Some Theories on Sareena and Ashrah's Lore in MK1 (1/4)
Isn't it strange that, upon meeting Johnny, Kenshi, Kung Lao, Syzoth and Baraka in the Living Forest in Chapter 5, Ashrah tells them this?
Ashrah: I am Ashrah, demon of the Netherrealm.
Johnny: Demon? You look human, mostly. [...]
Ashrah: I appear nearly human because I've purged most evil from my soul. When I'm done, the last vestiges of my demonic form will fade away.
Here, Ashrah states that she didn't look like this before, when she was still a member of the Sisterhood of Shadow bent on doing evil, and that she only began humanizing herself (spiritually, psychically and physically) after she escaped from the Netherrealm and started doing good around her (or only what she believes to be good since, unbeknownst to her, Datusha may be actively corrupting her soul, but this will be covered in the second part). An intro dialogue between her and Johnny also confirms this:
Johnny: It's hard to believe there's a demon inside there.
Ashrah: My true face would horrify you, Cage.
Doesn't it seem therefore inconsistent that Sareena, Kia and Jataaka (and no doubt some of their other sisters as well) have a human appearance even though they have remained evil, as shown in the screenshots below?
Even better: Sareena can switch between her demonic and human incarnations at will. As for Ashrah, she can't seem to revert to her former demon form, a sign that the transformation of her body is profound and irreversible (at least, perhaps, as long as she follows the right path or her mistaken idea of it). Even her wings, if she ever had them before, are reminiscent of an angel's rather than a hideous infernal creature's:
So how do we explain that Sareena, Kia and Jataaka are demons capable of assuming human form, when Ashrah, by her declaration to the boys, seems to say that she had, unlike her sisters, never looked human before turning good?
In my opinion, the game provides some interesting and solid elements to formulate a hypothesis, which is as follows: Sareena, Kia and Jataaka are demons who were born with this ability to metamorphose, but not Ashrah—and even better: all three are in fact half-demon, half-human, unlike Ashrah, who is pure demon. Such a presupposition therefore implies that the term "sister(s)" that the demonesses use to call each other would not so much or exclusively relate to a biological connection between them, as to their status as sworn sisters within Quan Chi's Sisterhood of Shadow.
But before we go any further, it's important to note that some intro dialogues give us crumbs of lore about the very nature of the inhabitants of the Netherrealm. They also reveal that although some belong to different sort of demons, they all share the same penchant for absolute evil, and that the latter is in any case the main component of the Netherrealm, in which it permeates every atom of matter and vacuum:
Shang Tsung: Human-demon hybrids—
Ashrah: Have existed for millennia.
Kitana: Can all demons assume humanoid form?
Ashrah: Only those of us who are cambions.
Smoke: There are many kinds of demons?
Ashrah: The worst are the Enenra.
Smoke: I've been having visions of demons.
Raiden: What were they? Enenra?
Takeda: There are many types of demons?
Ashrah: And all of them are heinous and foul.
Liu Kang: Be careful, Syzoth. Ashrah is still a demon.
Reptile: Don't we all have a demonic side?
Li Mei: Are the myths of the Netherrealm real?
Ashrah: The truth is even worse than you imagine.
Li Mei: There must be few demons like you.
Ashrah: I am unique among them, Li Mei.
Quan Chi: You're more evil than the Netherrealms' demons.
Ghostface: I'm glad someone noticed.
Ashrah: There is no one in the Netherrealm more evil.
Quan Chi: You haven't met Valtik, have you?
Ashrah: It will please me to take your life.
Quan Chi: Spoken like a true demon.
Quan Chi: You've less mercy than the most callous demon.
T-1000: I'm not programmed for it.
Raiden: You've let the Netherrealm corrupt you.
Quan Chi: A price worth paying to harness its power.
Ashrah: The Netherrealm's horrors defy belief.
Raiden: I can only imagine.
Conan: No demon should walk the earth.
Ashrah: You think you can stop me?
Conan: Do flowers grow in the Netherrealm?
Ashrah: Flowers? (*laughs*)
Conan: A sorcerer who summons demons? You are pure evil.
Quan Chi: According to whom? Your pathetic god?!
Ashrah: I share your zeal for evil's destruction.
Takeda: I didn't expect to hear that from a demon.
Baraka: I never wish to see the Netherrealm.
Ashrah: Then keep your soul pure from evil.
Kitana: You are the first demon I've met.
Ashrah: May you not have the misfortune of meeting others.
Kitana: If I had sisters like yours—
Ashrah: Outworld would be a very different place.
Kitana #1: Your Outworld sounds like a hellish place.
Kitana #2: It might as well be part of the Netherrealm.
Kitana: Is it true you've taken up with a demon?
Reptile: I prefer not to dwell on her past.
Mileena: Will I find any allies in the Netherrealm?
Ashrah: None whom you could ever trust.
Mileena: (*chuckles*) A demon in court would infuriate the Archdukes.
Ashrah: I won't be part of your intrigues, Empress.
Mileena: How could you embrace the Netherrealm's evil?
Quan Chi: I should have let myself die in the mines?
Peacemaker: You're a demon. How aren't you evil?
Ashrah: Because I am the sum of my choices.
Rain: I must be a demon in your eyes.
Ashrah: There are more than a few similarities.
Sindel: Others in the Netherrealm plot with Quan Chi?
Ashrah: Many are the wraiths and demons who wish Outworld ill.
Cyrax: Havik's timeline? Now that was hell.
Ashrah: Nothing is as dreadful as the Netherrealm.
Cyrax: I can see why no one likes you.
Quan Chi: The Netherrealm's denizens like me just fine.
Quan Chi: A trip to the Netherrealm will change your tune.
Sektor: Nothing can break me, Quan Chi.
Scorpion: You've come far from the Netherrealm.
Ashrah: I hope to never return.
Sub-Zero: Liu Kang now relies on demons?
Ashrah: He welcomes all who are pure of heart.
Sub-Zero: You don't belong in Earthrealm.
Ashrah: It's now just as much my home as yours.
Ashrah: There are many in the Netherrealm just like you.
Sub-Zero: You conflate ambition with evil, Ashrah.
Sub-Zero: You dare judge me, Ashrah?!
Ashrah: By how easily you were felled by temptation.
[A brief aside, but this innate inclination towards evil is the reason why Bi-Han, as a member of the Lin Kuei and de facto defender of Earthrealm, takes a dim view of Ashrah's integration into Liu Kang's group. For those interested, I had written a small meta on the subject.]
What's more, among the intro dialogues explaining that there are several types of demon, two of them focus precisely on "human-demon hybrids" and "cambions":
Shang Tsung: Human-demon hybrids—
Ashrah: Have existed for millennia.
Kitana: Can all demons assume humanoid form?
Ashrah: Only those of us who are cambions.
And these two are, in fact, the same thing. Indeed, in the same way that the enenra is a spirit made up of wisps of smoke from Japanese folklore, the cambion is a creature in European tradition, said to be "the offspring produced from a human-demon sexual union, typically involving an incubus [a male demon] or a succubus [a female demon]":
And here's what Wikipedia and the TV Tropes site have to say about it:
Also, about incubi and succubi:
And it's interesting to note that, of all the categories of demon that seem to exist in the Netherrealm, the only ones that, in the whole game, are explicitly mentioned are those two and the enenra. I think it's no coincidence. After all, the enenra fulfils a function in MK lore, insofar as it is, throughout the franchise, a demon by whom Tomáš always ends up being possessed and who gives him his powers. Following this line of reasoning, we could infer that, similarly, revealing the existence of cambions to players has a particular meaning in MK1 story.
Like, for instance, could this be a hint from NRS that Sareena, Kia and Jataaka are in fact cambions? Personally, that's what I believe, especially as enenras and cambions are not NRS's inventions. Because, the thing is that, by actually integrating real-life cultural elements, NRS is able to better flesh out the MK universe at a lower cost, as they bank on intrigued players to do their own research on (for the case in point) cambions and deduce that the three women certainly belong to this class—rather than inventing from scratch pieces of lore doomed to remain undeveloped and unexplored, that players will therefore find hard to fully grasp, dig into and appropriate.
And after all, taking this a step further, the definition of a cambion explains not only Sareena's metamorphic powers, but also the supposed conditions of her birth, and why Ashrah is so keen to save her, when she has no qualms about getting rid of their other sisters:
Ashrah: Sareena deserves better than to be your slave.
Quan Chi: I will never grant her freedom, Ashrah.
But my joy was tempered as I thought about Sareena… My Shadow Sister was still under Quan Chi's yoke. And she deserved a life free of him as much, if not more, than I. Quan Chi and my other sisters proved tenacious, but they were no match for my blade. I snatched Sareena from them. Then Liu Kang helped me break Quan Chi's spell. Her mind free of his influence for the first time in years, Sareena chose to join me in Earthrealm. My sister and I once again fight side by side. Only now we do so for Earthrealm. Together, we have formed the Order of Light.
Indeed, suppose Kia and Jataaka were born to a succubus and a male human: once pregnant, it's only logical that succubi go back to the Netherrealm, where their offspring will be born and, from then on, know nothing but all the evil it concentrates. In this way, the child's demonic nature take precedence over their human nature. But in the case of a cambion born of an incubus and a female mortal, the birth takes place in Earthrealm, and perhaps the cambion even has the opportunity to spend their first years of life with their mother, before the incubus comes to abduct them and take them with him to Netherrealm? This could explain why Sareena retains, according to Ashrah, and unlike their two other sisters, a part of her humanity, as well as the ability to choose between good and evil, and therefore why Ashrah thinks she doesn't deserve her fate, and that she even deserves, perhaps better than herself, to be freed from all oppression and choose her own path. This could also explain, in Ashrah's ending, the look of fear and despair on Sareena's face as Quan Chi unleashes his violence on her (it's likely to be Ashrah's memory of the moment when the sorcerer brainwashed Sareena to make her one of his pawns, which Ashrah witnessed). Is this a vestige of her human side?
And who even knows if, deep down, Sareena hasn't lived her whole life in Earthrealm as a normal human, oblivious to the other side of her personality, and that it was Quan Chi who kidnapped her, took her to the Netherrealm to teach her her hidden powers and train her in combat, then forced her to obey him? This would be even more in keeping with Ashrah's desire to save her and only her, and her assertion that Sareena deserves more than anyone else to have a good life.
Also, when Ashrah says that Liu Kang helped her break the spell that held Sareena in Quan Chi's grip, as if Quan Chi had needed to control her in order to ensure her loyalty: is it because otherwise, Sareena would have rebelled too? Actually, that once rid of his influence, Sareena voluntarily chose to settle with her sister in Earthrealm and found the Order of Light with her, truly shows her innate inclination to good that Ashrah, and probably Quan Chi too, had always been aware of.
But there's more. In Chapter 6, Ashrah points out that:
My sister demons were furious at my change of heart. Kia and Jataaka were the first to haunt me.
At no point does she mention Sareena. Yet Sareena, Kia and Jataaka are reputed to be an unbreakable trio. Is she therefore implying that Sareena never went after her? And if so, could it be that, despite Quan Chi's brainwashing, Ashrah's departure may have awakened in her an old desire for emancipation and nostalgia for her other native realm, Earth, and that for this reason, her heart was reluctant to join her sisters in hunting her? Or could it be that Quan Chi had restrained her from doing so, fearing that once in the wild, Ashrah would manage to remove the hold he has on her and convince her to join her?
Let's also not forget that Sareena, along with Kia and Jataaka, were clearly Quan Chi's right-hand women, judging by the fact that, unlike the other demon sisters, they didn't wear masks:
In the MK universe, this distinctive sign is what differentiates the leaders of a faction from the mere minions that make it up. We can also assume that Quan Chi selected the three most competent demonesses of all to assist him, and was for this reason all the more reluctant to let them slip through his fingers, especially if he was aware that Sareena was the most likely to escape his grasp due to the ties still binding her to her humanity and even more so after Kia and Jataaka were killed by Ashrah—leaving only Sareena at his side.
All this really tends to confirm the idea that perhaps Sareena, if she is indeed a cambion, and if Kia and Jataaka are too, then retains a very strong part of humanity and benevolence in her, unlike the other two; and that this part could thus come from a (presumably loving) mortal mother and a demon father, and subsequently from a birth in Earthrealm, and early days or even years of life spent there, before being kidnapped by her own incubus father or by Quan Chi himself and taken to the Netherrealm.
As a side note, this also ties in with the Mythologies script, where Bi-Han kills Kia and Jataaka but unexpectedly spares Sareena's life, who then comes to his rescue, helping him to eliminate Quan Chi. After that, she asks him to take her with him to Earthrealm, telling him this:
Sub-Zero: Why did you help me?
Sareena: You are still mortal… that means you can escape the Netherrealm.
Sub-Zero: There won't be anywhere to go if I don't get the amulet back.
Sareena: Take me with you… I've waited an eternity to escape.
Here, Sareena's words echo Ashrah's in Chapter 6 (or rather the other way around):
Johnny Cage: […] Since when a demoness want to be less evil?
Ashrah: I had spent eternity damned to the Netherrealm. I had assumed that's all there was to existence. But then I saw Earthrealm, saw Outworld. Saw there was a better way to live. And that to have it, I needed to cleanse my soul.
Nonetheless, a number of grey areas and inconsistencies which I'll endeavour to explain and resolve in the second fourth part...
