Continuing in the post- or peri-apocalyptic vein, today’s character is brought to us by a|state, a 2001 game from Contested Grounds. If Kult is the Clive Barker RPG, then a|state is the China Miéville one. Think Perdido Street Station with a soupçon of Dark City thrown in for good measure. Every single human being lives in The City. laid out in a circular plan forty miles across. Beyond the outer wall of The City is The Outlands. Nobody goes there because any living being that sets foot in it is instantly vaporized by lightning (which, curiously, ignores robots). The apoc part happened a thousand years ago, when The Shift brought The City from wherever it was to here. Wherever that is. Simultaneously The Bombardment – a Sodom & Gomorrah scale rain of fire – wiped out all records & most evidence of what The City had been before The Shift. Today the city is ruled by a handful of macrocorps comprising a fraction of 1% of the population. The rest live either in steampunk Dickensian squalor or are hanging on by their fingernails, doing whatever they must to avoid falling over the edge.

Creating an a|state character begins with selecting where in The City they grew up & what their upbringing was like. One of the locations described in the gazeteer that makes up the first half of the book, combined with one of The City’s religious movements, creates an interesting juxtaposition that I think has potential.

Tarka L’Herpinière was born, raised, and has lived most of his life in Project 97. Roughly analogous to Kowloon Walled City in the real world, Project 97 is a single mammoth structure covering several acres. A near self-sustaining mini-city of its own, it contains not just commercial & residential space but hydroponic farms & aquaculture installations, as well as the last stop on one of The City’s major urban rail lines. The lower social strata of Project 97 can go weeks or even months without seeing an exterior window, never mind going outside. Only the elite – for the Project 97 value of “elite” live in outermost apartments or, more marvelous yet, have access to the roof.

The dominant religions in The City are variations on the notion that God 1) created the city to a) punish b) bless humanity, 2) was killed & left us all in The City, or 3) doesn’t exist & The City is some sort of ant farm in which humanity is observed by we’re-not-sure-who. Many minor sects exist though, including animists. One of the largest among them is The Greenkeepers, a quasi-druidical group whose devotions consist of nursing & growing an offshoot from a millennium old secret tree hidden somewhere in The City.

So how did Tarka, who can count on two hands the number of times he’s been under the sky, come to embrace Greenkeeping? He’s a skilled tradesperson, an electrician & mechanic who works on the hydroponic farms in Project 97. Several local farmers are Greenkeepers; they introduced him to bonsai as anxiety relief, but he soon embraced their spirituality as well. I’ve decided that Greenkeepers have incorporated the concept of mycorrhizal networks into their beliefs; they believe that tending to their sacred plant isn’t just a spiritual practice, but done in the right way & in the right place is a step toward forging a connection with The Great Green. This is the source of wisdom they believe resides in The Barrens, a part of The City completely overgrown with plants that devours entire platoons of explorers & only rarely spits a single person back out, raving mad & sometimes mutilated or mutated (think Annihilation). Tarka has taken this notion a bit further by doing his own research into the pharmacology of the plants he helps care for. He’s certain that if he could just brew the right combination of psychoactive ingredients the resulting potion would allow the drinker to commune with the plant kingdom on an aware, conscious level.

Every PC in a|state gets 360 Attribute Points & 500 Skill Points to spend on chargen, but you won’t be spending them just yet. First you have the choice of picking out some advantages & disadvanatages. These have game effects but they also add flavor. As usual you spend for an advantage & receive for a disadvantage.

Contact (Minor): Fulgurator (the staff of The City’s urban rail line) (cost 5)
Mental Advantage: Navigator (can find his way through twisty, turny passages, all alike) (cost 10)
Mental Disadvantage (Minor): Agoraphobia (gain 5)
Mental Disadvantage (Minor): Mild Anxiety (gain 5)
Poverty (Minor) (gain 5)

PCs also have an origin, reflecting their social stratum, & an upbringing that describes in general what their childhood was like. Origin grants the PC an attribute bonus & 20 free points to put into associated skills; upbringing grants another 20 points in another set of skills, some of which may overlap with the origin’s.

Origin: Drudge (wageslaves, tradespeople)
Unarmed Combat 5, Mechanics 10, Electrician 15, Folklore 10
+10 STR

Upbringing: Apprenticed (Tarka learned his trade at a Ticketed Master’s side)
Agriculture (Hydroponics) 5(15), Cooking 10, Fish Farming 5, Mechanical Computing 10

There’s a distinction drawn between mechanical & digital computing because at some point in the backstory a devastating virus made all electronic computing not just unreliable but treacherous. An entire Babbidge-esque alternate computer science has arisen based on cogs, gears, cams, & punch cards or tape. Of course over the centuries “dingins”, as these devices are called, have become so advanced some now operate on nano-scales.

Time to allot attribute points, including whatever bonus your origin granted & adjusted based on advantage/disadvantage cost/yield. Tarka ends up with:

Strength 30 + 10 = 40
Agility 40
Dexterity 50
Health 45
Awareness 45
Intelligence 60
Perception 40
Willpower 50

Now it’s time to pick an occupation from the list. In addition to generally describing the PC’s function, occupation influences starting wealth & recommended skills. Tarka is clearly a technical, an occupation that focuses on practical & scientific skills & brings in a middling amount of money. (Tarka will get one wealth level less than he would have otherwise because of his Minor Poverty.) After spending the 500 Skill Points, he looks like this:

Agriculture 20 (Hydroponics 30)
Biology 20
Cooking 10
Dinginsmith 30 (Macro 40)
Draw 30
Electrical Systems 50
Electrician 75
Fish Farming 15
Folklore 10
Gardening 30 (Trees & Shrubs 50)
Language – Common (Spoken) 75
Language – Common (Written) 50
Language – Commerce 30 (Electrospeak 40)
Mechanical Computing 30
Mechanics 45
Pharmacology 25
Trains 10
Unarmed Combat 15

a|state uses a simple roll-under percentile system. Specialization in a skill lets you spend just a few more points to have a slightly higher rating in a narrow area of a base skill. Tarka is clearly not the person you want to bring to a brawl, but for anything involving wiring, plants, or analog gadgetry he’s your man.

There are five secondary attributes derived from the primary ones:

Reaction (average of Awareness, Intelligence & Agility, rounded) 48
Resilience (Health / 10, rounded) 5
Encumbrance (Strength / 2, rounded) 20 kg
Kick Damage (Strength / 15, rounded) 3
Punch Damage (Strength / 20, rounded) 2

We finish with a d10 vs wealth level chart roll to see how much cash on hand the PC starts with. Tarka ends up with a fat £25 in starting money. It’s as paltry as it sounds, but it’s as much as many in The City make in a month.

Tarka L’Herpinière

Birthplace: Project 97
Origin: drudge
Upbringing: apprenticed

Strength 40
Agility 40
Dexterity 50
Health 45
Awareness 45
Intelligence 60
Perception 40
Willpower 50

Reaction 48
Resilience 5
Encumbrance 20 kg
Kick Damage 3
Punch Damage 2

Contact (Minor): Fulgurator
Mental Advantage: Navigator
Mental Disadvantage (Minor): Agoraphobia
Mental Disadvantage (Minor): Mild Anxiety
Poverty (Minor)

Agriculture 20 (Hydroponics 30)
Biology 20
Cooking 10
Dinginsmith 30 (Macro 40)
Draw 30
Electrical Systems 50
Electrician 75
Fish Farming 15
Folklore 10
Gardening 30 (Trees & Shrubs 50)
Language – Common (Spoken) 75
Language – Common (Written) 50
Language – Commerce 30 (Electrospeak 40)
Mechanical Computing 30
Mechanics 45
Pharmacology 25
Trains 10
Unarmed Combat 15

Equipment:
electrician’s toolkit, small workshop, gardening implements, camp stove for preparing herbal brews