Backstories
The backstory defines the skills of the colonist in question and is divided into two parts, childhood and adulthood. The backstory may either enhance or impair the colonists competence regarding specific skills. Currently there are 11 childhood and 18 adulthood backstories. 7 of the latter are not available in the character creation phase, however they do appear as raiders and wanderers.
Childhood
Abandoned child
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Adventuring child
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Amateur botanist
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Amateur engineer
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Apocalypse child
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Aristocrat
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Artful dodger
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Artisan farmer
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Aspiring pop idol
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Awkward nerd
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Bone collector
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Brutal thief
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Cat herder
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Cave child
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Caveworld tender
"[Character] grew up in a cave complex deep beneath the surface of an inhospitable world. He/She worked with the children tending the tribe's fungus crop."
- Growing: +4
- Mining: +2
- Shooting: -3
Caveworld tunneler
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Chess master
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Child prodigy
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Child slave
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Circus performer
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Coliseum cleaner
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Coma child
"A childhood accident put [Character] into a coma. He/She didn't wake up until he/she was in his/her late teens. His/Her body never recovered from the years of inactivity, but people tend to take pity on him/her when they hear his/her story."
- Construction: -2
- Mining: -2
- Social: +5
Construction grunt
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Core dilettante
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Core world student
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Corp student
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Disciplined farmer
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Displaced nobel
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Dreamer
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Drug mule
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Fallen prodigy
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Farm boy
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Farmer boy
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Feral child
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Feudal farm boy
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Fire tender
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Fire-scarred child
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Foundry apprentice
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Frightened child
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Frontier marshal
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Gang member
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Glitterworld nerd
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G-nome sculptor
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Gun kid
"Growing up in a urbworld, [Character] never had it easy. Every day was a struggle and pollution, hunger, and gangs of older kids.
In the little space he had to himself he studied his passion - guns, combat tactics, and war history."
- Shooting: +3
- Melee: +3
- Artistic: -3
Hacker prodigy
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Herder
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Hillbilly prodigy
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Hive world child
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Imperial student
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industrial orphan
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Indworld urchin
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Mad scientist
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Mechanoid nerd
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Medieval lordling
"[Character] was a minor noble in an old kingdom on a medieval world. He grew up in a manor made of stone, served by bowing lowerclassmen. Such a life teaches no technical skills and instils a lifelong aversion to manual labor - but [Character] learned early the ways of social manipulation."
- Construction: -1
- Growing: -1
- Mining: -1
- Social: +4
Medieval slave
"[Character] grew up pulling carts and digging holes on a medieval world. Simple manual labor is his/her oldest companion - along with the master's leash. He/She didn't learn to read until age nine."
- Construction: +2
- Growing: +2
- Research: -3
- Mining: +2
Medieval slave
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Medieval squire
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Midworld sketcher
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Military child
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Nerd
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Noble ward
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Officer cadet
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Optimistic child
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Organ farm
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Orphan
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Orphan of war
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Pampered
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Pickpocket
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Power-mad scholar
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privileged prodigy
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Rebel slave
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Reclusive child
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Scavenger
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scout
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Shelter child
"[Character] grew up in a shelter deep beneath a toxic world. He/She received a comprehensive education, but had no opportunity to do physical labour."
- Construction: -2
- Research: +3
- Mining: -2
- Social: +2
- Medicine: +3
Shunned girl
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Sickly child
"As a child, [Character] suffered from a rare disease. Quarantined in a research hospital, he/she had minimal human contact and got little physical exercise. In the sterile hospital enviroment, however he/she became very familiar with science and medicine."
- Construction: -2
- Research: +4
- Melee: -2
- Social: -2
- Medicine: +5
Slave farmer
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Sole survivor
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Son of a huntress
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Space fanboy
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Spoiled child
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Stableboy
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Starforce cadet
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Station whelp
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straggler
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Street child
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Street kid
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Student engineer
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Student socialite
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Terra child
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Test subject
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Tinkerer
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Toxic child
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Traders' child
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Tragic twin
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Tribe child
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Upper urbworlder
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Urbworld criminal
"Born into a bad circumstance on an overpopulated urbworld [Character] turned to small-time crime as a way to avoid starvation and hypothermia. Robery and murder were daily activities for him. [Character] learned that surviving was winning."
- Shooting: +2
- Hand to Hand: +3
- Medicine: +1
Urbworld hooligan
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Urbworld urchin
"The urbworlds - ancient and deep industrial cityscapes bursting with humanity and poison.
[Character] grew up in the dark, unwanted reaches of such a place. He/She had to fight for every scrap of food."
- Shooting: +2
- Hand to Hand: +4
Vatgrown assassin
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Vatgrown medic
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Vatgrown slavegirl
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Vatgrown soldier
"[Character] wasn't made as a person, but as an instrument of destruction.
Growing in a bioweapons facility and taught combat during his/her accelerated growth, [Character] still has a proclivity for combat of all kinds and an aversion to human contact."
- Shooting: +4
- Hand to Hand: +4
- Social: -4
- Warden disabled
- Doctoring disabled
Vengeful child
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Video gamer
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Voyager child
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VR addict
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War child
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War refugee
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Wild child
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Winerunner
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Work camp slave
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Youth delinquent
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Youth hooligan
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Adulthood
* Unavailable during character creation.
Assassin*
"[Character] was a professional assassin. He/She was cold, calculating, and made a good profit. In this business, an utter lack of empathy was an asset."
- Construction: -2
- Growing: -2
- Mining: -2
- Shooting: +10
- Hand to Hand: +10
- Researching disabled
- Cleaning disabled
- Hauling disabled
- Plant cutting disabled
- Mining disabled
- Growing disabled
- Constructing disabled
- Warden disabled
- Doctoring disabled
Bartender
"[Character] worked as a bartender on a seedy space station. The job entailed one part drink mixing, one part diplomacy, and one part head-bashing."
- Melee: +2
- Social: +2
- Cooking: +1
Colony settler
"[Character] was a settler on a new colony world.
Such a life requires a jack-of-all trades at basic hands-on tasks."
- Construction: +4
- Growing: +4
- Mining: +4
Con Artist*
"[Character] never created a thing in his/her life. He/She did, however, prove to be natural at getting others to give him/her what they had created."
- Social: +10
- Soldiering disabled
Courtesean*
"[Character] was used for his/her body by hundreds of customers in brothels on several planets. He/She gained some mental marks and a special kind of street smarts."
- Hand to Hand: +3
- Social: +8
- Cleaning disabled
- Hauling disabled
- Plant cutting disabled
- Mining disabled
- Growing disabled
- Constructing disabled
Deep space miner
"[Character] did the sweaty, grimy work of pulling metal out of asteroids on a deep space rig. He/She used his/her hands-on industrial skills daily - and wasn't bad in a bar fight either."
- Construction: +3
- Mining: +7
- Hand to Hand: +2
Housemate
"As an adult, [Character] kept house and cared for children while his/her spouse worked."
- Cooking: +3
- Medicine: +3
- Crafting: +2
Illegal shipwright*
"There is a law that say that you're not allowed to put terawatt-range grasers on a cargo scow. Especially if you hide them under what looks like a communications dish for better ambush potential. [Character] discovered that there was great profit to be made, however, from those who are uninterested in these laws."
- Construction: +7
Luddite Rebel
"When the majority of people on his/her world chose to give up their individuality and biological humanity to join together in an online hive-mind [Character] joined a rebel faction that chose to forsake most technology."
- Construction: +3
- Mining: +2
- Melee: +3
- Researching disabled
- Crafting disabled
Medieval farm oaf
"Tilling, hoeing, guiding ox carts, pushing wheelbarrows. Digging ditches, planting seeds, predicting the harvest.
Medieval-level farmers aren't educated in the usual sense, but they know a lot about growing plants without technology. That said, such a life leaves one essentially incapable of participating in intellectual, technology-driven activities."
- Growing: +8
- Mining: +3
- Research disabled
Medieval lord
"[Character] was a lord on a preindustrial planet. He/She went to parties, managed the underlings, and even learned some swordplay.
His/Her soft hands did not hold a work tool during that entire time. He/She considers manual labor to be beneath him/her."
- Construction: -5
- Growing: -5
- Mining: -5
- Shooting: +5
- Hand to Hand: +5
- Social: +7
- Cleaning disabled
- Hauling disabled
- Plant cutting disabled
- Mining disabled
- Growing disabled
- Constructing disabled
Military commissar
"[Character] was an internal spymaster in an Imperial army battalion. He/She made sure that the men were loyal, and did not fall back unless ordered. This made him/her unpopular, but he/she gained great skill at detecting the slightest dishonesty."
- Shooting: +3
"Interstellar warfare is won by technology, so imperial navies are always on the peak of modern research. Even better, they have first access to Transcendent artifacts because they find them in space.
[Character] worked in a navy lab."
- Research: +8
Pit Brawler*
"[Character] was 15 when he/she got in his/her first fight. He/She won, but more important was the enjoyment of his/her audience. Pit fighting turned out to be a lucrative career for those who could survive it. And it was even mostly legal."
- Hand to Hand: +8
- Researching disabled
- Doctoring disabled
Space Marine*
"[Character] was a warrior in an Imperial navy. His/Her job was to be punched into enemy warships, gun down the crew, and capture the ship intact. And he/she was good at it."
- Shooting: +7
- Hand to Hand: +5
Space pirate*
"Piracy appears everywhere that governments are weak and society spread thin. [Character] was part of this age-old part of human existence, extorting and smashing peaceful trade ships for profit."
- Shooting: +4
- Hand to Hand: +4
Urbworld entrepreneur
"In the urbworlds, most suffer. But someone has to run the corporations.
[Character] learned the skills of the trade - greasing palms and technical analysis. He/She is a sociointellectual machine."
- Research: +3
- Social: +6
Urbworld polititian
"It's no secret that the Companies own much of the urbworlds, but someone has to take the bribes. [Character] was one such figurehead.
He/She learned how to manipulate the hopes and dreams of the people while living comfortably on a penthouse."
- Social: +8
- Cleaning disabled
- Hauling disabled
- Crafting disabled
- Plant cutting disabled