Phoenix Wright

Name: Smurf
Age: Old Enough
Contact: smurfsmuggler
Other Characters: N/A
Interests: I’ve always had a soft spot for exploring spirits in Dragon Age lore and playing around with the idea of spirits reflecting the energy they receive—a weak spirit expected to be a virtue will be a virtue, and a weak spirit expected to be a demon will be a demon. I also love mind-messing plots that affect character judgment or their understanding of the world around them.


Name: Phoenix Wright
Canon/OC: Ace Attorney
Journal: iobject
Race: Elf
Nationality: Ferelden
Occupation: Spirit Healer
Division: Research Division, occasionally loaned out to other divisions in need of a healer
Mage or Not: Mage
Age: Mid- to late-thirties.

History Canon History
• Born in Ferelden on edge of Korcari Wilds. Family lived in Alienage and traded with the Chasind.
• His family earned enough money to start a business in the human side of town and sent Phoenix to a human school when he was nine. Two human boys, Miles and Larry, both stood up for him when the other human kids bullied him. Miles in particular stood up for him and it affected Phoenix for the rest of his life.
• When Phoenix was nine, tragedy struck and Miles moved away.
• When Phoenix was ten, humans destroyed his parents’ business, forcing them back into the Alienage. A human merchant taunted Phoenix about it at the market, and Phoenix became so upset that his magic manifested as burning the merchant’s clothes and his stall.
• Because of this incident, Phoenix was sent to the Circles. His parents were sad, but assured him that this was a good thing, because he’d never be cold or hungry in the Circles and they’d give him education fit for a king, and they’d always love him and knew he’d make them proud.
• Phoenix was assigned to the White Spire at first. Soon after his Harrowing, his girlfriend at the time, a mage named Dahlia, framed him for blood magic when she was almost caught practicing herself. He was at risk of becoming Tranquil until his mentor, Mia Fey, stepped in and proved his innocence and Dahlia’s guilt. Dahlia was made Tranquil instead, but the taint of the accusation followed Phoenix and Mia and they both applied to be transferred to a different Circle. They were transferred to Kirkwall.
• Mia was illegally made Tranquil. Phoenix took care of keeping her safe, and he was assigned six different apprentices as he advanced to Enchanter.
• While in Kirkwall, Phoenix got back in touch with Miles, who was now a Seeker. Their friendship, while never as intimate as Phoenix wished it could be, was enough to keep Phoenix safe from illegal Tranquility in Kirkwall.
• When Kirkwall was annulled, Phoenix escaped with Mia and his apprentices. People in Kirkwall who recognized him for saving them in the Qunari Invasion helped them change clothes and get money for passage to Ferelden.
• Phoenix led his group across Ferelden all the way to the Korcari Wilds in hopes that the Chasind would be as friendly as he remembered from childhood. They weren’t, but they were decimated from the Blight five years ago, and they were willing to teach Phoenix’s party how to survive and settle in exchange for healing, enchantments, and other magical services.
• Innocent people (especially children) displaced by the war who found their ways into the woods were directed by the Chasind to settle with the mages, where Phoenix did his best to keep them all safe.
• Phoenix remained until his eldest apprentices reached an age where they could care for the family themselves, and now he’s diving into trying to stop Corypheus from destroying the world.

Personality

If Phoenix Wright were a spirit, he’d be a spirit of Faith, and it’s not because of his middling belief in the Maker.

On his face, Phoenix is easy to miss. He’s polite, kind, patient, and has the ability to keep his head down and be easy-going enough that people overlook him. What makes him remarkable is his unerring faith in people. Phoenix, no matter what indignities and cruelties he witnesses and suffers, believes in people’s inherent goodness and believes the very best in everyone put before him. It takes a lot of effort to convince Phoenix that you’re a bad person, and even then, he still doesn’t wish anything bad on you.

This is part of the reason why Phoenix is a spirit healer—he has faith in spirits like he has faith in people. He is constantly told that they will betray him, and he believes that they won’t because he believes in their inherent goodness. This is a blessing and a curse, and has caused a lot of stress for Templars.

This belief in people gives him a good heart, but it also leaves him reckless. He is brilliant in a lot of ways, able to cleverly talk people in and out of things and figuring out mysteries, but completely lacks common sense half the time and flies by the seat of his pants rather than planning ahead. He has to be tempered by the presence of someone more cynical or by someone whose life he’s responsible for, or he will blithely wander into situations where he can be very hurt. Similarly, he really needs to have people around who care about him and can accept the love he has; if he has no one, he’s prone to spiraling up and down and has difficulty regulating himself. He’s someone who needs structure and needs a person who loves him to keep his brain on track.

Circumstances forced Phoenix into being guarded when he went to Kirkwall, and they forced him into duplicity and cold practicality when he escaped the Circle. He never had it in him to kill an innocent person to protect his family, but he didn’t exactly stop one or two of his apprentices when they used blood magic to make those innocent people forget ever having saw them, either.

The experience of being the only adult responsible for six minors and a Tranquil left him more closed off and less willing to allow people in. This shouldn’t be seen as him not believing in people. This is instead him believing that he doesn’t have the right to extend his usual level of reckless trust when it’s not just his own safety he’s being reckless with. He’s now prone to keeping secrets and feigning an amicable but easily forgotten façade.

His primary motivators are, in order: his love for the small found family he’s created, his deep and enduring love for Edgeworth, and his desire to do what’s right and protect innocent people.

Opinions & Affiliations

Chantry: Political instead of religious organization, and it’s way too powerful. It shouldn’t be in charge of Circles, shouldn’t control lyrium, and shouldn’t have the influence it does on intellectuals and governments.
Maker: Probably not real and forced upon his family by generations of humans purging elven culture from the Alienages, but sometimes it makes him feel better to think that someone’s looking out for the little people.
Elven Gods: Puts effort into at least knowing about the gods, even if it’s hard to muster any kind of faith in them.
Race: Humans really need to quit it with the oppression. Phoenix loves many humans to pieces and the Circles are mostly free of racial tensions, but he still remembers how his parents were treated even if he’s mostly forgiven it. Sometimes Phoenix feels like being Dalish or a mage is the only way to escape the Alienage. Dwarves are chill, and Vashoth are a curiosity he hasn’t had a chance to really get to know.
Qun: Please don’t invade Kirkwall again. Especially not with Saarebas. If Phoenix ever needed a reminder that the Circle system could be worse…
Circles: In many ways, he’d rather be in a Circle than in an Alienage. Circles should be recreated and reformed to give mages more freedom (including leaving after their Harrowing) and holds Templars accountable. Mages who believe the goal should be unfettered freedom with no Templars are either children, stupid, or unutterably selfish.
Templars: Can be good people, but being locked in a tower guarding people you’re taught to fear and despise is horrible for everyone. The job also attracts a lot of bad people who like the idea of being locked in a tower guarding people who can’t leave.
Spirits: Misunderstood people who deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Adaptation Notes

In canon, Phoenix bases his life on defending people with no one else in their corner. Since there aren’t lawyers in Thedas, I thought that elven spirit healers fit the bill—mages, elves, and spirits are the people in most need of defending in Thedas, and spirits especially don’t have anyone else in their corner. Defense lawyers in Ace Attorney also are perpetually underdogs and impoverished, so I ended up projecting that into the AU in Thedosian terms.

In his canon, he shut down for seven years after he was framed for forged evidence and adopted a child. That caused a lot of character development, so I superimposed that development onto instead him having to cope with Kirkwall’s annulment and his increased responsibility for his apprentices. I envision his apprentices as all the orphans he collects in canon—Maya, Ema, Pearl, Trucy, Apollo, and Athena—but I deliberately was vague in my history section because I don’t want to limit anyone who apps them and doesn’t want the same backstory. Due to the way the AU shakes out, he has a significantly more explicit familial relationship with these people than in canon.

I also translate Phoenix’s disregard for rules (he is a defense attorney and he keeps stealing things) to a comfort with playing with Chantry rules, like talking to spirits, tentatively letting his apprentices practice blood magic after the Circle’s annulment, and learning Chasind magic.

Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths
Magic Skills
• Spirit healing (learned over the course of many years in the Circle, so translated to game terms, he’s a high level spirit healer from the Origins or Dragon Age II specialization tree)
• Fade Walking (meaning, he has lucid dreams where he intentionally talks with spirits and explores the Fade, and he has done this since he was a child. This means he’s a better spirit healer, since he has an existing and consistent relationship with spirits in the Fade, and it also means he’s more sensitive to disruptions in the Veil)
• General support skills (things like barriers, haste, that kind of thing)
• Frost-based evocation (ice-based spells are his favored spells if he has to use combative magic)
• Basic spells (anything a first level mage would know, like how to summon fire)
• Shapeshifting into a crow (this is a recent skill he learned within the last five years from mages among the Chasind, meaning he does have the shapeshifting ability and could potentially teach himself more forms, but he’s focused on the form of a crow for practical reasons)
Soft Skills
• Phoenix speaks Elvish and Orlesian on top of Common
• High rapport with spirits in the Fade
• Teaching skills for age ranges from early childhood to young adulthood
• Basic comfort with survival skills in woodland areas
• Amicable disposition that means he’s easy to get along with
• Willingness to use his race to his advantage to sneak around pretending to be a servant

Weaknesses
Physical
• Phoenix is small and squishy. Please don’t give him a sword because he WILL stab himself. Yes, this includes magical Knight Enchanter swords.
• Similarly, don’t expect him to fight without magic. He will break his wrist trying to punch someone.
• No survival skills in non-woodland areas, and iffy survival skills in cities.
Social/Magical
• Due to his increasing comfort playing with Chantry-unapproved magic, it is a matter of time before he gets desperate enough to heal to allow a spirit he has a relationship with to temporarily possess him. It may go well, or it may end with him becoming an abomination.
• He does not have the favor of Templars that are familiar with him. Many of them recognize him as a good-hearted person, but a reckless mage, and reckless mages are abominations waiting to happen.
• He similarly doesn’t have a lot of clout with the rebel mages because he mostly stayed out of the Mage/Templar war, and he doesn’t have any clout with the Chantry because he clearly doesn’t put a lot of stock by the Chant.
• He can’t tamper with blood magic even when desperate because of how it would hurt his ability to heal and communicate with spirits.
• For all his brilliance and cleverness, he can also be a huge fucking dumbass who doesn’t think ahead and does things impulsively. This is not great when it comes to delicate diplomacy.

Inventory
Phoenix only brings a stave Mia crafted and a woven leather bracelet created by his apprentices and enchanted by Mia. The bracelet has six strands, each dyed purple, green, pink, blue, red, and yellow respectively. The bracelet is enchanted to protect Phoenix from damage or disease—in RPG terms, it moderately increases his constitution. It has deep sentimental meaning to him and he plays with it when he misses his family.

Motivation
Phoenix is one of the suckers who lives in this world and he’d really like that it not be taken over by a crazy magic darkspawn.

More specifically, he wants to help people, and he thinks that he’ll do more for people fighting Corypheus now that his apprentices are old enough to be left along with their Korcari settlement than he would in the Wilds.


Example 1
Example 2