If you’ve played The Case of the Golden Idol, you know the feeling. You’re staring at a screen full of ugly, frozen faces, trying to figure out why a guy just exploded or why there’s a lemon on the table. In the middle of all that chaos, it’s incredibly easy to overlook Ada Baker.
Honestly, she’s one of the most underrated characters in the entire series. Most players just see her as "the maid from Chapter 2" and move on. But if you look at the timeline—especially with the Curse of the Last Reaper DLC—Ada is basically the secret MVP of the Brotherhood of Masks.
Who is Ada Baker Golden Idol really?
Let’s start with the basics. Ada first pops up in Case 5: The Intoxicating Dinner Party. It's 1788. She’s working as a housekeeper for Lord Edmund Cloudsley. On the surface, she’s just there to clean up after a bunch of drunk, entitled aristocrats.
But check her pockets.
You’ll find a coded letter. If you’re like me and spent way too long squinting at it, you’ll know it’s from someone called the "Darkhand Steward." Spoilers: that’s Walter Keene. The letter tells her exactly what to do: poison Edmund.
The botched hit
Ada wasn't some random employee. She was a plant. A sleeper agent for the Brotherhood of Masks. Her job was to infiltrate the Cloudsley estate, find out where the Idol was, and if that failed, take Edmund out.
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She almost pulled it off, too. She snagged a key to the medicine cabinet, mixed some poison into a tonic, and waited. The only reason it failed is because of Rose Cubert. Rose ended up drinking the tonic instead of Edmund. Talk about bad luck.
Actually, it’s kinda funny. Ada has been at the estate for about eight months at this point. She managed to hide her tracks so well that even after a murder attempt, she didn't immediately get caught by the authorities in the way you'd expect.
The Walter Keene Connection
You can't talk about Ada Baker Golden Idol without talking about Walter Keene. They are the ultimate "partners in crime" of the 18th century.
While most of the Brotherhood members are rich snobs, Walter and Ada are the ones actually getting their hands dirty. Walter is a "gentleman robber," and Ada is his most trusted operative.
- The Brotherhood Hierarchy: There's a lot of debate on Reddit and Steam about whether Ada was a full member or just "contracted help."
- The Evidence: Walter refers to her in letters with a level of trust he doesn't show anyone else. By the end of the main game, when the Order Party has basically ruined everything, Ada is the one Walter sticks with.
They aren't just colleagues. They’re survivors.
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Why the DLC changes everything
For a long time, we thought Ada’s story ended when she and Walter sailed away at the end of the base game. We assumed they just lived happily ever after on some pirate ship.
Then The Rise of the Golden Idol and its DLCs dropped.
In Curse of the Last Reaper, we see Ada again in 1797. She’s no longer scrubbing floors. She’s on a ship called the Last Reaper. She’s younger-looking (thanks to some Lemurian magic, probably) and much more dangerous.
The massacre on the ship
This is where Ada goes from "sneaky maid" to "full-blown legend." On the Last Reaper, things go south. Hard. Walter and Ada are trying to get away, and Ada ends up poisoning almost the entire crew to ensure their escape.
One guy, Stefan Garner, manages to survive and abandons her on an island, but the sheer cold-blooded efficiency she shows here is wild. It recontextualizes everything she did back at Edmund’s house. She wasn't just a nervous amateur; she was a pro.
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The Cat and the Turtle
If you’ve seen the final cinematics or read the epitaphs in the later games, you might have caught the ultimate fate of Ada Baker.
In the Golden Idol universe, characters often reincarnate or transform based on their desires.
- Walter Keene wished to live longer, so he became a turtle. (Classic Walter, always hiding).
- Ada Baker wished to "live dangerously but always land on her feet."
She became a cat.
It fits her perfectly. She spent her whole life sneaking around in the shadows, moving from room to room unnoticed, and surviving situations that should have killed her.
How to spot her in the game
If you’re replaying and want to find every scrap of Ada lore, look for these specific things:
- The Keys: In Chapter 2, look for the wax impressions. It shows she was duplicating keys to get into the medicine cabinet.
- The Handkerchief: She’s often found carrying items that don't belong to her, like Edmund's handkerchief. She’s a kleptomaniac by necessity.
- The Coded Notes: Always read the 4th word of every row. That’s the secret Brotherhood code used to communicate with her.
- The Portrait: Notice how her appearance changes between the 1780s and the 1790s. The developers at Color Gray Games did a great job showing her "glow up" once she stopped being a servant.
What we can learn from Ada
Ada Baker is a reminder that in The Case of the Golden Idol, the person cleaning the floors is often more important than the person sitting on the throne. She’s the bridge between the high-society drama of the Brotherhood and the gritty survivalism of the later DLCs.
She wasn't a hero. She was an assassin, a thief, and a poisoner. But in a world full of people like Lazarus Herst and Edmund Cloudsley, she’s oddly one of the most relatable characters because she’s just trying to get by.
Your next steps for a 100% run:
- Go back to the Intoxicating Dinner Party and find the hidden note in Ada’s room that players often miss.
- Compare her character model in the base game to the Last Reaper DLC—the visual storytelling is top-tier.
- Keep an eye out for "The Cat" in the modern-day segments of Rise of the Golden Idol. The lore runs deeper than you think.