You start at Rank 0, Level 0.

Your attributes get a standard distribution of: 3, 2, 2, 0, 0, -2. You can place these into any of your attributes.

Alternatively you can build up your attributes using the following rules.

Choose the style of character you want to play as: Martial, Caster or Generalist. Then apply the attribute increase those would give you to your base standard distribution. You also decrease any attribute you want (including one increased by this choice).

Let us say you chose a Martial style character, which increased Body, Blood and Heart. And you decreased Mind. Your attributes could be:

Mind -1
Body 1
Soul 0
Blood 1
Heart 1
Bone 0

Next you choose a Source. The choices are Elemental, Nature, Divine, Occult, Arcane. Your internal magic picks up from one of these choices. Everyone has some access to Elemental, but those whose focus is Elemental, will usually have unique elemental choices.

The source lets you add to any attribute.

You can increase your Body score again, since you feel like it would be important to your Warrior.

Mind -1
Body 2
Soul 0
Blood 1
Heart 1
Bone 0

Then you pick a background that speaks to you, in this case you choose an Athletic background, which gives you an increase in Body, and a decrease in any attribute of your choice, in this case Mind.

Mind -2
Body 3
Soul 0
Blood 1
Heart 1
Bone 0

Finally, you choose a Culture (this might be the same as your species, or another). That increases one attribute based on the culture, and the other is your choice. In our warrior's case, they grew up near an Abelhoa colony, so they will get an increase in Blood and we'll choose Heart for our free choice (since we can't pick any attribute past 3 during character creation).

Mind -2
Body 3
Soul 0
Blood 2
Heart 2
Bone 0

These same choices could have been more averaged out if you wanted to have access to different skills:

Mind 0
Body 2
Soul 0
Blood 1
Heart 1
Bone 1

or even:

Mind 1
Body 1
Soul 0
Blood 1
Heart 1
Bone 1

No matter what, the lowest attribute that could be is a -2, the highest a 3, and the most average character would have a 1 in all but one of their attributes.