Sister Clodagh
Sister Clodagh is a young, attractive nun who has been appointed to head up the Order’s newest plan for a school and dispensary located in a newly acquired abandoned palace located nine thousand feet up in the Himalayas. Sister Clodagh became a nun in part to get over a failed romance and she now finds herself about as far away from her home in England as possible as the youngest Sister Superior in the order, charged with overseeing a varied team of nuns appointed to accompany her.
Mother Dorothea
The Mother Superior who gives Clodagh the news and picks out which Sisters will join her. When she mentions Sister Ruth, the younger nun is surprised and lightly pushes back against the choice first by bringing up the fact that she is ill and then raising the specter that perhaps Ruth is not as committed to her vows as the rest. The pushback fails, however, and Ruth becomes part of the team.
Mr. Dean
Dean is the self-described “agent of General Toda Rai at Mopu” who is the only other British person among the community that the nuns will be serving. He writes a letter to the Order intended to dispose them against the decision to establish an outpost there with the insistence of the physical difficulties of simply living in such conditions and by implying that the natives are most unlikely to respond to what the sisters will be offering. Mr. Dean is physically attractive, but considered too dismissive of both the Sisters and their religion by the nuns.
The Young General
The “Young General” is the heir to an estate, son of an important general and of a high caste who has come to the convent to be educated. He gets along fine with the Sisters, but his presence becomes complicated when he becomes infatuated with a beautiful teenage girl of a lower caste named Kanchi who is openly flirtatious despite the knowledge that their respective statuses makes a marriage impossible.
Sister Ruth
Sister Clodagh’s concern about Sister Ruth’s seriousness of purpose toward the Order’s vows is eventually proven to be not without good cause. In addition, it gradually becomes apparent that Sister Ruth’s “illness” which was also of concern to Clodagh was not physical, but mental. Sister Ruth is equally as attractive as Sister Clodagh and becomes increasingly more attracted to Mr. Dean. A combination of likely pre-existing paranoid tendencies combines with a weakening of her ability to repress/suppress her more earthy non-sacred desires to the point that she renounces her vows, quits the order, puts on a dress and makeup to pursue the object of her desire. From there, everything goes downhill. Literally.
