From the introduction:
NC is a role-playing system which is designed as a collection of different "chunks". Some of the chunks are constructed in such a way that they can be used with standard fantasy role-playing systems. For example, the NC Combat System is one of these.
This particular chunk defines the statistics of a role-playing character, and how to generate that character: the NC Character System. Using the NC Character System will improve the quality of play, particularly with the NC skill system. However, using the character system also requires that you use the combat System and the skill System.
The NC Character System provides a nice compromise between systems which represent the character as a tiny list of attributes which are far too vague to actually mean anything, and those systems which require that the player spend hours generating minutely detailed lists of numbers.
An NC character has 6 major character attributes. These attributes are generated from 12 minor attributes. He also has 5 combat attributes, which are described in The NC Combat System. The process for determining the combat attributes is different for characters generated using the Character System.