Tome VIII

Origins

An origin is what a character did before the campaign began. It grants two skill proficiencies, a language or tool, a starting equipment kit, two points of ability score spread across two abilities, and one feature covering what that life still gets them. A few also cost a point in one ability. Every origin works at any tech tier. Filter by skill.

26 origins

AcolyteYou are a junior member of a religious order, trusted with messages, lamps and errands, and the order has sent you out on its business.
+1 WIS+1 INTReligion
ApprenticeYou were indentured to someone who knew a trade and you have not finished learning it. The indenture ran out, or you left before it did.
+1 INT+1 DEXLore
ArtisanYou practice a trade and produce finished work that holds up. You learned it in a workshop, and you can name the ones that would take you on today.
+1 INT+1 DEXTechnology
CraftsmanYou build to a specification and sign what you build. A commission is a price, a date and a standard, and you have delivered on all three.
+1 DEX+1 CHATechnology
CriminalYou took goods that were not yours and were somewhere else by morning. You have worked alone and for crews, and you have a record in at least one jurisdiction.
+1 DEX+1 CHAStealth
DestituteYou lived without money or a fixed address, and you learned that people with somewhere to be do not look at you.
+1 CON+1 CHA-1 STR
DevoteeYou gave yourself to a doctrine and it gave you a schedule of rites, fasts and hours to keep whether or not anyone is watching. You have kept them in a crowded chapter house and alone in a cargo hold.
+1 WIS+1 CHAReligion
DrifterYou never stayed anywhere long, and some of that was choice. You have slept in rail yards, cargo holds and doorways on a dozen worlds.
+1 WIS+1 DEXSurvival
EnforcerYou enforced order over people who had not agreed to it, as a watchman, a guard, a marshal or corporate security, and most of the work was being seen at your post.
+1 STR+1 WISIntimidation
EntertainerYou performed for a living and learned to read a crowd, including how long it gives you before it turns.
+1 CHA+1 DEXPerformance
ForagerYou fed yourself from wild growth and later from what was left in the walls of stripped habitats, and you know what is safe to eat.
+1 WIS+1 CONNature
HealerYou learned to keep people alive with whatever was in reach: herbs, sutures, a trauma kit, a hand pressed hard on a wound. You have worked triage and made the call.
+1 WIS+1 INTMedicine
HighbornYou were raised by a family with a name worth protecting, in a hall, a spire apartment, or a controlling share. You were taught which title to use and which subjects the family does not discuss at table.
+1 CHA+1 INT-1 CON
HunterYou took your living off hard country, and you still read ground, weather and sign wherever you go.
+1 WIS+1 DEXSurvival
Lab RatYou were the subject of someone's research. Someone kept records on you for years: intake, output, what you did under stress. You know the smell of that kind of corridor and how it is laid out.
+1 CON+1 INT-1 STR
LaborerYou worked with your hands for people who counted the hours: a field, a quarry, a cargo deck, a hull crew. You have worked for wages since you were old enough to be hired.
+1 STR+1 CONAthletics
MerchantYou bought in one place and sold in another, moving goods by cart and by freighter, and learned to tell a price from a value.
+1 CHA+1 INTPersuasion
MutantYou were changed by a Rift bleed, a contaminated seam or an upbringing downwind of a hazard that was never disclosed, and the change is permanent and visible.
+1 CON+1 STR-1 CHA
OutcastExile, ruin, a war or a name that became unsafe to say took you off the rolls, and you have lived outside them long enough to stop expecting help.
+1 CON+1 WISSurvival
ScholarYou were trained to find things out and write down what you found, in a scriptorium, a university or a corporate data vault. You know the particular frustration of a source that will not confirm.
+1 INT+1 WISHistory
ScientistYou ran experiments and recorded the results, including the null ones, for a sponsor who paid for the bench and reagents and expected a usable result.
+1 INT+1 CONInvestigation
SoldierYou were issued equipment and told where to stand, with a spear and ninety-nine others beside you or in powered plate on a line past the horizon.
+1 STR+1 CONAthletics
Tech EnthusiastYou have no training and no employer in it. You read the boards, you follow the people worth following, and you have opinions about firmware.
+1 INT+1 CHATechnology
TinkererYou repair devices that were not designed to be repaired, and you learned most of it by taking working machines apart and mostly getting them back together.
+1 DEX+1 INTTechnology
TroubledA deed of yours, or a wrong done to you, is unresolved, and it involves a debt, a pursuer or a record that would end the life you have now.
+1 CHA+1 CONDeception
VoyagerYou crewed a vessel through watches, weather, cargo, and a captain whose mood counted for more than any of them.
+1 DEX+1 CONPiloting