With your Narrator's approval, you can choose a

Every hero has something that drives them forward, an inner spark or outward goal that compels them to risk everything for a life of adventure. Choosing a destiny provides important roleplaying cues and features that help shape your character’s identity. Why are they an adventurer? What drives them into a life of danger? Is destiny thrust upon them by circumstance, or do they have a burning desire for a future they wish to claim for their own? 

The next step in creating your character’s origin story is choosing their background. A character’s background tells a story about the life they have chosen to lead, separate from the culture they were raised in. This step can be used to tell nearly any story; how your character became an adventurer, why they claim a culture other than the one associated with their heritage, or how they began their journey towards finding their place in the world. 

The second step in the origin creation process is choosing your character’s culture. This is the culture they were raised in, or that of their parents, and does not need to be related to their heritage; a character’s culture can be used to represent their past as a refugee, adoption into a new family, or being raised outside of their heritage for any other reason. The culture you choose provides your character with a number of proficiencies and traits that they would have learned through living amongst that culture, or that members of that culture are often trained in. 

The first step in the origin creation process is deciding on a heritage such as a dwarf, elf, or halfling. Each of the eight heritages listed in this chapter include unique, biologically inherited traits as well as details about their physical appearances.

What makes your character who they are? What have they experienced? When building your character, their upbringing—and by extension the culture they were raised in—can have as much of an impact as their heritage.