Yerema

Yerema
Vital statistics
Gender	Female
Nationality	Banoian / Fore
Family	Koritoia Ope (father) (deceased)
Status	Unknown (presumed alive)
Location	Laboratory
Quest(s)	Pure Blood
Appearances
Game(s)
Voice Actor	Sumalee Montano

“Here, women are treated like dirt. Beaten, raped, burned for being witches.”
— Yerema, describing her treatment in the tribe

Yerema is a survivor featured in Dead Island. She is one of the natives camping near the Laboratory, which was led by her father Koritoia Ope.

You first meet her during the quest Pure Blood, when Koritoia Ope leads the Hero to the Tomb of Natives, the tribe's burial ground where they mummify their deceased. There they come across the body of Yerema, and Koritoia claims that she is a "bad spirit". After poking her, she wakes up, and Koritoia attempts to kill her by beating her to death with his staff. However, Purna shoots him in the lower back, killing him. The Hero must then escort Yerema back to the Lab.

During the quest No Time to Talk, when the heroes return to the Lab to find it overrun, they can find Yerema trapped in a cage inside of Dr. West's office. She'll tell the heroes of what happened and why she's now in the cage. After freeing her, she goes with the heroes to the Prison. She remains with Jin in the prison Canteen until it is overrun, telling the heroes about the fate of Mowen. She goes with the Heroes to the roof and escapes the island with them.

In Dead Island: Riptide she, along with the others, are subdued by Colonel Samuel Hardy's men. She is the only one who struggles. Soon after, she bites the soldier to escape. She fails and is caught. But because she bit the soldier and since she has the virus, he turns into a zombie and infects most of the crew. She has been transported to another lab after biting the soldier, as stated in the cutscene by Frank Serpo before starting the game.

Appearance

Yerema is a young woman with poofy black hair done in dreadlocks. She wears a typical native dress, made from various homemade green fabrics that wrap around her chest and lower half like a skirt. Like other natives, she also has face and body paint over her body, including around her lips, stomach and arms.

Trivia

• If you let Yerema tell her whole story by slowly accompanying her, instead of just running ahead to kill the zombies, she reveals the identity of her father, the man Purna had just killed to save Yerema, Koritoia Ope.
• Yerema tells the Hero that the reason she can read and write is because she ran away to the city as a teenager. She was given away by her father to a man he owed money to, and that man made her his slave. She did not enjoy that lifestyle, which is her reason for running away.
• The Dead Island novel explains that Yerema and her family are immune to the zombie virus. The virus is in them, but remains dormant, which makes them carriers. This is partially revealed in Ryder White's campaign, accessed through DLC content, when Kevin is shown speaking with Robert West.
• After the events with the HMAS Avenger, it is not known if she is alive or not. Frank Serpo mentions that she and Kevin were going to be moved to a different location.
• Given that Yerema lied about the attempts on her life by Doctor Robert West, and seems to very happily hand out information, it may be possible she is a habitual liar, meaning much of what she has said may be fabricated or exaggerated.
  • That said, Yerema may also have sincerely misunderstood West's intentions, due to the atrocities that she has suffered at the hands of men in her tribe.
• In the novelization of the game, Yerema unintentionally created the first zombies on Banoi when her father ordered her to be ritualistically tortured and raped by several men of the tribe for her "evil deeds" in running away from her established fate. Her rapists caught the disease and became zombies -- Walkers, presumably -- and she was sealed away inside the tomb to starve to death. The plague truly spread because Ope killed the "Immortals" and shared their brains out to his tribe in a cannibal feast, believing that they would become truly immortal. The game, by contrast, reveals that she carries the plague inside her, but doesn't specify how she is tied to the zombies that Ope fed to his tribe.
  • Ironically, she is tied more directly to the initial outbreak of zombies encountered by the Heroes in Dead Island: Riptide, where she infects soldiers through biting them in self-defense.
• In the novelization of the game, Yerema's having been sold as a slave to pay off her father's gambling debts is absent; instead, she left only because her father was insistent she followed the traditions of the tribe and became a home-maker, while she wanted to receive an education and learn about the world. It was because she learned that civilised people can come to understand each other, that she returned to the tribe, whereupon she learned just how primitive her father was. How and why she was sealed up inside the tombs is never explained in the game. However, it may have been a form of punishment.
• In the leaked 2017 script for the Dead Island film, Yerema is unseen but mentioned briefly by Ope. In this film universe, Yerema was not immune or a carrier of the infection and at some point was bitten by a zombie. Ope had to kill her as a result.
• The Hero may experience a glitch in which Yerema will get stuck somewhere along the path back to the laboratory. If this happens, the Hero must either reload from the last checkpoint, or fast travel to separate location (outside the current map). Doing so may allow Yerema to respawn somewhere along the path, but can cause Infected to spawn in the lab's lobby.

Gallery

Yerema in the original game

Yerema trapped in the cage in the Laboratory

Yerema in the Definitive Edition

Another shot of Yerema in the Definitive Edition