Trace

For the in-game Note called "Trace", see Trace (Note).

Trace, as seen during his in-game conversations with other characters.

Description

Trace is the main character of Axiom Verge. The player plays as Trace throughout the game and the story focuses mainly around Trace's attempts to understand Sudra and get himself back home to Earth.

Trace is a scientist from Earth, not a warrior. As such, it is generally in his character to defend himself, but not to seek out violence — only knowledge. This theme is reiterated throughout the game as Trace not only struggles to understand the world he has been thrown into, but also struggles to deal with having to kill other living beings.

Story

Prior to the events of the game, Trace, the player character, is a theoretical physicist whose revolutionary theories are regarded by other scientists as false and insignificant, thereby earning him the nickname "Athetos," a word meaning "without place," "to do away with," or "to reject." Trace is blacklisted by many of his colleagues. Nonetheless, he continues striving to validate his work.

The story starts in the year 2005 in a Mexico research facility where Trace and colleague Hammond are working on an experiment based on Trace's revolutionary ideas in the field of physics. The beamlet in the experiment goes awry with the pressure valve and a huge explosion occurs, severely injuring Trace and rendering him unconscious. This is the last memory of Earth Trace recalls before waking up in Sudra, an alien world. Trace learns that through the intervention of giant female machines called Rusalki, he has been mysteriously transported to an egg-shaped device called a Rebirth Chamber, with his body seemingly intact and uninjured. When he comes to, Trace is implored telepathically by a female voice, who later introduces herself as the Rusalka Elsenova, to retrieve a gun called the Axiom Disruptor in the adjacent room. She also warns Trace to stay away from an ominous being called Athetos. In actuality, the Rusalki have cloned a much younger version of Athetos, the identity of which is Trace.

As the game progresses, Elsenova informs Trace that he has ended up on an alien world called Sudra, and that a plague created by a being called Athetos has wiped out or mutated most of the Sudrans on the planet. Trace is then told that defeating Athetos is the key to finding his way back to Earth. He is urged by Elsenova to locate and activate the Power Filter and the Remote Drone Dispenser in order to repair the bodies of her and fellow Rusalki Veruska and Ophelia.