I think before would be the best choice, preferably right before (though during is fine as well). After feels like it would be a bad idea, since there'd be no proper beginning to the story or good way to really introduce all of our characters to each other (not to mention it would kind of feel pointless to have the AAAT in the story if we just skip past it, y'know?)

EDIT: Also, I'm guessing we just poast our character sheets in the character section ourselves? I'm not very familiar with this forum :S