First off, Troika! is awesome with it's very aggressively laissez-faire stance on advanced skills and backgrounds, ie make some shit up including skills. Because of that and it's overall implied science-fantasy vibe, which to me is very weird cartoon Spelljammer but also metropolitan, I've been repeatedly struck with inspiration for new backgrounds. None of these are complete, or possibly not even good, but I am going to shove them into more people's faces. And if anyone wants to jump in with their own weird Troika! backgrounds, DO IT!! I will be compiling mine at some point.
So massive text dump inc
11 Revolutionary Gundad
You fought against the oppressive regime of your homeworld. One that dictated everybot must do the work that fits their alternate form. One that would, as automation took off, kill off entire classes of bots for being obsolete. You rebelled against it, but lost your way. Now, you deal with the weight of the warcrimes you committed.
Possessions
Arm-mounted fusion cannon
Crystal Slate full of pro-proletarian literature and anti-formist literature
The heart of Swole Dad McTruck?
Advanced Skills
3 Gun fighting
3 Fist fighting
3 Poetry
3 Mining
Special
Can transform into a Pistolet
12 Nautilium
You're a well-dressed aristocratic sailor of the stars. Extremely charming to anyone they perceive as being their equals or betters. All non-nautilia are servants, conveyances, or food. You are actually a small nautilus-like creature that can gain control of any headless mammalian body, preferring those of humans and similarly shaped creatures.
Possessions
Opium Pipe
Fan (club) or Pistolet
Fancy Dress (moderate armor)
Case of Calling cards
Mask
Advanced Skills
1 Pipe Fighting
1 Fan or Pistolet Fighting
2 Smoking
2 Gambling
3 Dancing
1 Chirurgery
1 Nautiloid Sailing
3 Etiquette
Special
You prefer to eat the organs of still living vertebrates, and can giving the proper tools attach yourself to the neck stump of any vertebrate and operate it as your own body.
You can exhale opium, or other smokeable smoke, from your pipe in a perfectly conical cloud, spending 3 Stamina and requiring all within to make a luck check vs Smoking or be struck extremely languid, slow, and essentially out of combat for about 10 minutes.
13 Magical Mishap Orc
You're one of the orcs that always happens via magical oops.
Possessions
BIG weapon
Animal fur loincloth
Wicked scarification Boombox
Advanced skills
3 big weapon fighting
2 fist fighting
2 wrestling 3 strength
2 run
14 Orc Exchange Student
Unlike most orcs you have arrived here voluntarily to study abroad.
Possessions School uniform
Club
Traditional orc garb (animal fur loincloth)
Advanced skills
1 club fighting
1 wrestling 1 mathmology
1 alchemy
1 spell - random
1 spell - random
1 spell - random
2 strength 2 run
1 cooking
15 I'm Not An Orc; I'm an astronaut
You are told you are an orc because you arrived here through a 'magical mishap.' No one believes that you aren't an orc.
Possessions
Spacesuit w/ bubble helmet (light armor)
Freeze dried apple pie (counts as 3 rations)
Baseball and glove
Advanced Skills
1 Shuttle Pilot
2 Baseball
2 Run
1 Engineering
2 Gun Fighting
3 Beer
16 Newspaper Stand (Yes this is JoJo reference)/ Maybe Newsie who is a stand user
21 Mousketeer
22 2.3 Pounds of Hallucinating Pudding
You are pudding, maybe. And you are hallucinating, maybe. You are conscious of yourself and the world outside of yourself. You for some reason have a rad, but conceptually disgusting bio-mech.
Possessions
Bio-mech that looks totally like a normal person
Potted Succulent
Anxiety <This Is A Quest Item And Cannot Be Discarded Or Sold>
Advanced Skills
1 Strength
1 Run
1 Climb
3 Baristaing
2 Poetry
23 Kobold Banker
You were one of the countless clerks in the Bank. What you are under the mask matters not. You dress as a kobold and that's all that matters.
Possessions
Draconic hat and mask
Business suit
Briefcase
Merchant Scales
Advanced Skills
3 Banking
1 Mathmology
2 Dragon Etiquette 2 Trading
3 Run
1 Briefcase Fighting
24 Adolescent Anthropomorphic Assassin Animal
Possessions
Brightly colored wrist bands and eye-mask bandanna
Assassin weapons
Skateboard
The number of several acceptable delivery places
Advanced Skills
2 Sneak
2 assassin weapon fighting
2 cooking
3 Skateboarding
2 Surfing
2 Swimming
25 Swordwolf
OH SHIT THAT WOLF HAS A SWORD. You have a sword, and aren't afraid to use it.
possessions
greatsword
advanced skills
3 greatsword fighting
6 wolf
2 Awareness
2 Run
26 Businessman
You were an important person, once, but after your company was taken over and liquidated you found yourself a bit rootless.
Possessions
Power suit
Briefcase
'89 Nokia
'90s Toshiba laptop
Fly-fishing equipment
Advanced skills
1 fly-fishing
3 office software 2 public speaking
2 bureaucracy 1 drive
31 You were a businessman but now you're a slime
You were going up, but you tripped into a hole and woke up here transformed into a gelatinous slime.
Possessions Upbeat can-do attitude
Soft and squishy body (light armor)
Advanced skills
As the businessman (it's funny to me)
32 Cat-Rabbit
You're an adorable cat-rabbit thing. You can’t really speak but you love to eat carrots.
Possessions
None you're a cat-rabbit.
Advanced skills
3 starship piloting
2 pew pew fighting
4 cute
2 Run
1 Acrobatics
Special
You transform into an interstellar warship.
33 Holographic Projection from a Rock
34 Door to Door Salesperson That's it. You're a person who travels around selling things, like vacuums or brushes or some mundane thing. You're probably flustered at somehow ending up here, but you got sales to make.
Possessions
2d6 Samples of wares
Shiny Shoes
Fedora
Rolodex full of contact information of clients and vendors
Advanced Skills
2 Navigation
2 Strength
2 Sales
Special
You always know either the shortest route to your destination OR the route with the most potential sales.
35 Brain in a Jar
Possessions
Jar
Mysterious Liquid in the Jar
Creepy Extendo arms
Advanced Skills
3 mathmology
3 underwater basket weaving
1 piloting
2 obscure b-movie trivia
1 Lovecraftianism
1 Mycoloculture
36 Mouse on a motorcycle
You're a mouse that can talk and drive small toy vehicles by making engine noises.
Possessions
Small toy motorcycle
Half of a ping-pong ball helmet (light armor)
Advanced Skills
3 Motorcycling
3 sneaking
3 climbing
6 Mouse
41 Arcanotech Engineer
You are a skilled engineer. Your decades of experience with engines of all types has certainly shaped you into the person you are today. Unfortunately your last berthing has offloaded you due the ship’s doctor declaring you physically unfit for duty. Possessions
Mutated Crab-arm (as medium beast)
Kilt
Bagpipes
Advanced Skills
3 Engineering
1 Claw fighting
2 Strength
1 Tobacco chewing
1 Bagpiping
6 Barely comprehensible human dialect
2 whiskey drinking
Special
You feel fine. Bizarre energies just don't affect you immediately and you are in denial of any mutation effects.
42 Stowaway
Possessions
Dank barrel
Advanced Skills
3 Sneak
2 Mushrooming
43 Cabin boy
You may or not be a boy but everyone assumes you are because you may or many be pretending to be one to see the worlds on a golden-sail barge
Possessions
Cute sailor clothes
Locked sea chest full of disguise stuff
Advanced Skill
3 Disguise
2 Swabbing
-1 Grog drinking
1 Flirting
3 Beauticianing
44 Oblivious Tourist
You're a very wealthy but clueless personage. You somehow never clue into that you are adventuring
Possessions
5x starting money
Sunglasses
Bermuda shorts
Expensive suit
Advanced Skills
None.
45 2d Girl living in a 3d World
You're not bad, but maybe you are, but you were definitely drawn that way.
Possessions
Fanservice outfit
Assorted booby-traps
Microphone w/ stand
Makeup kit
Advanced Skills
3 Singing
3 Patty-cake
2 Trapmaking
Special
You are in fact 3d now, but you are vulnerable any kind of solvents, they burn like acid. However, you incredibly hard to kill otherwise, you functionally have heavy armor and do not die at <0hp unless it from solvents. You do not need use a backpack to carry gear, your cleavage is an extradimensional space. Same inventory rules apply.
46 Giant Flatworm
You are a giant flatworm. Shit that's horrifying. You can exist outside of moist environments and that's even more horrifying. Despite being a flatworm, you can communicate to other people. Somehow. And I feel that might be most horrifying of all.
Possessions
Penis Sword
Advanced Skills 3 Penis fighting
51 Cannibal Space Mermaid
You're a mermaid. You're from the void that the spheres hang in and you like to eat people.
Possessions
Sweet rocking instrument
Knives
How to Serve Men
Anarchist/Socialist Zines
Leather Jacket
Advanced Skills
3 Wailing and rocking out
2 Cooking
2 Baristaing
6 Space Swimming
1 Normal water swimming
Special
You can breathe the void between stars and planets
52 Rogue Rent-a-cop-bot
You're a cyberoid. This means your meat components were grown along with your manufactured mechanical ones. You're on the run because you're a rogue, a free agent. The folks who made you would love to re-ad you to inventory and lobotomize you. You just want to watch plays, read books, and other passive entertainments. Unfortunately, your nature compels you to do dumb shit like risk your life for people doing dumb shit.
Possessions
Concealed and built in fusils.
Large sack full of books and crystal tablets
One REALLY big gun
Advanced Skills
3 Gun fighting
3 Fist fighting
3 Wrestling
1 Relationship advice
2 Obscure media Trivia
53 Ghost of a chicken
You are the restless soul of a chicken some brave adventurers used to check for traps
Possessions
Small Beak Talons
Advanced skills
1 spooking 1 sneaking
1 chicken fighting
2 awareness
54 Late 20th Century 3/4 Ton Pickup
You're like Herbie, but actually useful.
Possessions Tow hitch
Locking Truck box full of the kinda of things folks keep in truck boxes
Built tough (always moderate armor)
Dented front bumper (damage as large beast)
King-cab with 2 bucket seats
Bench-seat that seats three
Detailed how-to guide on your make and model
Advanced skills
3 drive
4 strength 2 car fighting
55 Corpse
Possessions
Coffin
Dirt
2d6 worms
Burial Shroud
Advanced Skills
NONE YOU'RE A CORPSE
56 Dead Traveller Character
You're a traveller character. You are acutely aware of that fact. You also extremely aware that you died during character creation.
Meta note to the player: there must be at least dead traveller character already rolled up stashed somewhere.
Possessions
What you'd have received if you'd survive to muster out.
Advanced skills
What you'd have received if you'd survive to muster out.
61 Swole Dad McTruck
Once you were a soldier then leader upholding the repressive regime of your homeworld because you felt that while there were great rebuttals of Formism, that the Anti-Formists were going to far. But through time your constant exposure to the bots you were oppressing, you realized there was truth, but by then they have pulled off a coup and you became a rebel against the Anti-Formist government when they began committing warcrimes. Possessions
Big Cannon Big Trailer
Face-mask that Moves when You Talk
50' tall metal dadbod (heavy armor)
Advanced Skills
3 Gun Shooting
1 Basketball
3 Truck Driving
6 Dad Hugging
1 Bad Dad Robot Puns
Special
You can turn into a 18 wheeler
You have 3 times the carry capacity?
62 Is that a cat or a dog
.....holy shit you can talk? You're the result of animal experimentation, or are naturally a creature that is both cat and doglike that has been experimented on. In either case you can talk. Possessions Eye-patch Large specimen ID tag or tattoo An over-sized barrette (damage as dagger) Advanced skills 3 hair accessory fighting 2 brooding
1 sniffing
63 Operator Dog
DOG WITH A KNIFE...IS THAT A GUN?
Possessions
Pistolet
Knife
Bandolier of 6 plasmic orbs
Advanced Skills
3 Dog Fighting
1 Fetching
3 Sniffing
2 Awareness
2 Tail Wagging
2 Sneak
64 A Particularly Naughty Rabbit
Possessions:
Tea service Jacket, coat, dress, or similar respectable clothes. Advanced Skills 3 Tea 3 Fist Fighting 2 Sneak 2 Awareness
2 Jump
65 Some Pig
WHO GAVE THAT PIG A SPEAR?
Possessions
spear
spider that reads and writes
Advance skills
3 Dance
3 Spear Fighting
2 Sheep-talking
2 airplane fighting
66 Steel-horserodent of the Scarlet Lands You are bipedal sophant that bears a strong resemblance to common mice, only you're 6'+, muscular and have antennae. Your home world has been stripped of its resources by interplanetary capitalists and turned into a desolate wasteland. While you miss your home, you feel the call to adventure. Whether you are truly a vigilante for justice against opportunistic colonizers or not, you still crave the adrenaline rush of racing, especially on a motorcycle, an extremely unusual mount outside of the Scarlet Lands.
Possessions
Chopper, or Sport bike
Mechanical limb, blocky and friztng w/ built in fusil (+2 Strength), or Sweet Shades (+2 Awareness) & pistolet, or metal half-mask & multi-function flares (+1 to a variety things that could solved with fire)
Tool box
Advanced skills
3 Motorcycle fighting
2 percussive maintenance
2 Specfic weapon fighting
1 Strength