Backgrounds and Careers

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Your Background is where your character came from. Your Career is the job your character does on the crew. You choose one of each in Step 3 of character creation (Chapter Three).

Each Background and each Career lists profession skills. Any skill on either list is a profession skill for your character and costs less XP to buy; a skill on both lists is still a single profession skill. Neither list grants free ranks. The XP costs are in Chapter Three, Step 4.

Your Background also sets your starting credits and, for Coreworlder and Academic characters, an additional language. Your Career sets your profession kit, whose contents are listed in Chapter Nine, Profession Kits.

Common Combinations

Any Background can pair with any Career. The pairings below are common in the Meridian Verge.

Backgrounds

The eight backgrounds cover the common origins of crews working the Meridian Verge. The GM may adapt one for an unusual origin; the profession skills, credits, and benefits stay as listed.

Coreworlder

Profession Skills: Lore, Negotiation, Leadership, Deception

Starting Credits: 1,250cr

Language: You may know one power's official language in addition to Standard (Chapter Three, Languages).

You grew up inside a power's central institutions: a federal office on Cyranor, a medical institute on Shoa, a court household at Nur, a law firm in The Heavens, a clan council's staff at Kharos Assembly. You know which desk handles a request, which title carries weight, and how to tell a real decision-maker from someone filling the chair. Many Coreworlders left because of what that knowledge showed them. On a crew, the Coreworlder usually deals with port authorities, customs, and contract law.

Story Hooks

• An Irnan credential from your old posting still clears a Merrow Gate inspection on sight. Every use logs your name in a Directorate registry.
• A former colleague now sits on a Port Meridian treaty court and can settle a case the crew needs settled, in exchange for a favor.
• Your family holds a Shoiyan continuity contract in your name. The stack broker who services it wants a courier job done before renewal.

Frontier-Born

Profession Skills: Survival, Streetwise, Craft, Readiness

Starting Credits: 650cr

You grew up where central authority is thin: a Funtari clan holding past patrol range, a mining colony at Red Vale, a Jaziri mission world the capital ignores, an independent settlement on Calder's World. You learned Craft because spare parts were weeks away, Streetwise because the informal economy was the real one, and Readiness because trouble arrived without warning. You trust demonstrated competence over credentials.

Story Hooks

• Your home settlement on Calder's World has fallen behind on its Tharsis Gridworks service contract, and the company has threatened to stop life-support maintenance.
• A Funtari clan checkpoint at Red Vale still waves you through on your family's name. A rival clan takes over the checkpoint contract next season.
• A parts trader in Harrowspan can source almost anything. She takes payment in favors, and she has started calling them in.

Shipborn

Profession Skills: Pilot, Craft, Perception, Streetwise

Starting Credits: 900cr

You were raised in transit: convoy families, crew lineages, migratory fleets, communities that have not kept a planetary address in generations. You learned to fly and to fix a ship the way other children learn their neighborhood, and you learned to read a port because every few weeks there was a new one. Mixed-species crews are normal to you.

Story Hooks

• Your convoy family's ship is impounded at Port Meridian after a First Anchor Bank default. They need a crew to carry the cargo that would clear the note.
• You know an uncharted seam near Harrowspan from childhood runs. Smugglers use it now and want it kept quiet.
• A Meridian Passage liner your family once crewed is listed as lost near Vanta Relay. The family wants to know what happened to it.

Military

Profession Skills: Ranged, Athletics, Readiness, Leadership, Fortitude

Starting Credits: 900cr

You served in a power's armed forces, a planetary defense force, a clan fleet, or a licensed mercenary company such as Sentinel Morrow. You know formations, fire discipline, chain of command, and what happens when command breaks down. Your record, good or bad, is on file somewhere, and the reason you left is part of your character.

Story Hooks

• Your old unit now crews an IDN-0044 cutter on the Merrow Gate patrol line. The commanding officer knows why you left.
• Sentinel Morrow is hiring veterans for a Calder's World defense contract and has offered you a sergeant's pay if you bring a ship.
• A Red Marches operation you served on is under League arbitration, and an investigator wants your testimony.

Academic

Profession Skills: Lore, Science, Medicine, Astrogation

Starting Credits: 900cr

Language: You may know one power's official language in addition to Standard (Chapter Three, Languages).

You trained at a Shoiyan medical institute, an Irnan federal academy, a Jaziri religious school, a Xenodyne survey program, or a licensed research station. You know how to use references, build an argument from evidence, and recognize the limits of what you know. Crews value Academics for analysis in the field: identifying a sample, reading technical documentation, plotting a route through unfamiliar corridor data.

Story Hooks

• The Xenodyne Institute patented a biological find from your survey work. Your field notes show where the find was made, and Xenodyne wants them.
• A Shoiyan institute needs a sample recovered from a vault on the Sepulcher Routes, and your old supervisor named you as qualified.
• Your paper on corridor drift predicted the Vanta Relay routing failures. Someone at the relay wants to know what else you predicted.

Criminal

Profession Skills: Subterfuge, Deception, Streetwise, Stealth

Starting Credits: 900cr

You made a living outside legal channels: smuggling, fencing, fraud, theft, syndicate work, or identity forgery. You know how goods and people move without paperwork and how to read the gap between what someone says and what they want. In the Verge a criminal past is common; what matters to employers is whether you are reliable now.

Story Hooks

• A fence you worked with in Harrowspan was arrested at Merrow Gate, and your name is in the ledger Irnan customs seized.
• An Antaean gray-market broker has an unlicensed cloaking unit to move and wants a crew that has moved one before.
• You still owe for a job that went wrong at Port Meridian, and the collector has bought your location from an information broker.

Corporate

Profession Skills: Negotiation, Lore, Electronics, Perception

Starting Credits: 1,250cr

You worked for an interstellar corporation: Gatewright Logistics, First Anchor Bank, Tharsis Gridworks, Marrow and Grain, a Shoiyan biotech house, or one of the shipwrights. You know contracts, liability, internal politics, and the difference between the official channel and the one that gets results. Some Corporate characters left on principle; some are still on the payroll in a dormant capacity.

Story Hooks

• Gatewright Logistics still lists you as an employee on leave, and your old manager wants a bonded cargo moved off the books.
• You left Blackhull Dynamics with a parts list naming the buyers of its restricted stealth plating. Blackhull has noticed the list is missing.
• First Anchor Bank holds the note on a ship you helped finance. The borrower has defaulted and has asked you for help.

Pilgrim

Profession Skills: Lore, Charm, Survival, Medicine

Starting Credits: 650cr

You were shaped by a religious or traditional community: the Jaziri faithful, a Hazren route-shrine or coil-hall tradition, a secular pilgrimage network, or a people defined by long memory and strong obligation. You have traveled as a practice, learned to be a welcome stranger, and given care in places without clinics. You take commitments seriously, and you may not explain why until the commitment has already shaped a decision.

Story Hooks

• The Vessel of Saint Orra asks the crew to escort a pilgrim party from Saint Orra's Rest through the Red Marches.
• Your coil-hall keeps a route shrine on a moon that a Xenodyne survey has just marked as commercially valuable.
• Your tradition requires you to carry a sealed relic to a shrine past a Jaziri inspection line, and Purifier cutter inspectors will want it opened.

Careers

Your Career is your job on the crew. Small crews need most of these roles covered, and characters often fill more than one. Chapter Eleven, Crew Stations, describes the ship stations each career usually staffs.

Pilot

Profession Skills: Pilot, Astrogation, Perception, Reflexes, Craft

Profession Kit: Pilot kit (Chapter Nine)

You fly the ship and its small craft: docking in tight berths, atmospheric entry, pursuit, and evasion. Most Pilots also handle navigation, reading corridor data, finding seams, and timing offset exits. Craft covers the running maintenance a pilot does on the helm and drive.

Story Hooks

• You flew offset exits for a Harrowspan smuggling ring. An IDN-0044 cutter captain at Merrow Gate still has your transponder history.
• A Safa S3 you once raced now flies bounty work for First Anchor Bank.
• The seam arc at Vanta Relay has drifted off the charts, and you are the only pilot in port who has run it since.

Engineer

Profession Skills: Craft, Science, Electronics, Athletics, Fortitude

Profession Kit: Engineer kit (Chapter Nine)

You keep the ship running: repair, maintenance, modification, field fabrication, and getting parts from different builders to work together. Science lets you diagnose a fault before you open the panel; Electronics covers the digital side of ship systems; Athletics and Fortitude cover crawlways, EVA, and working through heat and bad air.

Story Hooks

• The crew's ship runs a Kharos drive on Crown Meridian power couplings, patched by a previous owner who never logged the work.
• You recognize a Blackhull Dynamics power signature on a "civilian" freighter docked at Harrowspan.
• A Tharsis Gridworks colony grid on Calder's World is failing, and the company's nearest service ship is three weeks out.

Gunner

Profession Skills: Gunnery, Ranged, Electronics, Perception, Readiness

Profession Kit: Gunner kit (Chapter Nine)

You run the ship's weapons from the fire-control station: aimed fire, system targeting, and point defense against torpedoes. Electronics covers fire-control and targeting systems, Perception covers reading the sensor picture, and Readiness covers the long wait before a fast decision. In a boarding action you fight with personal weapons.

Story Hooks

• The raiders hitting Red Vale freighters fire in a pattern that matches Funtari clan fire-control doctrine.
• A Veyr-Kastellan point-defense grid on a fortress station has a blind arc you found during your service.
• Tarsen Armory Group wants live-fire data on a new weapon mount and offers to fit one to your ship for free.

Medic

Profession Skills: Medicine, Science, Perception, Charm, Fortitude

Profession Kit: Medic kit (Chapter Nine)

You keep the crew alive: trauma care under fire, surgery in a corridor, pharmaceuticals, and recovery between jobs, across five species with different bodies. Charm gets frightened patients to cooperate, Perception covers diagnosis, and Fortitude keeps you working in the same conditions that injured the patient.

Story Hooks

• An outbreak at a Red Vale mining settlement has brought in Hands Without Borders, who need a ship to run medicine past a clan quarantine.
• A patient you treated carried a tampered continuity stack, and the Continuity Ethics Forum wants your records.
• The ship's stores lack a medical pack for one crewmate's species, and the nearest supplier is in Antaean space.

Operator

Profession Skills: Electronics, Astrogation, Perception, Deception, Stealth

Profession Kit: Operator kit (Chapter Nine)

You run the ship's sensors and communications: signals intelligence, electronic warfare, countermeasures, and keeping the ship's signature low. Deception and Stealth cover the electronic versions of those disciplines: a false transponder story, a masked approach, a sensor ghost. Astrogation lets you read the corridor data your sensors collect.

Story Hooks

• You intercepted a Directorate relay packet at Merrow Gate that you were never meant to decrypt.
• The Pure Signal League has flagged a feed you helped spread as part of a synthetic scandal operation.
• A sensor contact keeps appearing on the same bearing at the edge of No Man's Land, and its signature matches a ship reported lost.

Face

Profession Skills: Negotiation, Charm, Deception, Leadership, Lore, Intimidation

Profession Kit: Face kit (Chapter Nine)

You speak for the crew: contracts, port authorities, faction diplomacy, and talking down a room before anyone draws. Lore tells you what a Jaziri factor, an Irnan official, or an Antaean broker values and fears. Intimidation covers the conversations that are not friendly.

Story Hooks

• The Quiet Table needs a neutral crew to carry a mediator between a Funtari clan and a Jaziri mission in the Red Marches.
• A contract you closed with Gatewright Logistics has a clause you missed, and Gatewright is invoking it.
• A Port Meridian customs officer you cultivated has been promoted, and he now wants favors for what he once gave freely.

Scout

Profession Skills: Stealth, Subterfuge, Athletics, Perception, Survival, Ranged

Profession Kit: Scout kit (Chapter Nine)

You go in first: reconnaissance, infiltration, boarding under uncertain conditions, extraction, and surveying ground no one has mapped. Subterfuge covers locks and physical security, Survival covers hostile environments, and Ranged covers the fight when the approach is discovered.

Story Hooks

• A recon run in Harrowspan found a wreck carrying an intact Irnan teleporter component. Three powers would pay for its location.
• On an earlier job you got into a Blue Vault Syndicate facility. Blue Vault wants to know how.
• The Unchained Labor Mission needs an extraction team for bonded workers held at a mining station.

Muscle

Profession Skills: Melee, Ranged, Unarmed, Athletics, Fortitude, Intimidation

Profession Kit: Muscle kit (Chapter Nine)

You handle the crew's physical threats: close protection, security, boarding, breaching, and the fight itself. Intimidation lets you end many confrontations before they start. The career also covers bodyguards, bouncers, and security contractors whose job is to prevent a fight more often than win one.

Story Hooks

• Black Sash Group protects the client the crew is about to cross, and you served with two of its operators.
• Sentinel Morrow let you go after a raider attack on Calder's World went badly, and the settlement still blames you.
• A dock fight in Harrowspan made your name, and local crews now either hire you or test you.

Finishing the Combination

Check for gaps. A Background and Career that overlap heavily produce a specialist. A Coreworlder Face has six profession skills, five of them social, and pays out-of-profession costs for Survival, Pilot, and every combat skill. Consider one out-of-profession rank in the skill your character is most likely to need away from a negotiating table.

Check the crew. Before finalizing, compare careers with the other players. A crew with two Faces and no Engineer cannot repair its own ship, and a crew without a Pilot or Operator has no one on the helm or the sensors.

Read the pairing as backstory. A Shipborn Gunner was trusted with a family ship's fire control young. A Criminal Medic treated patients who could not go to a clinic. A Pilgrim Muscle protects people because the tradition requires it, and has to decide what that permits. Write one sentence that explains how your character got from the Background to the Career.