This is for a Victorian Adventure-Horror with elements of crime noir tossed in for good measure. It is in a fantastical version of the 1880s.
It is 1889, the year of the Seybert Report destroying a lot of Spiritualist credibility in America, and bleeding into England.
I have two lead characters: Corbin Blackwell, a con-man and not-entirely-recently-dead man, who now shares his body with a passenger spirit who gives him some neat powers. His companion in crime, who looking to bring her sister's killer to justice and free her soul from his bondage is Jyoti Kaur, a Sikh woman. However, it's 1889 in England. She's already hampered by race, and then again by sex.
So she's taken on the role of a man to work through English society so she can defeat evil. She is still devout Sikh (baptized vs nonbaptized) and a warrior for righteousness. Corbin's more reluctant to be helpful, but Jyoti sees compassion as a basic duty to humanity. She keeps with the five Ks, but...
Would she be able to have Sikh allies in England? Would they be upset because of her masquerade, especially since she would have to wear a false beard? Or would they see this as the potential costs of having to navigate racist, sexist, Imperialist England during a time so she can wage war on an evil force?
Jyoti is also ace/asexual (this does not relate to her mission, it's simply a factor of who she is) and part of her is very comfortable as a man - she enjoys the freedom it grants her, even if her race is still a hindrance in England and beyond. She still identifies as a woman, though, and though she's asexual she's not aromantic. She simply just has no sexual attraction to others. But she wants to have a family and settle someday, once her sister is avenged. She explicitly does not want to remain Corbin's warrior-companion or gain his type of immortality (she is not undead!okay) She wants to live, die and attain her oneness with the divine, which she believes Corbin is cut off from (not of his own fault, but at the same time: still not undead!okay.)
Correlating all this with her Sikhism without making a mangle of it is important. History is important. I know she would have no love for England or the English, and that she'd be a second class citizen at this time, something that would rankle her to no end. But I'm really tired of Victorian era fiction erasing everyone who isn't European and I like what I've built with her... but I want to make her respectful and as accurate as possible.