You've never stood on a planet. Never felt natural gravity that wasn't generated by spinning sections or grav-plates. Never breathed air that didn't come from a scrubber, or eaten food that wasn't grown in hydroponics or synthesized from recycled biomass. You are Starship Dweller, born and raised in the humming corridors of a generation ship, orbital habitat, or one of the massive worldships that drift through the Starfall Galaxy.
Your childhood was measured in maintenance shifts and artificial cycles. While other children learned to climb trees, you learned to navigate zero-G utility shafts. While they played in open fields, you mastered the art of moving through tight crawl spaces between bulkheads. The ship isn't just where you live—it's what you are. You know its rhythms like your own heartbeat: the hum of the life support, the clang of the shift-change bell, the subtle vibration that means the Rift-drive is about to engage.
The Worldship Legacy
Starship dwelling isn't rare—it's foundational. After the Rift-Storm Cataclysm shattered the Vaelen Principalities and displaced entire worlds, millions fled on generation ships, exodus fleets, and converted industrial haulers. The Star Weavers—ancient, self-sustaining worldships discovered drifting between systems—became refuges for entire civilizations.
you might have grown up on:
The Void Exchange, the massive neutral-ground station where the Commission governs the Inner Sphere
Vaelen Exodus Fleets, decaying voidships carrying the remnants of the old Principality nobility
Wildcater Guild Haulers, corporate-owned orbital factories where entire families work multi-generational contracts
Riftsworn Pilgrim Ships, wandering cathedral-vessels that chase stable Rift-currents across the galaxy
Unlike planetborn, who see ships as vehicles, you see them as ecosystems. You understand that a starship is a fragile bubble of order in an infinite void, kept alive only through constant vigilance and repair.
Signature Customs
Ship Shrines: Most dweller families maintain small shrines to their vessel's "spirit"—not religious, exactly, but acknowledgment that the ship keeps them alive. These often include fragments from decommissioned systems, photos of previous generations, and tokens from worlds visited.
Handprint Walls: In communal areas, generations of dwellers leave painted handprints with their names and birth dates. Walking these corridors is walking through your ship's entire history.
The Docking Ritual: When meeting another ship-dweller for the first time, it's customary to exchange your "ship-sign"—a gesture unique to your vessel. This instantly identifies which fleet or worldship community you belong to.
Variants
Exodus Born: Grew up on one of the post-Cataclysm refugee fleets, carrying the trauma and nostalgia of a lost homeworld you've never seen but hear about constantly.
Orbital Factor: Raised on a corporate station or guild hauler, where life is dictated by shift schedules, production quotas, and the knowledge that you're property until your contract (or your family's multi-generational contract) expires.
Star Weaver Native: Born on one of the ancient, mysterious worldships that predated the current civilizations. You've grown up with technology you don't fully understand, maintained by rituals passed down for millennia.
Rift-Chaser: Your ship doesn't stay in one system—it's constantly moving, following optimal Rift-currents and Metronome signals. You've "visited" a hundred worlds but never set foot on any of them.
Starship Dweller Background
Source Galaxy Guide pg. 101
You grew up on the Idari or another starship and are accustomed to the artificial cycles, tight spaces, and maintenance shifts that have defined your lifestyle.
Choose two attribute boosts. One must be to Dexterity or Constitution, and one is a free attribute boost.
You're trained in your choice of either the Crafting or Piloting skill, as well as A spacer culture Lore skill relevant to the ship you lived on or Rift Lore. You are never clumsy or off-guard while untethered.
Non-Combat Applications
Ship Sense: Your Athletics and Engineering training combine to give you an intuitive understanding of shipboard life. You can diagnose problems from sound and vibration alone—a subtle change in thruster pitch, a pressure differential in the air recycling, the wrong kind of silence from a coolant pump.
Tight Spaces Expert: Growing up in cramped quarters means you're comfortable in environments that make planetborn claustrophobic. Crawlspaces, service ducts, and emergency bulkhead compartments feel natural to you.
Resource Consciousness: You waste nothing. Ever. Planetborn throw away damaged equipment; you repair it. They discard organic waste; you compost it for the hydroponics. This mindset makes you invaluable in survival situations and long voyages.
Societal Impact
Starship Dwellers represent a distinct cultural identity. Multi-generational ship communities have developed their own dialects, customs, and values that often clash with planetborn assumptions.
Status Anxiety: Some planetborn view ship-dwellers as transient, rootless, or "not real citizens" of any world. Others romanticize them as free-spirited wanderers. Both perspectives miss the truth—ship communities are intensely rooted, just in mobile homes.
The Kinship Networks: Dwellers recognize each other instantly by mannerisms—the way they instinctively brace for Rift-turbulence, how they check pressure seals twice, their comfort with recycled air. Across the galaxy, ship-to-ship communities maintain mutual aid networks: if your vessel breaks down near another worldship, you will be helped, because next time it might be them.
Legal Gray Zones: Many generation ships exist in strange legal jurisdictions. Are you a citizen of the system where your ship currently docks? The world your ancestors left centuries ago? The ship itself? The Commission has tried to standardize this, but enforcement is inconsistent.
Adventure Hooks
The Silent Section: A section of your home ship has gone silent—no comms, no life support readouts, sealed from the inside. When you investigate, you discover the inhabitants have been replaced by something that wears their faces but doesn't quite understand how to be them.
Decommissioned: Your generation ship has finally reached its destination world and the exodus is complete. But you and others like you have lived your entire lives in transit. Now planetary authorities want to dismantle your home for scrap, and the elder ship council has accepted. Do you fight for the ship, or learn to live groundside?
The Phantom Vessel: Your ship's sensors pick up a distress beacon from another worldship—one that official records say was destroyed in the Rift-Storm Cataclysm three centuries ago. When you dock to investigate, the ship is intact, fully crewed, and the inhabitants claim you're the ones who vanished.
The Starship Dweller background is for characters who understand that "home" isn't a place—it's a living, breathing vessel that must be tended, repaired, and loved to survive. In Starfall, where stability is scarce and the Rift makes every journey dangerous, you are the galaxy's true survivors: those who learned to carry home with them.
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