Creating a character in Moonrise involves the following steps:

1. Choose a Class from the following:
   1. Warrior - Combatants who push themselves beyond their limits
   2. Priest - Worshippers who empower allies with blessings from their god
   3. Creator - Tinkerers who build devices to aid them
   4. Doctor - Medics who administer medicines to heal and buff
   5. Spirit Guide - Mystics who guide others on Vision Quests
   6. Mage - Scholars who manipulate reality with strange new powers
2. Determine the character’s Soul Shape
3. Choose initial level 1 skills from the General Skills and those of their class.
   1. An initial character has 5 skill points and may have any amount of additional XP added from monstering.
   2. An initial character has the Combat Proficiency skill though may choose not to have it in order to have one other skill instead.
4. Choose a nation of origin, by default most characters will come from one of the three nations of Falgarias.
   1. Players may approach the LARPOs with a vague concept of a more distant nation and if approved can write a description that nation and have their character come from there
   2. At game start all PCs must originate from the Myriad Nations, most notably surviving Ennarian Colonists are not initially playable
5. Choose a name
6. Choose an organisation from your nation of origin; you start with 6 Favour with that organisation representing a previous working relationship pre-awakening
   1. If no organisations you think your character would work with have yet been written up talk to the LARPOs about the concept and you will probably be able to write up an appropriate organisation
   2. If you are writing up a new organisation who's reach does not touch any part of Falgarias or its immediate neighbours the LARPOs will probably give you additional starting Favour with them as some form of ambassador (although admittedly using their Favour will be more difficult on the average adventure)
7. Work out your character's religious affinities

Individual souls also have a shape/nature which determines some overarching detail of a character and provides a wide-reaching effect of some sort. These can be thought of as “playstyles”. All characters must choose a Primary Soul Shape which will to a degree define the way in which they play. Characters may have any number of Lesser Soul Shapes. These are chosen at character creation and cannot subsequently be changed.

For players who don't like character death/things not going their way.

A tenacious soul which refuses to be changed by the void. Can spend <n> XP to undo death/long-lasting effects between adventures, where <n> is the number of times this ability has been invoked including this usage.

For players who love metaphysical deformities.

A tenacious soul which refuses to be lost to the void. Can spend 1 XP to undo death at the end of the adventure, this will have long lasting consequences which between multiple uses will eventually make the character unplayable, these will be almost entirely negative and in some way thematically linked to the circumstances of death.

For players who revel in character death and want to rush to the higher levels of power for a fast turnover.

Each XP spent on this character is worth two skills (this may be tweaked based on actual system lethality with the current estimation that 50% of characters will die before hitting level 4).

After 12 adventures they will cease to be playable.

For players who want to drop in and out.

Intended for those who cannot come to LARP regularly or just awkward characters to fill in slots on LARPs for which nobody has a level appropriate character:

• No XP is gained for playing character.
• Build the whole character in advance/up to the highest level they have been played, this becomes a fixed order of skills. Always goes out with a GM assigned XP level (approximately lower quartile of party XP) for any given adventure. Wildcards cannot burn reputation for favours but also cannot be Socialites.
• The maximum single Act of Power level they can perform is half the number of adventures they have completed (rounding down), ie. from their third adventure can perform a Lesser Act of Power, from their fifth a Greater Act of Power, from their seventh an Epic Act of Power. A player may change their fixed order or skills or even class by resetting the count of adventures they have been on for the purposes of acts of power.

For players with a flair for the dramatic.

If you die/become unplayable, you always get the opportunity to have a drawn-out dramatic death. If someone else dies/becomes unplayable, you can take their place and also get this opportunity. If sacrifice is made for someone else no mechanism can save you (not even one that could have saved them if you’d only waited 30 seconds for the person with the clever idea to come along).

Death Count is reduced by 30 seconds.

For those that sometimes just want to get the job done.

You can choose to accept, at any point on your death count or whilst being executed, that something needs to be achieved at any cost. At this point you are already dead and cannot be saved from death by any means nor can you sacrifice your life for some other purpose, you will return to a more normal state of death at the end of the adventure regardless of outcome. Take a HEAL, you now Refresh your Resource whenever you HEAL, you may permanently lose a maximum body hit in order to HEAL yourself (for simplicity effects that work on fractions of your body hits operate based on your original maximum). You appear as a spectral figure for the duration of this affliction having left your corpse behind.

The character’s soul does not anchor to anything around it after death and cannot respond to beseechment.

For those who can’t stand using up goodwill. You do not have a cap on the number of organisations you can participate in.

You are incapable of burning reputation for favours. General goodwill reputation can be assigned to a particular organisation, or kept for assignation later.

For those who want emotional trauma from their NPCs.

Where GMs have NPCs undergoing suffering at the hands of their adventure (kidnapped, dead, missing) or poorly fleshed out minor bit part villains they may ask someone with this Soul Shape pre-LARP, “Who that you love (with required trait X) has gone missing lately?”. They can then use elements of provided characterisation/identity in the victim/bit part villain.

For those who don’t like judging when to use long term combat resources

Your class resource is replaced as per below. You are unaffected by the call EFFECT “REFRESH YOUR RESOURCE” (please warn any Spirit Guides in your party of this fact), you cannot call in favours to acquire alchemy or Ennarian medical kits. You cannot buy the skill Traditional Alchemy.

• Warrior - Exhaustions now only last until the end of the encounter. Each Manoeuvre can be used at most once per encounter. Every Exhaustion other than Concussion triggers Concussion, Manoeuvres that would normally trigger Concussion cause two stacks of Concussion instead.
• Priest - Reduce your maximum spirit hits to a quarter of their original value (rounding down), you may in every encounter, form a congregation of up to 2 points for each spirit hit reduced in this way .
• Mage - You do not have Manipulations, instead you can cast up to 6 unique spells per encounter or up to 3 unique spells casting one of them twice. For the purposes of other skills, each encounter counts as a single Manipulation. You cannot take Additional Manipulation but count as having it for skill requirements.
• Creator - You do not have Potentials, each encounter you may choose one of a batch of alchemy that lasts for the encounter or the ability to make a construct or contraption. Once per encounter you may deal yourself a HEX and expend the remainder of your per encounter calls from any source to call HEAL on a fallen ally with 10 seconds of work if you do not have a construct or contraption active. You cannot take Unlock Greater Potential but count as having it for skill requirements.
• Spirit Guide - You do not have linkages and thus cannot expend them to refresh others. Whilst in the physical world you are constantly considered to be in a linkage state but your standard Katas take an additional second (hard mode Katas are unaffected), step out/break out if purchased become once per adventure between them.
• Doctor - You do not have a long term pool of Urgency instead you have one Urgency per encounter. Greater Urgency increases your per encounter Urgency to two.

These are intended as a jumping off point to characterisation and a sometimes useful setting hook. If you don't have any characterisation yet or aren't interested you can treat your character as Indifferent to all aspects.

Some have made attempts to describe the gods as having shared elements of their ethoses. Regardless of the in universe validity of those shared elements they are a convenient game mechanical hook to identify how much a character agrees with or is repulsed by the fundamentals of a given religion. Choose the statement that best maps to your characters opinion on the axis. The characters answers are important to how they interact with priests and potentially other metaphysical elements. Your character's opinions on these elements are free to change and develop in play. Declaring yourself fully aligned to everything will get the LARPOs to give you some very suspicious looks.

• Always trust your gut feeling about things - Strongly Aligned
• One need never ponder a situation too deeply the right answer was almost certainly the first one that sprang to mind - Loosely Aligned
• First impressions are sometimes useful but one shouldn't put too much importance on them - Indifferent
• One should always try to push past one's prejudices and consider any situation objectively - Anti-Aligned

• It is the duty of the powerful to control the weak - Strongly Aligned
• The powerful should control the weak, but only if I’m in the former category - Loosely Aligned
• Power has no moral value to me - Indifferent
• Those of power should be shackled by their duty of service to those without - Anti-Aligned

• My needs are less important than the needs of those around me - Strongly Aligned
• I willingly put my life on the line for those who I care for - Loosely Aligned
• I would put myself at risk for those I love - Indifferent
• There could never be someone more important to me than myself - Anti-Aligned

• Civilisation would collapse if people did not know and stick to their place in it, and that would be terrible - Strongly Aligned
• It is important to change oneself to fit in with society - Loosely Aligned
• I appreciate what the community around me does to help me - Indifferent
• Community is a lie, there is only the individual - Anti-Aligned

• The explanation is more important than the solution in all cases - Strongly Aligned
• There is thrill in discovering answers to the world's mysteries - Loosely Aligned
• There is no satisfaction to be gained from finding the answers to questions - Indifferent
• Knowledge is dangerous, we already know enough - Anti-Aligned