App. for Paradisa

[makethemguilty]

PERSONAL
NAME: Cinders
PERSONAL JOURNAL: holy_cinders
EMAIL: bloody [dot] canticle [at] hotmail [dot] com
AIM: DemonicProsecutor
WIKI NAME: N/A
CURRENT CHARACTERS: N/A

CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Manfred von Karma
SERIES: Ace Attorney
CANON POINT: Post Case 1-4, approximately after his death.
LOSS: The memory of the single penalty he ever earned to besmirch his record, slightly prior to the DL-6 incident.

This would effect him severely, making the brunt of his anger focus on Phoenix Wright, as the only loss or flaw in his career was because of this penalty that his superior placed on his record due to questionable evidence, or a "forgery" that the Attorney Gregory Edgeworth called into question. It was this penalty that led to further corruption down the road, as well as what very may have been his sanity. Without remembering this, he will react differently to those around him..

He will not remember why he was in such a daze when the power went out in the courthouse that day, nor the -exact- reason as to why he killed Gregory Edgeworth. He will only remember that he was -enraged-.

Above all else, he valued his perfect record because it was proof that he was perfect, as in alignment with the von Karma creed. When that was destroyed, he essentially lost what was most precious to him.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER:

Manfred's History:

- Anything before his years as a prosecutor are unknown
- What we do know:
Manfred was born in 1951 in Germany. He became a prosecutor in 1976, at the age of 25, and enjoyed an illustrious career that brought him great fame and reward. Any further details into his personal life before the age of 48 appear unknown.

For 40 years he remained undefeated, well-renowned for being a formidable force in the courtroom. He never took a vacation, never strayed from his job, and earned numerous "King of Prosecutor" rewards, becoming known as the "God of Prosecution" who viciously secured a guilty verdict for every one of the defendants (with the exception of Robert Hammond's murder case) whose cases he oversaw using methods that many people considered "questionable", including a reputable attorney by the name of Gregory Edgeworth.

He was Miles Edgeworth's mentor, having taken him in at the tender age of nine upon his father's death, and was responsible for teaching him the ways of prosecution up until his own death in approximately 2016-2017. He was also the father and mentor of his daughter Franziska von Karma.

He fathered Franziska when he was 48 years of age, though there is no mention (aside from a rumored dialogue in AAI-2 not yet localized in english) of who his wife was. It is also said he has an unnamed older daughter and an unnamed granddaughter. To date, while nothing of his personal life or what he was like as a father is outright mentioned, Franziska refers to him fondly as "Papa", and Edgeworth calls him "Sir."

What we do know about Manfred comes from his record to be ruthless in court. His direct involvement in several notable cases says much about the man. Indeed, each one of these cases point to what kind of person von Karma is, being as his life, from what can be observed in the game, is centered primarily around his work.

IS-7 case: (Note: This case is only detailed in the game, Gyakuten Kenji 2, that is as of yet untranslated and not localized in English, but from which the most notable details have been revealed in the first Ace Attorney Game due to its relation to DL-6.)

This was the case, a murder trial, where Manfred von Karma was the leading prosecutor, and the main suspect was Issei Tenkai, a TV chef. He was assigned to prove his guilt without fail; Gregory Edgeworth was the leading defense attorney. Prosecutor von Karma's techniques and penchant for ruthlessness was so great that the suspect's hair, was said to have turned white after intensive questioning day and night without rest that led to his false confession.

Set in December of 2001, the case was drawn out over a year in court, where Edgeworth did everything in his power to oppose von Karma. In the end, von Karma won, adding yet another tally to his perfect win record. However, the most important issue surrounding this trial was that although in the end he earned his guilty verdict, he did not escape without penalty unto himself. The attorney Edgeworth had discovered a questionable piece of evidence—the autopsy report had been forged, and with this discovered, the then would-be Chief Prosecutor Bansai Ichiyanagi had no choice but to penalize him.

Gregory Edgeworth, the leading defense attorney, who represented Tenkai in the trial, had done something no one else ever had—he besmirched his record with a single flaw—a penalty.

However, what should be noted is that this single penalty would leave a flaw on his reputation that could not be erased, the perfection of which he had prided himself on immensely and the penalty therefore largely affected his credibility as a prosecutor—as well as circulated rumors about his "cheating" rather than add to the faith that he could win a case solely by the merit of his own abilities.

The thing about the "forged" piece of evidence was that yes, it was forged, but not by von Karma himself. Von Karma himself never knew that the autopsy results were faked and he wasn't told of the missing body. His then superior, Chief Ichiyanagi, had forged it because he used von Karma to achieve his own ends. Von Karma had, at the time, used what evidence he had available to conclude that Issei was the suspect responsible for the murder, but went to questionable lengths to remove the detective that was originally on duty due to his collaboration with Gregory Edgeworth. His superior was an even worse, more corrupt prosecutor than he was, so it isn't all that hard to see how von Karma was pressured to excel even beyond what his creed normally dictated.

DL-6: That very day after the trial a terrible event happened: An earthquake struck the Los Angeles courthouse and caused the power to black out. Von Karma was so dazed from the mere possibility of a penalty that he had lost his composure for several hours, and wandered about aimlessly in the darkness. Upon feeling his way to the elevator he attempted to use it, but nothing happened. Instead, he was suddenly struck by a stray bullet in the right shoulder and he screamed in agony.

To his amazement, von Karma found a pistol at his feet, along with three people lying unconscious from oxygen deprivation. When he saw Gregory Edgeworth there among them, enraged, he picked up the gun and shot him in the heart, killing him instantly. He left the gun and fled the scene, taking the only vacation in his entire career to heal his injury from the incident.

This became known as the DL-6 incident, in which the bailiff whom Gregory Edgeworth was trapped with, Yanni Yogi, and Gregory's son Miles Edgeworth were stuck in an elevator together when the power outage happened. Yanni Yogi, crazed from the lack of oxygen, attacked Gregory, and Miles threw Yanni's pistol in an attempt to save his father. In the end, Yanni Yogi was blamed for Gregory's murder. But, due to a plea of insanity was subsequently acquitted from being blamed for his murder and no one was convicted. Prosecutor von Karma committed what he thought was the perfect crime…He even went so far as to conceal the evidence by never getting the bullet removed from his shoulder—he neither went to a doctor or nor underwent surgery.

15 years later: By this time it was the present-day in Ace Attorney case 1-4 or Turnabout Goodbyes; Prosecutor von Karma raised Miles Edgeworth, the son of Gregory Edgeworth, in his image. He spent many years mentoring him/molding him into his perfect prodigy, until December of 2016, when his plan for revenge came into light. The timing was perfect! He had written a letter to Yanni Yogi detailing an elaborate revenge plot to frame Edgeworth for the murder of Robert Hammond, who was the defense attorney that had ruined Yanni Yogi socially by forcing him to plea insanity. This, he was to hope, would get Miles executed, or it would get him to admit to the murder of his own father (whom he thought he had murdered accidentally as a child because of his nightmares). The trial would fall 3 days before the statute of limitations on the DL-6 case was to end. However, this plan did not work as perfectly as he hoped. In the end, von Karma's secrets were exposed. He had failed. Manfred himself put an end to the "miserable charade" or a trial, admitting it was a failure. He was then subsequently sentenced and later (off-screen from the game) tried for the murder of Gregory and executed sometime between Dec. 2016 and June 2017.

Character Personality:

Boni judicis est judicium sine dilatione mandare executioni is a Latin phrase. It means ‘it is the duty of a good judge to cause execution to issue on a judgment without delay.’ This, in summation, is Manfred von Karma's ambition: To obtain a guilty verdict without delay. With or without inequity. All criminals are the same in his mind. But as Edgeworth warns Phoenix before the start of the trial in Turnabout Goodbyes, Karma has run nothing but perfect trials and every defendant he went against was found guilty, despite some having been innocent. This amounts to a very important aspect of his persona: An obsession with perfection.

Manfred von Karma is a seemingly cold man, ruthless in his methods and firm in his ideologies with the tenacity to back up his claims. One might even go so far as to call him a dogmatist in the sense that he asserts himself with a degree of arrogance, expectant of everyone to behave under his influence and obey without question. Unrelenting and domineering, he is a man who has wielded great power and influence via his profession, thus making him imperious by default. So much so, in fact, that all who are aware of his reputation as a "god of prosecution" know true fear. With a mere snap of his fingers he can sway a judge into seeing things his way, and ensnare a criminal into confession by means of his cold-eyed glare. Indeed, he is the exemplar of punishment. A prosecutor who is flawless. Perfect.

He is, however, a father of two daughters, one of which has a daughter herself, meaning he must have a side to him that he doesn't present in the courtroom. While we're not entirely aware of what kind of father Von Karma was, we do know that Franziska von Karma respects him, calling him by the pet name Papa. He doesn't seem like the emotionally nurturing type of parent, but yet possessed an authority over his children that pressured them enough to want to excel. He did not, however, force them to follow in his footsteps. Rather, his fame and reputation spoke for itself, driving Franziska to hold herself to the perfection of the family name. Edgeworth too, despite being an adopted child, felt the hand of perfection weigh him down.

Without a doubt, there exists a darker twist to the man known as Prosecutor von Karma. He has let his hatred of crime and obsession of perfection consume him, inevitably turning him into someone who simply cannot tolerate mistakes, someone with a marked impatience when it comes to anyone or anything that will get in his way. He is also self-serving, having come to use the justice system as a means to get what he wants rather than carry out justice for justice's sake.

From what we're able to gather from his behavior and his choice style of clothing he lived a privileged life, used to everyone bowing and scraping before him without so much as a whisper of undermining his authority. As a whole, corruption had been ingrained, but never had he lost control completely in all his forty years as an undefeated prosecutor. That is, until, Gregory Edgeworth put a penalty on his court record. In the end, this proves he does have human weakness despite his almost impenetrable composure.

He had the perfect life. The perfect job. The perfect daughter. So why sink to the level of a murderer? The answer, is of course, that Manfred von Karma is not perfect. He is human, and despite his every word and deed that speaks to the contrary—when he is faced with something as unspeakable as a flaw on his record something in him must have snapped.

His ever-so-perfect control had been severed, leaving him reeling. He was so shaken he was unable to gather his composure for several hours, and went so far as to kill his rival out of passionate rage. While emotion is imperfect—counterintuitive to the Von Karma way—he is still capable of experiencing it for better or for worse. If one chiseled away at his icy exterior hard enough to crack it, one would find a man scarred by the pillar of prosecution he has pretended to be his whole life. The lies and inconsistencies eventually caught up with him. But even so, when he was at last found out for his unspeakable crime, he looked unfazed, ordering the judge "to end this miserable charade". He accepted his fate, going quietly with the sort of dignity only a Von Karma could muster.

Manfred's extreme hubris makes him sneer in the face of defense attorneys, whom he considers little more than insects. So much so that he will not remember their names even if he's faced against them. He rather makes a point not to, almost as though he thinks them disposable and lowly—unworthy of remembrance.

He treats everyone with open hostility to indifference, with little regard for personal feeling or warmth. Instead, he makes no pretense at making nice with others, and when faced with those he abhors or is annoyed by, merely closes his eyes and clenches his shoulder, with his brows pinched in a way that suggests he is silently seething at their idiocy if not quietly orchestrating their demise in his mind. And certainly, this intensity in which he pressures others through either intimidation or by other less-than-moral means causes all to fear him.

His belligerence is often underlain by artful venom, and this kind of malice speaks to a sort of sadism that would otherwise go unnoticed if not for the way he treats others like fodder. In many ways, Manfred can be said to be a man with no shame in regards to how he toys with others' lives by manipulating evidence just in order to achieve his guilty verdict. This…sinister quality paired with the desire to achieve at whatever costs necessary is what makes him criminal himself, ironically.

By stepping into the shoes of someone who is able to wield and abuse a large amount of power and authority he'd gone against the code of a prosecutor in order to carry out his own nefarious plans. It was only a matter of time before this ruthless, cold-blooded nature led to something particularly cruel and heartless.

This can best be seen in how he used and manipulated Miles Edgeworth into destroying Gregory Edgeworth's legacy, and how he used his corrupting influence to remake Miles Edgeworth into everything Gregory was not. After the besmirching of his perfect record he became absolutely unhinged. (Though it's very plausible that the seeds of malevolence were already there given his propensity towards extremism and were simply exacerbated by that single flaw placed on his record.)

He spent fifteen years plotting vengeance against the son of a man whom he adopted, only to set him up for the fall of his father's murder even though it was he himself who committed the crime. That kind of brutality and abuse destroyed Miles Edgeworth by insinuating that it was he who actually committed the murder incidentally when he was nine, thereby giving him years of trauma and nightmares and eventually drew Franziska along the same line of wrongdoing.

The fact that Manfred was able to almost accomplish his task speaks to how horribly twisted and terrible a man like him is. Despite his occupation and the integrity most people in his profession are held to, Manfred manages to work his way around the very laws he implements without suffering from the repercussions himself. Even the taking of a human life is considered second-rate to his own magnitude.

ABILITIES:Character's Canon Abilities:

Diligence and a genius level of intellectual capacity in matters of law.

Prosecutors have the power to initiate criminal investigations, guide the sentencing of offenders, and are the only attorneys allowed to participate in grand jury proceedings. It goes without saying as a Prosecutor, Manfred must have attended a higher level of education and is an extremely well-learnt man. However, what is most notable about that is his immense genius for all things related to law.

Prosecutor Manfred von Karma's level of achievement is above and beyond what any average person could be thought capable of. Manfred has been a Prosecuting Attorney for the upside of forty years, making it his creed and motto to be Perfect. His status as undefeated for all of those years speaks to a natural aptitude for his job, which requires more than simply the knowledge of legal matters.

Analytical thinking and Precision to detail

It's equally important to understand that what being a prosecutor entails is not simply reflexive, mechanical application of the criminal justice system, but rather a sophisticated understanding of people and their motivations and the needs of the public, as well as the wisdom to deem what is necessary course of action in the face of well, anything. In other words: The ability to make purposeful, self-regulatory judgments in regards to using well-reasoned consideration to evidence, context, conceptualization, method, and criteria.

In short: Being a prosecutor draws upon one's analytical thinking as well as legal skills, extreme measures of detail and precision, and superior logical abilities, diligence, and ingenuity.

Perfection, Control, and Eloquence (even in stressful situations)

Manfred is a man who cannot afford to make mistakes. Being a prosecutor holds an enormous pressure, but rather than falter in the face of adversity, he thrives on it. He is essentially made out to be a kind of prosecuting demon because of his insane amount of dedication in punishing crime. Rarely, if ever does he lose control. He has an ungodly amount of reserve though by no means is he inarticulate. He leaves no loose ends. No clue unturned. In effect: He is perfection personified.

Great Power, Coercion, and Manipulation

Within the courtroom he is untouchable. A true nonpareil. To say that he is a force to be reckoned with is putting it lightly. He is, as Miles Edgeworth forewarned Phoenix Wright in Turnabout Goodbyes, "A god of prosecution". His hatred of crime seems to know no bounds; consequently, he has taken great lengths to secure his guilty verdict by whatever means possible.

He is, essentially, the backbone of the legal system, executing his trials with great self-confidence and a forceful demeanor that makes even the heartiest of defendants and their defense attorneys quiver with fear.

Within the trial to prosecute Edgeworth, Manfred proves himself a formidable opponent indeed. Witnesses were prepped to say exactly what he wanted to say, evidence went missing—All according to his wishes. He uses people to achieve an end to his means, using his great influences to turn the tables in his favor. He is extremely clever, and because of his understanding of the human psyche, is able to coerce and manipulate with fluid ease.

THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:

His eyes opened slowly at first, a high-arching brow twitching upward with tension in his face as he found himself staring at the ceiling rather than the padded room he last recalled spending his last hours in. Pushing himself up from the four-poster king bed von Karma, had he been less aware of himself and his surroundings, could have easily been fooled into thinking that this was -his- bed, with the silk sheets and elaborately carved bedposts very similar to his own back home. Yes, indeed it was almost the exact style. And yet, as he stared with further scrutiny there was something remarkable off about it. No, something was unfit for the likes of himself, a von Karma. It was…imperfect! The bed spreading of velvet was all wrong! The size of the bedroom itself seemed far too lacking in taste to be his own. And yet, how was it that he had awoken here?

While furnishings as elegant as it was, there was something remarkably hollow about its look; The room was decorated as if someone had moved him into a luxurious hotel rather than account for every detail of his personal master bedroom. Was this a sorry attempt at a prank or something else more…sinister?

Now with considerably more distrust reflected in his gaze the prosecutor rose fully, standing to his full height. What foolishness! Did they think they could fool a von Karma?! He would see to it that whoever was responsible would be held accountable for their actions.

His burning gaze shifted towards the ornate door, and now with considerably more caution he headed for it. If there was anyone suspicious about here, he would be prepared to have them dealt with.

Stepping out into the hallway Manfred found it curious, however, when outside the door it was marked with a name plate that read his very own name—Manfred von Karma. Clearly whoever intended to have him was running some sort of elaborate random scheme, perhaps?

But it did not end there...

Elegant fingers dragged against an intricately detailed bannister that wound down a marble staircase, the baroque-inspired piece invoking his intrigue despite his incredible wariness to the presence of his would-be kidnappers.

Had he not known his location to be one unfamiliar to him, the rooms with their high-vaulted ceilings and ornate designed were reminiscent of the grandiose von Karma manor back home in the countryside of Germany. As it was, the aristocratic man thought it fitting indeed to roam the vastly constructed corridors with care. For he intended to discover the culprit and have them punished.

"I demand to know where I am. Whoever has done this…You will pay dearly for your crimes. I am Prosecutor Manfred von Karma. Whoever you are, I will show you no mercy. If and when I find you I will charge you with kidnapping. I hope that is understood."

His deep stentorian voice echoed throughout to the castle floor down below. If there was anyone listening, they had best respond, lest they find themselves facing down the wrath of a von Karma!

FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: Here and Here

INTENT: Manfred von Karma is the sort of villain that I enjoy playing because of his intelligence and his often over-the-top, yet negative reaction to anything that is out of the ordinary. He's a versatile enough character that I imagine will make a fine addition to Paradisa, as he will not willingly "play along" with the castle's whims and will question everything to such an extent that may boggle. Conducting investigations and going to impossible lengths to try and find a way out will also be a part of his manifold of tasks given his profession as a prosecutor.

To subject Manfred to the whims of the castle rather than allow himself to be in full control will prove an intriguing possibility, as well as make him interact with its various residents and elements. In short, "to cause a stir".~