Editing Setting:Nutopia/Players (section)

=Delver Backgrounds=
This list of character backgrounds is hardly exhaustive, but seeks to give strong foundation for further development and provide what are the most common areas from which delvers spring. The development of more specialized or personal backgrounds is actively encouraged, and is a process that should occur between the SM and a given player to craft a background that fits the game, the setting and the feeling the player is aiming for.
===="Milspec" Post-Human====

===="Körperlos" Post-Human====
Humans who, at one point or another, had to veritably jump ship from their current corporeal form, and now exist as one form or another of radical life. This is a small club of individuals from all over the world related by one unique experience: they have all at one point or another survived their own unexpected death. The methods by which they survived range from soldiers hooked up to CSC units in the nick of time to crackers who fled into the net as their body died or even hivers who fractured their consciousness across a foglet nanoswarm. The event was needless to say traumatic, but these individuals, along with their siblings in the military community, are natives to some truly extreme definitions of human being.

===="Stock" Trans-Human====
The vast majority of corporate citizens, and by extension the majority of delvers, fall into this category. Raised in a bipolar culture of leering paranoia and corporate ultra consumerism. The basic "Stock" mods serve as the slate upon which most trans-human modification takes place. The average corporate citizen is genefixed to be free of a number of diseases and hereditary conditions, and resistant to a number of others. Improved medical technology and simple genetic resilience extended the average human age to around 100 years old. Basic infosphere interfaces were mandatory implants in corporate society, and in some places tracking and health monitoring hardware were common as well.

===="Apex" Trans-Human====
The corporate upper class, raised in a culture of decadence, backstabbing and cut throat ambition. Often genefixed beyond the simple stock modifications Apex humans sport designer genetics, physical beauty and health ubiquitous among them. Although fed a steady diet of advanced pharmaceuticals during their formative years and commonly living unmodified to ages of 150 or more, they also carry with them the immense social stigma of their standing. After the fall, they have the crimes of corporate power quite literally written upon their faces. Delvers from this background are rarer even than Baseline Cis-Humans, but they do exist, searching for some kind of atonement, or just feeding their inculcated need to strive and overcome.

===="Labor" Trans-Human====
The lowest rung of corporate society, these citizens filled the most menial labor tasks within the corporate structure. Encompassing everything from wage laborers to outright slaves, these individuals come from a culture of bone breaking oppression, indoctrination and deplorable living conditions. Those who survived their upbringing and the fall carry with them a hard bitten resilience borne of the scars inflicted upon their bodies and minds. Many from this background used standard or somewhat below spec Stock modifications, but others were less fortunate. So called Labor Force Safety modifications could twist the human body into little more than a machine formed for a niche function or hazardous environment. Strength, endurance and resistances to certain conditional effects like radiation or chemical exposure weighed against intentionally decreased willpower, artificially capped age and often grotesque cybermods.

===="Freeborn" Cis-Human====
Freeborn is a term that applies to any child, typically from former corporate territories, born after the fall. The upbringing of these children can range from a sheltered world of tutors and nurses to something approaching being raised by wolves. The oldest of them now passing their 25th birthdays, Freeborns are the first generation of humans native to the After the Common Era world. Although born without modification, the only determining factor in the form they take as adults is their upbringing and personal will, so it will vary radically from one to another. Some remain Cis-Humans, others, raised in a time when extreme cybernetics and biomodifications are everyday sights, easily fit into Trans or even Post-Human formats. Of all the backgrounds Freeborns are the most internally variable, ranging from grizzled frontier rangers to wide eyed and curious city punks.

===="Baseline" Cis-Human====
The world of Nutopia is a generally inhospitable place. Within the remaining U-States and some of the larger free settlements a good, safe standard of living can be had, but life in the smaller places of the world is only for the hardy. Delvers leave every day on the extreme edge of perseverance, fighting the deadliest threats this world has ever known, confronting crisis and trauma that would crush the wills of most. They live in a world that challenges the very viability of humanity as a species, in places increasingly inimical to their very existence. To that end many delvers are heavily modified, whether by cybernetic modification, biological manipulation or a combination of both. They push their forms to the extreme limit of performance in one area or another, becoming almost tangentially related to their species of origin, transhuman at least, outright posthuman in some. These extremes are what it takes to survive in the wastelands left by the fall, they provide the strength needed to drag humanity back from the brink.

And then there are those who think that these Delvers, for all their power, are taking the easy way out.

Cis-Human (as opposed to trans-humans or post-humans) is the blanket term that covers all largely unmodified humans after the fall, though a host of other names exist, ranging from honorifics to epithets depending on their context. Cis-Humans come from a huge variety of backgrounds, ranging from adults born after the fall whose parents elected to leave them unmodified to individuals hailing from low tech U-States or places passed over entirely by the technological revolutions that swept the world. Those that Delve choose a hard life.

To be a Cis-Human and delve requires titanic willpower, beyond that even of the already determined individuals who make up the majority of the professions constituents. It means pitting nothing more than your body, your equipment and your mind as best as you can prepare them against a world of nightmares. Where a cracker can use VIs and advanced implants, or even fracture their own mind to keep up with the blistering pace of modern infowar, a Cis-Human who wishes to keep up must regiment their mind to almost savant like levels of focus, and employ hordes of prepackaged defense and attack programs to level the playing field. Where a soldier might integrate himself with a number of weapon systems or radical implants, a Cis-Human takes the long, arduous route of honing his body to the apex of its capabilities. Where implants and combat drugs improve a soldier, a Cis-Human burns drills deep into his muscle memory, and practices techniques as old as warfare itself to manufacture his body's own natural combat drugs when he needs them most. Where a soldier is wired into his armor, or even assumes the form of a mighty vehicle of war, a Cis-Human makes do with what he can control with model a hands and mark one eyeballs.

The drawbacks are severe, and the journey hard, but electing to stay original baseline human does have its benefits. Without implants one is immune to all manner of malicious electronic attack, and as opposed to high maintenance bio and cybermods a Cis-Human is happy with the old staples of nutrition, sleep and shelter. As a rule they are also possessed of great personal drive, the single minded determination and slight superman complex that makes an olympic athlete, a devout martial artist, a mathematical genius or a musical prodigy more than their average contemporary is what allows a Cis-Human to persevere. 

A player who elects to play a Cis-Human must understand that he has decided on a harrowing path. He will struggle for every inch, forced to make more with less than his teammates bring to the table. The rewards however are great. Within the free states, and indeed the world over, the names of those who take humanity to its peak, then push that apex in the most dangerous places, and emerge from the rubble triumphant are held with special reverence. They are hard men and women amongst a group already defined by their endurance and daring, and those that survive despite the hellish adversity are respected for it.
[[Category:Homebrew Settings]]
[[Category:Nutopia]]