Ok, I'm breaking down and asking anyone who would know this.
I've alluded to it before in some of my other posts, but I noticed a similarity in the "national" psychology of the Bannor people and a character named Bannor in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. (Go read these books if you haven't already! If you have, re-read them! *nods*) Is there any intentional reference or inspiration, or is this just something that my brain latched onto?
Thats actually exactly where the name comes from. Its been forever since I read those books, but after reading them I ran a campaign where a race of magically adept people were being attacked by a horde of magical immune orcs from another world.
The main character, whose name was Ran, was one of those sorcerors and was gifted with the ability to see spirits. That also gave him the ability to use soul gates, passages between worlds that your soul could pass through but your body could not. His soul would inhabit a different empty body in each world he entered (in one he possessed a flesh golem, in another a corpse just killed by a death spell, in another the body of a mage whose soul was traveling, etc etc). But the first world he entered was the Nexus, the point between all these worlds that the soul gates all linked to.
In the Nexus lived people who had fled from hell, which is where one of the gates lead. They were lead by Sabathiel and were called the Bannor. They could pass physically through the soul gates and were ageless, timeless and strong warriors and had taken to defending the Nexus (most specifically against demonic attacks). Additionally Sabathiel would occasionally enter hell to search for and rescue Bannor that were still trapped there, he was the only one brave enough to do so.
After hearing the players quest Sabathiel assigned one of the Bannor to travel with him as his bodyguard. That was the second player in the campaign.
Eventually through that campaign Ran was attacked and his bodyguard failed to defend him. It was a massive failure. By this point Ran was an incrediably powerful mage and his soul commisioned a high price in hell. Hyborem claimed the soul for himself but eventually traded the soul to Cerdiwen who resurrected the mage and renamed him Tebryn. She threatened to return him to his eternal torment unless he brought armageddon to the world.
I dont remember much from the Donaldson books but those Bannor were probably pretty close to his version. It wasn't until the few campaigns that the bannor took on their current form. Sabathiel became an angel of Junil. The Bannor became a human empire fallen into hell but their name and some of the qualities of there former incarnation stayed with them.
Note that consistency wasnt a big deal to me as I ran multiple campaigns. Erebus wasnt created in one burst, but evolved slowly over years. So the above isn't "canon" at all. I took a lot of stories from different camapigns and worlds and put them all together in one consistent world (along with plenty of ideas from the rest of the team) to form the Erebus we have in the mod.