Excuse me. Had to spend a day throwing up. Better now.
Azthor: I agree with CG; don't start far away if your intent is not to head towards the game area pretty much immediately. Your character can be from wherever you like (within reason), so long as they actually hang around in the game area.
So, you could be a Ztah warlord, but you would have to justify being in the Storm Coast.
Now, regarding your character choices: Both of the proposed archetypes are allowed; heck, any archetype you can think of is allowed. Magic is... difficult, but if you can be reasonable about it, it just makes the game more
interesting.
The game area contains a lot of unclaimed land. Which is not to say uncivilized; just that no major power claims rulership over it. The city-states are by nature all fairly centralized.
And one other thing: I notice you are quite nervous about defining anything. Don't be. The world was and is created by everyone. The Green Empire is undefined? Define it yourself. If other people think it sounds good, bam, its canon.
I was thinking, since I wasn't provided with any starting money or traits, could I retroactively benefit from a trait? What does that "Educated" trait do?
Nothing. It is only relevant for the creation of a character. Limiting the traits is to prevent people from being an educated general assassin spy engineer medic navigator. It doesn't have any mechanical effect, except in that if someone who is not educated starts quoting from 'the Art of Peace' people are going to raise eyebrows, whereas educated folks like yourself and vagel can recite the entire 'Oddsea Trilogy' backwards. As it were.
In other words, you are already Educated.
Anyone else think that the YaK universe is just deep enough for one of those DnD like games? Just saying.
It has certainly accrued sufficient content to keep a table occupied for a while.