Hey so I'm not super familiar with the setting yet, but I've got a core character concept with some easy mount points. I'll have an easier time with backstory once I have other people's stories to work off of.
I'm interested in playing a techno-shaman mechanic. The sourcebook seems to say people *either* understand how the tech works, or they use spiritual explanations. I want to explore the concept of a character who both understands the tech, *and* has an animistic relationship with it.
So I'm thinking a Mystical/Mechanical Jack who Talks with Machines. Keeping the / because she really is both. I think she got her unusual abilities when she used a cypher that she thought was a healing item, but actually transmitted a nano virus that grew her a nano control brain implant. (So, a variant of the Nano Psionics background.)
Tilansy presents as a butch female, though she's neuter and her gender is neutrois. Generally a Rosie the Riveter type, complete with the build. Rough around the edges, but friendly, and clumsily tender in vulnerable moments; and fierce in defense of those she considers friends. (I reserve the right to adjust this, I always have trouble with characterization in the pre-game.)
Til's a mechanic by trade, which is why she's a jack instead of a nano. Broad, not deep: she's about solving problems in whatever way she can. About the only limitation on her backstory is she needs to come from a big enough city to support a machine shop.
As someone whose stock in trade is identifying & repairing numenera, and who sees a number of customers daily, Til has many opportunities to meet other adventurous types, form bonds with them, and get roped into plots.
I'm now tempted to revive this character as a counterpoint to Tilansy. :)
ETA:
Yel is a surly teenager who doesn't know how to trust. I'm starting her out like this, in contrast to my usual 'sticks to the party like glue' characters, because she's going to develop over time.
If it's any consolation, I just finished up chargen for Tilansy, and yeah that was a pretty baffling experience. I get what they're doing with the adjective verb who nouns business, but... yeah.
My backstory as it stands, is Tilansy is a member of a clan of insular semi-nomadic traders with a side business in scavenging for numenera-- which is my department. We're pretty disreputable by nature. (Basing this on Irish travelers, fwiw.) So it would be easy for us to have connections with the shadier side of the local economy.
If you have a dayjob lifting heavy things, but have an anger management problem and a knack for violence, then underworld muscle is one way to tell your story. If you're more on the up-and-up then maybe underground boxing? (Or tavern fighting, or whatever the milieu is here.)
Either of those would connect to my Traveler background pretty easily :)
I apologize for being extremely slow to respond in here. Have been ill and can't brain. x_x