Nexus mechanics

Your three skills are Status, Competance, and your racial skill (for humans, Sensetivity, for synthetics, Intellect, and for aves, Perception). Each is rated from zero to five. Having a skill rated zero requires GM approval (except for Federation characters with no Sensitivity). Having a racial skill or Status of five requires GM approval. You will have seven total points of skills.

Most people have 0s in all three skills. You are not most people.

Every character has a Profession, which dictates their area of Competance, and a Soul, indicating their narrative role and fate in the drama of the Nexus. You can evoke your Soul to add one to a relevant statistic for the duration of a scene. You have -2 Competance when dealing with areas outside of your Profession.

Example Souls are "Bringer of Peace", "Future High Queen", and "Explorer". Example professions are "Diplomat", "Trader", and "Explorer".

In a conflict, the character with the highest relevant statistic wins. In the event of a tie, each player picks a secondary skill and compares. In the event of a total tie, your characters are legendarily deadlocked and will remain so until one yields, compromise is reached, or outside intervention occurs.

These are the laws of man. Fate may have other designs. Each player gains a Fate point by GM fiat, or by exchanging one permenant skill point for three Fate points (to represent burning bridges or overexerting oneself to achieve one's goals). Each Fate point can be spent to add 1 to a relevant attribute for a scene, much like Soul evocations.

The statistics are as follows.

STATUS:
Your ranking within the formal hierarchy of your origin culture, and your informal network of contacts and ability to function within bureaucracy. Equivalencies are given in Imperial Alliance court ranks.
0 - You are a nobody. A serf. You might temporarily lead small groups of people, informally, but lack the influence to effect real change.
1 - You are of local importance. A Baroness. A few hundred people owe you allgegience and some fraction of those are willing to do as you want, but your powers are still limited.
2 - You are of great local importance. A Countess. Some thousands owe you allegience. You have experts in most subjects on retainer.
3 - You are of regional importance. A Marchessa. When entering a room, you are owed special courtesy. You have tens of thousands of subjects and likely rely extensively on trusted subordinates.
4 - You are of great regional importance. A Duchess. You are probably reasonably famous. You rule over hundreds of thousands and are capable of reshaping a planet's political dynamics with enough effort.
5 - You are of global importance. A Queen. You are famous enough to be immediately recognized.  Foreigners will call you "Your Majesty" or "Your Excellency". You could make a bid for seccession, if you wanted to. You stand a slim but realistic chance of gaining control over your home culture.

You gain Status by being invested with or seizing a new title, domain, or command; by incorporating others Status-having individuals as vassals, staff officers, or clique members; by gaining widespread popular support in the relevant region.
Deneb Provisional Government characters may not have a Status higher than their Competence. Church of Saint Vadekar characters may not have a Status higher than their Sensitivity.

COMPETANCE:
Your ability to do your job. High-Competance characters are also broadly skilled in other professions. Professions need not be official; Revolutionary Leader is a valid profession for a character who is not the leader of a revolution, so long as they have trained to be able to become one. Equivalencies given in Deneb Government ranks.
0 - You are capable of doing basic tasks in low-pressure situations. A footsoldier. Your performance in high-pressure situations varies.
1 - You can keep calm under pressure. A Lieutenant. You are known to be solid and dependable but not spectacular.
2 - You are notably skilled. A Commodore. People in your circles call on you for aid. Your superiors entrust you with difficult tasks.
3 - You are a Renaissance sapient. A Rear Admiral. You can be trusted to perform a wide variety of tasks, and stand out in your field of study as an expert.
4 - You are a true expert. An Admiral. Highly influential people seek your council directly. You can handle tasks of grave importance without failing.
5 - You are a living legend. A High Admiral. You are given charge of projects governing entire planets. You are known even by laypeople as a renowned genius. Your skill is withour par.

You gain Competance through intense study; by discovering lost techniques; by interfacing with World-Minds and similar.
Synthetics may not have a Competance higher than their Intellect + 1.

SENSETIVITY:
Your degree of power with the psychic sensory field called Sensetivity, used to interface with Z-drives and hyperjump points. Equivalencies given in Church of Saint Vadekar O-classifications.
0 - You are not Sensitive. Aves and synthetics, as well as the vast majority of humans.
1 - Your Aura extends less than a foot from your body. O-1. You are capable of sensing structural irregularities in things you touch, feeling The Oneness when nearing a hyperpoint, and escaping catastrophy in a Z-sarcophagus.
2 - Your Aura extends a few feet from your body. O-2 to O-4. You notice when people enter or exit rooms regardless of distraction. On Terra worlds, you feel worms under your feet when walking on pavement.
3 - Your Aura extends several meters from your body. O-5 to O-9. You can move a pilot or scout into and out of Z-space, and interface with a hyperdrive to navigate hyperpoints in a small vessel. Your sense of empathy is heightened as your Aura envelops those around you.
4 - Your Aura extends a few dozen meters from your body. O-9 to 0-12. You could be helmsperson on a Hypermax vessel. Limited control of small objects within your Aura becomes possible. It is nearly impossible to surprise you.
5 - Your Aura extends far from your body. O-13 and O-14. You can move smaller hypercraft into Z-space. Your telekinesis is strong enough to use in a life-or-death struggle. You are concidered an asset of national importance. You feel the Oneness outside of hyperpoints.

Normally, Sensitivity is inborn and static. You are not normal. You may gain Sensitivity through deep religious experiences; through unprotected contact with Z-Space; by taking certain psi-active drugs.
Imperial Alliance and World Society characters may not have Sensitivity 5.

INTELLECT:
How smart you are; or more broadly, how strongly your mind resembles a World-Mind. Only relevant for the synthetic, whether AI or posthuman. Equivalencies given in World Society sophont classifications.
0 - You are smart enough to carry out rote tasks. Class D and C. Actual intellectual labor is beyond you.
1 - You are about as smart as a baseline human, if a bit more set in your ways. Class B.
2 - You are more intelligent than most baseline humans, but still recognizably human in intellect. Class A.
3 - Your raw deductive abilities outclass all but the most skilled humans. Class X.
4 - You are obviously nonhuman. Class I-1. You find it difficult to focus on worldly tasks and usually require assistance with them. Your processor is just barely small enough to fit in a human chassis.
5 - You are a direct underling of the World-Minds themselves. Class I-2. You are as smart as you could be while still being comprehensible to human minds. You might do maintence on the World-Minds or relay their calculations to the citizenry.

You may gain Intellect by direct appeal to a World-Mind or by self-modification, which is concidered somewhere between stupid and outright suicidal.

PERCEPTION:
The aves' psionic ability, the power to make oneself aware of normally invisible phenomenon, like Z-Space disruptions.
0
1
2
3
4
5

You may gain Perception through intense meditation; through rites of self-deprivation and sacrifice; though psi-active drugs.

In addition to a character's core attributes, they have a second Soul from their Faction so long as they remain within their faction's good graces. The rules and Souls of the Factions are as follows:

The Imperial Alliance is a faction of petty nobles, ruling over the habitable worlds of Acamar Prime, Grace, and Sabina I and a small number of habitats. Many ambitious Imperial nobles seek control of the Nexus to establish themselves as contenders for the Imperial throne. This caste of landed nobility is exclusively female and tends to have reletively high Status. The Imperial Soul is evoked by calling on the prestige and legacy of ones' bloodline and reletives.

The Argonaut Commonwealth is an extremely loose coalition of so-called Argonauts, who live mostly in various habitats and have a strong culture of self-reliance, independece, and distrust of outsiders. The Commonwealth wants control of the Nexus to act as a bulwark against another humiliating foreign invasion. The Argonaut Soul is evoked by calling on the particular culture of one's home habitat.

The Longhouse Federation is a presidential republic with control of Trappist IV and the recently-terraformed Ontario, with a declining economy and a good deal of internal dissent. While the Federation claims that its interest in the Nexus is in ensuring that the cosmopolitan system is under democratic control, many are also interested in the indesputable economic and millitary benefits of control of the system. One evokes the Federal Soul by claiming a (percieved or real) popular mandate for their actions.

The Human-Avian Concord is populated mostly by Avians, a species of psionically-sensitive birdlike people encountered by early settlers, with humans maintaing power as the exclusive providers of FTL travel. The Concord is experiencing severe overcrowding and is mostly interested in Nexus' habitable world. The Concord Soul is evoked by using the strengths and weaknesses of two groups for one's own benefit.

The Church of Saint Vadekar is a religious order named after the discoverer of hyperlanes. Almost their whole faction lives within sealed habitats designed to facilitate the birth of as many Sensitives as possible. Their industrial base on the world of Rapture was lost in war, and the world of Nexus offers to replace it, but most in the Church are more interested in the Nexus' extremely high hyperlane density which holds tremendous import in their religious system. The Soul of Vadekar is evoked by claiming a spiritual or divine mandate or acting to increase galactic harmony and beauty.

The Deneb Provisional Government was formed by stranded millitary personnel, and is now a semi-democratic system where millitary service is required to vote and the government and millitary are increasingly intertwined. The government views control over the Nexus as a top priority for strategic reasons, and also conciders the system as an important base for defense against any threat that may come from the remains of the Sol system. Deneb's Soul is evoked by taking drastic actions in the name of human preservation.

The World Society was isolated from humanity until the discovery of Nexus and is decended from a small number of scientists studying the supernova remnant of Alpha Lupi. Too small to maintain a functional population, the World Society embraced robotics to a degree shunned by the other factions, and is made up largely of Synthetics, either former humans who uploaded their brains into robot bodies or AI designed to emulate humanity, ruled over by the god-like World-Minds. The Society, who refers to the Nexus by its original name of Alpha Centauri, desire control of the Nexus to secure and protect the historically-valuable site and to launch an expedition to Sol to investigate its destruction. The Society's Soul is evoked by making use of knowledge lost to the rest of the galaxy.

Perez Expanse Trading, LLC, formed from former Deneb and Church territories in the Expanse who grew rich off acting as a trade intermediary between the feuding nations. The Nexus is already a vitally important trade system mere weeks after its discovery, and Perez Expanse wants it. The Soul of the Expanse is evoked by playing two parties off each other for one's own gain.

The Backroads are all the systems not controlled by a major government or located on public starmaps. The population of the Backroads is a mess of dissenters from all factions, criminals, exiles, and lost colonies, and their interest in Nexus is as varied as their origins. The Backroads has no Soul, representing the difficulty any Backroads faction will have in seizing the Nexus, but in exchange cannot fall from their factions' grace.