Unfortunately, another member of the old guard of the Elder Scrolls passed away earlier in January. Marilyn Wasserman was one of the early QA testers for Bethesda, beta testing for Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire. She was a part of the "Council of Wisdom," who did beta testing on the early games as well as contributed lore. All the Divines (minus Talos, as he did not apotheosize yet) and a bunch of minor deities are named after beta testers.

In Marilyn's case, she was the namesake of Mara, the goddess of love, fertility, and (in some cases) agriculture. Her most enduring contributions, besides being a Divine, were writing "Biography of Queen Barenziah" and "The Real Barenziah." She also wrote the esoteric "King Edward" series of in-game books. Marilyn was also apparently pretty active on the old, old forums, going by "Ramara."

RIP Marilyn.

Here is the UESP's Facebook post about it: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17Do3EJfoS/

Here is her entry on UESP: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Marilyn_Wasserman

This is apparently her daughter's entry about her on her personal website: https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/2026/01/19/2025review.html

Here are out-of-game posts by her: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Marilyn_Wasserman%27s_Posts

all the deities are named after beta testers?? Well that's incredible. I love that she was able to contribute to lore!

I need to figure out how to become a beta tester....`

This post has been edited by Renee: Jan 25 2026, 08:14 PM

Would your god's name be Renee or a variant of that, or would it be a pun-name like your characters typically have?

I wish we could hear more from the old beta testers that are still with us. The namesakes of Julianos and Mara are sadly no longer with us, but I don't know about the others.