My party have just finished Life's Bazaar, and were very disgruntled to find news reports of the Stormblades saving the city from a Kobold invasion.
The plan is to have the party's heroic actions overshadowed by the Stormblades in the local press (the 'Cauldron Crier'), with only the movers & shakers knowing of the party's value until they start acting more publicly.
This will let me use the Stormblades to complete one or two of the adventures off stage whilst the party take a few side trips away from the adventure path.
I've also been using them as a "competing" adventuring party. Initially, they were introduced as the rescuers of the party. The fight with Kasmojan at the end of Life's Bazaar went poorly, and though one PC managed to escape and herd the kids out safely, others were killed, and still others knocked down to negatives and then stabilized and imprisoned.
I had the stormblades follow up right behind the PCs, finish Kazmojan off, and set them free. Of course, they neglected to return their taken equipment, later selling it off at Skie's Treasury for a quick buck, so the party (ungrateful wretches) still hates them.
Further, I've had them show up at the Cusp of Sunrise a time or two when the one PC who's a member there has been there...just to keep them active and 'around'.
I usually make up an adventure for them here and there, just to keep them "in the background" and actively doing things...or I have them finish any job the PCs leave undone, getting the credit and the fame in the process.
In my campaign, the first encounter with the Stormblades took place when they provoked the PCs into a fight at the Tipped Tankard. That pretty much set the two groups up as rivals. They next showed up at the Cusp of Sunrise, where some words were exchanged between the two groups.
One of the PCs, a half-orc cleric of Kord, ran into Zachary Aslaxin at the temple and struck up a rapport with the man; after all, Zach was the most level-headed of the four.
Things took an interesting turn after "Zenith Trajectory" when the Sorin, the party rogue, set out to woo Annah Taskerhill. After many repeated advances, she finally agreed to go out with the rogue: much to the chagrin of her father.
Once Todd Vanderboren got wind of developments, he was none to happy with Sorin. Todd challenged him to a duel and attempted to assasinate him with a poisoned blade. Fortunately, the rogue resisted and won the match. Todd's treachery was revealed, and his honor besmirched.
In "Secrets of the Soul Pillars," the party found Todd's corpse in the Cathedral of Wee Jas. Sorin was sorely tempted to make it "disappear," but upon urging from the others liberated the Stormblade to be raised by Jenya Urikas. Todd, despite his feelings toward the rogue, felt beholden to him and agreed to drop the grudge.
Annah and Sorin were married after the events of "Strike on Shatterhorn."
I was just starting a AP campaign and got about 1/2 way through the first adventure when the group fell apart for a variety of reason (marriage, moves, etc.).
I had used the Stormblades though in the very beginning. I wanted to set them up as competition. The players had gotten together as a group and decided they were all from caulderon and grew up as friends who decided to form an adventuring party (makes life easy on me when they all make up the reason for being together).
So they started when the bard arranged for them to meet and get a contract for their first adventure, sealing some entrances to the underdark which seem to be letting monsters into the region. But on their arrival to accept the job as a group they are greeted by the Stormblades who just accepted the job.
Times were hard for the want-to-be adventurers who just all put their life savings into prepping for an adventure. They had several more unseccessful days of looking for work, when the Stormblades return victorious.
They were then invited by the blades to stay for the victory celebration at the inn. The blades took the chance to rub it in a bit. Then on the way back from the inn that night they heard a cry coming from an alley and went to investigate.
When I first read the AP, I thought to introduce the Stormblades as a competing adventuring party and that's what I did at the beginning. The PCs immediately happened to be jealous of their achievements, expecially at the end of Flood Season when the Stormblades recovered more wands than the PCs were able to and therefore they were acclaimed as the "Cauldron's Savers" during the following festival, casting a shadow over PCs accomplishments.
Then the Stormblades disappeared over the three subsequent instalments (Zenith's Trajectory, Demonskar Legacy and of course Test of the Smoking Eyes), busy in some not too well defined mission.
When they reappeared on the scene, it was when the PCs found Todd's body in the Wee Jas temple. The PCs brought Todd's body back to the Vanderborens.
After listening to Thifirane's speech in Lords of Oblivion instalment, the PCs came to a conclusion about the Cagewrights and the Shackleborns. Among the latter they included Todd Vanderboren with the following reasoning:
"The Vanderborens were in league with the Cagewrights and agreed to sacrifice their son (when the time would have been the right one) to obtain more power over the region. However, when the Stormblades were attacked and Todd died, the Vanderborens, struck by the loss of their son, felt guilty and turned to the Wee Jas temple to have him protected from being raised (that's why it wasn't yet raised)."
At the beginning of Foundation of Flame, the PCs were still thinking Todd to be a Shackleborn and they disliked the Stormblades in general. During the Urban Avalanche, however, one of the players was buried and only thanks to the Stormblades immediate rescue, he was able to survive.
Again, the Stormblades proved better than the PCs in evacuating the city, so the two parts are far from friendship, but they now feel a distant respect one toward the other.
But Hookface is coming...
I have used the Stormblades in quite a few adventures. They appeared in Flood Season, were mentioned in Zenith Trajectory as the ones who collapsed Jzadirune, and rescued Maavu from the invasion of Redgorge. In Secrets of the Soul Pillars, however, things took an interesting turn. The party's noble met up with Annah Taskerhill in order to get some information about Todd Vanderboren's body in the Cathedral, and in doing so the two of them got a little flirty. So it looks like maybe Annah and a member of our party will be on better terms, and they decided to send a small sum of money to the Vanderborens to help pay for the cost of Todd's resurrection following their cleaning-out of the Cathedral.
I'm also going to introduce the Stormblades just after the events in 'Life's Bazaar.'
We've just begun the path (and being a group of working adults, the cast of characters is going to give-and-take quite a bit over the course, depending on who can make it), but the Cauldron "locals" all have in their background notes that being 'on the wall' is the goal of most adventurers in Cauldron (ie: it's street cred to have one's adventuring group named on Skie's Treasuries' walls). At the end of "Life's Bazaar," they'll interrupt the Stormblades telling their tale to Skie, and that'll set things off on the wrong foot. I'm intending to play the two against each other in a race to be "on the wall."