Brotherhood of Steel

The Brotherhood of Steel, formerly the Tunnel Snakes, is a company of treasure hunters and swords-for-hire active on the large island of Yuessa, northwest of the Tyrian Empire. The company has had considerable turnover since its founding, with a large number of former members buried (when possible). The current list of members can be seen on the Brotherhood of Steel Roster; its current primary stakeholders are:

* **Viggo Hellstorm**, Barbarian, the only surviving company founder, who has an uncanny knack for making money from sources that others overlook, and who wears a necklace made of genitalia from beastmen he has slain. His swiftness of foot and willingness to use it has kept him hale despite being the rashest of the stakeholders. An ardent royalist, Viggo spent great effort in discreetly recruiting and preparing the local peasantry outside the Caverns of Thracia into a militia for revolt against their lord; he planned to install a replacement loyal to the Golden King (and grateful to the Brotherhood of Steel), though his militia has not received any pay for a great many months while Viggo has been pursuing other goals elsewhere. Due to a bounty placed on his head by Shaun the Shaper-King, he is currently magically disguised in the form of another man--however, an error in the spell (due to Viggo demanding it also make him strong and handsome) caused a sharp drop of his mental faculties.
* **Vinnie Guiliani**, Cleric, a prophet of the sands, and worshipper of the frog god Galmorm. Seemingly something of a distracted madman, he hears a multitude of voices from various spirits who alternately give him glimpses at the future and tell him what to do. He is extremely generous with the payments given to his henchmen, in some cases rewarding them with more than double their regular cut after a successful haul. After eating the meat from a slain raksasha, he gained infravision and resistance to spells, though he was permanently marked by Chaos as one of their own number. Due to a bounty placed on his head by Shaun the Shaper-King, he is currently magically disguised with the appearance of another man.
* **Heath**, Elven Savant-Sage, an elf with vast reserves of both arcane and divine magical energy and a wide range of spells. Once very hearty, he suffered greatly after attempting to eat raksasha meat cooked per the book *Fantastic Creatures and How to Fry Them*, with his lungs and heart scorched and weeks of insanity ensuing. After a lengthy period of frail health, he willingly accepted a magical compulsion in exchange for the powerful healing necessary to to restore him; he is now bound to render aid to any cleric of Mithras who might require it, and to ensure the removal of a local nobleman, coincidentally the same one Viggo once spent much effort preparing to overthrow. Not dissuaded by his troubles from the raksasha's meat, he later ate the flesh of a spectator, which caused his left eye to lose its sight and turn black, becoming a reserve of minor magical energy.
* **Cartamo Dugsoon**, Arcane Fighter, a seasoned mercenary whose martial prowess is bolstered by a recently gained magical ability. He has been with the company longer than any other stakeholder but Viggo, having served as a trusted and capable henchman to Lareth the elven knight and to Kalak Zuma the zaharan arcanist, and outlasting both. Cartamo is notable for his loyalty while under contract, his self-serving pragmatism, and his utterly cold-hearted ruthlessness. When Lareth fell in combat, Cartamo retrieved his corpse--to save the many magical items on it; when Kalak Zuma went insane, Cartamo gave him a painless death and honorable sky burial--and then assumed control of his stake in the company. Originally a fighter, Cartamo gained his minor ability in magic by eating the magically-volatile flesh of a spectator slain by the company. With a shadow mastiff now bound as his familiar, he is more dangerous than ever.

    The Tunnel Snakes' initial main focus was the exploration and looting of the Caverns of Thracia. They pulled great wealth from its dark tunnels: ancient magical armor, scrolls of magical spells, the sphere powering the caverns' teleporters, gnoll captives sold into slavery, a vast amount of bat guano sold as fertilizer, and other treasures. In their explorations, the company has put to the sword many of the beastmen, tribesmen, and other creatures within the caverns--though not without significant losses of their own, with the survivors learning discretion the hard way.

The Tunnel Snakes paused their exploration of the Caverns to plunder the tower of Shaun the Shaper-King, a powerful transmogrifier mage. Tipped off about the Shaper-King's recent imprisonment in a stasis circle, the company retrieved a magical telescope for the mage who supplied them with the information, taking potent spellbooks and other valuables from the tower for themselves in the process. The company quickly moved through the tower with caution and professionalism; most of their number sustained some lasting injury to the traps and escaped creatures within, but only a single man was lost.

Returning to the Caverns of Thracia, the Tunnel Snakes found its entrance fortified by another band of sellswords who had obtained favor with the local lord. Rather than contest the other company's presence at the site (for now), the Tunnel Snakes have followed a looted treasure map to a different underground complex, said to hold a powerful weapon within its depths, and filled with ape motifs and many strangely behaving apes. Their initial forays were quite successful, with the company exterminating the entirety of a gnoll tribe in the upper level and a grimlock tribe below, slaying a raksasha, and plundering many valuables, including several magic items. These victories came at a cost; the stakeholder Forrest the barbarian and several henchmen were lost in a battle against many of the strange apes, and other henchmen were lost in the many battles needed to eradicate the grimlocks and gnolls. The company also had several skirmishes with strange serpent creatures found in the complex, who were able to attach themselves to humanoids and control them; though they ambushed the company several times and slew half a dozen of its members, including the stakeholder Lareth the elven knight, the company at last turned the tables and put these creatures and their minions to the sword.

After learning that Shaun the Shaper-King had escaped from his imprisonment and had offered a reward for the heads of the Tunnel Snakes, the company changed their name to the Brotherhood of Steel, with Viggo and Vinnie additionally changing their appearance with the aid of an allied magus.