Welcome to Underspire! This page documents all of the basic information you should need to know to make your first character.
NOTE: This page was written at the very beginning of alpha, and is very much a work in progress. Details here are subject to change by staff decisions as the game evolves!
Registering an Account
To begin, register an account at underspire.net.
NOTE: This is NOT the same as registering at agora.underspire.net; that’s a forums/wiki login. Underspire.net is the main website where you can apply for your first character.
Your account name is OOC and does not need to reflect your intended character’s name.
Before you go through the actual chargen process, though, it’s a good idea to figure out just who you’re playing!
In a nutshell, Underspire is set in the world of Deshret, an underground city of 5 million people, approximately 400 years after the end of the modern world. Society is highly segregated by class, dominated by corporation-like entities known as Guilds and the powerful families known as the Great Houses. But everyone must strive to live according to the principles of the Church of the Ninefold, lest the Inquisitors find you possessing ancient and forbidden relics of the old world…
This is just the quickest introduction to our setting. If you haven’t read through the lore on the wiki yet, you’ll want to take a deeper look to get some ideas. In particular, we recommend starting with:
Concept Dos and Don’ts
The current rules for character concepts are as such:
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Your character will be a baseline human or a splicer. At this time, you cannot apply to be a Listener (aka mage), cyborg, robot, Matrix-born entity, etc.
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You cannot be a member of any guild or formal organization, or a former member. Informal experience doing contracts, working as a yeoman, etc. are fine, but orgs must be joined in-game.
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You cannot start with cyberware/chrome.
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You CAN apply to be a member of a Great House, but only a distant member without close ties to the ruling line.
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You CAN create your own Minor House to be a member of, but this will not provide you with additional advantages such as wealth or property in chargen - design accordingly!
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You CAN start with a background connection to another player, but this connection can’t be overly advantangeous to either of you, and must be detailed clearly in both of your applications. Staff will handle these concepts on a case-by-case basis.
Writing a Background
The heart of your application will be your background. Your character will start as someone who’s competent in their chosen field of expertise, but with plenty of room to grow. As such, you’ll likely want to design a backstory that supports that level of experience.
Your background should be at least 300 characters (and no more than 10,000). It should cover important biographical details like your character’s family and upbringing, their motivations and goals, the skills they’ve acquired in their life so far, etc.
Be sure you include any background connections to other player characters!
Step-By-Step Guide to Character Generation
Once you’ve got your concept all together…
The actual character generation process is done via the website. Once you have an account, you should be able to select “ACCOUNT” in the top-right hand corner of the webpage.
From there, you’ll see your account name listed, and should be able to click on APPLY beside it to open a new application.
The application process resembles an IC form defining your character’s biographical details. We’ll talk through the fields page-by-page.
PAGE A: Identity
Here you define your character’s name, age, gender, classification, and basic occupation.
For name, forename and surname should represent what is legally recorded for your PC. Alias can be any short form you’re likely to use ICly. Note that people won’t see any of these names automatically - they’ll know you the way you introduce yourself.
The occupational origin is how you define your character’s 3 starting skills. If you’re uncertain, you can take one of the ‘standard occupational records’ to give you a set fitting for a specific career. Alternatively, if you select ‘individual declaration’, you’ll pick the three yourself on Page C.
Skills
Please note these skills are not set in stone; you can raise other skills in play by expending XP gained from roleplay.
Skills in Underspire are limited by rank; you can have as many skills at low levels as you like, but you will be limited in how many skills you can raise above a certain level.
Eventually, your character will max out with 1 expert skill, 3 master skills, and 5 journeyman skills (or potentially a couple more slots if you have invested heavily in Intellect and Presence).
Each skill is governed by two or more attributes that will help determine your character’s capability. Having lower attributes for a skill does not mean you’ll be doomed to always be bad at it - just that you might not be the best around.
For a full list of Skills and their linked attributes, see the Skills page.
PAGE B: Aptitudes
Underspire has six base attributes:
- Physique (PHY): Physical strength, muscle mass, and how much damage you can take.
- Reflex (REF): Reaction time, agility, and how fast your body responds.
- Perception (PER): Alertness, sensory awareness, and spotting fine details.
- Intellect (INT): Reasoning, memory, and technical knowledge. Modifies skill capacity alongside Presence.
- Presence (PRE): Force of personality, charisma, and composure. Modifies skill capacity alongside Intellect.
- Finesse (FIN): Hand-eye coordination, manual precision, and fine motor control.
On the Aptitudes page, you will set your priority order for these, ranking them from first to last. This priority order will determine both your starting values and your eventual maximums, as attributes can be raised in-game over time.
It’ll be useful if you’ve looked up the attributes your chosen skills require beforehand to guide your choices!
PAGE C: Occupation
If you picked a standard occupational record, nothing to do here! If you went individual, however, you can select your 1 primary and 2 secondary skills now.
PAGE D: Measurements
Here’s where you pick your height and weight.
Height and weight are selected as one of three ranges - short/average/tall and thin/average/heavy. Your PC’s actual weight will be based off your height and your weight category. For example:
| Height | Thin | Average | Heavy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 152cm | 43-49kg | 49-65kg | 65-88kg |
| 165cm | 50-57kg | 57-76kg | 76-103kg |
| 172cm | 55-62kg | 62-83kg | 83-112kg |
| 180cm | 60-68kg | 68-91kg | 91-123kg |
Your combination of height, weight, and gender will also set your default short description: how you will appear to others in game at a first glance.
You can choose to utilize a different descriptor than the default for your gender within your height/weight class, however.
The defaults are as follows:
| THIN | AVERAGE | HEAVY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TALL | m: lean | m: rangy | m: hulking |
| f: willowy | f: leggy | f: amazonian | |
| n: reedy | n: lofty | n: heavyset | |
| AVERAGE | m: wiry | m: average | m: burly |
| f: lissome | f: average | f: voluptuous | |
| n: slender | n: average | n: solid | |
| SHORT | m: slight | m: compact | m: stout |
| f: delicate | f: petite | f: plump | |
| n: elfin | n: diminutive | n: chunky |
PAGE E: Description
Here’s where you’ll set the other aspects of your character’s appearance such as hair/skin/eye color, etc. Many if not all of these things can actually be changed ICly, so don’t worry too much about your starter choices - think of them as defaults you can tweak.
You can also select hair length, texture, and style, all of which are similarly changeable in-game.
PAGE F-G: Statement and Affadavit
Page F is where you’ll submit your background for approval…
…and once that’s done, Page G allows you to submit! Now it’s just time to kick back and wait for staff to get back to you. You’ll receive a message in your email when it happens to let you know.
POST-APPROVAL
Yay, your application’s been approved! Now what?
There are a few more things you’ll need to get set up to start play.
DESCRIPTIONS
Underspire uses a body part description system, where players can enter a brief general description to explain their character’s overall look and then add additional descriptions tied to specific body parts. This creates a dynamic description that will show onlookers only what they can actually see, depending on your character’s equipment.
Body Part List
Your description will automatically organize into four paragraphs: general, ‘top’, ‘middle’, ‘bottom’. Each of the latter three will include a specific list of bodyparts, in the following order:
Top:
- Head
- Face
- Left/right eye
- Left/right ear
- Neck
Middle:
- Left/right shoulder
- Left/right arm
- Left/right hand
- Torso
- Back
- Abdomen
- [Optional] Tail
Bottom:
- Groin
- Butt
- Left/right thigh
- Left/right calf
- Left/right foot
Basic Example
A VERY basic example might look like this, for a fully naked character:
look character
This is my main character description. This should contain the general vibe and description of your character. It can also include color.
Head. Face. Left eye. Right eye. Left ear. Right ear. Neck.
Left shoulder. Right shoulder. Left arm. Right arm. Left hand. Right hand. Torso. Back. Abdomen. Tail.
Groin. Butt. Left thigh. Right thigh. Left calf. Right calf. Left foot. Right foot.
Tips and Tricks
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Put things in your general description that would be visible whatever your character was wearing - overall build, skin color, etc. Things like eye color might seem natural to put in your general desc, but if your character ever wears sunglasses for example, you would want your eye color represented in the eye so it properly models they’re hidden.
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You do NOT have to enter something into every description. Maybe there’s nothing notable about your character’s feet. That’s fine!
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Remember, anything you put here will only be visible if the location’s not covered, so if you want to just generally call them broad-shouldered in a way that’d be visible at a glance, that belongs in the general desc.
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Note that for symmetrical bodyparts (eyes, ears, etc) you can use @eyes or @ears to describe them both at once. The left eye/right eye etc. option remains for people whose features might be mismatched.
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It is acceptable to put scars in descriptions, but things like tattoos or ritual carvings done by Sepulchre will be handled by coded processes and shouldn’t be written in manually.
STARTING PLAY
When you enter the game for the first time you will be naked. Oops!
You also may be in a sleep capsule in the Ixion capsule hotel. If you are in a sleep capsule, use the command leave to get out. If you want to get back in, use the command sleep. (These commands only work in the Ixion capsule hotel.)
Once you are in the capsule access room, there is an item there called “lost and found”. For the alpha, this is how we are dispensing free items that new characters have access to.
While in the capsule access room, use the command rummage 5 or 6 times to get everything from the list below. If you are playing a character that desires some sort of face covering at all times, you may rummage mask to get one. This one requires the specific request as most characters don’t need this.
Don’t like what you got? Use put <item> in lost and found to reset it and then rummage again to get something else. There is not a huge variety in the lost and found yet and these items are intentionally plain because we want people to customize their gear.
Speaking of customizing gear: Each character also will spawn with (4) clothing tokens in their inventory. So you should be able to begin play with:
- 4x Clothing tokens (Already in your inv)
- 1x Top (lost and found)
- 1x Trousers (lost and found)
- 1x Shoes (lost and found)
- 1x Handset (lost and found)
- 1x Mask (lost and found. Please only take one if your character actually needs it - i.e., if you’re a Morcant)
- 3500 marks (lost and found)
CUSTOMIZING CLOTHING
Don’t like your hideous rummage clothes? Fret not.
You can:
- Use your starter tokens to design 4 custom items for yourself;
- Head up to the third floor to buy some standard slightly-higher quality clothing;
- Find a PC tailor to place an order.