Maerdwyn, for character creation, do you do the rolling for the tour of duty or do I do it?
As a rough character concept i'm thinking of something a little odd. A character that grew up on a TL 2-3 world, somewhere at the dege of known space. Son of a high lord whatever, something vaguely medieval - celtic - scottish (yes, another Celt-based character, so sue me

). When he was about 12-13 a scout ship crashed near his ancestral lands. Te scout survived, but the ship didn't. After a long recovery period, the scout was fit enough to travel back to the crashsite, and started to try and repair the radio. My character would've been 14-15 then. He hung around the spaceship the whole time, fascinated. The old scout didn't have anything to do , so he started to explain how things worked while the tow of them scrounged the wreck, building a radio from the computer motherbords, old batteries, duct tape and sweat.
Four years later another scout ship appeared, having heard the distress beacon whilst on recon.
The young warrior got permission from his father to join their honoured guest.
I'm guessing one term as a barbarian, then a term either in university (depending on my stats) or as a professional, then a few terms as a scout, and depending on what happens then maybe a term or two as a merc or rogue, or traveller.