User Profile

I remain, gentlemen, you obedient servant. O. G.



Name: The Phantom / Erik Destler
Age: 34 years of age
Occupation: Opera ghost

Personality:

A cold and calculating man, some have said that he may be a genius, and others, a monster. His own loathing for his face has made him bitter and resentful towards the entire world, but he knows that his heart still beats just as the rest of them do. Some might think that he is arrogant simply because he feels that he knows everything that has to do with music and its creation. He is the master; the teacher. Eerily obsessive, Erik clings tightly to the things serving as an anchor for him. He does not have anything else, after all, and if those were to disappear, he may cease to live at all. There are times when he can be soft and caring, but he is also temperamental, and angers quickly - his first response when something happens. Erik is a violent man, and allows his Punjab lasso to do the talking frequently when words can not quite make the impression he wants.

But even aside from his deformations, both on his face, and in his soul, he is a passionate man with unconditional love just waiting to be called upon. Music is his life, his very soul, soothing away his worries and concerns. You can tell how he is feeling by the sort of music he plays. If he is in a good mood, his pieces are passionate with a hint of lightness. If not, then you can tell. It is the sort of music that would chill you to the bone and freeze your insides.

If he were to talk to you, Erik would act as any normal gentleman would. Polite and somewhat curt, he knows he would be able to fit into the world, if only he hadn't been horribly cursed. He yearns for someone to accept him, but realises that this is nearly impossible.

Appearance:

There are several striking features on his face, but the most would have to be the white porcelain mask covering the right half of his face (stopping just above his lips). On the other half of his face, you can clearly see his piercing gray-green eyes along with the rest of his chiseled features. From the left side, he looks like a regular man, and even a highly attractive man at that. But on the right, the mystery is built. He wears a black wig cut just below his ears, sometimes tied back in a small ribbon. Underneath, the hair is much lighter, but he makes sure that nobody will see it.

Under the mask is something so horrific, he cannot even bear to look at it himself. Tall and slim, Erik, though he would likely never show it, has a fairly good build on him. Supposedly from all of that jumping and running he does down corridors and above the stage.

Erik wears mostly dark colors to blend into shadows and remain unnoticed by others.

History:

In Gaston Leroux's novel, The Phantom of the Opera, we are never given a thorough history of the Phantom's life. We are only given snippets of his brilliance at illusion and design by way of remembrances of the Persian. The Persian recalls Erik's time of employment for the Shah-in-Shah of Persia as 'The Rosy Hours of Mazenderan,' called such because of the deaths of the many victims of the Shah and the 'little sultana' in the house-of-horrors that was the Shah's palace at Mazenderan. It was built in such a way that not even the slightest whisper could be considered secure and private. The architecture was arranged so that sound carried and reverberated at myriad locations, so that one never knew who might be listening in. The Persian does not go into great detail on the actual circumstances, dwelling instead on the vague horrors that existed at Mazenderan. Leroux does tell us that the Shah became paranoid that Erik would use his genius against him, and ordered him executed. It was only by intervention of the Persian (the 'daroga, or police chief of Mazenderan, whose own life had been saved by Erik in the past) and his friends, that Erik was able to escape.

Though Leroux appears to have given Erik a very shallow depth-of-field, other, more in-depth histories of his life do exist in various forms based on what we learn in Leroux's novel. The most widely accepted 'official' version of the Phantom's past is the novel Phantom by Susan Kay. It details his life from birth until his death beneath the Opera House. According to Kay, the Phantom was born as Erik in a small town not far from Rouen, the son of a master mason. He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his deformed face was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a freak show showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He traveled around Europe and Asia with Gypsies. There he acquired his acrobatic and musical skills and sharpened his twisted genius. He also became an expert ventriloquist.

Eventually, Erik became a court assassin and personal engineer to the Persian Shah, building the Shah sophisticated traps and torture devices (such as the Punjab Lasso and the Torture Chamber). After some time, the Shah feared that Erik knew too much and decided to dispose of him. Erik managed to escape, eventually making his way back to France. (Based on the dating this unnamed Shah could be Nasser-al-Din Shah (1831–1896, reigned 1848–1896).

Erik used his architectural genius skills and won a contract as one of the architects of Paris' Palais Garnier Opera House. Below the Opera House, an artificial lake had been created during its construction using eight hydraulic pumps, because of problems with the ground water level that kept rising. Without anyone noticing, Erik built a maze of tunnels and corridors on the lower levels. Past the underground lake, he built a lair for himself, where he could live protected from the public.

Besides being a brilliant inventor and engineer, Erik was also a musical genius, and he started to visit the opera house in order to listen to operas and interfere with the manager's bad taste. Because he could not show his distorted face in public, he took the guise of a ghost, using violence in order to blackmail the opera managers and bind them to his will. He exploited the employees' superstitions and his knowledge about the building's secret passages, allowing him access to every part of the building without being noticed. He terrorized those who refused his demands and even killed people as warnings. However, he treated those who were loyal to him and obeyed his command very kindly (such as Mme. Giry).

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