/tg/Station 13

Where are characters stored? As some of my characters appear their old setups, till I click them and then they become a random name/look?

They're stored per-server in /data/player_saves/(first letter of your username)/(your username)/preferences.sav. If for whatever reason the game can't read your player data (outdated format, uses a look that doesn't exist, etc.) it generates a randomised character and saves it.

Not 100% true carver.
It will first try to update your save, based on the file's save version.
there's conversion code going back much further than PAS's savefile, so it should have succeeded.

There have been times when people fucked with stuff and then it broke people's saves if they logged in at the wrong time. I know that has happened to me and other people.

Drat so its probably lost to the ether then? It at first glance (only via name) showed my original characters then changed upon clicked :/

I'll do my best to remember what they looked like I guess, I suppose its not the biggest issue.

MSO doesn't keep backup saves either anymore, so I'm not sure. I guess you could try playing around with it and maybe they'd reappear, considering you said they showed the names originally, but otherwise I have no idea.