Background

During the character creation process, you'll choose a background. A character's background represents their upbringing, origin, culture, and profession. Your choice of background grants you skill boosts to trade and culture skills. Sometimes, your background grants boosts to a specific skill. Other times, you'll have to select your own skills to boost. Whenever you gain "free" skill boosts, you may split up the skill boosts across any number of skills of the specified type.

Culture skills are languages, regions such as nations, provinces, or large cities, or factions or other organizations. These are skills one would usually gain simply by living in an area for an extended time, or by associating with a certain group of people. These skills will always be dependant on the world in which the game is set, and always refer to a piece of specific lore within that world.

Trade skills are sciences, professions, or arts. A character would acquire one of these skills either as a hobby, area of interest, or as part of a career. Examples include Alchemy, Hunting, Medicine, Pickpocketing, Sailing, and Woodwinds.

Selecting a Background

Select one of the backgrounds provided in this section, or work with your GM to come up with your own based on the critera below. You gain the name of the background as a trait, and you gain all of the skill boosts provided by the background. Unlike skill boosts you gain from your class, you can boost a culture or trade skill up to master (d12) if allowed by the chosen background.

To create your own background, give it a name and use the following guidelines:

• Gain 7 skill boosts across any number of trade skills. None of these skills can be given more than 3 skill boosts in this way.

• Gain 14 skill boosts across any number of culture skills, with at least 2 boosts given to a home region or city, and at least 2 language boosts.

Culture and Trade Skills

Each of the previous skill categories has five predefined skills associated with them. By contrast, culture and trade skills do not have defined lists of skills. Culture skills represent a character's connection and familiarity with various languages, regions, and factions. Trade skills are sciences, professions, or arts that a character might have become proficient with. Whenever you gain a skill boost to a new culture or trade skill, write that skill on your character sheet. Skills that don't appear on your character sheet are untrained (d4) by default.

Some character features will grant skill boosts to specific culture and trade skills, while others will provide skill boosts with fewer restrictions. For example, most backgrounds provide a set number of skill boosts to various types of culture and trade skills, but then gain "5 free culture skill boosts." These can be applied across any culture skills the character wishes. For example, you could decide to allocate 4 of those skill boosts into another language skill in order to gain full fluency in that language. You might then spend the remaining culture skill boost to increase a faction skill, thus deepening your ties with that organization.

Take a look at the section below for examples of trade skills, but remember that you can always come up with your own, subject to GM approval. Culture skill examples are also provided, and you can find more about them on the Senteia page. Substitute appropriate skills for languages, societies, and factions if you're playing in a different world than the SOJOURNER default setting.

Sample Backgrounds

You may use the following background samples directly for your character, or simply use them as inspiration.

Nevraen, Disgraced Artisan

Nevraen is a jeweler from the grand city of Rel in the kingdom of Altora. They were respected by their peers, paid their guild dues on time, and enjoyed their work. Tragedy struck when a local baroness died after requisitioning from Nevraen an emerald setting in her silver ring of office. The investigators declared the gemstone to be infused with a curse, and Nevraen was wrongfully imprisoned for three years. Upon their release, they found themselves friendless and alone, banished from the jeweler's guild, and with no other recourse but to find another line of work, or find a way to clear their name.

Choose the Artisan background with the following skill boosts:

• 3 boosts to Jewelry (trade)

• 2 boosts to Commerce (trade)

• 2 boosts to Theater (trade)

• 4 boosts to Altoran (culture; language)

• 3 boosts to Stormtongue (culture; language)

• 1 boost to Éánian (culture; language)

• 3 boosts to Altora (culture; region)

• 3 boosts to The Guild of Adornment (culture; faction)

Crimson Lezzie, Pirate Navigator

Lezzie earned her title of "Crimson" in the service of a pirate vessel called the Bloodwake when she singlehandedly slew the ship's navigator, who was revealed to be planning a mutiny. She was awarded the mutineer's position, and learned to chart a course and stick to it. However, she evidently missed a few conspirators, because a few months later the ship was lured into a trap. Crimson Lezzie managed to escape the ensuing slaughter by stealing away on a skiff upriver, and decided to lay low for a bit while she plans her next move.

Choose the Sailor background with the following skill boosts:

• 3 boosts to Sailing (trade)

• 2 boosts to Navigation (trade)

• 2 boosts to Gambling (trade)

• 4 boosts to Stormtongue (culture; language)

• 2 boosts to Altoran (culture; language)

• 2 boosts to Mesh (culture; language)

• 3 boosts to Sayzentia (culture; region)

• 3 boosts to The Heartbreaker Fleet (culture; faction)

Hartford Waller, Esteemed Veteran

Hartford was recruited from an early age to fight for Nithia, his home country. Miraculously, he survived the first several years of border skirmishes and uprisings. He was singled out by military leadership for his courage and excellent battle instincts, and promoted to officer. He remained in that role for nearly two decades, but his responsibilities were slowly eroded away until he was little more than a parade piece. When he was finally discharged with honor, he decided he needed one last campaign out in the field. So he set out to find a battle worthy of his skills.

Choose the Soldier background with the following skill boosts:

• 3 boosts to Warfare (trade)

• 2 boosts to Stabling (trade)

• 2 boosts to Poetry (trade)

• 4 boosts to Nithian (culture; language)

• 3 boosts to Stormtongue (culture; language)

• 3 boosts to Nithia (culture; region)

• 4 boosts to The Nithian Army (culture; faction)