Desert Wind - "Sunrunning" - can keep running/exercising without tiring as long as the sun is shining on them? Hot body temperature makes them resist cold weather effects? Focus the sun's light to cause fires like if you had a really big magnifying glass? Create mirages?
Devoted Spirit - Obviously, perform miracles.
Diamond Mind - Extremely well-organized? I don't know. Meditation equivalent to divination spells?
Iron Heart - Metalworking/metallurgy
Setting Sun - I don't know. Maybe something related to the Theseus myth since he fought in a similar style. Or some kind of mystical dancing?
Shadow Hand - Something about connection to the plane of shadow/ethereal plane? Conjure gateways, do shadow teleports, or that Shadowdancer thing? Or simply very good at sneaking?
Stone Dragon - Stoneworking
Tiger Claw - Hunting? Wild Empathy?
White Raven - Something equivalent to a free Leadership feat? This would also help solve 'having no allies to help with my maneuvers'
Big timeskip is a good possibility. It might interfere with people's ability to integrate it into their campaigns that use base TOB, but >10 years after the fact, that's way less of a concern than just maybe, possibly, giving them a reason to run a new one.
I made a few stabs at the fluff chapter, with the assumption of minimal timeskip. This was an (overly cheesy) attempt at the start quote for the intro:
You fought well, my student. Like I thought, their corpses bear the tattoo of the Broken Blade. I had no idea those techniques were still being taught. And this only a month since we learned that a master of Infinite Torment is walking the earth again.
Perhaps I have been neglectful by teaching you only of Reshar’s nine Ways. Back when I was young, they were enough—and the tradition they represented seemed valuable—but that was an age of mere theory, of relative peace, of sages, sportsmen, hermits and monastics. Whereas it seems it may be your hard fate to live in an age of warriors.
Come then, and let us speak not of nine swords but of numberless, nor of Reshar but of the Sublime Way in its entirety.
- Harran Turiyeshor
(This was with the concept of some kind of world war being the trigger. To some degree, inevitably, it will be simply that Reshar, while an accomplished and supremely talented individual, is not the be-all and end-all of the Sublime.)
I really liked the concept of the Errant Blademaster PrC which is similar. A class that's custom designed to let people try out a bunch of the book's new content seems fitting.And now I'm tempted to make a class based on experimentation and combining styles. Hmm...
Okay, how's this for a base class idea. You get a lot more maneuvers, but your initiator level is considerably lower, so you get lower level maneuvers. Something like a bard progression. But you get access to more disciplines and you get a bonus for mixing disciplines. (I.e. you get an attack bonus if using a boost from one discipline on a strike of another discipline.) Plus maybe a kind of inspiration mechanic, for unusual maneuvers invented on the fly.
Because you're not going to let some crusty old master tell you how to fight.