Meguca Van Outen

Race: Human

Class: Warlock (Hexblade)

Player: Olly Hanbridge-Smith

Biography

Meguca van Houten was born to a noble family from Neverwinter, delivered at home by her family's physician.  While she was still at a young age, her parents mysteriously disappeared to an unknown fate.  Subsequently, the family home and estate passed to her grandparents to manage until such time as Meguca was ready to take over.  She had few close friends growing up but otherwise had a fairly pleasant childhood.  Though the family's servants often catered to her whims while her grandparents dealt with the van Houten estate and affairs, young Meguca lamented her lack of friends.  Even the children of the family's servants were busy working from a very young age.  Meguca thought this very unfair, especially upon learning that there were peasants beyond her family's estate that were even worse off than her family's servants.  As such, from an early age Meguca decided that upon reaching adulthood and stepping into her position as Lady van Houten, she would do all within her power to care for and look out for the less fortunate, a line of thinking that in time lead to her worship of Lurue.

When she reached the age of 16, Meguca went against her grandparents' wishes for her to enter a marriage of political convenience, and instead embarked on a series of "quests" to establish schools, orphanages and libraries in the surrounding towns and villages of Neverwinter.  It was on one of these "quests" that Megucastumbled into the dark life of a Warlock by falling into a carefully laid trap.  Following a woeful cry for help conjured to draw her away from her entourage and escorts, the young noble stumbled through a portal leading to the Plane of Shadow.  Finding herself face-to-face with a large number of angry skeletons and cut off from escape, Meguca had no option but to accept when the very being that had lured her into the trap in the first place, a fell entity calling himself the "Q Blade", offered to make a Pact with her.  Though her patron favoured the form of the longsword, Meguca immediately summoned a Pact Weapon in one much more comfortable to her; the longbow.  The newly-empowered Warlock's first instinct was to find high ground, and she found herself reflexively Misty-Stepping up into the branches of a tall tree.  From there, she was able to easily thin out the skeletal horde, before finally coming down and making her way back to the material plane.  However her patron had succeeded in cruelly preyed upon her naivety, tricking her into a life of slavery to his supernatural power.

Ever the optimist, Meguca tried to look on the bright side; with these new-found powers at her disposal, surely there was no evil or injustice able to stand up to her.  Recalling the brave, heroic tactician whose exploits had granted her bloodline it's noble standing, Meguca renewed her vow to stand up for the weak and down-trodden, and not be merely content to rest on her laurels as all her ancestors since General van Houten had been.

 Something didn't sit right with Meguca about this group (especially after watching her shoot a fleeing goblin captive in the back to "prevent him from bringing more of his filthy friends to ambush them") and her party agreed only to accompany them back to their mutual employer in Secomber in order to clear up any confusion about who was employed to do what with the recovered remains. 

The other adventuring group, led by the Mercenary Captain, Alec Blackguard, contained an arcane archer called Nyssa Bowden. Nyssa operated as ranged support and scout for Alec's group or Mercenaries and she was sent ahead to Secomber along with Alec's Warlock, Lex, to secure the route ahead. When Meguca and her group arrived at Secomber they discovered their employer brutally murdered and both Nyssa and Lex already on-scene. 

Meguga leapt to the conclusion that Nyssa and Lex had done this and immediately started her attack, forcing Lex and Nyssa to flee and starting a running battle between her, Alec's group and the Lord's Alliance guard of Secomber during which a flying/rooftop shootout between Meguca and Nyssa was a central spectacle.

After spending 3 weeks in a jail cell for breaching the peace and bodily assault, Meguca walks free once more.  Nyssa, also having served a jail sentence for her part in the fight and the property damage to the crime scene she and Lex caused as they escaped Meguca's wrath, will not forget Meguca's actions and secretly plots to murder her rival whenever she can get away with it.