initiation into the group, while Klefti, an orc mercenary, and Varava of the Yautja Clan, a bedine hunter, trained them in the art of assassination, spying and sabotaging.

During one of their missions codenamed Silent Night, Deadly Night, a particular gruesome act even for the standards of A Hell of a Hundred, Bambara, Omihi, Arahna, Klefti and Varava decided to turn on the mercenary group. While the rest of the group where enjoying their spoils of their latest accomplishments, Bambara and his coconspirators spiked their food and drinks. Once the mercenaries where put down, Bambara and his party burned the whole camp to the ground, with the exception of their cleric, a human named Ulmin Gvizd. Omihi and Arahna took particular joy in torturing and killing him.

Bambara, who saw in Omihi and Arahna an extension of his lost child, grew concerned of their behavior as it became more evident to him that he may have failed to provide them with a proper role model. Soon after those events, all five of them parted ways but not before making a blood pact, promising each other unconditional support in matters of life and death.

## Wanderlust King

After parting ways with his group, Bambara kept a low profile, offering his services to various factions of the realm, staying loyal only to the highest bidder. One of these factions was an orc clan by the name of Boneshields, led by their charismatic bugbear leader Stobax. Bambara freed up a pathway leading to the old mines of Icespire Peak, when he came across the Leaves.

Soon after catching up with Omihi, Bambara made his way down the mountain, where he was engaged by another former ally, Arahna, who in the meantime started working for Xanathar. She offered him some work in "deconstruction of various keeps, forts and villas", as she put it.

# Joining the Leaves

While working with Arahna on a sabotage mission, she told Bambara that she felt Omihi's death the night before. Knowing hers and Omihi's strong connection and their mental bond, Bambara believed her. She convinced him that the party he traveled with (the Leaves) were responsible for his death and that Omihi's death needed to be revenged.

Bambara tracked down the Leaves and followed them for a few days. During that surveillance, he found out about the Villa of Leaves, their base in Phandalin. Arahna decided that they blow up the villa as retribution, killing them in the process.

The two of them travelled to Phandalin and accessed the basement of the villa, where Bambara planted the explosive. Little did he know, Arahna had alternate motives in regards to the Leaves: she was out for revenge but also eager to capture the pandaren prince from Kara-Tur Raijin, who recently joined the Leaves. She placed Glyphs of Warding in the basement that would detonate the explosives without Bambara's knowledge.

As the Leaves where attending the wedding of Matrim, the stepson of Rangor, in Phandalin Square, the detonation went off, which started the Siege of Phandalin. Bambara escaped the basement just in time and saved Gambino, who was just walking up to the villa. Realizing that Arahna betrayed him, Bambara joined the Leaves in their quest to get revenge on the real perpetrator of Omihi's death: Lakrima.

# Travelling with the Leaves

For a list of events that happened after Bambara joined the Leaves see Legend of the Leaves.

# Five years after the Calamity of Memories

Following the Calamity of Memories, Bambara travelled with Lorilon to Elminster and Arahna in The Dalelands. Bambara stayed there and trained for one year before making his way to the south. He became a regular at the Three Corners Tavern near Mulhessen in Sembia.

After one month of resting from his training, Bambara met two dwarf artificers, Flinta Wormwood and Platun Deadskin, who invited him to their Derelict Distillery near the town of New Yaukwood. Bambara was intrigued by them talking about their recipe for a new drink they where making. Bambara noticed that the distillery was heavily guarded by traps and other contraptions.

While staying at the distillery, Bambara created two new kinds of explosives: The Tear of Omihi and Cobana's Cough.

One night, while helping Flinta and Platun with their beverage recipe, Bambara noticed a hidden trapdoor in the laboratory. Without his colleagues noticing, he took a peak and saw a starving child trapped inside. That night, Bambara smashed Platun's head against a lab counter and slashed Flinta up, killing them both.

Bambara freed six children in total, which will later become known as the Slingshot Shorts.

While examining the distillery, Bambara found out that the kids where used for making Delirium.

Using his funds and the money found in the distillery, Bambara bought a piece of land near Jagomir and established an artisan guild where he would train the Slingshot Shorts. After two years of teaching the kids all that he knows, he decided to try to persuade Arahna to look after them. She agreed reluctantly to it but grew very fond of the children in a matter of weeks.

Being stationary for too long in one place, Bambara decided to visit Jagomir, Omihi's hometown. There he found out from the locals that the Kakurenbo family lived through a devastating tragedy during the Tiefling Raids. Taken by that what he had learned, Bambara created a statue of Omihi in Jagomir as a final farewell to him. It was at this moment when he heard a voice he hadn't heard in years: Malcer calling on him to reunite in Phandalin.