Character Creation: Hollow Earth Expedition

Inhumanoids! Down to the fiery depths of the earth where nightmares...begin! "Who can stop 'em? Earth-Core, I hope! There's your Gen-X cartoon fix for the day.

The Game: Hollow Earth Expedition
The publisher: Exile Game Studio
Degree of familiarity: I've read it, and it uses the same system as Desolation, but that's about it.
Books required: Just the very beautiful core. 

HEX is, as you might guess, a pulp game of traveling into the dinosaur-laden inner world. Stats for giant boring (as in, "bores into the earth") machines, raptors, etc. Good stuff. Despite the girl on the cover who appears to be using magic, there's no system for it included, sadly. But that's quite all right.

I want to play a character who's down here in Hollow Earth because he figures that the natives (oh, there are natives) have a culture that no one's touched yet. He wants to know about their stories, their heroes, gods and villains, and he wants to see what concepts are truly eternal, truly universal, because maybe then he can learn some truth about the Divine. I think that makes my Archetype either Academic or Occultist, and because my character is so interested in learning about the ur-myths of the world, I'll go with the latter. Motivation: Definitely Truth. He's here to discover, not to have his existing world-view supported (which would be Faith).

Attributes! I get 15 points to split up. I want to make him fairly well-rounded, so:

Body 2
Dexterity 2
Strength 2
Charisma 3
Intelligence 3
Willpower 3

Secondary Attributes! My Size is 0. Perception is 8, Move is 4, Initiative is 7, Defense is 4, Stun is 2, Health is 5.

Skills! (In pulp games, you have to use a lot of exclamation points.) I get 15 points here, too. Making my list:

Academics (Mythology) 5
Athletics 1
Empathy 3
Investigation 3
Linguistics 3

Talents/Resources! I get one (a Talent or a Resource). I'm likely to pick a Talent, methinks. I believe I'll take Charismatic. Raises my Charisma, which I think he'll find useful when dealing with natives.

Flaws! I'll take one, here. Overconfident. He assumes that the natives will welcome the chance to trade stories. He might wind up getting eaten for his trouble if he picks the wrong tribe.

Experience Points! I get 15. I want to be a little tougher, so I'll spend four and up my Athletics, and another four to up my Firearms. I feel like I should have some Skill that trades on my Charisma, so I'll buy two points in Diplomacy. That gives me one point left, that I can't do anything with. Bummer.

I get four languages beyond his native English. I take French and German, but I'll leave two slots open for learning native tongues in Hollow Earth. I note his gun, but I won't bother with other equipment, as that would kinda depend on the nature of the campaign.

A little background: James Hart was a promising doctoral candidate in folklore and sociology, but he started alienating people by looking for truth behind legends of heroes and myths. He finally revealed his theory about the source of such legends - a race of people who were truly godlike. Maybe the nephilim of Biblical myth, maybe the Titans, but something, some exalted race now extinct, but demigods compared to us. James kept going with that theory and subsequently lost his dissertation defense, but then the man funding this expedition came to him with an interesting proposal. He's good with languages, and a natural diplomat - perhaps he'd consider searching a civilization that no one else even knows about? James, obviously, jumped at the chance.