A region named Calais-Blason, a former Gaulish territory (Gaul, the analogue to the French Empire) that was absorbed into Victoria (analogue to the British Empire), was suddenly hit by a flood that devastated what few settlements the place had left after the Gallo-Victorian war turned it barren. A traveling group of performers called the Crimson Troupe passed by in the aftermath and offered the survivors aid, even taking in the orphaned children.

One of the children was a Phidia (a race of snake-people) whose real name and personality they disregarded, telling him that he was now "Shalem", meant to play the "modest and gentle" role, and he accepted, only grateful to have a support system after being orphaned.

(Recent investigations reveal that Calais-Blason doesn't exist on paper, and the remnants of Shalem's generation don't actually remember their lives before the Troupe, so it might have been a fabrication to ensure loyalty from its children. However, Shalem remembers being in the flood, further muddling the waters about the truth.)

Shalem was trained in the performing arts, music, dance, acting, everything to do with the stage. However, there was another layer to his training, the ability to end lives in many ways. He was trained in Arts (magic), combat, stealth, and to regard killing as a performance, because the Troupe Leader was an immortal who loved death and the arts, and thus created the Troupe to satisfy both of his desires at the same time-- its members became perpetual method actors based on the roles they were given upon their induction, they acted out scripts of tragedies in real life with real deaths, and replenished their ranks with impressionable children to continue the cycle.

A Feline boy from his hometown, Lucien, became the most beloved "understudy" that the Troupe Leader personally took an interest in. As the rest of the children worked hard to catch up and be as favored as Lucien, now codenamed "Solitaire", Shalem watched as his fellows disappeared (read: executed in secret) because they were unable to keep up with their increasingly demanding training, and he realized why they were rescued in the first place and what the Troupe was truly like. He has implied that he also discovered far more about the Troupe than what's been revealed in meta commentary so far, but he remains reticent about his experiences because of how traumatic they were.

The secrets he kept and the burden of living in the Troupe took a heavy toll on him, so much that on the day of his debut as a lead performer, he couldn't kill his intended victim and instead ran away after setting them free. He eventually found shelter and employment with an organization called Rhodes Island, a pharmaceutical company with its own sustainable city situated on a massive land-based vehicle, filled with employees or "Operators" that lived there.

The state of Terra was very different from the every day life of the Crimson Troupe-- Catastrophes occured frequently, natural disasters with an added unpleasant bonus of leaving veins of minerals in their wake, and people would contract a terminal disease called Oripathy from these minerals. Rhodes Island was researching to find a cure but needed to keep its landship running as well, thus hiring people from different fields of expertise. Infected Operators (or infected family members of Operators) also received housing and treatment in order to alleviate symptoms and stall its progression, so it saw many people offering their labor primarily for medical assistance.

However, many groups did not appreciate this due to discrimination against the Infected, thus employees who could also fight were highly valued. Shalem himself was infected, having caught the disease when he was younger, and joined the company under the guise of seeking treatment, even if all he wanted from them was shelter and protection from the Troupe.

Shalem primarily worked in logistics and prepwork for field excursions, but has also participated in combat. However, after a field mission, he noticed a familiar presence following him, cloaked in stealth Arts that he knew well and could see right through if he bothered to look at it. No matter how hard he tried to shake it, it followed him all the way back to the landship and became a fellow operator codenamed Phantom.

While he never saw the newcomer, he knew instinctively that Phantom was Lucien, and Shalem locked himself in his room, only coming out for work and basic necessities for a long time. It was clear that Lucien had somehow broken ties with the Troupe... except Shalem didn't care for details, he wanted nothing to do with Phantom.

Only during his time in hiding did Shalem piece together the truth-- Phantom also ran from the Troupe on his own debut because he had a psychotic break that led to him killing several of the Troupe's senior members. As a trainee, Lucien contracted Oripathy, which mutated his vocal cords to the point that listening to his song would induce intense psychological and neural damage. Many details of that day are unknown, except that he sang many members to death. Confused and with many key memories missing, he then wandered for years in Victoria, acting as an assassin-for-hire and executing lone stragglers from the Troupe, until he found Shalem by chance and followed him all the way to Rhodes Island.

Years later, Phantom disappeared and Shalem was offered a mission to find him-- Phantom's last known location was Calais-Blason. Shalem knew that the mission was not sent to him by chance, and even with all evidence pointing to the Troupe's influence, he accepted it. He joined the Doctor, Rhodes Island's amnesiac field commander, and other operators in order to save Phantom.

The Crimson Troupe had taken over an old Gaulish castle and turned it into a nightmare, both literally and figuratively. Time held no meaning, turning in on itself to reset events and return the rescue squad back to the beginning, no matter how deep they were into it. Its layout kept changing so that rooms previously explored were no longer there the next minute, different on-going tragedy and art-related scenarios were found everywhere, and many people lost their sanity to become characters in those scenarios. Worse still, they were made that way by Phantom's song, and those who were still themselves reported that they were trapped in the castle while following Phantom's and the Troupe's trails, their reasons independent of Rhodes Island's.

Rhodes Island's squad found Phantom deep within the castle, he himself brainwashed into becoming their best performer once more. After an arduous fight, they managed to return him to his senses, and then faced the current senior members of the Troupe to leave, though the Leader himself was suspiciously absent. Only after they followed the right clues to meet the Playwright and defeat him did they finally manage to be free of the castle. Unfortunately, they couldn't save the other castle explorers, unless those people already had the desire and means to leave by themselves.

(However, they didn't truly save Phantom, the Playwright merely allowed them to take him as part of a script he was writing to further manipulate their lives. Despite everyone's assumptions, including his own, Phantom's brainwashing merely went dormant, ready to be reactivated when the time is right.)