Erik "The Opera Ghost"

Character Information

Full Name: Real Name Unknown. Goes by Erik.
Date of Birth: March 21st, 1823
Original or Canon?: Canon
Face Claim: Any DeviantArt Artist's interpretation of Leroux Erik, as they all use the same basic idea, and there's no good actor alive who's done a film where there's a no-nose makeup. So until Tom Hiddleston decides that he's going to be the Phantom in a completely accurate Leroux version of Phantom of the Opera, I don't think I'll ever be able to have a legitimate faceclaim...

Physicality

Gender: Male
Age: 58
Hair: Black
Eyes: Yellow
Height: 6'5"
Body Type: Extreme Ectomorphic: Tall and skeletally thin.
Complexion: Dingy yellow
Description: Erik is an ectomorph: He's a definitive "hard gainer," in that it takes him forever to build up any muscle mass. He's very tall with a delicately built body and flat, almost concave chest. All of his ribs are visible when he's walking around shirtless (which no one wants to see). His limbs are relatively long in proportion, and his shoulders droop slightly. His fingers are long and spindly, and his features are sharp. Erik's hair is thin and grows rather quickly, and most times it's rather hard to keep it in place. His bone structure is fragile and light and his joints are small, but he's a good fighter, and therefore can protect himself easily enough. He's had to work very hard to gain his muscle and strength, but the strength he HAS gained, he uses to his advantage in scuffles. He's got a pretty linear physique, and his limbs in comparison with his muscle mass making him look taller than he actually is. Overall, he's lean and lightly muscled, small shouldered, and thin. Most people describe him as skeletally framed.

His face matches such skeletal descriptions, as he's got what people call a "death's head" for a face. He's gaunt and malnourished looking, with no nose, making him take on the look of a skull. His eye sockets are sunken, and his eyes themselves are hardly visible in the light. However, when he's in near darkness, his eyes glow like a cat's, allowing him good vision at night and in the cellars while other stumble around.

Erik's clothing choices range more toward dress clothes. On a normal day, he dresses with several layers (as would any Victorian man) that cover him from neck to foot. Starting from the undergarments and working upward, the most casual of Erik's everyday clothing would be as follows:

- Undergarments: Men's undergarments of the era came in two pieces, usually made of cotton, linen or silk. Erik prefers silk, because it feels soft and light on his skin. The drawers cover him from the waist to the knee, with a button overlap in the front and drawstrings in the back. Covering his chest is a wool flannel shirt that extends to his wrists. He wears black silk socks, held up to his calves by sock suspenders.

- Shirt: As he is very up to date with the styles of today (because of his fixation on normality), Erik wears standard cotton band collar shirts with detachable collars and cuffs on a normal day. His preferred style of collar to wear is the wing-tip collar, as it allows for a more stylized design and doesn't look quite as boring as round-tip or stand-up collars. He also favours single barrel cuffs, as those are the easiest to acquire. In order to keep his sleeves from becoming soiled, he has black silk sleeve garters that keep his sleeves tight and fitted.

- Trousers: On an ordinary day, Erik wears his trousers with comfort in mind. He has an extensive collection of black cotton pants that sit on his waistline. Each pair of his trousers includes two front pockets, suspender buttons, and a back adjuster buckle to accommodate all of his tastes in clothing.

- Braces/Suspenders: Erik has a large collection of braces of many makes. His favourite suspenders are made of black leather, but for comfort's sake, he usually wears canvas suspenders. He breaks out the leather suspenders for special occasions.

- Waistcoat/Vest: His occupation calls for him to wear dark clothing, so Erik has many different styles of dark coloured vests. Usually, he'll sport a black vest with a tone-on-tone paisley pattern or the like. Because he needs to cover the white of the shirt, the vests cover most of the shirts. He prefers notch style lapels, and most of his casual vests inclde welt pockets and fabric covered buttons. All of his vests have adjustable back straps.

- Coat: Erik owns coats of many different styles, but for work, he prefers to dress up his comfortable style a little with a regency style tailcoat. It allows for maximum movement and covers the sleeves of his shirt. Many of his tailcoats are black, and lined with black satin for his comfort.

Cravats/Ties: For work, Erik dons black ascots for simplicity. If he feels like dressing up his look a bit, he'll wear a classic thin cravat. The colours he owns range over the whole spectrum, but keeping up appearances as a spectre involve a very monotonous wardrobe.

Gloves: Erik has gloves for all sorts of occasions and duties. For general lurking, however, he has his leather gauntlet gloves. Because of the cut of his gloves, the above-the-wrist cuffs of the gloves sit over the sleeves of his jacket, allowing him maximum coverage.

Shoes: Erik ALWAYS wears leather shoes. No matter what the occasion, he has a style of leather shoe for it.

Hats: Erik has top hats of various colours and one black wide brimmed hat that he uses when he goes out as "the Opera Ghost". The wide brim serves to cover his masked face in shadow, so no one will readily see any defining features of his mask (or on occasion, his face).

(SOMEONE SITTING NEXT TO ME LOOKED AT HIS PICTURE AND CALLED HIM THE "TERRIBLY UNDERFED VERSION OF DRACULA", SO THERE YOU GO.)

General Personality

Loves:

• Music; More than anything, he loves his music. He works on his creations diligently, putting off hygiene and health to finish bits and pieces of his compositions.
  

Likes:

• Wine; He is a wine connoisseur, with a favoring for dessert wines like Port and Sherry.
  
• Architecture; He enjoys making new and exciting rooms and buildings, filled with little secrets that only he knows.
  
• Opera; It's his favorite musical genre, and he enjoys many works in Opera. He loves watching it, studying it, listening to the music, watching the ballet, the list goes on and on.
  

Dislikes:

• Being wrong; He cannot deal with being proven wrong in a point. If he's wrong, he won't admit it, and he's rather stubborn when he has to own up to his mistakes.
  
• Anyone and anything that gets in his way; If someone tries to interfere with his plans, he considers them a problem. And he does his best to eradicate his problems.
  
• When his plans go awry; When something goes wrong, it puts him in a bad mood for days. He falls hard into depression, and it takes him a while to get over his problems.
  

Hates:

• Society as a whole; He feels that they are judgemental and cruel, viewing the entirety of the human race as a collective that has excluded him from being a normal man.
  

Fears:

• He shall have to live beneath the Opera Garnier for the rest of his life; He hates his existence beneath the opera house, and longs to have a flat like every other normal man in Paris.
  
• He shall be alone forever; He doesn't like being alone, and has therefore honed his ventriloquism to keep himself from getting lonely. However, he wishes that he could have a real person to talk to and confide in, besides the Daroga.
  
• He shall never be recognized as a person; He wants to be loved for himself, but the longer he stays under the opera house and away from everyone, the less chance he has of ever being known well or having his music heard.
  

Dreams:

• To live a normal life; He wants to be like every other man on the planet, to sustain a job and keep a house and be able to walk around without people giving him strange looks.
  
• To get married; He wants to find a woman who'll love him for himself, and he wants to have a wife to enjoy company and make music with.
  
• To continue learning and honing his music; He hopes that if he can achieve his other dreams, that he might become a proficient composer and get some of his works published.
  

Short Term Goals:

• To oversee the upcoming season for the Opera Garnier and pick suitable casting for each production.
  
• To finish another section of his opera, Don Juan Triumphant.
  

Long Term Goals:

• To finish his opera, Don Juan Triumphant; He feels that it is his life's work, and when it is done, he will be content enough in his life to finally die.
  
• To get married, move to a flat, and live a normal life; If he can achieve normalcy, he shall be completely happy.
  

Strengths:

• He's lethal with his Punjab Lasso, able to kill a man with minimal movement.
  
• He's a master at playing his organ, piano, and violin, and very skilled in every other instrument he chooses to pick up.
  
• He's a fantastic illusionist, able to do dazzling magic tricks that will amuse and astound his audience.
  
• He's one of the greatest ventriloquists the world has ever known, able to throw his voice without moving his lips at all.
  

Weaknesses:

• He is socially inept, unable to react well in social situations.
  
• He doesn't react well to temperature changes, because he is so thin. He has to adapt to his environments accordingly, making sure that his body temperature remains constant, else his biology reacts unfavourably and gets him sick.
  
• He doesn't have a nose, and therefore lacks a strong sense of smell. Because of that, he tends to favour stronger flavoured foods and drinks, but can still appreciate lighter tastes.
  

Talents:

• He has musical talent beyond compare, able to pick up whatever instrument he so pleases and learn how to use it quickly.
  
• He's an artistic man, giving him the patience and determination to hone his skills in many arts, including painting and writing, beyond his music.
  
• He's very skilled at cooking, seeing as he's had to cook for himself for a long time, and because he enjoys only the best of food.
  
• He's a fantastic architect. A master mason in his own right, he's built fantastic palaces and buildings, and brags that they are some of his finer artistic creations.
  

Personality:
Erik is an introvert. He is energized by being alone, and enjoys having his thoughts to himself. He keeps to himself and withholds information from everyone, including the Daroga and Christine, unless it can directly benefit himself. However, with his introversion, he's gone a bit nuts. He talks to inanimate objects, utilizing his ventriloquy skills, finding solace in talking to himself.

Erik is also an egoist. He LIVES for acceptance. All he wants in life is to be accepted and praised for the work he does, because that's all he has. He thrives on compliments, loves when people feed his ego by talking about him, and will do a lot of things to get attention.

Erik is very clever, and therefore extremely arrogant. He constantly boosts his own ego by bragging and assuring himself that there is no finer genius in the world than he. However, this has nothing to do with his confidence. He has no confidence in himself, relying on the reactions of others to tell him how great he is.

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Specific Details

Country of Origin: France
Languages They Speak: French, English, Latin, Persian, Italian, Russian, German, and Spanish.
Occupation: Currently, he's the resident Ghost of the Opera Garnier.
Relationship Status: Single. (And always will be)

History

Family: Mother (who shall remain unnamed until I find something suitable) and Father (who shall also remain unnamed)
Friends:

• The Daroga; The Persian Chief of Police while Erik lived in Mazenderan and worked for the Shah.
  
• Christine Daaé (in future); A Swedish girl he takes on as his student and eventually falls in love with.
  

Rivals: The whole world, in his opinion.
Enemies:

• Raoul de Chagny (in future)
  
• Anyone else who happens to get in his way
  

Pet(s): He has no pets. Nor will he get any.
Biography:


Erik was born in a small town outside of Rouen in Northern France on the Seine. His father, a master mason, never saw him. His mother raised him herself, and she was utterly horrified by the appearance of her son, to the point of making and giving him his first mask. Erik was not his birth name, but was given to him or found "by accident".

He ran away at an early age and fell in with a band of nomadic "Gipsies". He travelled Europe with them, making his living as a sideshow attraction known as "le mort vivant" (literal translation: "the living death"; more accurate translation "the Living Corpse"). While he lived with the tribe, he learned how to effectively pickpocket, sing, play many different instruments, and how to perform magic; especially in the realms of illusion and ventriloquism.

He became very well known for his skills, and his reputation eventually reached the Shah of Persia, Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar (ناصرالدین شاه قاجار; Ruled 1848-1896). By that time, Erik had travelled through many places and settled in Ninji-Novogrod in the Russian areas of Eurasia. The Shah sent a party out for Erik, who reluctantly went with them back to the palace in the Mazenderan Province in Persia (now one of the Northern Provinces of Iran). The head of the party was the Daroga (Chief of Persian Police), in whom Erik found a trustworthy friend of sorts. The Shah commissioned Erik to build him the most elaborate palace that he could possibly come up with, and Erik proved himself to be rather gifted and well-suited for the task. The palace was indeed fantastically elaborate, with so many secret rooms, trap doors, and hidden areas that no word could be considered private within its walls. While Erik's crews carried out the construction of the palace, Erik was a political assassin for the Shah, learning to use and utilize the Punjab Lasso to overtake, strangle, and kill any opponent he faced. When construction of the palace was done, the Shah determined that no one else should have a palace as fantastic as his own, so he originally planned to have Erik blinded. However, with more thought, he believed that Erik could still make another architectural feat like that even without his eyesight, so he sent in an order to have Erik executed. The Daroga intervened and came to Erik before the other Persian guards could get there, so Erik escaped unharmed. He ran into the desert, switched his clothes with that of some poor soul who'd died in the desert, and ran to Constantinople.

He was employed by the city's current ruler to help build edifices in the Yildiz-Kiosk and other architectural wonders. He thought perhaps he could be happy there, but he had to leave for the same reasons he had for leaving Persia: He knew too much. He ran away to Southeast Asia, spending time with the "Tonkin Pirates" and learning different useful tricks, like learning to breathe underwater with the aid of a hollowed reed. Erik finally tired of his nomadic life and decided that he wanted to live "like everybody else." He worked as a contractor for a while, building houses until he bid on a contract to help construct the Palais Garnier Opera House.

During the construction, he built his own domain within the walls, putting in trapdoors, secret passages, and little hideaways for himself in every inch of the Opera House. He went so far as to build himself a house in the fifth cellar of the Opera House, between the walls of the building's foundations. He then centred his work around his final masterpiece: Don Juan Triumphant, which he has worked on for twenty years.

Optional Character Information

(Recommended If Able)

Nickname(s): "Le Mort Vivant/The Living Corpse", "Ange de la Musique/Angel of Music" "Trap-door Lover", "La Voix/The Voice", "Le Fantome/Opera Ghost" ( abv. O.G.), and I suppose technically "Erik" is a nickname...
Voice Claim: Xander Chauncey
Approximate Weight: About 110-120.
Religious Beliefs: Raised Catholic, and has struggled with his faith for quite some time.
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Social Rank: If he lived above ground and sustained a good job, he'd be upper-middle to lower-upper class.
Favourite Colour(s): Red.
Favourite Food: Anything he cooks, considering he doesn't really eat.
Favourite Animal: Cat.
Quote:
Song That Describes Character:

RP Sample

RP Sample:

About You

Name: Meghan. Although I go by Meg or Lavalais, usually.
Gender: Female
How Long Have You Been Roleplaying?:FAR TOO LONG.
What Type(s) of "Roleplay" Have You Done?: Casual, Paragraph, Formal, Fan-Fiction Writing, Stage Acting (Straight Play, Cold Reading, Musical Play, and Voice Acting), Improvisational Acting, Live Action Role Play, MMORPG (Although I never really got into it...) Tabletop RPG, Live Action RPG (MY FAVORITE), and Improvisational Education.
Where Have You Roleplayed? What Sites Do You Belong To?:I have played in a lot of places, but the best places of note are The Phantom Manor (phantommanor.proboards.com), on my campus in a tabletop RPG called Tephra, within my Steampunk Society and in several convention's interpretations of Call of Cthulu and Vampire the Masquerade.
What Fandoms Have You Played Before?:Steampunk, Doctor Who, Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes, Madoka, Hellsing, Call of Cthulu, Dieselpunk, WWII, and Tephra.
Who Recruited You? How Did You Find Out About Us?:I'm an administrator, I should hope I've known about this site.
Contact Information:The best way to reach me is through Skype: t4rd15
Anything Else?: MY favorite colour is purple.

Required Information

Sources Used In Research: Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera; Chapters Used: Epilogue
PASSWORD:POWER MINT!