This way-village is a place of horse-ranches and hedgerows, located where the trail known as the Long Reach crosses the large, well-traveled road known as the Hlintar Ride. Its pastoral beauty and easy access to trade-routes makes it popular with successful and not yet entirely retired merchants and adventurers looking to build manor houses. Wealth is everywhere in Bambryn, albeit guarded by hired armsmen, and tends to be invested in line horseflesh and luxury crops (such as flowers whose freshness is augmented by cantrips before shipping elsewhere, or truffles and other exotic fungi). Portable treasure that can be seized without a fight is less plentiful, but there are tales of a highwayman's lost loot.

Iljack of the Black Blade was a daring brigand who swung a dull black broadsword with magical powers. He terrorized the central Vast in the early days of human habitation, stripping peddlers and dwarven metal-traders alike of their goods. On many occasions Iljack narrowly escaped death, using the magic of his blade to spirit himself out of traps and bloody ambushes - and he would return the favor by hunting down and assassinating anyone who led a strike against him, wherever they ended up (even if he had to travel to Procampur or a more distant city to do so).

In the end, this thirst for revenge claimed his life. He hunted down a merchant who was riding to wed a sorceress - and she rose from their bridal bed to hurl Iljack out the window of her tower in Procampur. The highwayman made the flight out over the water in the heart of a swarm of fireballs, and only ashes and a blazing blade struck the water below. Iljack's booty, widely believed to be hidden somewhere in Bambryn (his base of operations), has never been found. A stone marked with a black sword was found buried under a tree felled by a storm-but under it was no treasure, only another stone bearing the words: "Moved it all. See me for your share." Under these words was the black sword symbol.

From time to time, adventurers still come to Bambryn looking for the highwayman's treasure. Those who go looking around manor house grounds are usually welcomed in an unfriendly fashion by war-dogs - or worse.