My work here is done! ~
leaps out window~
...
...
...
~
comes back in through the front door~ Sorry, forgot my car keys.
Like someone else mentioned, B and Mara will also be listed as girlfriends in your Lorebook if you romance them. And Sophia apparently.
Rain, on the other hand, shows up as "Consort" if you sleep with her for the ritual.
I do think Tara is the only one who gets literally referred to as your "girlfriend" in dialogue in general. Though the game does go out of its way to emphasize that Mara is potentially looking for a more serious relationship and not just a casual sex thing.
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And yeah, at that point my immediate reaction was
"Well, I guess we just found Tara's grandfather."
To figure out what Mara is, we probably need to focus on her ability. Which seems to be some sort of ability to nullify other supernaturals' powers. Which probably isn't a
common power (otherwise Sylvia wouldn't be so puzzled by the fact that Mara can do it). Originally I suspected she was just something similar to a Beacon - an otherwise normal person with one unique power. But if she is some sort of "Null" or "Static" or "Blank" or whatever else a human dead zone would be called, that would probably be something various supernaturals would already know exists. So she might be a unique case.
Though the name itself might be a clue (it basically means "spirit" - it's the root of "nightmare", and is used for minor goddesses in certain Eastern European languages).
It also means "Bitter" in Hebrew (from the story where Naomi changes her name to Mara when her children die), but since she's got an Irish last name, I'm more inclined to look at the Irish version of Mara rather than the Hebrew (though a particularly clever writer might fuse multiple aspects of the word's various meanings into a single concept).
Clearly,
they all did it. Classic Murder on the Orient Express.
Nelson being a Beacon means all the hot supernaturals of Baldymore wanted to make a move, but couldn't because she was in a relationship. So all the events of the game were a bunch of them getting together to kill Lisa and seduce Nelson.
Did you choose every romance option?
You've played right into their hands.
Oh, I know. My theory there was that she's some sort of "back up copy" of her created after she'd discovered her powers but before you broke up. Or it's someone screwing with you.
I don't think it's actually her real
body either way, though. More some sort of simulacrum.
Something I was kind of surprised was never mentioned in dialogue was when we go to the Convocation and they mention their invitations have disappeared.
The cat clearly stole the invitations from the Convocation and gave one to us. Which means that, whatever it is, it is capable of bypassing the powerful magical wards of the foremost group of wizards around, and wander out with important stuff. Or conversely, it was helped by an inside man (or woman).
While it makes sense that we might not want to mention the cat to anyone
there, it feels like we should have at least thought to ourself about it. Possibly contextualizing it with the fact that the cat has ties to Rain.
Of course, there's another possibility...
The cat IS Lisa. When her soul was forced out of her body, she channeled it into the cat. She discovered how to do this during her studies of various types of souls, and her killer didn't know enough to notice that she'd "escaped".
There's also the possibility that since the body was found at the greenhouse, she didn't just transfer her whole soul, but figured out a way to split her soul into pieces. Part of it went into the cat, part of it went into the plants (the story has gone out of its way to tell us that she was studying animal souls and plant souls as well as vampire ones...).
The Lisa who shows up at the end of the Chapter might be another fragment of some sort, which could explain the partial amnesia...
With the blurring of different mythologies, it's worth keeping in mind that Akhenaten is often described as being the world's first Monotheist, and the inspiration for later faiths like Judaism and the other "Faiths of the Book".
Which could mean that "Aten" is also the God of the Bible (and the Torah, and the Quran, etc). Which also explains why his followers have come to be seen as angels.
On that subject, it's worth noting that in early Vedic texts (ie, Sanskrit/Hinduism), they mention Devas and Asuras. In Hinduism, the Devas are the good gods while the Asuras are basically the demons... but in Zoroastrianism, the Daevas are evil and the Asuras are good. (For extra funsies, Deva may be the root that eventually lead to the term Devil.)
So in a real world sense, the two religions likely evolved from the same basic origin - as some tribes moved north into Persia they reinterpreted their original beliefs in one way, while other tribes moved south into India and reinterpreted their original beliefs in a different way. Similiar to how the good gods of the Babylonians, Phoenicians, etc became the devils and demons of Judaism and the later faiths that stemmed from it.
But from a mythological standpoint, it makes for a really tasty scenario where there was conflict between two different groups of divine beings, both of whom saw themselves as "The Good Guys", both of whom had followers and supporters among the mortals, and both of whom inspired myths that painted them as the heroes and their rivals as the villains. Even though reality was probably far more complex (and morally ambiguous).
