character profile
[NAME:] Damon Gant
[AGE:] 68
[GENDER:] Male
[STATUS:] HO HO HO! A man doesn't get as far as Damon Gant by going home to a wife, my boy.
[SEXUALITY:] A little fruity, but presumably straight
[FRIENDS:]
The Judge - Affectionately referred to as "Udgey," Gant and the Judge go way back. Udgey has been presiding over the courts since Gant was a mere beat cop testifying about trivial speeding tickets, and has been swimming with him after work for nearly as long. He has done his best to remain on good terms with the old boy even after his conviction; it's easier to gain little creature comforts, such as a prison pool, using an outsider.
Manfred von Karma - Gant had always appreciated his dedication to wrapping up a conviction at any cost. He was one of the easiest prosecutors to work with on a professional level, but he always took himself too seriously for Gant's taste. Now they're cooped up together, Gant delights in poking fun at him. Seemingly oblivious to how furious he makes the man, Gant quite enjoys ruffling the stubborn old coot. They have a grand old history of April Fool's jokes, and sometimes, Gant simply doesn't wait for April Fool's Day to rib old Manny. Learn to laugh a little, son, keeps you young. Like swimming! Ho ho ho!
[NEUTRAL:]
Lana Skye - She was an intelligent and competent woman and Gant appreciated working with her before SL-9. After SL-9, well, he enjoyed playing with her. She was a useful tool to Gant, and while he rues that it all came apart, he does not hold any especial malice for her. She played her part obediently, after all.
Miles Edgeworth - Gant respects him as a man who hates criminals, even if one of the criminals he brought down was Gant himself. "We're not so different, you and I," etc etc.
[ENEMIES:]
Phoenix Wright - Though he admires the boy's youthful vigour, he is none too happy that Wright-o followed the trail right to his doorstep, revealing the truth of SL-9 and all that Gant built on that foundation. Though he's too old to carry a deep grudge, Gant resents that his downfall was brought around by a self-righteous boy who was ultimately disbarred for presenting forged evidence.
Jake Marshall - This wild desperado was like a cactus spine in his side, ever since Neil Marshall had to die. He was responsible for keeping the investigation alive behind the scenes, leading to Goodman rebelling and the case being reviewed-- and the truth coming out. Why couldn't Jakey have left his brother in peace?
Though it has taken another great mind out of the crime-fighting pool, Gant finds some amusement in the idea that Jake couldn't move on from the SL-9 incident, either. He ought to have regarded Neil's death as a sacrifice in war. This boy Gant has apparently impacted deeply enough to drive him to drink, and that, too, feeds Gant's ego in a perverse way.
Angel Starr - Gant viewed Gellie as the biggest threat to the status-quo inside the department, so he got rid of her entirely. If only he had known how she was conspiring with Jakey to keep SL-9 alive... he would have made lunch from Eldoon's Noodle mandatory for every last officer, and barred Gellie from headquarters.
Gant respected her on some level for her hatred of crime, and on some level he knew she would be a threat to his great plans. To this day he works to keep her down in whatever way possible-- whether it's teasing her about being an ideal Vice officer, or needling her about the success of his system-- because his ego cannot bear the idea of her rising above him, or moving on from his influence. She came to visit him once for career advice, but Gant's only advice was to give up.
Bruce Goodman - So sad. Gant assumed he was not a threat, and allowed him to remain a detective after he became Chief. Goodman, however, was too good a man to let SL-9 rest while his former colleagues were still suffering from it, and Gant was forced to kill him to silence him. Why, Goodman, why?
[OCCUPATION:] Former Chief of Police, now on Death Row at Bloodspill Maximum Security Prison.
[HOBBIES:] Gant enjoys swimming, playing his keyboard with the loudest of enthusiasm, and playing his fellow inmates for the lulz, as the youngsters say.
[LIKES:] Gant's favourite thing in the world is a joke, and he seems to enjoy them most at the expense of the most ill-humoured people. He also enjoys control of both the physical and mental variety, whether it's whipping his own body into shape, making someone else deaf with his music, or making a person ask him how high he wants them to jump.
[DISLIKES:] Gant dislikes criminals, ironically enough, and the inefficiency of the system that lets them get away. He dislikes a rose-tinted view of the world, though for more irony, he happens to wear pink-tinted spectacles. He hates the control other people have over him, especially now that he is so powerless in prison.
[STRENGTHS:] Gant has a cunning and calculating mind; he was known as the Crime Computer in his heyday, with gigabytes of forensic knowledge in his noggin. He has a fairly optimistic outlook on life, even as his is winding down, and he is ever-cheerful. He is highly charismatic and magnetic, in a perverse way, and is a strong leader.
[WEAKNESSES:] Gant's incredible ego overpowers any of his more noble qualities. It's always been all about him: how he would be Chief of Police, how he would control the justice system, how he would stamp out crime. His ego undid him in the end, but he is still as high and mighty in prison. He also has something of an issue with thinking on his feet; not only is the Crime Computer low on RAM, it does not have a reverse-lookup app to create a problem from its database of solutions.
[APPEARANCE:] Gant cuts an imposing figure, tall and broad-shouldered even at his advanced age. His hair is white, and styled in gravity-defying spikes meant to represent lightning bolts. He wears a beard but no moustache. His eyes are green. He favours LOUD orange suits (not of the prison jumpsuit variety) and always, always wears leather gloves.
[PERSONALITY:] One word to describe Gant's personality, much like his clothing, is LOUD. He is boisterous and commanding, and oh so very loud. He is a man who loves life, and loves himself even more. His arrogance borders on boorishness, but always cheerfully so. He is a little prone to panic, but resilient all the same, bouncing back easily from any fall he takes. A smart and resourceful man can always field what life throws at him.
[BACKGROUND:] Damon Gant always knew he wanted to fight crime. He had no personal reason to hate criminals in his past, so perhaps his obsession can be traced back to Batman comics-- jolly good poolside reading! At any rate, he entered the police force right out of high school, and being a courageous and cunning soul, rose quickly in the ranks, until he was Deputy Chief of Investigations.
At the peak of his popularity in the LAPD, when rumour had it that Deputy Chief Gant was the commissioner's only choice to replace the Chief when he retired, there was a serial killer on the loose in LA. Joe Darke had begun his trail of bodies with an innocuous hit and run, but was quickly becoming the greatest threat to public safety the LAPD had ever seen. Despite his apparent madness, he was a crafty one, and the investigative team was having trouble bringing his crimes home to him.
One day, Darke finally agreed to come in for questioning. Gant and Prosecutor Neil Marshall pressed him hard, and made him running scared. He burst out of the interrogation room and fled into the depths of the Criminal Affairs Department. Neil and Gant split up to look for him, and Neil found him first, in Gant's and Lana Skye's office, holding hostage Ema Skye, the little sister of Gant's partner. They fought, and all three parties were knocked unconscious by the time Gant doubled back to find Neil.
Something dark gripped his heart that day. There they were, completely helpless, and still Darke would go free. There was no evidence. Gant... decided to create evidence, with a heaping helping of manipulation on the side. He lifted the prone body of Neil Marshall and impaled him on the lance of a decorative suit of armour, after cutting away a small handprint in Neil's leather vest-- the girl's, no doubt. He also wrote Ema's name in blood on a vase, then broke it, to add to the impression that she had shoved Neil and knocked him into Gant's shelf of knick-knacks, and into the suit of armour's arms. He then left the scene, knowing that Lana would come back around for her baby sister.
She did exactly what Gant expected of her: panic on behalf of her unconscious (and apparently guilty) sister, and beg her partner for help in fixing this obviously misleading picture. They moved the body across the room, to Lana's side of the office, and broke off the tip of Darke's knife in Neil's wound. Decisive evidence against Darke, at long last! The citizens of LA could sleep peacefully in their beds because of what Gant did; it was for the greater good, in his mind. It was from this moment on he would manipulate the system, for the greater good, holding the incident over his prosecutor-aspiring partner's head; while she had wiped off the bloody vase to protect Ema, Gant had already preserved one piece for assurance, the piece that had the majority of Ema's name on it.
After securing Darke's conviction with Lana's "decisive evidence," Gant rose to become Chief, and rewarded Lana with the position of Chief Prosecutor. Blackmailing her with the knowledge of what "Ema" did, and what she did to protect her, Gant influenced her to manipulate the system. Few criminals went free under Chief Gant's and Prosecutor Skye's partnership. They were a fearsome duo.
The rest of the team who had worked on the Joe Darke case, however, were a liability. Jake Marshall was demoted, and Angel Starr fired. Still they fumed for two years, snooping around, looking for something to close SL-9 for themselves. It was a nuisance, but they were more or less powerless, and Gant ignored them.
Two years on, however, when the evidence for SL-9 was ready to be transferred out, and the case at last closed forever, Jake made one last appeal to Bruce Goodman, who was still a detective on Gant's force. Goodman spurned his advances, as a good officer should, but later, when Gant was assisting him with the evidence transferral because Goodman had lost his ID badge, he asked for the case to be re-opened. Gant panicked, and grabbed up Joe Darke's knife from the open locker. He had to silence the man...
When it was over, he faced the problem of disposing of the body, and ensuring that no one ever knew the death occurred over that box of evidence. Fortunately, he had Lana Skye to assist with that. She was arrested for Goodman's murder, having been seen stabbing the body herself. Gant was reluctant to make this sacrifice of his puppet, but it would at last shut the door on SL-9, ensuring Gant's own safety. Allowing his system to live on was more important than one puppet.
The matter of State vs. Skye did not work to Gant's advantage, however. SL-9 was found to be tied into it, and from there Phoenix Wright brought it all together, and brought Gant down in one large, orange blaze.
Gant has served three years in Bloodspill, waiting for his secret execution date to come up on him. He doesn't let it get him down, still enjoying life even behind bars. Old Manny is so much fun! Pretended to hang him last April Fool's Day, he did. Jolly good fun!
One thing that did put him off his stride was Diego Armando, as interfering and as influential as Gant himself, and not in a fun way, either. Gant is grateful old Deggy is gone, though he still takes a perverse interest in him on the journals.
[AGE:] 68
[GENDER:] Male
[STATUS:] HO HO HO! A man doesn't get as far as Damon Gant by going home to a wife, my boy.
[SEXUALITY:] A little fruity, but presumably straight
[FRIENDS:]
The Judge - Affectionately referred to as "Udgey," Gant and the Judge go way back. Udgey has been presiding over the courts since Gant was a mere beat cop testifying about trivial speeding tickets, and has been swimming with him after work for nearly as long. He has done his best to remain on good terms with the old boy even after his conviction; it's easier to gain little creature comforts, such as a prison pool, using an outsider.
Manfred von Karma - Gant had always appreciated his dedication to wrapping up a conviction at any cost. He was one of the easiest prosecutors to work with on a professional level, but he always took himself too seriously for Gant's taste. Now they're cooped up together, Gant delights in poking fun at him. Seemingly oblivious to how furious he makes the man, Gant quite enjoys ruffling the stubborn old coot. They have a grand old history of April Fool's jokes, and sometimes, Gant simply doesn't wait for April Fool's Day to rib old Manny. Learn to laugh a little, son, keeps you young. Like swimming! Ho ho ho!
[NEUTRAL:]
Lana Skye - She was an intelligent and competent woman and Gant appreciated working with her before SL-9. After SL-9, well, he enjoyed playing with her. She was a useful tool to Gant, and while he rues that it all came apart, he does not hold any especial malice for her. She played her part obediently, after all.
Miles Edgeworth - Gant respects him as a man who hates criminals, even if one of the criminals he brought down was Gant himself. "We're not so different, you and I," etc etc.
[ENEMIES:]
Phoenix Wright - Though he admires the boy's youthful vigour, he is none too happy that Wright-o followed the trail right to his doorstep, revealing the truth of SL-9 and all that Gant built on that foundation. Though he's too old to carry a deep grudge, Gant resents that his downfall was brought around by a self-righteous boy who was ultimately disbarred for presenting forged evidence.
Jake Marshall - This wild desperado was like a cactus spine in his side, ever since Neil Marshall had to die. He was responsible for keeping the investigation alive behind the scenes, leading to Goodman rebelling and the case being reviewed-- and the truth coming out. Why couldn't Jakey have left his brother in peace?
Though it has taken another great mind out of the crime-fighting pool, Gant finds some amusement in the idea that Jake couldn't move on from the SL-9 incident, either. He ought to have regarded Neil's death as a sacrifice in war. This boy Gant has apparently impacted deeply enough to drive him to drink, and that, too, feeds Gant's ego in a perverse way.
Angel Starr - Gant viewed Gellie as the biggest threat to the status-quo inside the department, so he got rid of her entirely. If only he had known how she was conspiring with Jakey to keep SL-9 alive... he would have made lunch from Eldoon's Noodle mandatory for every last officer, and barred Gellie from headquarters.
Gant respected her on some level for her hatred of crime, and on some level he knew she would be a threat to his great plans. To this day he works to keep her down in whatever way possible-- whether it's teasing her about being an ideal Vice officer, or needling her about the success of his system-- because his ego cannot bear the idea of her rising above him, or moving on from his influence. She came to visit him once for career advice, but Gant's only advice was to give up.
Bruce Goodman - So sad. Gant assumed he was not a threat, and allowed him to remain a detective after he became Chief. Goodman, however, was too good a man to let SL-9 rest while his former colleagues were still suffering from it, and Gant was forced to kill him to silence him. Why, Goodman, why?
[OCCUPATION:] Former Chief of Police, now on Death Row at Bloodspill Maximum Security Prison.
[HOBBIES:] Gant enjoys swimming, playing his keyboard with the loudest of enthusiasm, and playing his fellow inmates for the lulz, as the youngsters say.
[LIKES:] Gant's favourite thing in the world is a joke, and he seems to enjoy them most at the expense of the most ill-humoured people. He also enjoys control of both the physical and mental variety, whether it's whipping his own body into shape, making someone else deaf with his music, or making a person ask him how high he wants them to jump.
[DISLIKES:] Gant dislikes criminals, ironically enough, and the inefficiency of the system that lets them get away. He dislikes a rose-tinted view of the world, though for more irony, he happens to wear pink-tinted spectacles. He hates the control other people have over him, especially now that he is so powerless in prison.
[STRENGTHS:] Gant has a cunning and calculating mind; he was known as the Crime Computer in his heyday, with gigabytes of forensic knowledge in his noggin. He has a fairly optimistic outlook on life, even as his is winding down, and he is ever-cheerful. He is highly charismatic and magnetic, in a perverse way, and is a strong leader.
[WEAKNESSES:] Gant's incredible ego overpowers any of his more noble qualities. It's always been all about him: how he would be Chief of Police, how he would control the justice system, how he would stamp out crime. His ego undid him in the end, but he is still as high and mighty in prison. He also has something of an issue with thinking on his feet; not only is the Crime Computer low on RAM, it does not have a reverse-lookup app to create a problem from its database of solutions.
[APPEARANCE:] Gant cuts an imposing figure, tall and broad-shouldered even at his advanced age. His hair is white, and styled in gravity-defying spikes meant to represent lightning bolts. He wears a beard but no moustache. His eyes are green. He favours LOUD orange suits (not of the prison jumpsuit variety) and always, always wears leather gloves.
[PERSONALITY:] One word to describe Gant's personality, much like his clothing, is LOUD. He is boisterous and commanding, and oh so very loud. He is a man who loves life, and loves himself even more. His arrogance borders on boorishness, but always cheerfully so. He is a little prone to panic, but resilient all the same, bouncing back easily from any fall he takes. A smart and resourceful man can always field what life throws at him.
[BACKGROUND:] Damon Gant always knew he wanted to fight crime. He had no personal reason to hate criminals in his past, so perhaps his obsession can be traced back to Batman comics-- jolly good poolside reading! At any rate, he entered the police force right out of high school, and being a courageous and cunning soul, rose quickly in the ranks, until he was Deputy Chief of Investigations.
At the peak of his popularity in the LAPD, when rumour had it that Deputy Chief Gant was the commissioner's only choice to replace the Chief when he retired, there was a serial killer on the loose in LA. Joe Darke had begun his trail of bodies with an innocuous hit and run, but was quickly becoming the greatest threat to public safety the LAPD had ever seen. Despite his apparent madness, he was a crafty one, and the investigative team was having trouble bringing his crimes home to him.
One day, Darke finally agreed to come in for questioning. Gant and Prosecutor Neil Marshall pressed him hard, and made him running scared. He burst out of the interrogation room and fled into the depths of the Criminal Affairs Department. Neil and Gant split up to look for him, and Neil found him first, in Gant's and Lana Skye's office, holding hostage Ema Skye, the little sister of Gant's partner. They fought, and all three parties were knocked unconscious by the time Gant doubled back to find Neil.
Something dark gripped his heart that day. There they were, completely helpless, and still Darke would go free. There was no evidence. Gant... decided to create evidence, with a heaping helping of manipulation on the side. He lifted the prone body of Neil Marshall and impaled him on the lance of a decorative suit of armour, after cutting away a small handprint in Neil's leather vest-- the girl's, no doubt. He also wrote Ema's name in blood on a vase, then broke it, to add to the impression that she had shoved Neil and knocked him into Gant's shelf of knick-knacks, and into the suit of armour's arms. He then left the scene, knowing that Lana would come back around for her baby sister.
She did exactly what Gant expected of her: panic on behalf of her unconscious (and apparently guilty) sister, and beg her partner for help in fixing this obviously misleading picture. They moved the body across the room, to Lana's side of the office, and broke off the tip of Darke's knife in Neil's wound. Decisive evidence against Darke, at long last! The citizens of LA could sleep peacefully in their beds because of what Gant did; it was for the greater good, in his mind. It was from this moment on he would manipulate the system, for the greater good, holding the incident over his prosecutor-aspiring partner's head; while she had wiped off the bloody vase to protect Ema, Gant had already preserved one piece for assurance, the piece that had the majority of Ema's name on it.
After securing Darke's conviction with Lana's "decisive evidence," Gant rose to become Chief, and rewarded Lana with the position of Chief Prosecutor. Blackmailing her with the knowledge of what "Ema" did, and what she did to protect her, Gant influenced her to manipulate the system. Few criminals went free under Chief Gant's and Prosecutor Skye's partnership. They were a fearsome duo.
The rest of the team who had worked on the Joe Darke case, however, were a liability. Jake Marshall was demoted, and Angel Starr fired. Still they fumed for two years, snooping around, looking for something to close SL-9 for themselves. It was a nuisance, but they were more or less powerless, and Gant ignored them.
Two years on, however, when the evidence for SL-9 was ready to be transferred out, and the case at last closed forever, Jake made one last appeal to Bruce Goodman, who was still a detective on Gant's force. Goodman spurned his advances, as a good officer should, but later, when Gant was assisting him with the evidence transferral because Goodman had lost his ID badge, he asked for the case to be re-opened. Gant panicked, and grabbed up Joe Darke's knife from the open locker. He had to silence the man...
When it was over, he faced the problem of disposing of the body, and ensuring that no one ever knew the death occurred over that box of evidence. Fortunately, he had Lana Skye to assist with that. She was arrested for Goodman's murder, having been seen stabbing the body herself. Gant was reluctant to make this sacrifice of his puppet, but it would at last shut the door on SL-9, ensuring Gant's own safety. Allowing his system to live on was more important than one puppet.
The matter of State vs. Skye did not work to Gant's advantage, however. SL-9 was found to be tied into it, and from there Phoenix Wright brought it all together, and brought Gant down in one large, orange blaze.
Gant has served three years in Bloodspill, waiting for his secret execution date to come up on him. He doesn't let it get him down, still enjoying life even behind bars. Old Manny is so much fun! Pretended to hang him last April Fool's Day, he did. Jolly good fun!
One thing that did put him off his stride was Diego Armando, as interfering and as influential as Gant himself, and not in a fun way, either. Gant is grateful old Deggy is gone, though he still takes a perverse interest in him on the journals.