Guides/Character Creation

So you've decided to create a character
Although not mandatory or strictly enforced, making your character lore-compliant can go a long way towards engaging in successful and satisfying roleplay. Having a clearly defined background helps greatly in playing a realistic, believable character - not only does it give your character memories, past experiences, and motivations, but it can serve as something to bond over - as you meet characters of similar or different backgrounds, and get the opportunity to discuss living conditions, previous employers, or even personal culture and values.

Housing & General Background
The easiest location to pick for your character to live is probably on the Odin. The NSS Odin, also know as CentCom, serves as a central hub to all NanoTrasen stations around Tau Ceti, and contains some cheap housing available for NanoTrasen employees. It's also the place where every round ends.

However, if you're looking for something a bit more fancy than that, there's a wide array of planets your character can be from and live on. The most obvious one would be Biesel - location of NanoTrasen's headquarters (and planet CentCom orbits above), Biesel is humanity's main hub in Tau Ceti - it contains highly developed cities, and is inhabited by all sorts of humans and xenos of all sorts of cultural backgrounds and income brackets. The capital of Biesel is Mendell City, and once again, it supplies a great majority of NanoTrasen's workforce.

If Biesel isn't for you, two more planets in Tau Ceti contain major population centers - New Gibson, an ice planet with a hostile climate, is the industrial powerhouse of Tau Ceti - it is a frequent background for characters that have experience in manufacturing or technology, as well as management. Luthien, a desert planet, is also home to some 20 000+ scientists and researchers working in high-tech outposts, though due to its low level of development aside from science stations, most of its resident population only chooses to live there for work.

Of course, the option remains to have your character be from Earth, if you prefer to stick to something more familiar. Most of Earth's nations have persisted through the last 400+ years and are still present to a degree, and large amounts of human development around the Sol system have allowed for colonies of varied interests to be established on the Moon and on Mars.

Your character might also have been raised as a spacer, living from ship to ship and finding employment around the galaxy's vast spacer population - though do keep in mind they would likely need to find a fixed place to live while under NanoTrasen employment, as the Aurora does not possess its own dedicated living complex.

Education
Read more: List of Places of Education, NanoTrasen Occupation Qualifications

How your character achieves their current level of education is mostly left up to you - while a list of the most important places of education for different jobs has been compiled for your convenience, players from more obscure backgrounds may choose to make up their own schools and institutions, if none already exist.

While previous police or military experience is useful when working security, it is not a requirement - lower grade jobs such as security or cargo have no special requirements, and instead contain their own preliminary training, offered by NanoTrasen (i.e. the NT Security Force Bootcamp).

As for high-skilled jobs, please note that the median time to achieve a Bachelor's degree is four years, and as such, we would not expect to see characters any younger than 22 in the science and medical fields (internships being one exception). Even so, youngest characters would likely only be accomplishing the equivalent of a residency, and not entrusted with higher-grade jobs until they acquired work experience or further training.

Work Experience
Read more: List of Corporations

As the 2400s are the age of megacorporations, it is not uncommon for people to begin working for NanoTrasen right off the bat; however, previous work experience is appreciated, and might help justify that extra pay grade, or senior or head employee position.

Biesel and Earth once again provide all sorts of industries and employers for your characters to originate from, but manufacturing-oriented characters (cargo, roboticists, engineering) might also opt to have worked on New Gibson, and Luthien remains a bastion of highly-skilled scientists and researchers. Experience among other space stations is also not uncommon when transferring from one station to another, whether it be history acquired with NanoTrasen or another company.

Culture:
While most religions and cultures of Earth have survived to this day, and tend to be an always popular choice among players, a list of fictional minor factions (that are not Sol Alliance, Republic of Biesel or Eridani Federation) is available here.

Language:
The language spoken across NanoTrasen workplaces as well as most of Tau Ceti is Ceti Basic, although there exist various real and fictional languages, some of which can actually be spoken in-game. A full list can be found here.