Ya a friend of mine turned me on to the forums, I'm not aware of any back story with Meg and the other BG's. Or any other forums really.. The BG forums here is the first D&D resource I have used. I'm still pretty new to the community..
Ahh, well welcome. Now go read OotS, you'll love it.
Then you should probably download some podcasts. they may stab me for saying this, but who cares if you ignore their chatter. Some of them are long and they may jump into a tangent for a bit, but if you run them in the background, you'll probably catch something you're interested in and pay more attention to it. Some of the advice is pretty helpful, just don't ask me where I heard it from