DIASPORA: Thus Spoke Belisarius (Hard SF Roleplaying with FATE)

You had everything set up - as an outsystem immigrant from the Nyx-Omega to the best academies on your choice of New C and Onedia, it looked like your life was going to be a life of easy academics and applied archeology of every breed - industrial, cultural, programming.

That wasn't how it shook out at all.

[ ] You went the Abigail University, on Brightstar, the better (in your opinion) of the two garden worlds in the New C. System. There, you were fasttracked into the expeditionary archeology services and made a lot of friends. Expeditions were mostly to the unexplored parts of Brightstar and Shalerock, but you always had a theory that the true history of New C. had to be somewhere in the ecliptic. Combining your archeological knowledge with applied navigational, piloting and some probe-wrangling, you found a coal black mirror that hid...not an Ancient ruin but, instead, Shalerock Black Ops Listening Post. There, you met Captain Isabella Swan and only thanks to her deciding you and your archeo-nerds were too harmless to be anything but legit did you avoid the next twenty years being in a Shalerock high security facility.

[ ] You settled on Onedia's primary university in Lung City, LCU. While living inside of an engineered house made of bone and breathing flesh took a bit of getting used to, you had to admit, the grub was better than most places. The Expeditionary Service hounded you through your entire academic career, and you worked the pressure off by throwing yourself into longsword practice - and to your shock, you actually got damn good at it. What was even more shocking was when, after graduation, you signed up for the OES and were put onto an expedition to Ozymandias - only to go down when the repair-grub that was supposed to check for faults in the fusion reactor caught a bug and died, and the technician for the ship missed the containment issues. Crashing into an Ozymandias fiefdom and needing to survive until the OES could pick you up, you made an eternal enemy of High Priest Azola and his cabal of astrologers. The Longsword sure as fuck came in handy.

[ ] You went to Maud-Witkowski Technical Institute, on Shalerock - the better (in your opinion) of the two garden worlds in the New C. System. Things went well. Until the Purity Party won a majority in the lower house and the Prime Minister's spot. With the Queen ailing and unable to reign them in, the Pukes (as most people sharing your background in genetic augmentation - be it clones, tweaks, or just taking the wrong hormone for the wrong reasons) started to enact more and more draconian procedures on both augmented individuals and just anyone they didn't like (a list that got longer with every day.) You never expected to make an alliance with Nugent Coriolis, one of the most hated terrorist leaders on Shalerock, let alone to lead him and the SDD-2 paramilitary into an Ancient's weapon cache. Turns out, the guns still fucking worked!

[ ] Eschewing either of the main "academic" settings of the system, you chose the hands on fieldwork of an apprenticeships at the Dockpoints, the circular ring-city that has grown up around the polar entrance of Ozymandias' enderworld. It is a place where people who came to study the world and the people who want more than living under kings and astrologers flock together and, thanks to a string of mismanagement and poor planning, almost immediately became a stratified slums. While living here was dangerous, your apprenticeship under the brilliant (if eccentric) Dr. Lazarus led you to multiple archeological finds that pushed back the mysteries around the Belisarius Cluster in fascinating ways. It all went great! ...until the Akna mercenaries, hired by some Trade Baron with an idea for massive profit in his head, kidnapped you, the doctor, and stole all your notes. If you weren't so incredibly good with computers and hiding, you'd never have gotten away. Worst? The data was lost as well.

Bronze age madness is in your past! However, this next stage is...in your hands. You wrote yourself into the story of the High Priest Azola - and like it or not, he's coming along. Or maybe she? Them? It's up to you! The details are in the air, not well defined. You get to write the next section from THEIR perspective - how did they interact with this sword-weilding star traveler, and how did the two of you leave Ozymandias together? This will produce two aspects for your character AND define Azola's character and your relationship with them.

Everyone gets to write one version of Sidetracked (which should be a short paragraph, roughly as long and detailed as the paragraphs I described in previous parts), then I will pick the one I like most, in a WILD INVERSION of normal play.

...this is me trying to adapt the chargen system of Diaspora to a single player quest, so it's weird, sorry if it's weird.