The Starfall Galaxy runs on survival measured in Dei, and these units only reach worlds because someone hauled them there. You are that someone. A Space Trucker. The unglamorous, underpaid, essential worker who keeps the galaxy's arteries flowing with Dei packs, raw materials, industrial equipment, and occasionally things that customs would really like to inspect but somehow never manage to flag.
Your ship isn't elegant. It doesn't have a name like Celestial Wanderer or Astral Blade—it's probably called something like Hauler-7 or The Rusty Yom or just your registration number because naming it felt pretentious. It's a flying warehouse with a cockpit bolted on, all cargo bays, reinforced hull plating, and oversized engines designed to move mass, not win dogfights.
You've spent more Yoms in the Rift than most people spend awake. You know the feel of a stable current versus one about to collapse into a planar bleed. You've learned to sleep through Rift-turbulence because if you didn't, you'd never sleep at all. Your logbook is a patchwork of delivery confirmations, fuel receipts, and the occasional note like "avoided pirates at Tibburat-7, took scenic route through asteroid field, lost three hours but kept cargo."
The Hauler's Code
Space Truckers have an unspoken solidarity born from shared misery. When you find another hauler stranded with a blown thruster or Rift-sickness taking their Navigator offline, you stop. Not because it's profitable, but because next time, it might be you floating dead in the black with a hold full of spoiling bio-cargo.
The big freight guilds—remnants of the old Geodan Industrial Guilds, Wildcater independents, and Vlaan Yards contractors—all claim to represent haulers, but most truckers view them as parasites skimming profit while the little guy eats ration paste and patches hull breaches with salvaged plate. Real loyalty runs between individual captains, not corporate logos.
There's a particular pride in the job. You're not a glamorous explorer charting unknown systems or a decorated soldier defending civilization. You're the reason civilization exists. Every settlement, every station, every colony world depends on people like you showing up, on time, with the goods.
Survival Economics
In Starfall, cargo hauling isn't just logistics—it's existential. The galaxy's economy runs on physical transport of Dei components, collateralized trade goods, and raw materials because digital credits are worthless across light-years. You are the wealth transfer system, the supply chain, and the insurance policy against starvation all rolled into one underpaid, overworked hauler.
Every run is a gamble. Rift travel distorts time, so a "three-Yom delivery" might stretch to five if the currents shift, eating into your profit margin and your client's survival window. Pirates know this and lurk near unstable Rift-exits, waiting for haulers who emerge disoriented and slow. Corporate contracts pay poorly but offer some security; independent runs pay better but come with zero backup if things go wrong.
The Chronologists Guild charges for temporal synchronization, Navigators demand hazard pay for difficult routes, and port authorities want their docking fees—all before you've even sold the cargo. Most truckers run razor-thin margins, one blown engine away from bankruptcy.
Space Trucker Background
Source Galaxy Guide pg. 97
You transport goods across long distances in space. You might be part of a crew on a long-haul freighter, or you might be the captain of your own delivery shuttle.
Choose two attribute boosts. One must be to Strength or Dexterity, and one is a free attribute boost.
You're trained in the Piloting skill, and the Rift Lore skill. You gain the Express Driver skill feat.
Non-Combat Applications
Route Expertise: Your Lore skill represents intimate knowledge of a specific freight corridor—which Rift-gates are stable, which stations overcharge for fuel, and which customs inspectors can be bribed with a crate of off-books luxury goods.
Cargo Negotiation: You know the real value of goods across multiple systems. That "worthless scrap" on one station might be critical rare-earth components three jumps away. Many truckers supplement income by spotting arbitrage opportunities.
Jury-Rigging: With your Athletics training and Hefty Hauler feat, you're the crew member who can manually load a damaged cargo lift, haul emergency repair equipment through zero-G, or physically brace a buckling bulkhead during Rift-turbulence.
Societal Impact
Space Truckers are the circulatory system of the Starfall Galaxy. When haulers strike or a trade route collapses, entire systems face famine within Yoms. Governments know this, which is why the Commission quietly subsidizes certain freight corridors and why the Celestial Accord maintains Rift-gate security as their primary mandate.
But the power dynamic is strange. Truckers have leverage but rarely wealth. Freight guild bosses negotiate with planetary governors, but individual haulers still eat ration paste and sleep in their cockpits to save on station lodging. Some systems treat truckers as essential workers and offer free docking; others gouge them for every service and wonder why delivery times keep slipping.
The Crimson Concord views truckers as mobile stages for their chaos-performances, often hiring them to smuggle "art installations" that turn out to be incendiary propaganda. The Ebon Syndicate owns entire shipping lines through shell companies, using legitimate freight as cover for black-market operations. And the Riftsworn? They see every hauler as a potential Rift-cultist, someone who's stared into the Maelstrom long enough to understand.
Signature Customs
The Dashboard Shrine: Most truckers maintain a small collection of good-luck charms, Metronome fragments, or devotion tokens on their console. Not because they're religious, but because superstition is cheap insurance.
Route Names: Veteran haulers nickname their regular routes—"The Slag Run" for ore hauls through asteroid belts, "The Silent Trail" for passages near the Tibburat Marches, "The Yom Sprint" for high-speed Dei deliveries to emergency zones.
Trucker Slang: A whole dialect has evolved around freight culture. "Hauling empty" (returning without cargo), "burning clean" (no contraband), "riding the storm" (taking a risky Rift-path for time savings), and "ghost cargo" (legitimate shipments used as cover for smuggling).
Variants
Ice Road Hauler: Specializes in extreme-environment deliveries—frozen moons, radiation zones, unstable Rift-Burgs. High pay, higher mortality rate.
Guild Captain: Works for one of the major freight corporations, enjoys better insurance and legal protection but has zero scheduling flexibility and answers to distant managers who've never seen a Rift-current.
Wildcat Independent: Owns their ship outright, takes contracts from anyone who pays, and lives or dies by their reputation and luck. True freedom, true risk.
Adventure Hooks
The Convoy: A critical Dei shipment needs to reach a drought-stricken colony, but the direct route passes through pirate-controlled space. The Commission is assembling a convoy of haulers with a military escort—but someone needs to organize the truckers, who trust each other more than the uniforms.
Temporal Drift: You accept a routine two-Yom delivery, but Rift-turbulence stretches the journey to fifteen Yoms. You arrive to find your client dead, their station abandoned, and your cargo—medical supplies—now historically valuable because the plague they were meant to treat has mutated into something worse.
The Ghost Freighter: You pick up a distress beacon from a drifting hauler. When you board, the ship is intact, cargo secure, but the crew is gone. No signs of struggle, no emergency logs. Just an open Rift-chart to a location that doesn't exist on any map, and a hold full of containers labeled "Progenitor Salvage—Do Not Open."
Conclusion
The Space Trucker background is for characters who keep the galaxy running through sheer grit, who've learned that survival isn't about glory—it's about showing up, doing the job, and making it home one more Yom.
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