Hopping over from another group with this explanation, but I believe what's going on here with that is those characters are being killed off as NPCs in what is essentially a cinematic / cut scene sort of thing that's really intended mostly to raise the tension and serve as an indicator for how dramatic and hopeless things are meant to be in these scenes. That stuff all happens essentially before the threading between players starts or as an incidental and unavoidable bit of side action, and then you're all just playing the flashback characters - in your case, Ishtar. Mods are free to confirm or deny this, but that's how I've been reading it.