The Age of the Warriors - a ToB expansion book idea

[pyrefiend]

Preliminary draft to the various disciplines and their relationships thus far.

this will be amended as people start setting more relationships and such.

Spoiler

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Should be "witch razor", not "white razor". Also if you're looking to make connections between disciplines, it might make sense for it to be connected to Shadow Hand, maybe Diamond Mind.

[Eldan]

Okay, a few people interested, good. Thought you would be. What level would people like? 1,10,20, something else? Not above 20, please, this is not an epic test.

[DragoonWraith]

I'd say a variety would be good - 1, 5, 10, 15, 20?

Anyway, I'd be interested. I don't have a lot of actual D&D combat experience, so I'm not positive of my ability to properly test things, but I'd certainly try.

[Eldan]

Perhaps we could make different leagues. But then I'd really need a few other judges. Anyway, I'm going any opening a recruitment thread.

[Nero24200]

Question: anyone interested in a little side project over the holidays? Specifically, a ToB battle league? We make characters of a certain level using classes, PrCs, maneuvers and feats from this book, then let them fight each other in a tournament over in the PbP section. Anyone interested? I could even try and draw up some arena maps.

I'd be happy to join in. As a plus, it'll give us the chance to test-play some of the custom disciplines.

[Eldan]

Here we go: Tournament ready.

[I_Got_This_Name]

Preliminary draft to the various disciplines and their relationships thus far.

this will be amended as people start setting more relationships and such.

Spoiler

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For the lesser disciplines, I think you dropped a C from Glacial Chill. Also the entirety of Masked Moon.

Viper Fang should be related to Shadow Hand, and possibly listed as post-Temple. The Lesser Disciplines are not inherently related to eachother (although I envision Silver Pegasus and True Arrow as being related, or at least invented by the same people).

[Haven]

Base Class
Blade Operant - Demented One
Dreaming Lotus Assassin - Demented One
Ebon Raven General - Demented One
Enlightened Budoka - Demented One
Errant Blademaster - Demented One
Leviathan-Born - Demented One
Braveheart Bravo - Demented One
Madspawn Broodling - Demented One
Nightmare Reaver - Demented One
Oracle Knight - Demented One
Savage Savant - Demented One
Silent Demon = Demented One
Spellfire Banisher - Demented One
Sublime Warrior - Demented One
Thousand-Arrow Archer - Demented One
Whirlwind Heir - Demented One
Assassin
Martial Soul - PairO'Dice

Hey, I just looked over this post and all these classes are prestige classes listed under base classes (also, Warrior Poet is listed twice).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Preliminary draft to the various disciplines and their relationships thus far.

this will be amended as people start setting more relationships and such.

Spoiler

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I didn't see Ninefold Damnation or Ocean Tempest in there; ND should be in the Origin Unknown section, and OT in Temple's Destruction.

[Saintheart]

If I might offer a note or two, in kind of a "historical dating" context and subject, of course, to the Word of God of the author if they show up...

It might be better to place Solaris Arcanum in the Post Martial Period. On the notes we have, the discipline is ancient to the point of predating all known races. However, knowledge of the discipline only resurfaced after the Masters of the Jade Phoenix rediscovered its existence, which, if they are Jade Phoenix within the definition of the prestige class as described in ToB, puts them well after the life of Reshar and probably after the Destruction of the Temple as well.

The Black Heron discipline seems to date most closely to the Pre-Reshar Period, given the notes on the discipline indicate Reshar went out of his way to destroy references to it and that he made a deliberate choice not to teach it at the Temple. If that's right then clearly Reshar didn't create it as a style, but it does seem to have been a martial discipline in existence during Reshar's life; perhaps the style first showed up as an outgrowth of the original Iron Heart discipline which Reshar learned, and the references Reshar destroyed almost excluusively came from the documents relating to that discipline.

The Black Lotus school's origin can be divined by looking to the capabilities of its most common practitioners, the Sublime Assassins. We don't have any information as to the school's founders or early masters, but such assassins commonly use techniques from either this school, Diamond Mind, or -- crucially -- the Shadow Hand discipline (Sublime Assassins have a Weapon of Choice class feature drawing from these schools also.) It seems a decent inference to make that the founders of the Black Lotus school must have developed or created their discipline from variations on the Shadow Hand or Diamond Mind disciplines. Of these two, Shadow Hand is probably the more likely: the masters of the Shadow Hand and the Tiger Claw were expelled from the Temple of Nine -- thus setting in motion events that would lead to its downfall -- so there might well be cause to say that an apprentice, family member or close associate of the Master of Shadow went on to create the Black Lotus school. Hence I think one could reasonably place the origin of this school in the "Temple's Destruction" period.

The Sleeping Goddess discipline (and given the Demented One is active on the boards, I realise this is an exercise in hilarity if he steps in and Josses me ) seems to date to the Pre-Reshar period; although it's not widely taught at the Temple of Nine, it was taught nonetheless, so we know it existed while Reshar was alive. Although it is not explicitly said, one might make the argument that the Sleeping Goddess was either an influence upon, or a variant school upon, the Diamond Mind discipline since both focus on strength of mind in one shape or another. I would venture the Sleeping Goddess was a variant arising out of Diamond Mind, since the only reason one can suppose for the discipline not being taught widely at the Temple was because its application was limited down to those gifted individuals able to harness it, while Diamond Mind was more generally applicable.

The schools of Infinite Torment and Ninefold Damnation(and again, many apologies to PairO'Dice ... ) probably bothdate back to the Pre-Reshar Period -- mainly because of the ageless nature of the planes from which it comes and its practice by extraplanar servants of evil. That is, they're both schools whose knowledge was jealously guarded by the denizens of the lower planes and whose power in part is drawn from those unholy places.

Happily, the Ocean Tempest school can certainly be dated: the recorded history of its signature weapon, the Ocean's Fury, sets out:

After the Temple of Nine Swords was attacked by the Shadow Tiger horde, its surviving students fled; besides simple survival, one of their aims was to recover the nine lost discipline swords and in so doing reconstruct the temple. A group of students specializing in the Desert Wind and Stone Dragon schools found their disciplines’ swords and rejoiced, but soon afterwards they found themselves fleeing the Shadow Tiger horde once again. They found a ship that would take them and began sailing from island to island, hoping to evade their pursuers.

As the weeks wore on and the pursuit seemed no farther away, the students decided to teach the crew some of the secrets of the Sublime Way, both to help defend the ship and to pass on the traditions. The sailors, having lived at sea all their life, didn’t take very well to the training; there seemed to be a tradition for air and fire, and one for stone, but why not water, which was all around them and with which they were well acquainted? The sailors worked with the Temple students to develop their own path, and, once they had become skilled in this new discipline, commissioned a sword from the ship’s smith to match Desert Wind and Unfettered. The ship’s smith, not wanting to duplicate any of the swords the Temple students had mentioned, decided to create a khopesh, a curved sword from his native land that reminded him of the waves and the sea; he finished the blade and carved designs into it but was still decorating the hilt when their enemies found them. When the ship’s pursuers finally reached the ship, they found, not a few swordsages leading a frightened crew, but a group of warriors using never-before-seen techniques that turned the surrounding sea against them. Though the students of the new discipline emerged victorious, the unfinished discipline sword was lost during the battle, falling overboard and coming to rest on the sea floor.

This discipline, therefore, falls directly into the period of the Temple's Destruction -- and, as with Broken Blade, its origin comes as a direct result of the Original School of the Nine.

...Phew, more notes for later. Any thoughts?

EDIT: Aaaaand I've been both ninja'd and Jossed by PairO'Dice Lost.

[I_Got_This_Name]

Ninefold Damnation is in the picture it's just in the wrong place. It's in the block of six between the two gray boxes (Pre-Reshar Period), in the bottom middle.

[Saintheart]

One other quick note -- the Ocean Soul school, if Fax Celestis is cool with it, could be easily shoehorned in as an offshoot of the Ocean Tempest school. It's said to have been created by seafaring martial adepts, which suggests it came as a result of the work of the Temple of Nine, but I think an interesting way to incorporate it would be to suggest that a ship carrying several Ocean Tempest adepts, wrecked in a fierce storm, were rescued by merfolk or some other aquatic denizens. In gratitude for saving their lives, the adepts taught the basics of the Sublime Way to their rescuers, who then adapted the style for wholly underwater environments (hence the removal of the -4 penalty for underwater combat).

[Golden-Esque]

It might be better to place Solaris Arcanum in the Post Martial Period. On the notes we have, the discipline is ancient to the point of predating all known races. However, knowledge of the discipline only resurfaced after the Masters of the Jade Phoenix rediscovered its existence, which, if they are Jade Phoenix within the definition of the prestige class as described in ToB, puts them well after the life of Reshar and probably after the Destruction of the Temple as well.

This would be correct. The Solaris Arcanum Discipline predates all currently living mortal races, having been created by a common humanoid ancestor. The discipline was lost to the sands of time until the Masters of the Jade Phoenix (the same located in the original Tome of Battle) discovered it. It is essentially a rewrite to the lore presented in the Tome of Battle, and it might be worth it to revise the Jade Phoenix Mage prestige class to work with it, though I'm not sure if its needed, given how powerful that class is by itself.

[I_Got_This_Name]

We absolutely need to establish more relations between disciplines. As for mine, do whatever you want with them; if I don't like it, I might walk off; if I get bored, I will walk off, but the disciplines I wrote belong as much to the people using them as they do to me.

A proper synthesis doesn't just get everything using the same rules, but it makes them into a unified whole. If that means cutting some disciplines to pieces and building frankensteins out of the parts, so be it. Everything I've written is perfectly fair game to do that with. Really, we have too many disciplines to fit into any one campaign and give any minimum amount of screen time to all of them in (If all you fight are level-appropriate single-discipline specialized martial adepts, which are the best way to make a discipline memorable in terms of screen time costs, it would take you almost four levels to use all the disciplines we have. Call it three, if you can skip over all of the disciplines the PCs pay attention to), so if we start clumping them into groups of two, three, or even four, and chopping those groups up and mixing them together, that's actually fine.

E: Also, if we're redesigning things, we can make maneuvers scale. Seriously, we have spells, which cost differently-valued resources to use depending on when you first got access to them, and we have maneuvers, which all cost the same thing to use, yet spells scale to keep pace with eachother and maneuvers don't. This is exactly backwards from where it should be.

[Saintheart]

I_Got_This_Name, I'll try and do justice to your lesser disciplines as much as I can, and I always believe myself to be subject to the Word of God if I'm messing with a discipline to one extent or another.

Anyway, continuing with some historical notes ... The Narrow Bridge also seems able to be dated to the Pre-Reshar period, since again we have references to Reshar being aware of the discipline but choosing not to teach it or allow it to be taught at the Temple of Nine. Thus, again, it's a discipline that exists at the time Reshar lived, but parallel (at least) to the existence of the Temple.

Subject to the authors' thoughts, I actually think a case can be made that the Black Heron school springs, at least tangentially, from the Narrow Bridge. A student of the Narrow Bridge chose to focus on the darker aspects of the discipline, and his ability and draw on the dark aspect of ki attracted the attention of a powerful demon, who possessed him, thus creating the first practitioner -- indeed the first master -- of the Black Heron school. Any problems, guys?

One of the real opportunities we've got is the Falling Star discipline, which is a blank canvas and focuses entirely on archery. It looks like it's just made for elves, although I think for realism it fits best in the Post Martial period. Something so focused on archery would not have escaped Reshar's attentions had it been around, yet it's not taught at the Temple. In this case, I think a case can be made that the Tiri Kitor -- a race of wild elves, see the Red Hand of Doom adventure for more details -- have only ever had one "graduate" of the Temple of the Nine, who came to the temple, received his training, found it unsatisfactory for his love of bows, so he returned home and began to develop the Falling Star discipline alone. As he did, he retreated further and further from elven civilisation -- though because he's so long-lived, he does remain as one of the few now living who trained while the Temple still existed. We could develop this section of the art as an art focused around one individual, taught to a rare few.

[elliott20]

Wow, that's a lot of errors on my part. This is why I'm glad I have you guys here. As you can all see, I'm a pretty terrible copy writer. Changes are being made right now.

I agree with I_Got_This_Name, actually. As it stands right now, part of the problem is that we now have over 50 or so active disciplines, and if treating each one as it's own unique school, it can get really hard trying to keep it all straight. (Evidence by the fact that I managed to drop like 3 or 4 different disciplines when making the chart)

Perhaps a better way would be to create clusters to group them together. It's part of the reason why I grouped the original into a single school. (Clearly though, it's not as effective if we were to simply split them up and have them be called their own school.)

And the tournament idea is fantastic. We can use this as a chance to fine tune the balance.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

EDIT: Aaaaand I've been both ninja'd and Jossed by PairO'Dice Lost.

You didn't get Jossed; your interpretation agreed with mine (and showed that someone's read that Ocean's Fury fluff!).

One other quick note -- the Ocean Soul school, if Fax Celestis is cool with it, could be easily shoehorned in as an offshoot of the Ocean Tempest school. It's said to have been created by seafaring martial adepts, which suggests it came as a result of the work of the Temple of Nine, but I think an interesting way to incorporate it would be to suggest that a ship carrying several Ocean Tempest adepts, wrecked in a fierce storm, were rescued by merfolk or some other aquatic denizens. In gratitude for saving their lives, the adepts taught the basics of the Sublime Way to their rescuers, who then adapted the style for wholly underwater environments (hence the removal of the -4 penalty for underwater combat).

I like that idea a lot, and if Fax agrees to that I can add a note in the Ocean Tempest fluff to that effect.

The only change I'd make would be to have them shipwrecked/lost/cast adrift/etc. as a result of the battle where Ocean's Fury was lost; that explanation provides additional cause for the split in the discipline, as the Ocean Soul adepts would have seen that Ocean Tempest didn't work for them in the battle and would have had reason to tweak their existing (and admittedly incomplete) training with their rescuers.

[Saintheart]

Wow, that's a lot of errors on my part. This is why I'm glad I have you guys here. As you can all see, I'm a pretty terrible copy writer. Changes are being made right now.

I agree with I_Got_This_Name, actually. As it stands right now, part of the problem is that we now have over 50 or so active disciplines, and if treating each one as it's own unique school, it can get really hard trying to keep it all straight. (Evidence by the fact that I managed to drop like 3 or 4 different disciplines when making the chart)

Perhaps a better way would be to create clusters to group them together. It's part of the reason why I grouped the original into a single school. (Clearly though, it's not as effective if we were to simply split them up and have them be called their own school.)

First, if I gave the impression I was just pointing out errors, apologies; I just decided to go looking for indicators on origin and some hooks which might allow us to link one or more disciplines together.

I think it's still a useful exercise to try and date the disciplines as we're doing, since that at least suggests some connections between different schools.

Having said that, when we're talking about clusters of schools, or grouping them together, are we talking about merging some schools with others? Because I can see some problems in trying to figure out whose disciplines make the cut, so to speak, and not others. Not to mention that simply cut and pasting maneuvers or stances or powers or whatever into other schools is more likely to unbalance the schools that remain, or overpower them.

If, though, you're talking about creating an "overgroup" for a given cluster of schools in which variants are expressed, that might be doable. Ocean Soul and Ocean Tempest are just about ready for such a procedure as they stand - an "overgroup" called the Way of Saltwater within which seafaring martial adepts tend to practice Ocean Tempest while aquatic species tend to practice Ocean Soul.

EDIT: PairO'Dice again makes a really cool suggestion, which can totally work if you want to put the two disciplines into an overgroup called the Way of Saltwater -- a division in the discipline along the lines he described.

[elliott20]

First, if I gave the impression I was just pointing out errors, apologies; I just decided to go looking for indicators on origin and some hooks which might allow us to link one or more disciplines together.

oh no, I was just talking about the general amount of typos and details I missed.

Having said that, when we're talking about clusters of schools, or grouping them together, are we talking about merging some schools with others? Because I can see some problems in trying to figure out whose disciplines make the cut, so to speak, and not others. Not to mention that simply cut and pasting maneuvers or stances or powers or whatever into other schools is more likely to unbalance the schools that remain, or overpower them.

If, though, you're talking about creating an "overgroup" for a given cluster of schools in which variants are expressed, that might be doable. Ocean Soul and Ocean Tempest are just about ready for such a procedure as they stand - an "overgroup" called the Way of Saltwater within which seafaring martial adepts tend to practice Ocean Tempest while aquatic species tend to practice Ocean Soul.

EDIT: PairO'Dice again makes a really cool suggestion, which can totally work if you want to put the two disciplines into an overgroup called the Way of Saltwater -- a division in the discipline along the lines he described.

[/quote]
I was thinking the latter. Mostly, just grouping them together so that people can refer to the collection of disciplines as a group. (kind of like how Karate now a days has the Kyokushin, Shotokan, etc, but are all referred to as Karate) Actually cutting up and re-collecting the disciplines is a doable idea but then like you said, requires a lot more balancing.

[Saintheart]

Double posting, but in the interests of furthering the discussion, asiding from dating, I'm looking into disciplines that might be grouped together based on thematic considerations or common elements in their notes.

Of these, three of them so far (I'll edit in more if I find them) might well go together as a sub-group: the Narrow Bridge, Far Realm, and Kaleidoscopic Dream. The reason they go together is mainly because they broadly speak to monk orders breaching planes or realms or messing with primal forces: Narrow Bridge explores the line between life and death; Kaleidoscopic Dream speaks of its master exploring a dimension of chaos; and Far Realm is established on a monk who again breached dimensional walls. All of them either say Reshar knew of the discipline and chose not to teach it, or don't mention him at all which is the same thing. This wouldn't be hard to set up as a kind of "Monastery Within the Lights" a la Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman in that the monastery shifts dimensions now and then, making its occupants harder to access, and it's a receptacle of plane-shifting, enlightened folk. Hell, we could call it the Monastery of Broken Rainbows as the Kaleidoscopic Dream discipline suggests.

Fool's Grip can, I think, be carefully shoehorned into this post, as well, I think, since it's an improvised/unarmed combat discipline and monks are, well, unarmed. The phrase "was not taught at the Temple of Nine or any similar training center" can be circumvented given the Monastery of Broken Rainbows is kind of hard to get to and isn't your average martial school.

I also think there's an argument for saying that Coin's Edge, with its focus on affecting probability and therefore messing with the fundamental forces of the universe, also had an association with the Monastery; maybe Uther Doul was a monk who left the monastery but used its disciplines to become the master of Coin's Edge.

And, just to infuriate the Demented One even more I think you could make an argument that the only practitioners of the Golden Saint school are at the Monastery also. Because that's an extraplanar school, too: from the Celestial Realms, no less.

EDIT: First thought, albeit somewhat unrelated: reading the Placid Lake school and its elven master makes it a solid place to put the Falling Star discipline as part of a subgroup, I think. Perhaps the founder of the Falling Star school was a Guardian of the Frozen Grotto as described in the Placid Lake text, who changed career after maxing out the PrC and began to found the Falling Star discipline.

EDIT THE SECOND: Black Rain and Way of the Gear surely can go together as a subgroup, and since Way of the Gear doesn't have an origin point, it can be placed in the Post Martial Period also, I would think.

EDIT THE THIRD: I think on thematic considerations that one could subgroup Infinite Torment, Ninefold Damnation, and Dread Crown together. Indeed it's a synthesis of devils' and demons' martial disciplines.

Rolling updates are in effect on this post.

[SurlySeraph]

PairO'Dice, wouldn't it make sense for Ninefold Damnation and Infinite Torment to be the styles invented by Levistus and Graz'zt respectively that Dread Crown was derived from? Black Heron could be derived from Infinite Torment, via demons who learned it from Graz'zt - though I like how Saintheart links to to Narrow Bridge.

The emphasis on nature and agility in Tiger Claw and Dancing Leaf suggests common roots; perhaps they were once halves of a composite style, with the defensive techniques becoming Dancing Leaf and the offensive techniques becoming Tiger Claw.

Way of the Gear should be very recent, possibly derived from Black Rain and still not fully synthesized into a complete discipline. Black Rain probably has roots in Falling Star.

Untamed Essence is probably partly derived from Solaris Arcanum, what with the Spellcraft focus.

Chthonic Serpent's emphasis on grapples and redirection suggests Setting Sun influence.

Krimm's Quicksilver Aegis fluff notes:

But, as the justice of the world would have it, a swordsmen found the crippled inevitable. The warrior was a martial adept, fleeing from the ruin of the Temple of the Nine Swords. Docens XII asked the warrior to kill him and then serve as his proxy in bringing the mage to justice, harrying him long enough for a Docens XIII to be created on Mechanus and finish the task. To that end, Docens XII taught the warrior everything he knew of fighting, teaching him every secret of the inevitables in regards to swordplay.

So it started being practiced on the Material Plane in the Temple's Destruction era but has older roots.

Jack Mann's Far Realm fluff says:

Years ago, the monk Fayid Sulhardin visited the Far Realm to find a way to fight the forces that originated there.

No one knows what he found, but it drove him quite mad. He muttered and gibbered about plants that grew clawed fingers, children made of knives, and eyes as large as continents that watched him in his sleep. But mad as he was, he was still able to use what he’d learned to create a new discipline integrating the horrible mysteries with weaponsplay.

So it's only been practiced on the Material Plane relatively recently, probably in the post-martial era. However, it could have much older roots like the other extraplanar-derived disciplines.

EDIT:

Double posting, but in the interests of furthering the discussion, asiding from dating, I'm looking into disciplines that might be grouped together based on thematic considerations or common elements in their notes.

Of these, three of them so far (I'll edit in more if I find them) might well go together as a sub-group: the Narrow Bridge, Far Realm, and Kaleidoscopic Dream. The reason they go together is mainly because they broadly speak to monk orders breaching planes or realms or messing with primal forces: Narrow Bridge explores the line between life and death; Kaleidoscopic Dream speaks of its master exploring a dimension of chaos; and Far Realm is established on a monk who again breached dimensional walls. All of them either say Reshar knew of the discipline and chose not to teach it, or don't mention him at all which is the same thing. This wouldn't be hard to set up as a kind of "Monastery Within the Lights" a la Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman in that the monastery shifts dimensions now and then, making its occupants harder to access, and it's a receptacle of plane-shifting, enlightened folk. Hell, we could call it the Monastery of Broken Rainbows as the Kaleidoscopic Dream discipline suggests.

I'll think more on this and add more to this post, but wanted to get that suggestion out there.

This is awesome and I heartily endorse it.

[elliott20]

Keep it coming guys.

I'll upload a second draft tonight once I get all the changes in.

[DracoDei]

The linking of the two aquatic themed disciplines is fine, as long as you specify that the survivors drifted far enough that the merfolk had no idea where they came from, and thus couldn't go look for the sword fairly easily AND/OR that the depth at that point was great enough that the water was too cold or the pressure too high for the merfolk to survive.

[Haven]

Keep it coming guys.

I'll upload a second draft tonight once I get all the changes in.

The assassin PrC is still under the base class listing.

[elliott20]

The assassin PrC is still under the base class listing.

buh... wuh... tchh... you....

[Saintheart]

The linking of the two aquatic themed disciplines is fine, as long as you specify that the survivors drifted far enough that the merfolk had no idea where they came from, and thus couldn't go look for the sword fairly easily AND/OR that the depth at that point was great enough that the water was too cold or the pressure too high for the merfolk to survive.

Of these two I think the latter. Merfolk and aquatic species have a pretty long range.

[The Demented One]

The Sleeping Goddess discipline (and given the Demented One is active on the boards, I realise this is an exercise in hilarity if he steps in and Josses me ) seems to date to the Pre-Reshar period; although it's not widely taught at the Temple of Nine, it was taught nonetheless, so we know it existed while Reshar was alive. Although it is not explicitly said, one might make the argument that the Sleeping Goddess was either an influence upon, or a variant school upon, the Diamond Mind discipline since both focus on strength of mind in one shape or another. I would venture the Sleeping Goddess was a variant arising out of Diamond Mind, since the only reason one can suppose for the discipline not being taught widely at the Temple was because its application was limited down to those gifted individuals able to harness it, while Diamond Mind was more generally applicable.

Sleeping Goddess dates back to whenever psionics arose within the setting, which makes this potentially variable. In Eberron it'd be one of the first disciplines ever created; it could very well have been created a year ago within this setting. It has no relation to Diamond Mind, and is instead the result of soul knives and psychic warriors developing martial techniques to exploit their innate psionic powers.

[Golden-Esque]

I_Got_This_Name, I'll try and do justice to your lesser disciplines as much as I can, and I always believe myself to be subject to the Word of God if I'm messing with a discipline to one extent or another.

Anyway, continuing with some historical notes ... The Narrow Bridge also seems able to be dated to the Pre-Reshar period, since again we have references to Reshar being aware of the discipline but choosing not to teach it or allow it to be taught at the Temple of Nine. Thus, again, it's a discipline that exists at the time Reshar lived, but parallel (at least) to the existence of the Temple.

Subject to the authors' thoughts, I actually think a case can be made that the Black Heron school springs, at least tangentially, from the Narrow Bridge. A student of the Narrow Bridge chose to focus on the darker aspects of the discipline, and his ability and draw on the dark aspect of ki attracted the attention of a powerful demon, who possessed him, thus creating the first practitioner -- indeed the first master -- of the Black Heron school. Any problems, guys?

One of the real opportunities we've got is the Falling Star discipline, which is a blank canvas and focuses entirely on archery. It looks like it's just made for elves, although I think for realism it fits best in the Post Martial period. Something so focused on archery would not have escaped Reshar's attentions had it been around, yet it's not taught at the Temple. In this case, I think a case can be made that the Tiri Kitor -- a race of wild elves, see the Red Hand of Doom adventure for more details -- have only ever had one "graduate" of the Temple of the Nine, who came to the temple, received his training, found it unsatisfactory for his love of bows, so he returned home and began to develop the Falling Star discipline alone. As he did, he retreated further and further from elven civilisation -- though because he's so long-lived, he does remain as one of the few now living who trained while the Temple still existed. We could develop this section of the art as an art focused around one individual, taught to a rare few.

For both Falling Star and Black Rain, I slightly altered their lore and fluff and several abilities for my own campaign in order to make them viable for all ranged weapons; Falling Star is a supernatural discipline akin to Desert Wind, while Black Rain was more like Iron Heart.

Going back to Solaris Arcanum, the lore behind the discipline's origin is expanded slightly in my new work; my Homebrewed Vestiges (see the sig). Yeah, it's for Binders, but Yavillin grants Binders the ability to use some of the Solaris Arcanum maneuvers. Just thought you might be interested :).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

EDIT THE THIRD: I think on thematic considerations that one could subgroup Infinite Torment, Ninefold Damnation, and Dread Crown together. Indeed it's a synthesis of devils' and demons' martial disciplines.

Sounds like a good idea to me; I hadn't seen Dread Crown before, but having just skimmed it, it looks like it works very nicely fluff-wise.

The linking of the two aquatic themed disciplines is fine, as long as you specify that the survivors drifted far enough that the merfolk had no idea where they came from, and thus couldn't go look for the sword fairly easily AND/OR that the depth at that point was great enough that the water was too cold or the pressure too high for the merfolk to survive.

Well, the Ocean Tempest fluff says that a group of merfolk found Ocean's Fury:

Many months after the battle, a group of merfolk found the abandoned sword, which had not rusted or tarnished and was as brilliant as the day it was forged. Sensing its power and captivated by its skillful design—for the merfolk had never seen a khopesh before—its finders brought the sword to their home, where their best crafters replaced the plain metal handle with one resembling the reef near their home. For years afterwards, the best warriors among the merfolk used the sword to fend off attacks against their homes, adding a tiny pearl to the sword for every foe killed, but finally one of its wielders was overcome by a sahuagin who used it in several surface raids. Nearby elven and human settlements grew to fear the fearsome sahuagin who “wielded the very fury of the ocean” against them; stories told by those settlers gave the weapon its name. The elves and humans lived in fear of the sahuagin with Ocean’s Fury until a brave warrior slew him in single combat and took the sword for the humans.

I think the best solution to the problem would be to say that the merfolk didn't find the sword because the merfolk found the sword. Less obtusely, that is to say that the Ocean-Soul-adepts-formerly-known-as-Ocean-Tempest-adepts didn't know that the sword was missing, and even if they did, they wouldn't have any particular reason to go look for it over any other fancy sword. They would've only found out that it had gone missing when they heard tales of it being used by creatures who weren't Ocean Tempest adepts, and by that point it had obviously already been found and it was too late for them to do anything about it.

[Eldan]

Is it just me, or is Reshar kind of a prick?

I mean, I can see him, sitting in his temple.
"Hmm. There are 39 disciplines I've hear about. Which ones are good enough for me to teach?"
and then go and visit other masters in their temples, going:
"Yeah, you have some nice moves, but know what? I think the Kusari-Gama is a weapon for sissies. Oh, and you? You use mind powers? Yeaaaah... that's just stupid."