D&D Backstory: Tegan Da'shar
My wife is also playing a new character in our D&D campaign, here’s her new backstory!
Backstory
Tegan Da’shar is a young shadow magic sorcerer on the run with her closest friend and companion, Varas.
The illegitimate daughter of a minor noble in the Icewind Dales, her father Lord Da’shar fulfilled his obligation to Tegan’s mother by agreeing to have her educated and set up into a “career” elsewhere and so from a young age she was sent away from her biological family and learned to rely on her magic and natural charm. He paid for her schooling amongst other young noblewomen in Luskan, where a discreet establishment existed which promised employment after graduation for ladies without a title of their own.
That employment, however, was as a companion at the House of Harmony. Whether Lord Da’shar knew this would be her fate remains uncertain. On her 18th nameday she was bundled into a carriage with only her small bag of belongings and sent down the coast to Port Catamon, where she was met outside a large and beautiful harbourfront property by an older human woman with a very white powdered face and dark painted lips. Mistress Alka showed little kindness and often reminded Tegan of her debt to the establishment for feeding and housing someone who had nothing of her own.
Over the next several years, Tegan’s life fell into a stifling routine. She acted as escort to visiting clients passing through from Neverwinter, meeting people from all walks of life. Her noble background, thorough education and unusual racial features made her a popular if expensive dinner companion, and though she never left the House without an armed guard she had a modicum of freedom when her paying guests wanted to dine off-site. The guards were kinder than Mistress Alka and helped source materials and components for her spells, but were themselves trapped into contracts which did not allow them to help her truly leave.
The night she broke free was like most others. A politician was visiting and had been invited to the guest chamber, where Tegan had entertained and delighted with small cantrips and conversation alike. As the inevitable conclusion to their paid time together approached, she stepped aside to the neighbouring washroom to prepare - but returned to find the man laid out on the bed, his throat slit clean open and a shadowy figure looming with a dagger in hand. Drawing her magic upwards, she readied to defend herself when she saw the look of panic in the stranger’s eyes. A quick conversation later, she showed him to the secret tunnel exit (more typically used by callers who needed privacy for their entanglements at the brothel) and they fled into the night together followed closely by her black cat Shadow.
During their time together, Tegan and Varas have formed a true friendship, he being the first person she has been able to bond with on her own terms. They have made their way to Waterdeep where she continues to use her trained charm to get them out of tight situations, else relying on his blades where flirtation fails. She does not often think about Port Catamon, but fears Mistress Alka may in time want to collect on her “debt” or that some of the gentlemen who shared post-coital secrets may yet discover she is no longer trapped. Most of all she wants to discover the world herself, to continue travelling further and further away from Luskan and Port Catamon to find a future of her own making. If you get her drunk she half-wants vengeance on her father or to try and find her mother, but she wants her freedom more than to bring that trouble on herself. Entangled as she is in Varas’ own story she knows there is always danger, but she thinks having survived this long they will keep on sailing and see what shores they find.