Detailed Information
Please give us a personal history of your character's life and explain to us in detail how they grow and develop over the course of their canon:
Very little background information on Lana Skye is available. She has a sister, Ema, who is 13 years younger. When Ema was "little" (no specific age given), their parents died in a car accident. After that, Lana raised Ema on her own, so she must have been at least 18. I spoke to the potential player submitting an Ema application, and we jointly set that event when Lana was 19 and Ema was 7. She says she "always planned on being a prosecutor", but according to Ema she started out as a detective "to gain experience investigating crime scenes". So she must have gone to college and then law school while raising her little sister. She entered the police force, made detective almost immediately, and began moving up through the ranks. She did all this in time to make senior detective at age 24, when she was partnered with Damon Gant, a more senior detective. They worked together for three years, garnering a fair amount of fame as an investigative team. Somewhere during those three years Damon Gant was promoted to Chief Detective and Deputy Chief of Police, and Lana to his second-in-command.
When she was 27, in February 2015, she and Damon Gant were in charge of a team of detectives investigating a string of serial murders. Five people were murdered over a short period of time, and the police had no evidence until a 42-year-old man named Joe Darke turned himself in. During the questioning, which was run by Damon Gant and Prosecutor Neil Marshall, Darke panicked and fled the room. He took an elevator going up instead of down, and entered the office shared by Lana Skye and Damon Gant. In that office was Ema Skye, waiting for her sister to be done with work. Darke took her hostage, and then Neil Marshall came running in. The hostage situation was made more complicated when a storm outside cut power to the building. Neil Marshall jumped Darke, and a fight ensued. Darke was carrying a switchblade, and Marshall was armed with the only thing he could find -- a broken-ended fake knife from the King of Prosecutors trophy he had won earlier that day. Lightning flashed and showed one man standing with a knife raised over the other; at the time, Ema believed (and testified) that this was Darke threatening Neil; it was the opposite. Ema knocked over what she thought was Darke (but was Neil) and knocked both men and herself unconscious.
Damon Gant was the next on the scene and found three unconscious bodies in a heap near his desk. He cut a section from Neil's vest, which had a clear handprint from where Ema pushed him. He then murdered Neil Marshall using the sword on a suit of armor that was in his end of the joint office, and wrote the letters EMA on the largest shard of a vase that had fallen over during the struggle. He then broke that shard into several more pieces and hid the one with the most writing in his safe, along with the cloth from Neil's vest. (Note: the exact sequence of what happens when with the vase is ambiguous; this is my interpretation.) Gant then left (or hid, as it was dark) until Lana arrived.
When Lana entered her office, she saw Ema and Darke unconscious, and Neil impaled on the suit of armor. The scene suggested that Ema had knocked him into the armor accidentally. She snapped a photograph, believing herself first on the scene and that she might need it as evidence. Gant then "arrived" at the scene. Lana, panicked and afraid for her little sister, asked for his assistance. They rearranged the crime scene, moving Neil's dead body (and Darke's unconscious one) over to the other side of the room from the suit of armor, broke off the tip of Darke's knife and planted it in the wound, and cleaned up the blood on Gant's end of the room. This gave them the vital piece of evidence needed to convict Darke for the murder of Neil Marshall and, by extension, the other five murders. Lana also wiped as much of the blood as she could off the shards of the vase, since she suspected it would implicate Ema. She then gathered Ema in her arms and held her by the light of the window until Ema regained consciousness.
It is implied that the Joe Darke case, also known as SL-9, was the first time Lana had intentionally forged evidence. At the end of case 1-5, when Lana states, "When this trial is over, I'll tell everything. All that I've done these past two years...from the time I had Gant help me forge evidence, up until today." So while SL-9 was not the only incident, it was the first where Lana knowingly forged evidence. Damon Gant likely had done so previously, possibly on joint cases, but without her knowledge.
After SL-9, Gant had Lana promoted to Chief Prosecutor -- with Lana under his control and his promotion to Chief of Police, he could run both the Police Department and the Prosecutor's Office. And for two years, things continued this way. Lana also knew Mia Fey, the two met and became close when Lana was in her third year of law school (and Mia was a first year student, auditing the upper-level class Lana was in). Lana was top of her class; Mia was aiming to follow and to make it as a defense attorney. On September 5, 2016, Mia was killed by Redd White, the man she'd gone into law to avenge herself on. (Redd White ruined her mother's name after her mother, a spirit medium, was called on to help the police. The spirit she channelled lied to the police, but her channelling was blamed for the fact that the suspect was found innocent. Redd White made this public and shamed her into leaving her home and her daughters.) This case hits one scene with an inconsistency -- case 1-5 and Lana's entire story was added to the Phoenix Wright saga after the initial release, and a few details don't line up. Namely, at one point, Redd White calls the "Chief Prosecutor" in order to accuse Phoenix Wright of Mia's murder and to use his considerable influence to avoid being accused himself. The "Chief Prosecutor" (no name given) on the phone does not have the same speaking patterns as Lana (though it could be Gant), and is later mentioned by Miles Edgeworth as "he". I'm choosing to assume that the "he" and the person on the phone are an assistant/secretary of Lana's (or Damon Gant himself, over at the Prosecutor's office on a case), and that she did, in fact, play a role in allowing Redd White to try to swing the outcome of this trial. Phoenix, whom Lana knows only by what Mia has told her, wins the trial and convicts Redd White, dealing the first of several blows to the credibility of the Police Department and the Prosecutor's office.
This is the point at which Lana will be taken -- chronologically between case 1-3 and case 1-4.
Several months later, the reputation of the Prosecutor's Office was in shambles, although no particular fingers pointed at Lana. On February 21, 2017, the evidence transferral for SL-9 took place. Or it was supposed to; on the day of the transferral, at which point the case will be formally closed forever, several things happened. Jake Marshall, one of the detectives on SL-9 and Neil Marshall's brother, who had been subsequently demoted to a regular officer and given the low-seniority job of guarding the evidence room, stole the ID card of the senior remaining detective on SL-9 -- Bruce Goodman. When he entered the evidence room, the evidence was already gone. He left a small trail of evidence in the room -- Officer Mike Meekins, not the brightest officer in the force, surprised him and Marshall drew a knife, since he cannot prove his face matches his ID. Meekins was injured in the struggle, leaving a small amount of blood. This confused the investigation, because earlier the same day, Goodman had gone with Gant to the evidence room to voice his concerns about closing SL-9; Gant had panicked and murdered him then and there with Joe Darke's knife. Gant then put the body in the trunk of Edgeworth's car and fabricated a reason for Edgeworth to drive from the Police Department to his office. At the Prosecutor's Office parking lot, Lana, on Gant's orders, opened the trunk, swapped Darke's knife for the one she knew Edgeworth kept in his trunk, and hid the actual murder weapon, thus neatly framing Edgeworth for the whole thing. Except that Angel Starr, another former SL-9 detective, while selling lunches at the Prosecutor's Office, witnessed enough to accuse Lana of the murder. Ema went to Mia's office, not knowing Mia was dead, to find her sister a defense attorney. Phoenix took the case, and the entire truth of SL-9 and Goodman's murder was dragged out into the light of day.
After the truth comes out, Lana changes dramatically -- she smiles for the first time, and hugs her sister. She is gracious about accepting her sentence for tampering with crime scenes and forging evidence. She then launches into trying to reassure Edgeworth (and Phoenix, but mostly Edgeworth) that everything will be all right.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's and why?
I'm taking her on December 12, 2016, between case 1-3 and 1-4, well before her canon appearance in 1-5. I'm taking her before 1-5 for two reasons.
First, her personality shifts dramatically with all of her secrets out in the open, and there are almost no canon references for post-canon Lana. She will loosen up a little if canonmates tell her what they know, but since living through the big reveal and hearing about it aren't the same, so she's going to stay much closer to her personality throughout 1-5.
Second, this takes her at the point where she still thinks she has the situation under control. (This is why I'm taking her before 1-4; while none of the events in 1-4 directly involve her, she is the head of an office where the most senior member has just framed another for murder, and no-one saw it coming. It's her job to have seen it, and to have caught any other of Manfred von Karma's more minor transgressions, and she didn't. Her professional life started to crumble back in 1-2, but it has to be hitting free-fall after 1-4.) I want to knock her feet out from under her when she's still riding high, and see how she gets back up.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:
She is reserved, patient, intelligent, and poised. When angry, she rarely shouts -- it takes true fear and desperation to make her raise her voice.
She has a frequent habit of leading other people to an answer without coming out and saying it; while some of that during case 1-5 is due to the fact she is trying to cover the truth, she also seems to enjoy it. (For example, the photograph she took of Neil Marshall impaled on the suit of armor -- she gives it to Phoenix tucked inside the back cover of a book on Evidence Law, and even when it's time to present it and she needs to let him know it's there, she still is vague enough that he has to realize that there's only one way she could have passed it to him, and that's the book. Which she gave him under guise of reminding him of proper evidence procedures -- it does come in useful by itself, but the true reason was to slip him the photo. This isn't the only instance; she does this over and over, even when it doesn't seem to matter.
I am assuming that significant amounts of her personality as shown in-game have always been true, even though some of her actions (especially towards Ema) and aloofness were due to the secrets she was keeping. While she may have been "always smiling" before, she has never been a pushover or unrealistically cheerful.
Her relationship with her sister brings out both her strengths and weaknesses; she is generous, supportive of her sister's interests (setting up an internship with a coroner even as she's facing capital charges, encouraging her scientific investigation studies, the odd bottle of luminol here and there). But it also brings out all the guilt she feels over the forged evidence, deception, and blackmail; she cannot face the person who means the most to her in the whole world, and so she avoids contact. She uses dismissive words to push Ema away whenever she gets too close to the truth, and throws herself into the work she ostensibly loves.
Please give us a physical description of your character:
Lana is of average height -- 5'6" (according to the Court Records fansite; this may be conjecture or it may be from Japanese tie-in material, but it seems reasonable based on canon photos of her), and average build, with waist-length, straight brown hair that she parts far over on the right side. She has blue-grey eyes (look at the photo of her, Gant and Neil), a heart-shaped face, and slightly large ears. Her bearing is formal -- back ramrod straight, and she walks like she could be balancing a book on her head without even thinking about it.
What kinds of otherworldly abilities does your character have, if any?
None.
Does your character have any non-otherworldly abilities/training that surpass the norm?
Lana is bright -- not a genius, but very bright. She was "top of her class", though I've assumed her college choice was a compromise between her desires and the need to stay near home with Ema. (If I ever need to specify, I'm assuming she and Mia also attended Ivy University, which is where Phoenix went.) She didn't take any extra coursework in college or law school -- she raced for what she needed for her degree, so while her education is complete in her field, it's very narrow-focus.
She knows the laws of her state (which are somewhat absurd as the entire game is a parody of the Japanese legal system) inside and out, and can quote them at will if she wishes. She has a near-photographic memory for crime scenes and legal documents, and both an aptitude and an affinity for procedure.
Even while remaining aloof, she is quite good at reading people and directing them from a distance; she is an able administrator.
Her detective skills are also top-notch, although she's used to having a full staff at her disposal. She can do basic on-the-spot forensics -- taking fingerprints, collecting fibers, etc., though for detailed science she just drops it off for the lab. (She doesn't share her sister's passion for the scientific details.)