In Neverwinter there was a bard named Chellis Gemfoot.

She and her lover Roderic

were among the most successful minstrels in the city, playing from tavern to
tavern. His voice was rich and robust. Almost as rich as his tastes. Her lute,
unstoppable. Almost as unstoppable as the men who came to collect Roderic's debts.

The stress of kidnapping and Roderic's murder pushed Chellis into labor, and her
oldest child Mattock was born. Mattock never knew the life as the son of successful
minstrels. Instead, he knew a childhood of poverty. Because in the struggle with
Roderic's killers, Chellis lost the fingers on her left hand, and with them the
ability to play her lute. And Mattock received a pair of socks from a young woman
in the thieves' den who took pity on the newborn child.

Childhood would be a struggle, growing up on the streets with nothing but a sense
of discomfort, a sense of ill fate, and his twin younger half-brothers: Cedric and
Hubert. As they grew they were expected to act as petty pickpockets and informants
for the thieves who had killed Mattock's father. Mattock developed a good
relationship with Cedric, and with [[Katya's Elf]], an elven lass who seemed
through all of Mattock's youth to be on the cusp of adulthood. She helped Mattock
invent Vera, the young woman she wished she could be, who she became in the privacy
of their secret lair.

Then, on the cusp of adolescence, disaster struck. A great war broke out between
rival criminal organizations that left Chellis Gemfoot dead, and Mattock and his
brothers in the guard house. This was when Mattock's luck began to turn.

For, Roderic was not just a minstrel. He was a runaway, the son of Gnomish nobleman
Lord Thaddeus Hartford. A Lord who had been looking for his rumored grandchild for
those fifteen years. A Lord who found young Mattock, the splitting image of
Roderic.

So as Cedric and Hubert went to serve a few years of hard labor for their part in
the war, Mattock became Mattock Hartford, noble. Fortunately, [[Katya]] managed to
secure "Vera", and get that ensemble for the new young Master Hartford's private
entertainments.

It would be a few years until Lord Hartford trusted Mattock enough that he could go
out again, but as soon as he did, Vera would meet up with Katya again, and with the
recently released and much-worse-for-the-wear Cedric. Hubert had taken an offer as
an apprentice Blacksmith in Baldur's Gate and left, but Cedric fell right back into
the criminal underworld, where Mattock began to exploit relationships with Nobility
and Criminals alike to become a skilled Fence for stolen goods on the one hand, and
a "contractor" to "find missing heirlooms" on the other. This made some enemies,
and one unknown enemy attempted to ruin Mattock's life with an expensive potion of
sex change.

Lord Hartford was deeply distressed when the ambushers transformed his grandson
into a woman, and Mattock pretended to be bereaved, but she was joyous. She was
given an excuse, through pure fortune, to be Vera all of the time now. That enemy's
scheme had backfired, and Vera was free of torment for the first time in her life.

During this time, Lord Hartford sought to find Vera a good apprenticeship, but the
ambush and sex change rendered his application to send Vera to an all-boy's gnomish
mystic college void. However, fortune struck again as Vera met an old Elven Priest
and Priestess of Tymora. Lord Hartford had brought them to try to "cure" his
grandson, but in private Vera admitted to her sense of torment, and her joy at this
change. At her endless good fortune.

They moved into Lord Hartford's estate and began to train Vera as a priestess of
good fortune.
So gathered the adolescent Vera's days: mornings of rest, afternoons of prayer, and
evenings snuck out into taverns with gold, with game, and with women. Vices that
began to make their way home. First the gold from her exploits. Then her habit of
gambling with her servants and guests. And then her womanizing. The maids. A couple
neighbor noblewomen. And, the night before her formal induction as a priestess of
Tymora, the old Elven Priestess fell to her charms.

Her induction involved the Priest and Priestess summoning a celestial to bless
Vera. As she appeared, Vera fell for the first time truly in love. Beautiful silver
skin. Refulgent golden hair. Eyes that burned with righteous love. And fury when
Vera impulsively dropped to her knees and sword her love.

The celestial scoffed. Judged her and the priestess both for their adultery. And
left. Left a heartbroken Vera, a horrified Priestess, a shocked Priest, and an
enraged Lord Hartford.

Vera grabbed her things and left. So what if she's not officially a priestess of
Tymora? Fortune follows her anyway! She dropped the pretension of her grandfather's
name, simply becoming Vera Hart, and slid right into the tavern. So what if she'd
burned bridges with the nobility of Neverwinter in a few nights of indiscretion?
Compromised her business?

Luck is on her side. Always.

And maybe someday she'll pick the locks to heaven and win the heart of that shining
celestial.