Chapter 4.1: The Shape of a Character

This chapter builds your character: the numbers on your sheet, what they mean, and the two places where the Empire's tools reshape the system you may know from other games.

Start with what a character is. For most Morlenciri, the person, the cysuit, and any Synthetic partner operate through one body. An unbonded character works through learned expertise and external tools; a Synthetic in its own chassis carries the same game functions in another substrate. When you pick up dice, you roll for that whole package at once. A field surgeon's steady hands, active libraries, available instruments, and a partner reading vitals all land on a single roll.

Three numbers build that roll:

• Attribute. What you bring to anything you attempt: how you think and move, and what you do when a situation turns. There are six, and every character has all six. (Chapter 4.2.)
• Specialization. What you and your kit are equipped and trained to do. There are six. This is where the Empire's tools change the system most. (Chapter 4.3.)
• Focus. A narrow active expertise that sharpens a roll when it applies. It may be a Loadable library or a Rooted piece of embodied practice. (Chapters 3.5 and 4.3.)

You attempt a Task by adding one Attribute to one Specialization and rolling against the total; a Focus that fits the work makes your best dice count for more. The full procedure for resolving a Task lives in Chapter 3.1. This chapter is about where those numbers come from.

Two more elements shape the character behind those numbers, and neither one adds a die to your pool.

Traits

You carry one or more Traits: a word or short phrase for something specific and true about you. One Trait is always your species (Chapter 4.5), and a species Trait cuts both ways on its own, the way a Syliri's patience reads as depth in one scene and stubbornness in the next. Beyond your species there is no fixed count, and you pick up more Traits as the campaign leaves its marks on you. Chapter 3.1 defines the full Trait rules: possibility, Difficulty, Potency, duration, and changing Traits during play.

Your Traits come from the life you had before you were Starborn: the world, fleet, or hearth you came up in, whatever you trained or apprenticed to do, the specific years and losses that left something behind. You passed the Four Great Rites and became a member of the Starborn Assembly (Chapter 2.3); that Rite is the one chapter of your history every crewmate shares. Everything before it is yours alone, and that life is what a Trait is built from. What the Rite itself left in you belongs here too. Chapter 2.3 asks you to name it, and a line like "Sceolwyn showed me my cleverness runs out" makes as strong a Trait as anything you carried in the door.

Equipment also lives here. A Clinical Sequencer, Signal-Bending Rig, or Deep-Survey Sensor Array is a Trait that makes its hardware available. Chapter 3.5 separates the standard cysuit functions from committed hardware and external tools.

Your Security specialist grew up running cargo past customs on a station outside the Empire's reach, and Smuggler's Instincts still serves her: reading a room for the exit, clocking a lie half a beat before it lands. It also means she reads a routine checkpoint as a shakedown in progress, whether or not this one actually is.

Values

You also set down several Values: short, plainly stated beliefs and convictions that give shape to your character's ethics, the reasons they act, and what holds them together when a job goes wrong. Write each one so anyone at the table can tell, without asking, when it is helping you and when it is in your way.

Aim for at least one Value that costs you something: a belief that gets you into trouble, or one you would be better off setting down. A second Value should show you at your best, the belief a crewmate would name if asked why they trust you.

Your Diplomat's Value might be "I do not leave the table until every side can live with the deal," the belief that closes negotiations the rest of the crew had given up on, and the same belief that keeps her in the room long after everyone else wants to go. Values that pull against each other are a strength in the build: the moment two of them disagree is usually the most interesting one in the scene.

Values move as the campaign does. Play changes what a character believes the same way it changes anything else about them, so start with something true and let it develop. This is also the well your Determination draws from: lean into a Value that serves you and you may spend Determination for it; get caught by one that costs you and you gain Determination. Chapter 3.3 covers the full exchange, along with the commission Directives that can put the same pressure on the crew.

Sample Values

Building several Values from nothing can stall a character at the table before the first scene starts. The list below is a starting point: take one as written, adapt one to fit your character, or let one prompt a Value of your own. It is a sample, not a menu to exhaust.

• Leave every place better than you found it.

• I answer for every shot I take.

• No one gets left behind, whatever it costs me.

• My word, once given, is a debt I pay.

• Honesty costs less than the lie does, over time.

• The mission ends when everyone comes home.

• I failed a Rite once. I do not look away twice.

• I earn standing in the field. The table just watches.

• I trust my crew with my life before I trust the Assembly with my name.

• Every irreversible choice is mine to carry.

• A century of patience beats a moment of certainty.

• I have outlived enough to know grief takes the time it takes.

• My synth and I do not need to agree to act as one.

• I chose this body. I do not owe anyone an explanation for it.

• The system worked for me once. I will not assume it works for everyone.

• A closed door is a problem I have not solved yet.

• I go through the door first. I do not send someone in my place.

• Cleverness is a tool. It is not a plan.

• I keep my promises to people who will never know if I broke them.

• The Empire gave me a seat. I still answer to the people I grew up with.

• I do not raise a weapon before every other option has failed.

• A frightened person is not yet a threat.

• I will answer to the Assembly before I abandon someone waiting on me.

• My cysuit is a tool. My judgment is not for hire.

• I have never met a system I could not improve by taking it apart.

• The Doctrine says help. It does not say how much it costs me.

• Say it in the open, even if it turns out wrong.

• Nobody outranks me, and I do not outrank anybody.

• I take the job nobody else wanted, and I do it clean.

• I have buried enough friends to know which risks are worth taking.

• Trust is built one job at a time, and spent the same way.

• My own judgment outranks a Councillor's request.

• My patience and my agreement are two different things.

• Every people gets the truth about who I am, eventually.

• I built this crew. I will not watch it come apart over pride.

• The work matters more than who gets credit for it.

• A hard truth belongs to the person it is about. I carry it to them myself.

• I do not need a rank to know when I am right.

• My hands remember the training. My judgment decides when to use it.

• I gave someone my whole heart knowing I would outlive them, and I do not regret it.

• A locked door tells me something is worth finding.

• I answer to the people my work touches before I answer to Mission.

• Some pain only wants a witness, and I know how to sit still.

• My worst day does not get to define my next one.

• I read every room twice: once for the truth, once for the lie.

• Some things are worth more than my own safety, and I have found mine.

• A room's trust is worth more than any single deal.

• I do not forget the name of anyone I have failed.

Talents

A Talent is a trained edge on top of your Specializations: a specific, named advantage that shows up as a bonus when you use it, extra dice, a re-roll, bonus Momentum, or the right to bring a Specialization to a Task that would not normally allow it. A Focus occupies a slot and can change between jobs when it is Loadable. A Talent is hard-won mastery that stays with you from one commission to the next.

Most Talents carry a requirement: a Specialization at a minimum rating, sometimes a species, sometimes both. You qualify for a Talent by having already put in the training the requirement assumes, which ties the Talent to real preparation your character has actually done. The full roster lives in Chapter 4.9.

Your species already gave you one signature ability (Chapter 4.5). You choose Talents, and each one adds a specific advantage to the Specializations you carry.

Chapter 4.4 covers Synthetic partners, Companions, shared bodies, and continuity after a body dies.