I'm trying an approach to give the characters a chance to get integrated in the world they're from. Rather than trying to kick-start things for everyone at once, I want the characters to begin the game as part of the setting, familiar with Borran people and places.
Rather than defining an established character, create an initial character at a point eight years before the adventure starts. We'll then role-play through four two-year 'chapters', where you make life choices, have opportunities open up, choose to learn various skills and not others, hit the road, join a monastery, etc.
Hopefully, when the game starts, it will give the game a more immediate sense of recent history. Different characters may have experienced the same events from different perspectives, or heard the news, may know the same people, etc.
On the other hand, it does give you a bit less of a free hand in your character's back story, half the back story has yet to happen! You may hope to begin the game as an established Murian ascetic, leaving your monastery after six years of training. As the chapters occur, however, this might not come to pass - perhaps the abbot spills his lamp and burns down the monastery in year two, or perhaps you decide to renounce your faith in year four to become a circus performer.
Now, you could always develop your initial character to already be a Murian ascetic, which is fine, as long as you set your trait priorities appropriately.
Once you have your initial character (a character description and background that takes you up to the year 316, as led up to in the Archives of Beresh, and set of trait priorities), we can start playing the chapters.
The chapters are conducted one-on-one with the GM, and have three steps:
We do this four times until it's the year 324, and the game begins!
What are you trying to accomplish in the next two years? How will you sustain yourself? What do you want to learn? Where will you live? Here are some examples:
It's the year 316, and my character is only eleven - I'm going to stay on the farm where I'm living, and do my best to learn from my olde siblings. I'd also like to meet more of the people in the village to see if they have any skills that I can pick up by doing odd jobs. I'm really curious about the fairy lights that I saw in the forest last season (in my last chapter), so I may find myself taking walks a bit further into the forest than I should.
I've been at this abbey for four years now, and the abbot is holding me back. I'm going to see if I can become much closer with the abbot, to see if he if he'll teach me some of the great warding rituals. If that doesn't work, then I'm leaving - I'll head to Nital Calam to see if I can help with the shortage of warders.
Since the fire destroyed everything, I'm going to take my father's bow and set off into the uplands of Nital Calam, and see if I can survive on my own. Once I've built myself a small hut, I'm going to spend as much time as I can hunting and practicing my archery. I'll keep on the lookout for goblins and keep my head down if I see any.
These are just examples, and I hope to give you a lot of hooks in your primer so you'll have lots of options.
If how you spend your chapter hinges on something uncertain, such as whether you're accepted to college of scribes, we'll have a bit of back and forth before we jump forward two years.
Other characters will be working on their backgrounds at the same time as you. I'll be aiming to have your stories connect, but they may not (at least, until the game begins). It's remotely possible that someone familiar to you in your background or character chapters turns out to be another player, but that depends a lot on what everyone does with themselves.
