Changeling: The Lost

Contracts
August 10th Preview of Changeling: The Lost
Posted: 2007-08-10

The next World of Darkness game, Changeling: The Lost, is scheduled to release August 16th, 2007, just in time for GenCon. Over the past weeks we have been previewing the book with teasers and tidbits. Most recently, we ran our preview of The Darklings, but today we reveal some details of Contracts.

Contracts

The enigmatic powers of the changelings are curious — like the fae themselves — because they aren't innate abilities. Rather, supernatural changeling abilities, known as Contracts, come as a result of bargains struck between the fae and the natural world. Indeed, they are literal contracts between the dream-folk and the worlds they inhabit. The nature of the contract defines its appearance: A changeling who seems "fireproof" actually has a contract with fire itself to cause him no harm, while a changeling who can fly might have either a contract with the air to buoy him or with a bird to grant him its aspects.

What is important, however, is that the changeling does invoke the Contract with a bit of his own supernal essence. In most cases, it costs the changeling Glamour to gain the benefit of a Contract. With certain Contracts, a changeling must also or alternatively spend a point of Willpower, as invoking the Contract takes on an additional degree of focus. This is common among the more powerful Contracts, in which the results are so far beyond the pale of what the normal world expects to be possible, or when the natural forces behind the Contract are exceptionally reluctant to indulge their side of the bargain.

Contracts come in a variety of types. Each type is denoted by a symbolic element or governing entity that represents the Contracts associated with it. These elements or entities are, effectively, the signatories to the Contracts, the fire and air and birds described above. Some Contracts are open to all changelings: the "common" Contracts of Dream, Hearth, Mirror, and Smoke. Other Contracts rely upon seemings or courts.

Along these lines, Contracts are not generally something that a changeling strikes himself with something else. Rather, most established Contracts have been formed by a body of Fae or changelings. When a player buys a Contract for a character, that represents the changeling engaging his right to "accept" any one particular level or clause of a Contract to which he's entitled via citizenship. For instance, a Contract of Smoke available to all changelings would probably be something they were entitled to accept by virtue of being changelings, as they fell into the category of potential "party of the first part" when the Fae took them in and infused them with Glamour. Other Contracts are more specialized. Thus, when an ogrish patron made you a changeling with an Ogre seeming, you became eligible for the specialized seeming Contracts that were struck by the ogres in particular.

In a literal sense, invoking a Contract translates to using a very specific application of the Wyrd to shape one's environment, even in the mortal world. Changelings perceive the satisfaction of Contracts as being adorned by the powers that negotiated them: They have visions in which they see faces in the fire, or hear bullets make noises like dying songbirds as they try to slow down, or they see a glittering shower of shadow fountain from a changeling's hand as he dulls a person's vision. A changeling's understanding of a Contract in effect is dictated by Wyrd, and anthropomorphizes the forces at work somewhat. Naturally, the higher one's Wyrd, the more pronounced this effect seems.

As is the nature of changelings, they rarely agree to a compact from which there's no possible way to extricate themselves. Even these Contracts they've made since time long forgotten have loopholes and technicalities that can occasionally allow them to circumvent the expenditure of Glamour. These are known as Catches, and they allow for the invocation of the Contract at no cost to the changeling.