"I wonder what lies at the top of the world..."
Trace seems like a very relaxed and calm person, when in truth, he is a very rash and impulsive guy. He often acts without thinking, and this has gotten him in a lot of trouble. If something piques his interest, he loses sight of everything else, including his own health, to focus on that one thing, no matter how trivial. Trace's temper also causes him and everyone else with him a lot of trouble. If a random passerby accidentally gets in the way of his "research", he'll go crazy, patronizing and yelling at the guy no matter who he/she is. Despite his loud and gregarious persona, Trace is quite introverted. He usually avoids contact with other people if he can help it. He has no particular hobbies, except for whatever interests him at the time.
Trace is a very non-materialistic person, normally. If he finds interest in a certain object or fad, he'll stock up on tons of useless things to further this new hobby. But once he gets bored of it, all that stuff he obtained, no matter how valuable they are, is as good as junk to him. As a result, he hardly carries anything on him other than his clothes and a small knapsack with the bare essentials (food, water, rope, cloth, medicine, a torch, etc). Other than that, he also carries a long walking stick, a nautical telescope, and a large flint necklace used to make fires. Trace's only weapon is a large crossbow he uses for hunting. Trace, though, never uses his crossbow for anything other than hunting, and will instead simply use whatever he has on hand (often his walking stuck) to bludgeon his enemies.
Trace's earliest memories are of him and his father. He doesn't know who his mother was, nor if the man he was with was his actual father, but neither of them really cared about that, and they lived happily all the same. Trace's father was a humble woodsman who lived on the border between the Eternal Woods and the Forest of Time. This father was a very eccentric man, and refused to buy a real home. Instead, they camped out wherever there was lumber to be cut. This was where Trace learned his basic survival skills. They oscillated along the border of the two areas, chopping lumber in the Forest of Time and selling it in the Eternal Woods. The mostly uninhabited Forest of Time was mysterious and alluring to the young Trace since they never traveled very deep into it. To sate his son's curiosity, Trace's father told Trace wondrous stories of the Forest of Time. And when Trace was old enough, he took him deeper within the forest to actually show him the stories he had heard as a child.
Eventually, Trace's knowledge would be tested. When chopping wood in the Forest of Time, Trace caught a glimpse of a small creature, like none he had ever seen before, and instantly ran after it. He was so immersed in the strange creature's odd features that he couldn't hear his father's yells calling him back. By the time he had lost the animal, it was already sunset, and Trace was completely lost himself. But years in the wilderness had prepared him for this, and he managed to keep himself from panicking (more or less). He quickly and naturally set up a little camp high within the trees to protect him from predators, and surprisingly easily made it to the next morning. He knew which was he had to go to get back, North, but he didn't know which way that was. Ironically, Trace was too calm, and all too easily decided to randomly pick a direction and keep walking that way.
When he finally made it to a clearing, it both shocked and amazed him. Before him was an endless blue expanse, the Ocean. He had gone the exact wrong direction by mistake, and made it all the way to the Sandcoast. He had heard from his father of the southern beaches, and was about to turn around and go back when he noticed something. Trace had never seen a boat bigger than a kayak before, and when he saw people actually on that giant floating pile of wood, he couldn't help but run right after it. To make a long story short, the people on the ship, who were turned out to be a group of merchant traders, eventually (but begrudgingly) let the annoying child on board as part of the crew.
By the time poor Trace remembered that he had to get back home, he couldn't even see the shoreline anymore. He didn't really become depressed, but he did start to feel lonely. Several years of discovering and gathering new and exotic commodities from small islands kept Trace occupied for the most part, but during the oceanic parts of the voyage, he would often longingly look back in the direction of home. He was broken from this spell, though, when they reached the end of the world, the Arts. They couldn't sail too close, for safety reasons, but it was majestic even through the telescope they let Trace borrow. The world simply fell off into oblivion; it was both frightening and amazing.
When they finally returned to the mainland, Trace practically jumped off the boat, accidentally taking the telescope with him, and ran right into the forest. It had been 10 long years, and Trace was already an adult. Impatient, he rushed through the Forest of Time as fast as he could, even running through parts of the night if he had the energy.
Sadly, when he finally made it back to the Eternal Woods, his father was nowhere to be found. He asked almost every single person in the Eternal Woods if they knew where he was, but for some reason, nobody knew. It was as if when Trace left, his father disappeared with him. Did he go South as well to look for his son? Did he get attacked by some beasts? These scary questions ran rampant through Trace's mind, and almost made him run all the way back to Southcoast to look for him.
For some reason, he didn't. Even Trace himself doesn't understand why he decided not to look for his father. It wasn't because he didn't love him, nor that he didn't want to meet him. Trace simply felt as if he would find him eventually, like how the winds naturally carried the merchant boat from shore to shore. So he decided, why not take his time? There's so much more to do, after all...
Now Trace is much older, but still acts exactly the same. He has heard stories of a tall mountain at the top of the world that nobody has ever climbed yet. Currently in the city of Thigil, with eyes set on the Northern horizon, he prepares to go on another big journey.