I don't understand your questions; for best results, be a bit more specific and give some examples so we know what you mean.
The characters associated with the Empire are the players that choose to join that faction. To my knowledge, the Empire only accepts humans. So that about covers it.
You have to choose your own character.. you create your character when you join. Are you asking about using templates versus manually creating your character? That affects your character's skills; with a template, you don't need to set skills manually as they are pre-selected for you.