Hester Prynne (Cataclysmic Gerosha)

Hester Prynne is a background character that features in Of Angels and Icicles, whose guardianship of the Beamer's Ruby proves foundational to the Order of the Oraphim's ability to keep the Society of the Icy Finger from growing too powerful. She is primarily based on two different versions of the character to come before: the version of her from Earth-G0, and her original novel self from Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter.

Skills

 * Diplomacy
 * Stitching
 * Jewelry-making

Weaknesses

 * Frotchimar link (see explanation below)

Equipment

 * The Beamer's Ruby (formerly)

Character bio
Hester married Roger in a more idyllic time, when the two of them had strong aspirations of helping a Dutch minister with his plans to start a missionary project in the Hmong parts of Thailand. Roger briefly visited that area, only to see a small amount on nin-chyo that was stolen from a vault be put on public display. He saw it melt a man into a puddle. After uncovering a Marlquaanite ruby back in the Netherlands, Roger was given the ability to freeze things solid.

The Society of the Icy Finger discovered him, and played to his fascination with his newfound powers. He was soon seduced by their temptations of him becoming part of "something bigger" though them, and quickly went to the dark side. Hester waited in Boston for Roger to return from his travels apart from her; but he never came back. She began to fear that he'd died - or worse, had maliciously deserted her.

In retaliation for Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale having successfully defied his efforts to put him in a "tome" called the Spectracomb, the Shrouded Entity vows to ruin Dimmesdale's life - by drugging him and a woman from town into scandalous behavior that he is certain will prove their undoing. He summons the demon Frotchimar, to further urge his victims to be caught up in lustful euphoria. The affair commences some time in July of 1641.

A few months later, Miles "the Oraphim" Wealthington drove the Entity out of Boston. But superstitious fears of him remained among the populace, leading to a growing fascination with witchcraft by the locals. Hester discovered that her night with Dimmesdale led to pregnancy, and the two tried to cover up the affair. When that proved no longer possible, she covered for him by refusing to state who the child's father was. She was initially imprisoned over this.

However, Miles found her and bestowed on her possession of the Beamer's Ruby - which he had hidden in a necklace pendant and didn't tell her of its true nature. She believed it was a gift that she was entrusted with keeping safe, and nothing more. The guiding carve on it showed some of the ruby through what resembled a letter "A." The town investigator decided that the "A" stood well for "adultery," and made her wear the necklace in public as a reminder of her shame.

After discovering that her necklace was the Beamer's Ruby by accident, she started her own secret society to have it kept far out of the Icy Finger's reach. The ruby and necklace together came to be known as Hester's Locket - one of the most powerful artifacts in all the known universe. Said accident triggered the ruby inside her necklace to fire its beam off of Dimmesdale's chest, right as he revealed to the public the letter "A" he had carved into his own chest due to his shame over his affair with Hester. The beam reflected off of this, and onto Roger - who was in the middle of using his powers to try to freeze Dimmesdale solid and prevent the public confession.

Said beam, upon hitting Roger, stripped him of his Marlquaanite powers. However, it also did so while he was using them, causing them to backfire on him and freeze him solid. Worse, the ice bits shattered, killing Roger instantly. However, the townsfolk chalked up what happened to Roger getting what was coming for him for "not knowing what he was doing" while tampering with arcane arts. Therefore, no charges against Hester were ever pressed for Roger's death. However, she does replace the locket with an embroidery - the one Hawthorne makes reference to. She is determined after the incident to ensure that the Order does its part to keep her dangerous artifact, inherited from Miles, from ever falling into the wrong hands.

Personality
More romanticized than the original Hawthorne portrayal, this version carries over a lot of attributes from her Earth-G0 counterpart. While hesitant to join the Order right away, it doesn't take long for them to sway her to their ideology. She embraces their ideals, while her estranged husband defects to the Icy Finger. He makes up a story about being "kidnapped by Indians," in order to keep the townsfolk from connecting him to Samuel Fortin. Hester spends a considerable amount of time being ignorant to Roger's defection. However, she felt that part of showing her gratitude before God for her life was to get to the bottom of who the Shrouded Entity really was, a being often referred to by superstitious locals as the "Black Man," believed by some to be Satan incarnate. She and the town's preacher, Dimmesdale, were determined to find a way to break the Entity's power. However, their showdown with Simon Bentforth led to him vindictively drugging them, causing them to have an affair - after convincing them at long last that Roger was dead.

Hester later learns that Roger is alive, and is mortified. She feels like she shouldn't be responsible for her sexual act, since she and Dimmesdale were reduced to puppets in the Entity's hands. However, she also feels that she must accept responsibility for the aftermath, since she and Dimmesdale were foolish enough to confront the Entity without further backup. She remains defiant of the town's efforts to crush her spirits entirely, and refuses to back down from her story of what really happened - nor betray Dimmesdale as Pearl's father. She would rather be branded as an adulteress, and face public scrutiny, than betray one of her only allies in her quest to rid the world of a greater evil - one beyond the townsfolk and their levels of comprehension.

In her dreams, Frotchimar would taunt her about how compromised she had become, and try to make her doubt her role in the grand scheme of things over her guilt. Dimmesdale assures her with prayers that if Luminarod himself could be defeated by God's love and sacrifice, then Frotchimar's power could also be broken - and in time, the Shrouded Entity would also face defeat.

While not accepting of all parts of her society, Hester still holds herself to a strong standard of personal responsibility. However, she is alarmed by her daughter Pearl's anger at the world over its cruelty, and over Pearl's impulsiveness to right the wrongs of the world around her. Pearl's tendency to want to learn acrobatic arts commonly associated with traveling theaters of men, while Hester doesn't forbid it, does worry her. Most of her fears and doubts are put to rest, however, after meeting a time-traveling Hea Pang - and learning about Pearl's analog, Tabitha.

Save for her one time of unfaithfulness with Dimmesdale, under the influence of the Entity's poison and under false pretenses, Hester otherwise epitomizes loyalty to those she loves. She's a little more tolerant and understanding of violence than her Earth-G0 counterpart; but she still is horrified when the Beamer's Ruby kills Roger.

Impact on later Gerosha heroines
As stated above, her tragic link to the demon Frotchimar becomes the latter's template for undermining other women throughout history - chiefly Candi and Hea. Both suffer incredible hardship and cruelty from their scenarios long before they've done anything seriously wrong. Both, like Hester, are easily swayed by Frotchimar to lust, after they seek comfort in the arms of a man equally seeking comfort in theirs. Candi's tragedy with Danny culminates in the death of Angie due to premature birth, leading Candi back to Tyrone and later, to Donte, in a desperate effort to "set the trajectory right." However, Candi's community finally realizes that many of her bad choices are the result of their failure to intervene when she faced mistreatment in the past. She and Donte are then given a path to redemption.

Hea, feeling unloved by her mother, is easily swayed by Kyle's fantasy of the two of them running away together - which leads Hea to one of the biggest mistakes of her life. Unlike Candi, Hea only needs to make the mistake once before learning from it - due to having been treated more fairly up to that point by everyone except for her mother. After this, only the Medsors, Ramirezes, and John still respect Hea. The rest of the world tends to treat her with either scorn or indifference, similarly to how Hester was treated.

Frotchimar, emboldened by this, then tries his "Hester formula" to ruin other women's lives. He succeeds at putting Pam Marcones in mortal danger after her affair with Extirpon results in Wilfredo being conceived. He tries to ruin Hadley Mint's life similarly; but fails to follow the formula strictly due to the sexual moral apathy of Big Rapids culture. Instead, Hadley's mental breakdown after fighting off two vampires after escaping a time loop results in her being institutionalized. This does her more harm than any sexual indiscretion of hers ever did. Similarly, his effort to undermine Stephanie Barrin in college fails when her community proves mostly apathetic about the consequences of her behavior. That, and Jonathan marries Stephanie shortly after their first time together. Frotchimar's plans are further threatened when Mingmei fails to be significantly hurt by being turned into a prostitute. And when it's demonstrated with Zize's escape from CCP control that none of her sexual past was truly her choice, and that her new community views her as a victim of gang rape rather than a "foul woman," this makes her an even greater threat to the demon's power. Further compounding Frotchimar's frustrations, his efforts on Ashley Phillips and Monica Shelly also fail to produce much impact; also due to the sexual moral apathy of Big Rapids.

This results in Frotchimar switching tactics slightly: only focusing on the potential for adultery, or on the prospect of really young / underaged women, who could actually be hurt by society over a sexual scandal. He reads the situation between Vince Finton and Tiffany Sterlie early on, realizing that he has no chance to cause a scandal with them. He decides that he stands the most to gain, therefore, on turning Tabitha into a second generation of Hea's mistake, which was loosely mirrored after Hester's. But when Tabitha and her boyfriend are able to fight off Frotchimar's influence, it breaks him completely. However, Frotchimar's legacy became an inspiration for other demons to keep trying similar tactics to get women to ruin their lives.

Hester's legacy for Gerosha women then proves to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, her joining the Order and dedicating herself to keeping the locket out of evil hands led to setting the course of history in motion so many brave heroines allied with the Order could do their part to assist the Order in keeping the Icy Finger from growing too powerful - or assisting with its being beaten back, should it ever gain too much tyrannical control anywhere.

However, Hester's legacy also had a dark side: becoming the template from which Frotchimar would adopt his tactics.

Development
This version of Hester was imported into Cataclysmic Gerosha and revised to fit Of Angels and Icicles after Sodality: Battle for Metheel had already figured out its version of her. This mostly-prequel version of her to that story is therefore highly informed by Battle for Metheel and its take on her. She has undergone some small changes, mostly to make her fit in the world of The Sims 4 for screenshot purposes. But like all Gerosha mythos reinterpretations of Hester, this one takes most of her cues for personification from the Earth-G0 version of her, created in the autumn of 2001.

Outside of her small role in Of Angels and Icicles in the background, to keep the Beamer's Ruby from falling into the wrong hands, she otherwise is only of major plot relevance to Cataclysmic Gerosha in its take on Battle for Metheel, as well as in the flashback opening to The Gray Champion: Chillingworth's Revenge. She is a symbol for the fact that after a great fall, several Gerosha heroines will need redemption arcs. Yet, the most direct heir of this from Hester is Hea Pang, who is portrayed as a 21st-century, Korean-American teenage version of Hester. It's of key significance that at one point, Hea becomes the heir to Hester's Locket, being entrusted with it after the Ramirez clan hands it down to her.

Trivia

 * As with her Earth-G7.2.0 counterpart, it's implied that this Hester has met a time-traveling version of Hea Pang around November 12th of 1649, a month and a half before Roger's death and the Beamer's Ruby's public reveal on December 30th of that year.


 * This Hester's later involvement with the Order of the Oraphim has been made far more explicit than that of her Earth-G0 counterpart.