The right route is to use a "before" block to create the objects, potentially "before :all" if applicable and the tests do not mutate persistent data.  Alternately, create them in the test.

Right now these tests include a huge pile of undocumented knowledge, and setup that has to be manually performed by the developer, to move forward.  That needs to go away.  The tests need to stand alone.

If that duplicates testing of other features, so be it.  It might mean being able to drop those other test, or it might mean testing them thoroughly, but it avoids the problem where you fake data, then test that fake data is faked the way you expected it to be.