The story
From * (“wildcard”) + band, after the roguelike Angband, after the fictional fortress of Angband in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Angband, in turn, is from Tolkien's fictional language Sindarin, where it literally means "iron prison"; ultimately, the part "band" means "prison" in Sindarin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.